Back to KCMC for a final week of work July 25, 2007

(this post is for July 23rd, 2007)

Man this is going to be a busy week. There is a ton to do, and I need to juggle my time between KCMC and the KASI peer group training camp. I am working on a formal evaluation for the outreach even tso that they can have some feedback about how they are doing, and also give me a chance to do a survey about other topics. Spent some time revising the survey, and it will soon be translated to swahili.

This morning, I met a student working at KCMC from the States, Salman. He is a student from Duke, and is here with other students to fix up broken medical equipment. He brought 5 broken wheelchairs that he found in a closet somewhere, and brought it to the wheelchair workshop to be fixed. He says he works with a program called Engineering World Health through Duke. The staff here at the worksho then spent all morning and fixed up all 5 wheelchairs. Now they can be used again to help transport patients around the hospital!

Then later today, we got a visit by some occupational therapists and apatient at the workshop, wanting to get some cushions made for the wheelchair. The patient is a young child, and has a fairly sever disability. The lack of cushions and support on the wheelchair has caused him to have very bad posture, and the chair is not even suitable for anything more than just transport. I had a chance to talk to the occupational therapist from Norway, Kristin. She tells me that these patients can only afford to have a free wheelchair from these non profit organizations, but none of these wheelchairs from Wheelchair Foundation are properly fitted for them, and feel that these organizations should support the local wheelchair workshops instead.

The wheelchair being used by the patient was distributed by Community Foundation Trust in Arusha, and the wheelchairs were donated from Wheelchair Foundation. It is a red 4-wheeler foldable wheelchair with fairly rugged wheels. While what they are doing is great, giving away wheelchairs for free, but having an improperly fitted wheelchair can do more harm than good.

So I wanted figure out if there was a way to change this situation, and try to get the sponsors for these wheelchairs to invest in these locally made wheelchairs instead. What we found out about these wheelchairs is that Wheelchair Foundation actually earns a large profit by cutting costs and receiving a good amount of money from donors to get these wheelchairs distributed. It seems like there is a substantial amount of money involved, and I am not so sure how I can go about improving this situation.

Abdullah dropped me off in town, and on the way back, we dropped by his house for lunch. His wife made us Pilau! It was so good. I told Abdullah about what I thought of Wheelchair Foundation, and he told me that Motivation had successfully convinced the British government to not allow Wheelchair Foundations to import those chairs. 

Ahh this is a big mess, and I should really think about what I can do to change this. I am not so sure if I would be able to convince Wheelchair Foundation to stop doing what they are doing, since there is a such a large money interest involved in this situation…

In town, I stopped by Dr. Nyumbi’s office to talk about the survey I had drafted! He really liked it, and was glad that I had taken this opportunity to help make a formal evaluation of the program. There will be quite a bit of work to be done to analyze the data, and will need to solicit some help from KASI and Abdullah to help make a report from the surveys. I hope to publish the findings later online (if appropriate).

I was done for the day, and returned home to hang out with my host family! Christina had spent all day planning her trip to Zanzibar, and she finally got her tickets to go! I am very excited for her.

Ahh… I think I have been eating way too much here.

Safari Weekend!

(This post is for July 21st and 22nd)

Christina and I woke up at 5:30am to get ready for the safari! We stood outside Parkview Inn (the hotel next to our house) to wait for the tour operator to come, Amani. Just some side info, I had a really tough time finding reviews for these tour operators, so I am going to try to give a review about my experience. I hope that this would be useful for those who plan on going to a safari.

I took a week to shop around for a budget safari, and got various kinds of quotes. I am also going during high season, and petro prices have gone up, so everything was expensive (even park fees have gone up). I was able to finally find a place that would let me go for a 2 day safari for $290. So what does that include? Well it’s an all inclusive price, so that includes food and lodging and transport and everything. The safari I booked was a group safari, so we expected to join others on this trip.

The itinerary for going on the safari was to get transport from Arusha to Ngorongoro Crater, and spend a day driving around the crater. Lunch box was included, and we would picnic at the crater. Before sundown, we would be required to leave the national park, and spend the night at a hotel just outside of the Lake Manyare National Park. Dinner is included as well, and would be served by a hotel in the area. We would then go to Lake Manyara in the morning, and spend the day there. Lunch box is also included for this day, and we left Lake Manyara around 2pm, and got back to Moshi around 6pm.

Our tour guide for the first day was Emanuel and for the second day, it was Herbert. I think that we definitely preferred Herbert as a tour guide, because he was more talkable. But these tour guides don’t always understand what we are trying to say, so sometimes it’s hard to communicate with them. But they were accomodating in terms of stopping for us to take pictures and stuff.

On the first day, our car had 6 people! Christina and me, a couple who just graduated from BU (Graham and Megan, yeah, what a small world!), and two Japanese guys from Osaka. We were very happy with our tour group, because we were afraid that we would get some really obnoxious tourists in our group. Turns out Graham and I know a little bit of Japanese, so we tried to speak Japanese to them. Not really so sure if it was well received, but the Japanese guys were very entertaining. They were also amuzed and would love to wave bye to the animals!

The Japanese guys actually only bought a one day safari, so for the second day, it was just the four of us. I woudl have to say that is the best number of people to have in the land cruiser. The food was also great, and they gave us another fairly large lunch box. Overall, Christina and I were very happy with what we paid for. But I think that the safari could’ve been cheaper, and to have cost around ~$250.

The lodge/hotel we stayed at was in a residential area, and it looked like a large house turned into a hotel. We had a bathroom with a western toilet, a mirror, and a large bed with a mosquito net. The place was a bit loud, since people were talking outside all night, but we were comfortable, ad the lodge was very basic.

I don’t want to go into too much details about the trip, and more details will have to til I upload my pictures!

I can’t wait to upload these pictures when I get home! I miss home!

Around Moshi town… (July 20th, 2007)

Here I am, catching up on the 20th.

This morning, we woke up early to go to KCMC to meet with Abdullah. We stopped by the KCMC canteen to have a western breakfast with eggs, sausage, eggs, toast, slice of beef, and tea. We really enjoyed our full breakfast and it was only 1900 Tsh!

I presented the marketing guide, the revised KCMC bplan, and a new KCMC presentation to Abdullah. I also showed him a sample business plan for him to learn from. Abdullah realized that he has got quite a bit of work ahead of him! We are still missing some photos for the wheelchairs, so Christina helped me take some product photos at TATCOT.

Abdullah cut the day short, and we returned to town earlier than usual today. Christina and I decided to go around town a bit to help her find an ATM for cash. We did a bit of running around, and turns out she was only able to get out 300,000 Tsh. She has just enough for the safari tomorrow.

Anna made us lunch! We werent’ too hungry but we ate anyways, it was this fried rice + veggies dish. Very very delicious! We ate and got ready to head back to town to burn some time.

We walked to Moshi town market to check out the scene, and went to the tour company to double check that we have sleeping bags for tomorrow safari camping trip. Turns out we will be joined by two others from Arusha! I hope they are friendly.

The market was a bit boring, since we weren’t really there to buy any fresh vegetables or fruits. So we just passed along, and went to buy some snacks for tomorrow from the supermarket. I bought some cookies and salty snacks, and stopped by a convenient store to buy some candy and gum. I will be so happy tomorrow when I have candy on the trip!

We went to the Coffee House and found out that it was where all the tourists hang out. We bought a large pot of tea (600 Tsh), and sat there for a couple of hours just to chat and burn time until we felt like going home. The Coffee House has a very cute kitten there!

Nothing really happened today, so we came home and just worked on the computer to catch up on blogging and do some more writing.

Anna spent the whole afternoon making kaboabs, and we had some with chutney. It was so yummy! I love the food here.

Christina and I were hanging out for a while and packed up for the safari! We found out that we would get transported to Arusha through a shuttle, and would be picked up by the private car later in Arusha. Ahhh… 6am to meet for the shuttle.. it’s so early.

I didn’t die!!! July 19, 2007

I kinda disappeared off the internet for a couple days… But here I am! The internet was out at my place, and I wasn’t able to blog on here or answer email. But no worries, I am back!

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Well, for those who might’ve heard about this earthquake thingy… On Tuesday night, supposedly there was an big earthquake coming, and most of the people went to mosques for prayers. Nothing happened though, and all we have felt was tremors. So good news! I am still here!  The internet was out at my host family’s house though, I think it’s unrelated to the quake, so I disappeared for a couple days.