WEEK ONE IN KOWAK

WEEK ONE IN KOWAK , March 8, 2013

It’s Friday evening and it was an enjoyable and slow week here in Kowak village. Our American visitor, Lora, from Duke Univ had an enjoyable visit and departed yesterday. She hopes to return in June with a new research student to help implement a 2 month evaluation of a little catsup-like envelope meds for HIV positive babies. We are looking forward to her return and her student. This will be the first trip for this student to Africa so this will be quit an experience for her. Lora will be going home in August to get married and attend grad school.

            I assisted our Utah volunteer, Henry, in getting his first fence erected for his little tree seedling garden to keep our cows, goats and sheep out. He and I and his wife attended the debate club practice competition yesterday and found it interesting and inspiring in some ways. They were debating the advantages of women-only teachers in a girl’s boarding school. We are about 80% male teachers. I then attended one of Henry’s computer training classes which is open to anyone who wants to practice after normal class hours. He usually gets at least 20 and sometimes 50 or 60 girls every afternoon. I think he enjoys it also. His wife Jeanne is teaching freshman English plus extra sessions after class for the weaker students. I am sponsoring one of them and she is really weak so I suspect she will be repeating Form I if she does not pick it up pretty quickly. That is the disadvantage of sponsoring the village students who come from really poor primary schools. I had one last year who had to repeat but they say she is doing well this year in Form II. 

            I saw one of my other sponsored students several times this week and gave her a gift for completing “A” level (Junior college) last month. She is a local village girl and came to our hospital for treatment. They found that she may have chronic typhoid and is now getting injections every 8 hours. It’s a wonder she was able to finish her exams before she arrived. I haven’t seen the medical bill yet but at least she has friends she can stay with nearby. The hospital is getting more popular every year because of it’s good medical staff and nice facilities and lack of corruption; unlike the other hospitals all over TZ. We have some young doctors that are talented and really dedicated as are the nurses and Indian sisters. The new children’s ward is going up quickly and should be completed by July. That will add another 54 beds to the 120 we have now.  The new doctor’s offices (OPD) will also be completed about the same time.

            We had 2 visitors from Baylor University Medical School in Mwanza today testing for HIV by pricking the finger tips of 99 babies at the CTC (HIV) treatment center, so that was a busy place today. The mothers were able to get the results within one hour so they were very pleased. The visitors just departed a few minutes ago and seemed very pleased with the good turnout. 

            It rained all night so it looks like the rainy season is right on schedule. Everyone was very pleased, even thought we also got some light showers later in the afternoon. Anyway that postponed our plans for removing the well water pump #3 until tomorrow. Apparently something is jammed so it has to be removed and inspected. Fortunately it is only 60 meters down so relatively shallow. I sure hope it is not damaged. It is an expensive German pump (Grundfos) like those in our other two wells (boreholes is the British term they use here).

            Fr Conard has malaria again so he has not been feeling well the last two days. He had to miss two meetings in Musoma yesterday and today but hates to go to those anyway. We are hoping he is healthy for the big meeting Tuesday when the bishop comes to sign contracts for changing the administration of the secondary school. He plans to give it to the Indian sisters that are currently running the hospital (Sister of Adoration).  The teachers are very nervous about this big change so I hope we don’t loose any until they give them a chance to get started (July). I’m very pleased with this change and anxious to see what changes they will be making. The other school they administer in TZ was 2^nd in the National exams for Form IV. We were 55^th of 4400 schools.

            The power just went out 5 minutes ago. Fr Conard just came in to inform me that a young woman was just being wheeled in for a caesarian about 15 minutes ago, so they had to quickly start the generator. I’m glad we got it fixed this week. 

Tom in Kowak