Some pictures from Juma's birthday party

I tried, I promise....

I have been trying to upload some pictures for the last half hour, but I'm not having any luck.

I'll try again later--check back in a few days.

Juma's birthday

Thanks to everyone who sent Happy Birthday wishes to Juma on his special day. If you forgot, here's your chance to make ammends--leave a comment on this post and we'll read it to the little squirt.

We had a great party yesterday with dozens of kids. We threw it Pemba-style; which means that it was quite the production. There was a stage for Juma to display his four-year-old self and plenty of food and drink and, of course, music.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but for now, know that Juma's very happy to be four and is looking forward to your comments on this post.

electricity and internet woes, but otherwise well

Well, this one is short because the (only) public internet connection is excessively, frustratingly, painfully ssssssssssssssssslllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwww. I'm been on for 50 minutes and accomplished virtually nothing except exercise my pointer finger by clicking Refresh, Refresh, Refresh, Back, Back, Refresh countless times.

Besides the connection being slow, the electricity siutation on the island is dreadful. The island's electricity depends on burning crude oil, which is shipped in by boat and intervals. The last few days, the electricity has been rationed; off during the day, on at night. Our cook uses a charcoal stove, so cooking lunch is not a problem, but we use an electric cooker, so heating up water for Juma's bath, cooking breakfast, etc, has been difficult. As is keeping anything in the fridge.

I don't want to complain the whole post, though. My work finally started, and things are going really well. I've been received well by doctors and nurses at the hospital where I'm doing interviews, and I have a research assistant who is very helpful.

But now I better try to post this message, as there are only 4 mintues left on my computer turn, and it'll take at least that long to get this to post.

long-awaited news and unwelcome visitors (not for arachnophobes)

As far as long-awaited news goes, we finally got research permission for our anemia study, so our work can start next week. It only took two weeks, which is actually pretty record-breaking, even for the US.
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While the house we live in gives the impression of being contained—strong walls, a ceiling (rather than just the roof), screens and glass/wood shutters on all windows—certain animals have managed to find their way in. We spray the rooms with bug killer every afternoon when we go out to kill mosquitoes and other small creatures, and we sleep under nets every night.

We’ve found everything from giant crickets to mini-scorpions, from biting centipedes to giant East African millipedes (which are over 6 inches long and a good inch in diameter, but harmless), either dead or alive, in or just outside the house. (Some young boys placed one giant millipede on our doorstep, knocked, and ran, as a practical joke. Luckily, we’d seen many of their likes before, so it didn’t scare us.)

Our most unwelcome visitors have been giant spiders. One particularly large spider lives outside in our courtyard (an area contained by four walls, but open to the sky) in a giant, rain- and wind-proof web. It rests there, its head pointed down, splayed out in the center of its intricate web, with several smaller spiders around it in their smaller webs, like little courtiers to their queen. (I imagine it as a female, though I sincerely hope it does not bring us babies.) Its leg-span reaches the size of a small donut, and it sports red, black, and yellow colors. I keep a wary eye on it every time I go past the web, and I am always a little unpleasantly shocked to see it move. But we leave it be, as it remains outside, and rarely moves except to pounce on small insects unfortunate enough to fly into the web. (We’ve witnessed several of these deaths-of-insects, and even got two on video, complete with Juma’s commentary.)

But of the giant spiders that have graced us with their presence, the worst are the ones that find their way inside. (These ones are thick-legged, brown and hairy, though I imagine they are not poisonous. Let me imagine it.) One appeared in Juma’s room, and much to Juma’s delight, Justin sprayed it with just enough Raid that it crawled across the room and died in a curled up heap under Juma’s bed. He offered to show the spider’s corpse to some fellow American guests we had later that day, but they politely declined.

Last night, another appeared high up on the living room wall above Justin’s head. While Justin kept an eye on it, I ran for the Raid. When Justin sprayed it, the spider must have realized it was in mortal danger, because it—she—suddenly started ripping open the egg sac she carried on her belly. Dozens of surprisingly tiny baby spiders dropped onto the floor and scattered, while the mother disappeared. For fifteen minutes we searched the living room for the giant mother, who was still dropping live babies around the room, which we were not going to let grow up inside the house. The mother finally reappeared on the opposite wall, above my head this time. We finished her off with way too much bug spray, and we went outside for a breath of fresh air.

Justin commented that if any Pembans had seen the spectacle they would have laughed their heads off at the crazy wazungu who undertook an impassioned little battle to get rid of a harmless spider.

ups and downs

This week in Pemba has been one of ups and downs. Our first evening here, we found a great house to live in--AC, hot water, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, tile floors, firm matresses. But then the hot water heater doesn't work; water pressure it terrible; giant spiders and other undesirables have made their way in; the noise of traffic is loud; the call to prayer is from right next door (very loud!) --not at 5am like we're used to--but at 4am. But all in all, a good house.

The first morning here, last Friday, I found my way up to the public health research lab through which I was to do my internship. But no, they didn't approve our proposal, and it was quashed the minute I came in. Bureacracy and internal politics, I don't know. A semester of prep work down the drain. Things were up in the air over the weekend and as my colleague from Cornell tried to sort things out at the lab. We spent all of Tuesday picking up the pieces and developing a new plan of action, a new research proposal, new interview giudes, etc. Even with all that done, it was still pretty shaky about whether or not the new project would get approved. So I remained in "What the heck is going to happen?" mode for a few more days.

While in that uncertainty, Juma gave us a scare with what turned out to be just a sensitive reaction to mosquito bites. Each one swelled considerably, developed blisters, then burst. So it's a matter of keeping them clean and covered with neosporin and bandaids. But for a morning, we were a bit paranoid.

Finally on Friday, my colleage, also named Sera (pronounced the same as Sarah), gave me the good news that our project is 90% sure to get the go-ahead. Phphphaaa--shshsew. So now we're studying local ideas about severe anemia during pregnancy. Related to the original project, but not really.

In other news, we've hired someone to cook lunch for us, and through her I have so far met a traditional midwife, and a nurse midwife who gave me a tour of the local hospital. I also randomly met a man whose responsibility is to make all the health statistics for Zanzibar and Pemba available online. My new best friend. And Justin randomly met a fellow PhD in African history (she's a professor now), whose teenage sister became Juma's best friend for a week. All in all, a good week.