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Uninspiration

Life continues very much as normal here in Dodoma:

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Rift Valley Fever (RVF) continues to take a hold on Dodoma - meat has almost ceased to exist

Libby continues to worry about RVF

I continue to be blase about RVF

We continue to hope that the truth falls somewhere betweeen the two

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Caleb continues to be a pain in the night (we tried not feeding him last night, and Libby sleeping in another room - but he woke up at 3.35 and screamed blue murder for half an hour and we gave in - just haven't got the stamina we used to)

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Joshua continues to grow - he grew 3.5cm in the last six months, and he can now read (in a manner of speaking) the books he brings home from school

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Bethany continues to be cute, stroppy, girly, boyish, loving school, hating school, being best friends with Joel next door, never wanting to play with him again

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Libby continues to be busy, tired, stressed, homesick, happy, settled, ready to leave tomorrow

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I continue to be busy, tired, fed up, relaxed, thinking about work half the night

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All in all, life in Dodoma is very much like life in Watford (except with Rift Valley Fever :) )

Worry

I guess I’m a bit of a worrier, but before I came to live here I’ve never experienced that gut churning fear that makes you feel ill and stops you wanting to eat. Most of the things I worry about here are quite unlikely to happen, but that doesn’t make the fear any less real. I am reading a very helpful book at the moment, which has a chapter on fear. (‘Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World’ by Joanna Weaver) As I guess I’m not the only one who struggles with this problem from time to time I thought I’d share some thoughts with you. First some statistics:

What we worry about

40% are things that will never happen
30% are about the past-which can’t be changed
12% are about criticism by others, mostly untrue.
10% are about health, which gets worse with stress
8% are about real problems that can be solved.

The point this book makes is that worry/fear is allowing our problems to come between us and God. It is really saying that God has somehow lost control of the situation and we cannot trust him. I like to think that I’m trusting God, but there are definitely areas of my life that I’m holding on to very tightly, that I feel like I have a right to worry over and that subconsciously think the worry actually helps. However, “ Worry doesn’t prevent bad things from happening. In fact it may prevent us from leading the full lives God intends us to live”.

That is not to say that there are not plenty of things in the world to be concerned about and in John 16 v33 Jesus says “ In this world you will have trouble”. But...

“If we have Jesus as our saviour, we are not alone. We are never alone. When life comes blustering down the street, threatening to huff and puff and blow our house down, we can rest in ease. Because we live within a mighty fortress. Because we are hidden beneath almighty wings. Because we have a heavenly father right there beside us. And he’s rolling up his sleeves.

That’s the reason we can leave our worries behind-not because there’s nothing to be concerned about, but because we have someone who can handle them a lot better than we can.”

“Do not be anxious about anything”, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

“I prayed to the Lord and he answered me, freeing me from all my fears. Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy. (Psalm 34 v 4-5).”

Now comes the hard part; living out the truth in my day-to-day life!

We went to an African party on Friday evening (as you do when you live in Africa) We all dressed up in our batik outfits, so I thought it was worth a photo.

The photos seem to be working again. The picture on the previous blog shows Joshua and Caleb playing after church. This blog shows the previously promised Caleb and Reuben watching the rain, an elephant we saw at Mikumi last week and 4 hungry people waiting for pizza in Dar.

"T.I.A"

“This is Africa” - a quote from a film we watched at the weekend called ‘Blood Diamonds’ about the Diamond trade. This nicely sums up many of our experiences here.

This week:

Bethany hasn’t been well. We took her for the now routine malaria blood test, but it came back negative. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t have malaria, it just means it didn’t show up. However, even if it had come back positive it might not mean she has malaria either because the tests are not that reliable: what can you do?

Another consequence of all the rain we’ve had recently is that we now supposedly have Rift Valley Fever in Dodoma. It’s a disease that can produce a haemorrhagic fever similar to that of Ebola - remind me why I’m here! It’s actually not been confirmed, although someone has supposedly died of it. I’m quite doubtful (based of course on my extensive knowledge and experience of tropical medicine. Actually, internet research again!) but the local Tanzanians are very frightened. RVF can be caught from mosquitoes, meat and related products and milk. Consequently no one is buying milk or meat; in fact you can no longer buy any meat in town. So I’m now looking in my veggie cookbooks for new ideas. You can buy chicken, but it’s like buying a bag of bones, there’s so little meat on it. Any recipe ideas welcomed!

On the up side it hasn’t rained that much recently, so cholera is on the decline again - it’s all fun here.

If you remember from other blogs, Sarah my house lady has 7 children, 4 of which belonged to her sister who died 2 years ago of AIDS. I had assumed that her sister only had 4 children but this week I found out there are actually 10, the other 6 are living in others parts of the country. Anyway, two weeks ago Sarah was informed that the oldest of these had died. However, she turned up at Sarah’s house last week, so I guess someone was misinformed. Consequently Sarah has to make a trip to try and find out what’s happened. Communication is quite hard work here with no postal addresses and few land lines, so I guess she will probably end up with 8 children and we’ll have another child to sponsor through school.

This morning Mzee Joseph (the old guy who goes to the market to get me vegetables) came to see me because he has a ‘shida’ (problem). Shida’s are many and varied here and I usually get to hear about them. His last shida was on Monday when he came to tell me that his cow had died (supposedly of Rift Valley Fever)!!! This morning he was arrested by the police because the insurance on his piki piki (motorbike) had lapsed and the police had impounded his bike. Having no money, this is a shida kubwa (big problem) because he uses his bike for his business. Anyway I gave him the money to sort it out, so hopefully it’ll work out and he’ll turn up on Monday complete with piki piki.

What can I say - T.I.A.

Court

Sorry for not updating on this sooner. From some e-mails and comments we have had, I think some were worried that I was languishing in a Tanzanian gaol cell for an indeterminate period!

Fortunately not.

For the sake of interest and cultural research, I'll give you the details of last Monday's little foray.

We (that is me and Frank - my 'right hand man') arrived at the courthouse around 8.30 for a 9.00 start. We weren't sure when the case was actually going to be heard, as we didn't know where we were on the magistrate's list.

However, by 8.55 we were getting a little edgy as our lawyer hadn't turned up. His clerk and Frank were desperately ringing all his numbers, but there were no answers! Fortunately, he turned up just before nine. I noticed him talking to someone just before he drove in the entrance - it turned out that the prosecuting lawyer had 'forgotten the file' (?!) and had returned to her office for it. Why she walked, and didn't take her car, I'm not sure.

But she turned up eventually, and we were ushered into a corridor outside a small 'lounge' type room. We stood there for sometime, with the only interruption being the lawyers clerk coming out to advise me that if I was asked a certain question, I shouldn't tell the truth, but should give a pre-prepared answer. I told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't planning to lie under oath on my first court appearance (or on any other appearances for that matter). He went back in to the room for a hurried consultation with the lawyer, and then reappeared to let us know that this was 'OK'. Good job really :)

We were eventually allowed into the room, where we sat on a small wooden bench at the back of the room. The other contents of the room were two fairly large tables, arranged in a 'T' pattern; another wooden bench against the left-hand wall, and a couple of comfortable looking armchairs. The magistrate (or judge?) sat at the head of the T, and on other side of the vertical were sat two people. One a fairly large lady, who seemed to be a bit uncomfortable and do very little; and another a tall gentleman with a beard and a very laid-back manner. Him I recognised, as he is a staff member at the NSSF (the rough equivalent of National Insurance in the UK). He was scheduled to visit us the following day for an NSSF audit! He appeared to be prosecuting the case underway! So that was an encouraging start.

Anyway, we sat on the benches listening to the case being heard (most of which I didn't understand, as it was in rapidfire Swahili). Our lawyer sat in one of the armchairs, furiously flicking through large tomes of law on 'procedures in the conduct of criminal cases', or somesuch. This encouraged me even more, as I hadn't appreciated that this was a criminal case!

Eventually the previous case finished (or 'was adjourned' is probably more likely). Our lawyer suddenly left with the prosecuting lawyer, and the magistrate asked Frank what case we were there for. He told her, and we were then told that we should be in Court No 1. So we traipsed around asking various folk where this was, and eventually ended up in a much more traditional looking court, with a big stand for the judge at the front, and witness/defendant stands on either side. There was also a large table and several chairs in front of the judges' stand, and rows of rickety wooden benches at the back. We were motioned to the front of these, while various people came and went.

Frank enquired of the lawyer (who turned up eventually) what would happen. He was told that I would be standing in the witness box on the left. He also discovered that the proceedings would be entirely in Swahili, and he and our lawyer would translate. Great! Nothing like a fair trial, which you don't understand!

In the meantime, the wooden benches were filling up, until there was standing-room only( and precious little of that). I guess it's not often that a mzungu (rough translation 'white bloke') is in court, and it was obviously thought good sport.

So we sat and sat, waiting for the magistrate. There was some kerfuffle (?) with the larger lady from the other court, and a lady in uniform. Frank (eavesdropping) told me that they were discussing the fact that neither of them spoke English, and so didn't want to have to swear me in!

After a few more minutes we were ushered back to the original (chamber) court. It appears that neither lady wanted to have to try and swear me in in faltering English!

So eventually we started the hearing (in English, fortunately!) Our lawyer's first argument was that, as MAF was a 'corporation', he could appear for the defence (rather than my predecessor, who was actually the person named on the charge papers). This didn't seem to be the sharpest argument to me, but then I'm not a lawyer.

I should mention that our lawyer was the only original 'player' in the case (which had started in July 2005), my predecessor having left, and both prosecuting lawyer and the judge having been dismissed for corruption. [On a side note, and to prove how ludicrous life can be (and how small Dodoma is) I understand that our lawyer is now acting as the lawyer for the former prosecuting lawyer, in his corruption charges!] The magistrate's understanding of the case was therefore a little hazy - which may turn out to be a good thing!

Anyway, I was then sworn in as DW2 (Defence Witness Two). It was only at that point that I actually appreciated that I was appearing as a witness, and not the defendant. This made me quite happy :) The larger lady swore me in reading the words off a scrap of paper. It was quite exciting really. It was a 'Swahili-ised' version of the thing you see in American films: "I promise to tell truth, all truth and only truth, so help me God" (if I recall correctly, which I don't).

I then proceeded to give my testimony, which consisted of presenting two letters into evidence which had not been written by me; had been written to someone I didn't know, and had been written before I even knew I was going to be in Tanzania. This may sound a simple thing, but everything I said was repeated in duplicate by my lawyer the magistrate, at ever-reducing speeds, before she understood it. She then wrote this down on blank sheets of paper in laborious longhand.

The whole hearing consisted of this, plus my lawyer stating that this was all we had to say, and that his final defence arguments would be by written submission at a later date. There was much rustling of diaries for the negotiation of a suitable later date (7th March, as it happens), and that was it.

Incidentally, the only role the prosecuting lawyer (a nicely turned out, but very young-seeming lady) played, was to whisper 'no objection' at suitable intervals. Even this had to generally be repeated by my lawyer to the judge a couple of times!

Frank tells me that he thinks it will be alright because our lawyer has struck up a good relationship with the prosecutor.

As the lawyer said to me the week before, it's not know-how that matters in Tanzania, but know-who.

We shall see......