It’s the rainy season.

What a beautiful morning this morning.  It was sunny, bright and hot.  There were a few high clouds but would have been a great day to walk.  I admit I did not out of sheer laziness.  Bed felt so nice!  Moody slept in because he was a little under the weather yesterday, home from Ruaha with the Kings, Lamont and Terry.  Of course, they had a wonderful time at Mwagusi.  Gary has been many times. Moody said, “Ruaha never disappoints!”

There was just a little adventure in the air because the group was going to Iringa.  We have taken a dala dala or larger cruiser to Iringa numerous times in previous years, but on the heels of a rollover, no one was anxious to use the dala dala for travel.

Nick delivered his talk on skin infections and Sarah Lebens hers on diabetes.   They went well, if to a small but adoring audience, half of whom don’t speak English.  This is an exaggeration.  Most do understand some and were definitely on the adoration side.

Esther, one of Anna’s young friends who works for her, was to go to Iringa with the six who planned to go, myself, Nick and Grace to stay home.  Later we found Esther to be here at Ilula and have not seen Nick.  Our surmise is that Nick went with the group to fill out its capacity of seven since Esther could not go.  It is possible Nick is sequestered in his room, but I don’t think so!  Moody had some translation to do before Saga’s wedding, so he also drove to Iringa for some Kihehe tutoring.  They aren’t back as yet.

Grace, who developed a survey to assess whether or not we are doing any good here for the Tanzanians had another great idea.  With her first survey, we got some long-desired data confirming what we wanted to hear.  They like us!  Dr. Anne, who is a master at research, offered Grace some advice.  Anne noticed that most of the survey answers to the Likert-style (“on a scale of 1 through 9”) questions were all lined up in a vertical row, i.e. all 7 or 9, but without variation.  One of her suggestions was to ask the questions in such a way that similar questions might have answers at the opposite ends of the scale.  This would likely prevent all the answers to reflexively be the same and possible generate more candid feedback.

So Grace set about rewriting the questionnaire in that fashion with editing help from Sarah and Emily.  Then she took the concept step further.  She had the questionnaire translated to Kiswahili by a wise, smart man whose name is Mdege Pele.  He took a day to do so and got a little extra help from Mpeta too.  I think Mpeta typed it for her also.  Once typed, we printed 80 copies and with Mdege’s help distributed them all throughout the hospital and OPD (out patient department) with requests to complete the form and drop it in the anonymous collection box in administration. And we accomplished all this before lunch.

After lunch I took a nap and awoke to thunder, certainly not uncommon in the rainy season.  There were even a few droplets before I returned to the guesthouse from and errand to administration (where I shook the box to find some questionnaires already there and  I hope we don’t find any “Yankee go home” love letters).

Two-minute fill rate

Grace went off to shower with the nice warm water she had collecting sun in the yard.  Then the train roared through!  Well, on the corrugated metal roof, it kinda sounded like a train.  A little anyway.   I thought I heard a little hail but did not spot any.  Grace later confirmed it however.  I was pretty impressed with the torrent.  Pretty sure there were cats and dogs mixed in, but the rain was just too heavy to see them.

I was also impressed that the red 300-liter barrel filled in about 8 minutes.  It collects off the roof, into the gutter then into the barrel.  And then it REALLY started to rain.  I am sure we were up in the two-minute-barrel-fill range. Last year’s record was a five minute barrel-fill. 

Pretty exciting stuff if you ask me!