Beginning work at the College of Health Sciences

Arrival

I’m now reaching the end of my fourth week working at the College of Health Sciences in Zanzibar. I arrived by ferry at midday on 18 October after a 2 hour journey on a calm sea,. The ferry was very comfortable, the sea azure with white beaches as the islands come into view. Zanzibar town, or Stone Town, or at least the ferry terminal end of it, is scruffy and the temperature was very high when we arrived, at about noon.

                                                          Approaching the harbour at Stone Town

In addition to several very aggressive porters, I was met by Suluhu Hamza¸ the College’s Chief Administrative Officer. He negotiated me to the top of the immigration queue and we were soon on our way in the College minibus, via the market to pick up a woman laden with shopping and the nursery to pick up two of Suluhu’s sons. The College is in Mbweni, about 7 km south of the town, near the airport.

After introductions to my boss Dr Kemal Bilal and his colleagues I had a welcome wash down in my temporary accommodation on the College campus before returning to the offices to be shown around by Rukia Bakar, the Chief Academic Officer.

The VSO Office in Dar es Salaam suggested I contact a British woman, Mary Hadley, who is working for the Zanzibar Ministry of Health, funded by Danida, the Danish development agency. She lives near the College.  I rang her at about 4 o’clock and she said she was just about to drive past the College on her way home so she called in. She kindly took me to her house, which is on a beach and has views of the ocean from her terrace.

                                                                             Beach next to Mary’s house

Mary also took me shopping: the local shops in Mbweni are rather limited but I bought bananas, yoghurt, milk and Weetabix, so breakfast at least was possible! Mary also lent me a bike which will make life a lot easier.

There is a frequent local bus – ‘daladala’ - into Stone Town, which takes a bit of getting used to: the ‘buses’ are small lorries with bench seats along the sides and a roof to keep the sun off the passengers. There is about 4 feet of headroom, you have to climb in stooping and then squash into a bench. The buses are usually crammed with 20 or so adults, packages and children. The saving grace is that, unlike in Dar es Salaam, standing is not allowed.

The College of Health Sciences

Health, like education, is a devolved responsibility of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar and the College is run by the Zanzibar Ministry of Health. A debate is going on about semi-autonomous status – The College is a corporate body but the Ministry employs and pays all the staff. It’s budget from the Ministry for other costs is unreliable. Recently the College introduced fees for students and this is providing a reasonably secure funding stream.  The campus has buildings of varying ages in spacious grounds, with a mosque in the middle.  The Omani Government of Oman funded the original College in the late 1980s and they are funding new teaching and accommodation that is now being built. The African Development Bank recently funded other new buildings. The College has wireless internet access and a computer centre with 32 workstations and more planned. Students generally have mobile ‘phones but not their own computers. This year there are six courses at Diploma level: nursing, clinical medicine, clinical dentistry, laboratory science, pharmaceutical science and environmental health.

Although there are over 900 students and 50 staff on site on weekdays with about 400 living on the campus, the cafeteria: a large kitchen area and dining room, has been unused for several years. The Ministry closed it after charges were introduced and students complained that prices were too high. One of my VSO colleagues, Brian, who works in VSO Tanzania’s Sustainable Livelihoods programme, is contacting local businesses to see whether there is interest  in re-opening the facility. He visited with a colleague and took photographs and left a list of questions for us to answer about student requirements.

The College has a well that now has salt water so we need to use bottled water for drinking and cooking. The salt corrodes the plumbing and the shower in my accommodation does not work. Zanzibar is subject to daily power cuts, sometimes twice a day. This is due to a weak link with the mainland power supply – in late 2009/early 2010 during the hottest months there was no electricity for 3 months. This had a devastating effect on the economy. Most large businesses have emergency generators, as does the College, although it only powers the teaching areas and offices during working hours.

My accommodation

I moved into my permanent accommodation after a few days. It has two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It also has a courtyard at the back and washing lines. The house had been vacant for a while, it has been re-painted and has new mosquito screens. For the first couple of days there were lots of giant ants, smaller creepie crawlies and giant brown beetles that were probably cockroaches. They appeared through the back door at about 7.30 every night. I’ve used a wonderfully effective, but probably deeply un-ecological, bug spray and this week have seen only one cockroach! Every morning I am still sweeping up pile of corpses of smaller beasts.

                                                                  My accommodation at the College of Health Sciences

The house is much nearer the mosque than my temporary accommodation and I generally wake at 5 a.m. with the first call to prayer of the day! Apparently there is a rota of students for this task.

I moved into my office on Friday last week – I share with the head of nursing at the College a large room on the first floor which has a lovely sea view and air conditioning!

                                                                                       View from my office

Chakwa Bay and Pemba

I’ve been lucky to have had two trips out already. On the Saturday of my first week I joined a meeting of VSO volunteers in Zanzibar at a resort hotel on the eastern side of the island about 30 km from the College, at Chwaka beach. A minibus had been organised so getting there and back was straight forward. The drive to the resort hotel was interesting, through the countryside, palm trees, banana groves, a few cattle like those in India but smaller, but people live in very small, basic shacks that look vulnerable to the elements.

We had a relaxing afternoon, the resort hotel is really nice, open to air buildings, white sandy beach. I had my first cup of coffee since leaving London! The ocean was calm and the water incredibly warm. Lunch was barbecued fish and meat kebabs and octopus salad. Also pineapple which was very nice, with sweet biscuits. There is a particular sort of monkey unique to Zanzibar, Red Colobus monkeys, and we saw a large family of them in the trees (well you may need a magnifying glass!).

                                                                        Colobus monkeys at Chwaka beach

My second trip was to Pemba, the neighbouring island, for a two day review of the Ministry of Health’s strategy for health with the ‘development partners’. At least half of the public health services in Zanzibar are funded by donors. Key partners are the US Government, Danida and the international partnership the Global Fund which runs the large HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria programmes.The proportion of Zanzibar Government spend devoted to health was 5% in 2010 and is set to fall. Next year the Government intends to introduce more ‘cost-sharing’, i.e. charges, for patients. The meeting was interesting and useful for my work but the highlight was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat in the 12 seater ‘plane on the way back – fabulous views!

                                                                              Pemba Misali Sunset Beach

 Celebrating 50 years of VSO in Tanzania

Last weekend and until Wednesday was the Eid-Ul-Haj celebrations - we had four days without power cuts! On Tuesday Prince Charles and Camilla visited Zanzibar as part of their visit to Tanzania to mark the 50^th anniversary of independence. Along with other VSO volunteers I was invited to meet them at a reception in Stone Town. Most of the other people at the reception were Brits who live and work in Zanzibar in various private, public and NGO organisations. Charles and Camilla visited a number of VSO projects in Zanzibar and cut a cake to celebrate VSO’s 50 years in Tanzania.  

                                                                Prince Charles at VSO’s education project in Bububu

On 8 December all the VSO volunteers in Tanzania are meeting in Dar es Salaam for the 50 year celebrations, after the annual two day meeting – I will report back!

Introduction to Tanzania

Arriving in Tanzania

Arrived Dar es Salaam airport c. 7 a.m. on 2 October. I joined several other volunteers were on the same flight, Lesley who is also British and is going to work in Dar es Salaam for an NGO that advises small businesses, and several Canadians who had already travelled for 14 or so hours to get to Heathrow. We were met by Robert, a VSO volunteer working in a TV production company in Dar es Salaam, and taken to the VSO office where we were greeted by Director and some staff, given wonderful, tasty bananas and a warm welcome.  

The VSO office is on the Msasani peninsula, where most of our induction sessions will be, is about 6 km north of city centre, near the government offices and embassies etc.  On our walk round later in the afternoon the traffic was stopped to allow a convoy of government people to go by: police escort, several 4 x 4s all going at about 45 mph, quite unnecessarily since the road was empty, unless of course they were afraid someone would attack them!

There are several VSO volunteers already in Zanzibar and four from my group are going there, Peter and Jane who are working with the Ministry of Education on education projects for a year and Niki who has a short term placement with the same Ministry.

We stayed in the Econo Lodge hotel near the centre of the city, which is, as its name implies, towards the bottom of the market as far as Western standards are concerned. I shared a room with Niki. However I cannot fault the hotel’s laundry service: slight anxiety that no record was made of what I put in for washing but all the clothes came back ironed, each shirt had all the buttons done up! They are washed by hand and hung to dry on the roof of the hotel.

We mostly travelled by hired bus to and from the hotel and office but for two days we used a local bus, the ‘daladala’. These are a bit mad, the conductor pushing people on and holding them into the bus from outside the door, collecting fares and remarkably, managing to give people change as well as bus tickets. When very full, which seems to be normal, passengers climb in and out through the windows.

We ate in the evenings as a group in some fantastic venues: Coco Beach near the office looking out over the ocean and frequented by locals, very good Indian food in the courtyards of restaurants such as the Badminton Club near the hotel. I had a wonderful vegetable kurma there that was better than Tooting’s best.

Induction meetings

Over our five days in the city we were briefed on VSO’s development policies, which, consistent with those of the European Union governments, are centred on the UN Millenium Development Goals. VSO recruits volunteers from a wide range of countries and receives significant funding from government and NGO donors in the Netherlands and Canada as well as the UK. I am working in the health programme and I was briefed by my Programme Manager, Rosalia Marandu, who recently visited Zanzibar to meet the Principal of the College of Health Sciences where I will work. Rosalia said that the accommodation set aside for me is very good – I’ll report back!

About 15 of us participated in the induction programme. Other volunteers in health are clinicians who are going to various hospitals to practice and teach and experienced managers who are also going to hospitals. There are also volunteers joining the other two VSO Tanzania programmes, education and ‘secure livelihoods’, which focuses on business and civic society development. The age, nationality and experience range is wide, which makes for interesting discussion. As well as the Canadians and British, there are four Dutch and two Swiss.

Language training in Morogoro

On Saturday 8^th, we set off for the long distance bus station which is outside the city centre. Small single storey shops and workshops line the main road, selling all sorts including large wooden bed frames, coat stands and coffins!

The bus station is lined with tables with people selling soft drinks and food. Buses are used to transport all sorts of things. Ours was loaded with what looked like bathroom or kitchen building materials – several packs of tiles plus large sheets to face walls.

Our bus

Our Kiswahili teacher, Benjamin, took charge, had bought tickets and reserved us seats at back of bus. It was a 60 seater, five seats to a row, so rather cramped! When the bus stopped in small towns on the way, traders sold snacks to passengers through the windows - packets of cashew nuts and crude but ok potato chips with slight chilli flavour. One or two traders got on the bus, continued selling and then got off again a few miles up the road.

The flora is amazing - bananas, coconut palms and mango trees are recognisable but there are many unfamiliar plants and trees in all shades of green.

After about three hours we arrived in Morogoro. We are staying at the Amabilis Centre run by the Mgolole Sisters.  This is the nuns’ headquarters from which they run several schools and welfare services. After a good lunch we walked round the town in the afternoon. The market has all sorts of local produce piled into large baskets, also made locally. Here you can get freshly picked bananas, papaya, mango and pineapple, local rice and potatoes as well as many other vegetables, hardware and clothes.

Morogoro market

On the way back from the town we saw and heard a wedding party that seemed to be having a wonderful time.

Morogoro wedding party

Our Swahili classes start at 8 a.m. on Sunday and continue until Thursday. We finish in the afternoon at about 3.30 p.m. but also have homework! Learning the language is a challenge. As with Italian, there is no alternative to memorising vocabulary, which I find very difficult. We practice with the nuns and in the town, the shopkeepers are very tolerant, as are the nuns, although their laughter at our attempts is a little disconcerting. There seem to be quite a lot of words that need to be pronounced carefully to avoid misunderstanding, for example, ‘mbu’, which is mosquito and ‘mboo’, which is pooh! The language has some amusing words, like ‘lala’ for ‘sleep’ and ‘keepi lefti’ for roundabout! I hope to be able to learn enough to function in shops and to be able to pass the time of day with colleagues.

First thing each morning a group of us walk around the village near the convent for about 45 minutes, starting out at about 6.30 a.m.  We are not alone – children are walking to school, people are setting up their street cafes, traders are walking with laden baskets to the market. 

The nuns feed us very well. The cooking area of their kitchen is on a veranda where there are two charcoal fired ranges, used for boiling water for rice and vegetables and heating oil for deep frying - chicken, banana and potato bajis and  chips.

On Friday, our day off this week, most of our group are going to a safari park. I am going with one of the Dutch doctors to hike above the town in the Uluguru mountains. The highest peak is about 2,600m and has been shrouded in mist since we arrived. This is the short rainy season, it rains every day but not for very long, showers that clear up quickly. It is humid but hot, about 28 degrees when the sun is behind cloud, warmer when the sun is out.

Saturday is our final teaching day and on Sunday most of us return to Dar es Salaam en route to our placements. I will arrive in Zanzibar on Monday evening.

Getting ready to go

'Blogging' is a new trick I am trying to learn to keep you posted on my VSO work in Tanzania. The views are my own and not those of VSO

Today I need to take the third malaria tablet of a three week trial, which I am putting off as it may destabilise my mood!

I am also compiling a final shopping list, loading the new laptop with documents and my Kindle with books! Any suggestions?

My flight is booked for the evening of 1st October, with return flight booked for morning of 1st April 2012!


You can find out more about VSO's work in Tanzania at http://www.vsointernational.org


The views in this blog are my own and not those of VSO.