Diary - Wednesday, January 20, 2010

If you Google "Murphy's Law", it says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It seems that we have been learning this reality over the past several weeks now as we head into day 40 without power from the grid and our main computer was recently stolen from the vehicle in Stone Town. Luckily for us we had most of our data backed up and have only lost some recent files which were created over the last three weeks. This along with water supply problems, increasing prices of all commodities, fuel shortages and escalating health concerns within the community have suddenly made us aware of just how tenuous our lives can be. We are surviving though and adaptation would be the key descriptive here as we have all had to modify our activities to work around this present situation. We run a generator three times a day and this has allowed us to maintain foodstuffs, power this computer that I’m working on and provide light for a few hours in the evening. In addition, we are still able to open the “Well” and provide services to the travelers who have stayed on and are also coping with the situation. So even though these times are challenging, we are learning good lessons and hopefully becoming better people as a result.

I had already prepared an update but unfortunately it was one of the files that was not backed up so I cannot include what was a beautiful picture of Jane and Val taken before they left in December. They had also written a very nice farewell blog which we all appreciate very much. Needless to say, we had just a fantastic relationship with these two lovely women and we would like to thank them so much for their unconditional love, their selflessness and service to others. They really added a nice touch to the team here and they both know they would be welcome here again. Thank you Jane and Val!!!!

Hot on the heels of these two we have had the pleasure of welcoming Maylin Lauritzen who is from Norway and Nareena Switlo from British Columbia. These two very dynamic ladies have been helping Pat out with her teaching schedule in the JTTI and will continue to do so over the next several weeks and we are really looking forward to getting to know each other better during this time. They have brought some tremendous enthusiasm into the project and it is already obvious that they are committed to doing the best job that they can as well as pumping out the "good vibes" which are always appreciated. Welcome you two and thanks so much for being on the team.

Our most recent news regarding the power outage is that we cannot expect a return to normal until at the earliest February 20th so our communication until then may be pretty sparse.

For those volunteers scheduled for this year, I would appreciate you contacting us as we did lose our most recent master list and I want to update that just as soon as I can.

So until the next time, take good care and very warm wishes from all of us here experiencing a bit of a jam in the "Jam"