Diary - Monday November 18, 2002

Greetings once again from Ali Baba and Mama Pat.

It is a very calm Tuesday morning here in Jambiani with just a touch of wind coming from the southeast to temper the heat of the ever-present sun. It has now been almost a week since we arrived in Jambiani and as usual, the pace has been pretty hectic for us. The house and clinic are essentially complete however we are undertaking some fine-tuning to bring it up to scratch. At this time, we are living out of our packs as our furniture order will not be ready for another three to four weeks and we are tiling the bungalow floors. So we will be shifting from room to room until the tiling is complete. Our supplies are due to arrive from Dubai by the middle of December so at that time we will be able to start cooking for ourselves. We will employ someone local to learn the necessary cooking skills to be able to provide balanced and nutritious meals for the volunteers. At the moment we are having our breakfast and dinners at local hotels. The fresh fruit has been wonderful as always.

The Clinic near completion

We have also planned and begun the landscaping around the clinic and bungalow so that things will be looking nice for the grand opening that we expect to have in January. We will be meeting with the Jambiani Development Committee this Sunday to discuss the final plans for the opening and to put together a list of dignitaries we hope to invite.

We are heading into town the day after tomorrow to get some more supplies and to arrange a meeting with the new Principle Secretary of Health so that we can brief him on our activities to date. There have actually been several changes to personnel in the federal government here so we do have some new introductions to make. All is well though and we are feeling very optimistic.

As many of you may know, the South Vancouver Island Chiropractors donated a portable table to our project here and it has seen quite a bit of action already. I have been treating patients in the spare bedroom as they arrive. The schedule is totally informal at the moment but it sure has been a treat to have a proper table to work on. Bring on those patients.

I guess the biggest problem we are seeing at this time is with the water supply to the village. The main pump has been out of commission for about two months now so people are relying on wells for their water and some are even purchasing water. We have a well beside us so we are in the process up setting up a pump that will serve us and part of the village until the mains are back on line, which hopefully will be in the next few weeks. This is a good lesson for us as we take our water supply for granted back in Canada and we are certainly not in a situation, like many parts of Africa, where water is not available at all.

I think that's about all to report at this time. We are well and of course we miss all our friends and family, a feeling we have come to experience many times now.

Hope you are all enjoying life as we are. Until the next time, much love from us here in Jambiani.