Lamu magic

My day consists of getting up around 7.00 am and then doing household chores. Then I walk to the hospital which is about a one minute walk away. There I am working on a project in which we work out the Body Mass Index of HIV sufferers and then work out a food supplement program for them. If you are taking Antiretovirals and you don't have a certain body weight they will not be affective, so you have to make sure the client (as they are called so as not to stigmatise them by calling them patients) has a certain body mass. Then I go back to my house and have a shower and a lie down for an hour. Then I leave for the orphanage which is about a 50 minute walk away. There I have 3 classes I teach English to. I teach year 5, 7 and 8, so aged from 11 to 18. I have some very comprehensive text books which make my job very easy., although Mr Patel who wrote these books has not got a fully comprehensive grasp of the language. My last class finishes at 9.15 pm and then I get an armed security guard to walk me home through the mangroves back to my house. It is still concidered a dangerous place, I dont feel it is which probably means I shall get killed tonight. Sometimes if I am too tired and a guard is not available for 20 minutes I get my sheath knife in my left hand and a torch in my right hand and off I go alone. I have never felt threatened at all. Everyone you meet en route home says Jambo (hello), fingers crossed !! I then sometimes stop on the way home and there is a really lovely lady who always has a huge wok of boiling oil on the go and it is filled with cooking poyayoes and falafel

A lazy Sunday morning by the pool at Peponi.

Island life !!!

Well here I am back again. The days seem to fly by and suddenly a week has gone by. My days are spent in the hospital which is right next to my little 3 bed cottage, very basic but all mine and free thanks to the Knights of Malta. I helped deliver a baby by C section yesterday. The incision was made at the tummy button and then cut down. In hot countries if you are overweight this is considered more hygienic as you could get infections in the rolls of fat in a hot climate going left to right. I assisted in a cataract operation, unbelievable. You put a needle and thread through the eye ball to hold the lid open and then with a scalpel you make an incision into the eyeball and cut a hole big enough for what looks like an ear bud with cotton wool on it. You put that into the incision and just clean out the cataract. Then you insert a very small contact lens under the outer layer and Bobs your uncle. Fifteen minutes later the man walk out (all done under local anaesthetic, ouch !) and he can begin to see the next day and read the papers. So interesting. Then I walk down alone the coastal track to the school (Anidan) which takes me around 45 minutes. Then my English classes start at 7.00pm. I teach 3 classes. Form 5, 12 year olds then form 7, 14 to 15 year old and then class 8, 16 to 17 year olds. Luckily I have very good text books to give me direction. I am told I am doing quite well.

Island life !!!

On Lamu

Oh this island is so beautiful, I can quite see why both my sisters honeymooned here many years ago. I dont suppose it has changed much other than the fact there are no tourists here. A month ago 9 locals were murdered here by Al Shabaab, a week ago a child was found in the mangroves minus her tongue, eyed and heart. 2 weeks ago they found a suitcase in the swamps full of body parts. Black magic is alive and thriving here in Lamu. All this activity have filtered back to westerern civilation and has understandable made people a bit nervous of coming here. I was approached by a beautiful Spanish girl at Malindi airport asking me if I was Piers ! She turned out to be the manager of the orphanage I am working with. We flew together toManda island where we took a dow to Lamu. There I was introduced to my co workers. 3 Spanish girls all aged around 30 and an Italian boy. Must dash the boat is taking me accross the island to photograph a hospital

At last after 8 weeks I am back on line with my blog up and running again. The reason my blog was shut down was because I wrote about being robbed. I went down to the ministry of telecomunication's office and they told me that maybe I was mistaken in thinking I had had a slippery little Ethiopian hand in my pocket after having had a huge mouthful of green gob landing on my hand and over the little feller and that if I would write saying that the money had fallen out of my pocket that they would reinstate my blog. Well blow me down with a goose down feather, I thought Soviet Union rules went out in 1991. Anyway I have now been in Kenya staying with my old friend Arabella Akerhielm (Loundon) having a rest after 3 months working in Addis. I am off to Naivasha this morning with the lovely and fragrent Alice Murphy for I think a children's party and then sleeping in a tent up there and back tomorrow. Then Monday morning I fly to Lamu and island off the Kenyan coast to work in an orphanage. I spent yesterday in the toy shop buying cricket bats, balls, balloons, coloured pencils, paper beach balls  etc. Cant wait to give them to the children and teach them how to play cricket. I hope I can remember. I will write at lengh in the next few days as I have so much to tell you. Wonderful Christmas with Alice Murphy who came to Addis to work with Mother Teresa, Ali Hanratty who joined me for 12 days working so hard with Alice with the children. Marina Ayton and Bell Burt who came out to Mother Teresa for 2 weeks and worked so hard and brought SO many toys for the children to play with. I will write so if your reading this please let people know that my site is back up again and hopefully will have some interesting stories.

Fuck I have been robbed !

Last week I saw some of the smelliest injuries I have seen to date. I had 6 leper patients in in the last 5 days. Yesterday a man came in who had leprosy and a huge gash in his foot. The smell was indescribable. I had to really concentrate on not vomiting. The skin was hanging off his leg from his knee downwards like a pair of loose stockings and it was suppurating and weeping like a broken tap. I cut away all the skin which was about 4 or 5 layers thick and put it into the container for later disposal. I then bandaged the whole thing up as quickly as I could to get outside and breath the fresh air which I needed like a drowning man. Some other patients who were in a terrible state got tended to by me and 3 died, being so far gone in their injuries. The mad Italian Marco has left to go up into the mountains to pray for a week so a certain amount of calm has descended on our little home, although I now have to clean. Not up to Marco's OCD standard but nevertheless not to bad for someone who has had a maid for 25 years. Lovely Loles our gorgeous Spanish volunteer has left on Monday morning. Galci and myself and Loles went out for a final dinner together on Saturday night. First we went to a local Ethiopian student bar where we were the only white people and drank beer in a wonderful atmosphere and student chatter and music. Then we went to a resturant called Jollys for Burgers and Burritos. Quite strange being served burgers by Ethiopians male and female dressed as Santa with white beards and a Christmas tree in the middle of the room with the live aid song Do they know its Christmas time, playing on a loop. A great evening full of laughter. Sunday Loles came from her hotel to have Mass with us at the center and then I said I would take her shopping on her last day. We walked from our place to Piazza and then down Churchill Avenue (a good tourist shopping street) and all the way down town. This took us about 3 hours. Then we went into a supermarket because I wanted to buy some sweets for the children at the center. I brought a huge tub of 100 balls of sugar on a stick which I stupidly brought out my whole wad of cash to pay for. So someone saw how much money I had. About a mile later, Loles and I were walking along Bole road without a care in the world when suddenly a man 'Accidently' sneezes into my hand and over my trousers. It was a full mouthful of spittle. He said sorry sorry and proceeded to get a tissue out of his pocket and wipe down my trousers. The oldest con in the book and I feel for it. Somehow he managed to get his hand into the front pocket of my jeans (he couldn't have got his hand in there six weeks ago, hell I couldn't have got my hand in there six weeks ago but 6 kilos lighter makes an opportunity for the cunning con man) and got my wad out without me noticing until 20 minutes later. Well they do say ones mans lose is another mans gain  I was spitting (pardon the pun) mad. That is only the second time in 35 years I have been robbed but it still made me crazy that I didn't notice it, nor did Loles who was watching the whole thing. Bugger. 1600 Birr was taken which equates to two months rent for one of the doctors I work with, £60.00, a huge sum down here. The really annoying thing is now I look at everyone suspiciously which I feel is unfair. Anyway so now its just me and Galci left. Alice Murphy from Narobi arrives today so that will be lovely. The 300 pound cook who has the hots for me has upped her foreplay technique. Her mating ritual with me, to show me how much she fancies me is to clip me round the head when I walk past her kitchen, which I have to do 6 to 8 times a day. That is then followed by a forearm punch to the stomach with a forearm like the ham of a black forest pig. After she has delivered these love tokens she stands back arms akimbo grinning manically waiting for me to capitulate to her charms. Actually she is very funny but still quite painful.