Happy 2012!

Well, it sure seems that years have flown by!

When we moved here our youngest was 2 years old, just a baby really. Now she is a lanky 5-year old with opinions! The middle one still yearns for Israel, as she did from the beginning, and the 13-year old is a teenager with an Adam's apple and an attitude..
I look at videos of myself when we first moved here and am SHOCKED. Who is that pretty, young chick with the fat guy? Now my dear husband is the one who looks better after all this; he is thinner, healthier, is just finishing a book he's been writing for five years, and is on the brink of, if not research, then at least some serious data collection.
As for me, I'm a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I don't know how other women do it.
I feel like a juggler whose balls are constantly smashing to the ground.
This is my life: Clinics, patients, organizers, translators, volunteers, 3 kids. Husband who is away a lot. Two volunteer houses.Very little electricity, although it seems they had mercy on us over xmas. Water running out when electricity goes. Cars that keep breaking down if not daily, then at least weekly.
 However, on the plus side of things I don't have to cook, clean or iron!! Ever. Yahoo!! I hate housework. The downside of this luxury is that I have staff. The issue of staff is something that is hard to explain to Europeans and a constant topic among us wazungu in TZ.

Every time I look in the mirror I want to scream; sun spots, wrinkles, grey hair... Lucky the lightning is bad and the bathroom mirror a small one. My friend Veronique summed it up when she said: 'Look at me! Look at the state of me! Look at my shoes, my clothes...' She said her family, who came for a visit mumbled in astonishment when they saw her at the airport. What happened to your hair??!! What happened to YOU! (Apparently she cut her own fringe, which she hadn't done since she was 6).
Our clothes shopping is done at the Memorial second hand market. Sometimes we get a kick out of finding an authentic Louis Vuitton or Prada bag, but mostly we buy someone else's old junk that deteriorates even further on the sunny clothes line. (Because no matter WHAT you say or HOW you train your staff, they will never understand that dark/coloured clothes should be drying in the shade.)

Life here is a strange mix. On one hand I feel deeply grateful that I can do the work that I do, to help people profoundly, to make a difference of literally life and death in many cases. I love my job.
But it's hard. The conditions are sometimes awful. I come home a wreck from sitting on crooked chairs, straining to be able to read the computer screen, and frying in 38 degrees.
On the other hand my house is always tidy, there are clean undies in the drawer, and the food is ready and waiting when I get home. Can't complain about that.

Summa summarum; two days ago I told my husband I'm staying in Israel after our next holiday there. I said he can continue, but me and the kids will not be returning to this hellhole. Anyway we can't afford the school fees (a mere 30 000$/year), and I need a shrink, a car that works and a dishwasher that doesn't speak. AND the kids would learn hebrew without my having to endure another israeli au pair.

Hmmmm... I guess he still loves me, because he talked me into booking a return ticket after all.

And we're back...

My friend Mike started a blog. And inspired by him I decided to return to my own. Tomorrow. When I have time... Its been a year and a half in Africa.
Afrika.
Amazing Afrika.

Back home

I’m back home now, back to normality, back to routine. But my heart is in Africa. I think about it all the time. I mostly think about the people I met. The women with AIDS. Those women in Uru. With nothing. No health care. No husband. No money. No food. Polluted water. 75% infant mortality rate. Dead babies. Goodluck’s mother haunts me, I see her face, her huge eyes welled up with silent tears as she looks at her 5-month-old baby. Her skeletal body covered in colourful clothes. I can’t and don’t want to imagine the desperation of looking at your beautiful child and knowing you will not be there to care for him. I don’t want to imagine the pain, sorrow and worry about the baby, who in all likelihood has ‘that disease’ too. I think about the young lawyer who came with her mother and sister. She looks just like a friend of mine in Finland, only one is blonde and one is black. Her mother got infected while giving birth to the sister; caesarian, loss of blood, she was given a blood transfusion; no sex, but still AIDS. The sister is now 21 and the ARVs have stopped working and she is loosing weight fast. Her CD4 is down to 39. But she’s a fighter and an optimist. She is not giving up. Her teeth are your classic Syphilinum teeth, pointed and crumbling. Jeremy gives her Fl-ac based on her buoyancy and aggravation from heat. Great prescription, wouldn’t have thought of it myself… After the mother’s case the lawyer sister stays; she’s been interpreting, and starts to cry silently. She’s just sitting there crying. I start to cry too, so we quickly get into her headaches. In my essence I’m already there. I tell the kids we’re going. Ikey, our 10-year-old is very excited. He watches our promotional DVD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pExI8B9dJ7M) and at the end, where I say ‘we need your help’, Ike cries ‘I WILL HELP YOU! I will bake cookies for the market and make money, teach me homoeopathy mummy and I will come and give remedies’. He sees the photos. He sees Goodluck and asks if his mother is going to die. I say I don’t know. He says if yes, we will adopt him. My feelings exactly. 14 million children in Africa without parents. 14 million worse off than Goodluck. We need to rent our house out, pack up, but what to bring to Africa? Just clothes, a few toys and books? Or start shipping stuff? Should I sell my car? But what if the project runs out of money and we come back in a month… then we have no house, no car… These thoughts roll in my head all the time, day and night. In the meantime I’m trying to fundraise and get a new web site up and running, design a logo… all on zero budget but with the help of a lot of friends. People ask me ‘How was Africa’. In the beginning I tried to answer, but now I just say ‘We are moving’.

First Impressions

5.12.2008 Almost a week in Africa and I'm excited! I was excited from day 1 and I get happier and happier as the days go by. Call me a happy-go-lucky optimist (my husband does), but this place rocks! And our project rocks! It seems like we are in the right place at the right time; everything is falling into our hands, we keep meeting right people wherever we go and that feels good. So very very good! My reason for being here is to 'check the place out' from a family point of view. Emotionally I have always known that it's better if we all move here, but intellectually… well, let's just say that I have moved countries before. I have lived in four different countries so far, and out of those I have moved once with kids. I can tell you it's a totally different story to pack your backpack and wave adios when you have only yourself to consider. With a whole family it's different. We have three kids who will pay the consequences of their parents' whateveritis; idealism? Desire to save the world? And in this neighborhood the price can be very high. There is malaria (it's the biggest killer in Tanzania), typhoid, TB… plenty of nasty diseases any mother would freak out from. And I am afraid. Of course. Who wouldn't be? So I arrived here Monday night, flying to Kilimanjaro airport, which by the way is an international airport. I met the trusted Margot and Sibhon and after a cool beer concked out in a gorgeous little hotel my darling husband had chosen for my first night in Africa. (He promised it would be downhill from there on and he has kept his promise- I'm writing this in Dar in a hotel that has not only fleas but also cockroaches..). Tuesday morning we walked into Moshi, which is a nice little town. Certainly not Europe, not even Middle East but for Africa- great. It has been voted the cleanest town in Africa several times. We then took a taxi to the International School in Moshi, which was one of my biggest tests for the place. And boy did it deliver. The school is absolutely gorgeous. It has it's own campus 10 mins out of centre of Moshi, surrounded by acres of lush, green fields and huge old trees. The headmaster is a lovely man and everything looked so serene, even idyllic. Now I know schools are schools etc but as far as I can see this one has a lot going for it. And I'm not only talking scenery here, or the swimming pool with views to the Kilimanjaro (yes, parents can use it too!), It seems that they have a great attitude towards learning, and a philosophy to 'inspire individuals to be lifelong learners in a global community'. Cool! I saw some of the mums too, and to my relief they looked like sane people. So in my little head the thinking went like this: If these respectable looking people put their children here, and if a number of others send their kids from all over the world to board here, it must be ok. Right? Right. As far as I'm concerned the matter is settled. We're moving. I will not go into the rest of my trip, except to say that I saw the simba and the lucky elephant. I also saw communities in the jungle with no health care and an infant mortality rate of 75%. Seventy five per cent. I saw things that shocked me more than I can ever tell you, people that touched my heart and made me want to start treating them straight away. NOW. God knows we are needed here and with his help, and yours, we can only hope and pray that we can make a difference.