Diary - Monday, March 29, 2004 

Well good morning once again from Jambiani and the ever increasingly popular, one of a kind, Jambiani Wellness Centre. :) I'm checking the date here and I'm realizing it's been a while since I last typed an update.

First of all, we hope you are all in good shape and enjoying the return of warmer weather and those beautiful spring days. We are going through our own seasonal change now as well as we shift into the Zanzibar version of autumn. It is the time of what they call the Masika or long rains and although it is still quite early in this season, we have had some fabulous thunderstorms and good periods of rain. I have mentioned before that Jambiani is in a relative dry zone so we are always grateful for the moisture. Of course the garden powers during this period and we are constantly amazed at how fast things grow. Mind you, Pat and the "boys" take special care and we have brought in many loads of soil and manure to provide optimum conditions for all the shrubs, trees, flowers and vegetables that we have planted. We have several coconut palms that were started as seeds about ten months ago and now they are over ten feet high! These particular palms are special varieties that are native to Zanzibar and you can really see how hardy they are by their size and intense green colour.

We had a very nice meeting with Dr Makame, the Minister for Health, last Wednesday and we are now very much on track with respect to the addition of medical services at the Centre. We will be getting a list this Wednesday of what administrative formalities are required by the Government to facilitate this and then it should be fairly easy going after that. Famous last words!! :) From our discussions with the Registrar of Private Hospitals, all requirements seem strait forward and sensible, so this is a bit of a relief. We have also had some communication with Dr Pat and his wife Janie and all seems to be working out well in the UK with their initial planning stages. So this is very encouraging for all of us.

We also have some fantastic news to share with you but we have sworn an oath of silence until final confirmations are in place. Hopefully we will be able to fill you in on the details of this new development in the next update. Assuming that this all comes together as planned, many thousands of individuals stand to have improvements made in the quality of their lives in the very near future. This is earth shattering stuff, believe me, and we are very privileged indeed to be a part of this.

There is not too much news on the home front. I'm really enjoying the clinical side of things, Pat is continuing to teach her biweekly English classes and to coordinate the once a week deaf and hard of hearing class that we are hosting up at the clinic. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves very much.

We are still waiting for funds to be released by the Ministry of Finance so that our friend Mustafa can travel to India to have the defects in his heart repaired. He seems to be quite stable at this time as long as he takes his daily regimen of medication so we can only hope that the money for this life saving procedure becomes available soon. We'll keep you posted as time goes on.

You might also remember the little girl who we saw a few weeks ago who was recovering from TB and who had leg and hip problems. We eventually took her into Mnazi Moja hospital to have a consultation with Dr Said and we determined that she had an avascular necrosis (death of bone due to reduced blood supply) of her femoral acetabular joint with a dislocation as well as an osteomyelitis (infection of the bone) of her tibia. I will be talking with Dr Said tomorrow to determine when he will be able to operate. I think the outcome of this will be favorable for the girl and hopefully within the next few weeks she will be able to walk properly again. We will let you know how things progress here as well. Keep your fingers crossed!

We have a bit over a month or so to go before Dr Grant Parker and his partner Barbara arrive. I think these two very dedicated practitioners are going to make a big impact here in Jambiani. Barbara intends to teach massage and Grant is very adept at dealing with, among other things, soft tissue injuries, so I'm certain they will be able to help a lot of people in this and surrounding communities. As usual, we are looking forward to welcoming them to Zanzibar. Grant and Barbara will be our 10th and 11th volunteers respectively since we officially opened last January, so we are very grateful for the tremendous response we are receiving from all you wonder-full people out there!! Thank you!!

Anyhow folks, this has been a pretty brief update this time, but as I said, things have been pretty routine here over the last couple of weeks or so.

As always, we send our love and most sincere appreciation for all your help and support now and in the past and we are really looking forward to seeing some of you again in the now, not too distant future.

Be well and much love to you!
Ali Baba and Patima :)