a typical day in tanzania and some updates

14 October 2007

Updarts & Newsflashes from the last fortnight:

• Leopard chomped at our neighbour’s dog. Well, so the locals are telling us. We’ve taken our Lonely Planet guide out and had them point to which animal (dog had deep lacerations all over its hind leg so we knew something had happened – just didn’t know what!). Our neighbours flipped through our book, came to a stop and pointed. Leopard. “What? Here? In the village?” queried Shona aghast.
"Yes”
”Where?”
”Over there…”
“Where, near the river?”
“Yes”
“Just there? So close?”
“Yes”.
• We purchased a you-beaut shipping container last week. All our tools and power tools are locked up in it each night. Security plus. Must have been all the energy the blog readers put out in order to ensure our success!
• Julius, one of our workers is using the money we pay him to put himself through school, another, Elias, has asked that we keep $5 from him each week, so that when his time to leave has come, he can pay for his younger sister’s education (they have no parents). A third, Abel (who likes to call himself Roger Moore for reasons as yet unexplained for the resemblance is not overwhelming) is paying to fix some areas of his shamba (farming plot). We have decided to give all of the men some help with saving (we’re going to offer to hold some of their money for them each week since none have bank accounts) and we’re also thinking we’ll offer a few acres of our farm house for a very-low rate (a bag of the resulting produce) in order to encourage the guys to get a communal farming co-op going (Corky and Mudi’s excellent idea). Our plan is to encourage these men to spend money on sensible, income-generating items, while they have it rather than beer and cigarettes. We’ve had the first talk – just an introduction outlining our plan [see photo] – but are really looking forward to implementing this part of the project.
• Two new volunteers Brendon and Eamonn have arrived and have been absolutely going off! We’ve all been really looking forward to their arrival because they’ve been so incredibly enthusiastic from the onset. We asked Eamonn via email, before he came, whether he’d want to do a safari while here and he answered, “No, I plan to just work for FWS while I’m in Africa.” A day after arriving, up on the job, nineteen-year-old Brendon said “I’m going to really work hard because I feel like I’m taking somebody’s job by being here, so I’m going to put in heaps of effort”. The boys also impressed us with their sensitivity to the cultural temperature of Tanzania. Straight up, they asked Shona all sorts of questions about appropriate behaviour in Tanzania (You see, like any country, there are non-spoken rules of etiquette here, that FWS is keen to respect and follow at all times - ie Tanzanians are fairly conservative compared to us – Tanzanian males would never walk around in public with their shirt off, so it’s inappropriate for us to do the same here. Another one that differs from home revolves around socialising – Tanzanians socialise, for the most part, without alcohol. Yes, they drink beer, but they often can’t afford it, so they don’t drink regularly or excessively. This is seen as dodge behaviour at best, as unacceptable behaviour at worst. Tanzanians would certainly never go out on weekly or twice-weekly binges as many Westerners do back home. Therefore, the way FWS sees it, Westerners wanting to interact with their Tanzanian neighbours, might need to settle for a few sodas (soft drinks), rather than a big, weekly booze-up. Eamonn and Brendon were quick to absorb our advice and have continued to ask us how best to respect the culture of our neighbours. We really appreciate their open-minded enthusiasm and willingness to learn about this country and these people we love so much.

That said, we also really appreciate their physical efforts – Eamonn has led a small Tanzanian team in the setting out and pouring of the cement slab for our shipping container to sit on – fantastic job [see photo]. Brendon has been Daz’s right-hand man, on the ongoing carpentry work (we waved goodbye to volunteer carpenters Jai & Blair last week). Daz says, “Brendon is great with his hands. Anything I give him to do, he picks up really quickly – I like him, because he’s humble and often downplays his skills, but then it turns out he’s really capable.” Together with the Tanzanian team, Daz & Brendon are working on the joists that will support the floor of the early-learning and community centre. And this week, Shona and I are particularly thrilled with Eamonn because he’s tackling the long-awaited job of getting this fence up around the Kesho volunteer house – yippee! So, yes, we’ll be sad to see Eamonn and Brendon go next week – and we’ve already begun trying to trick them into staying (yes, we're sure their girlfriends will be so happy to read that!)
• Big ruckus one morning. I pretended so sleep through it (so lazy!), but Shona, Daniel and Daz leaped out of bed to find that our guard, Luseiko, had come across a mongoose (the fancifully named Slender Mongoose) in our chicken coop at 1am. To save it from eating our chickens, Maasai Luseiko, tied its tail to the chicken wire. As you do. [see photo]. By 7.30am, locals had come from all over the village to discuss the event. By 8am, it was decided that nobody would eat it, but instead that the house owners should take the mongoose to Arusha National Park and release it in the wilds. Shona, Beck and just-arrived volunteers Brendon and Eamonn were up for the adventure. And an adventure it was. An hour’s trip on the bumpiest road in town, all the way to the gates of the game-park, only to be greeted half-heartedly by an attendant who didn’t know or much care what the mongoose was or why we had brought it. We placed the box housing the mongoose on the floor and opened it for the attendant to have a peek. He barely raised his eyebrows at it, but seemed more intrigued by us. “Where should we release it?” beamed Shona as she stood next to the box in the car park.
”Here,” answered the guard pointing to his feet.
“In the car park? No, it’ll get run over,” explained Shona.
“Let’s just take it on a little walk down that path and let it go there…”
Which is what we did. FWS: For Welfare of animals great and Small.

Interestingly, when talking ourselves up to our American mate, Fred, a long-time Arushan local, we were told that the “slender mongoose” is in fact, not particularly exotic, generally seen as a pest to Tanzanian wildlife as it eats birds, a animal more akin, in status, to the ... feral cat, say. Shona: “We found it in our chicken coop.”
Fred: “Yeeep, that’s where you’ll find em!" [laughing - at us and not hiding it!]
Shona: “We released it in Arusha National Park.”
Fred: “You did whaaaat? You released Tanzania’s biggest bird-eater into Tanzania’s biggest bird-life game park?”
Us: “Mmm, apparently”.

A typical Tanzanian day - by request. It’s not exactly a weekly blog yet is it? Right, well try this on for a typical day and you’ll soon see why the blog comes whenever it comes:

This morning - 14 October 2007:

• Brizzy volunteer Eamonn arrives at our home at 9am with 12 workers from the block who now have no work up there (due to the artificial cement shortage – yes, companies are hiding their cement in order to create a price spike for builders. Ta for that, Tanzania!). So, Eamonn, with the help of Kesho Leo assistant manager, Mudi, arranges the guys to hand-plough our half-acre veggie patch (half a morning’s digging) and to dig 35 holes around our farmhouse for soon-to-be-purchased fence posts.
• same time, Beck organises our neighbour Muswai to do our clothes washing in the back yard while our tap water is on (Elizabeth has had her baby – Jacqueline – so is at home resting).
• same time, Shona & Beck welcome Lucas, fws’s first Tanzanian volunteer, into our home to sit with Shona and translate our fws info flyers into Kiswahili.
• same time, Beck does a few exercises for her back problem which flared up during a spectacular endeavour to save some seemingly exotic Tanzanian wildlife (more later).
• same time, Beck welcomes Agnes our cook into our kitchen to surprise her with the fact that we had absolutely no food for her to cook with – none. “So, Agnes, how about we give you some money now we are confident we can trust you, and you can go shopping, buy enough food for lunch for the boys, cook that food in your home (as we won’t be home to let you cook in our kitchen) and then bring it back to the boys who will be wanting a hearty lunch at precisely 12.30pm. “Hey Agnes, here are some hotpots for you to carry the food back in. Goodbye, have fun!”
• same time, Mudi advises that the boys will only have enough ploughing work to see them through to midday, so given it’s 11am, we girls better get going into town to buy the timber for the fence posts so the boys can paint the posts and whack them into the holes this afternoon.
• soon after, Beck decides that it’s unlikely her and Shona will return in time with the fence posts, so instead, lets have the boys actually plant veggie seeds (spinach, tomato, carrot, onion, eggplant, watermelon for starters) after they finish ploughing. Find seeds, leave with Mudi to hold them as he will not have a key to the house once we go, so there will be no way for him to get inside. Good, sorted.
• Shona, Lucas and Rebecka discuss the idea of only putting the word out about the mama positions for Kesho Leo and holding off on the Tanzanian teacher, nurse and farm-manager roles. We’ve a sneaking suspicion (der) that we’ll be inundated with applicants and decide it’d be better to stagger the call-out for employees over the next few months instead of beckoning all at once. Excellent. Shona and Lucas tweak the flyers to reflect the new changes.
• Corky SMSes Rebecka again to ask if she’s had time to see if there is a volunteer rate for the game-park fees he must pay to return through the Serengeti from his permaculture course. Rebecka texts back “TBC”, adding “Visit Tanzanian Tourist Board to ask about Corky’s vol rate” to her list of town-jobs.
• Rebecka and Shona alternatively chase Anne and Kelsey out of the house several times. Edwina is not interested in coming inside, Anne however, is quite bold and rather annoying. Very pretty though.
• Daz arrives home early, surprised the girls have not left for town yet and decides that since they are so late, he will catch a lift into town with them, throw the bike in the back of the ute, get off halfway, buy his own nails, and return with them on the bike.
• Rebecka and Shona write shopping lists, combining the job lists and finally declare, keys sorted, jobs sorted, that they are ready to leave. It is 1pm (no sign of Agnes but fortunately the vols aren’t at the house waiting for lunch yet).
• Hold on. Let’s stuff around with finding the actual money. Seems we’ve all but run out – waiting on a lump sum to come from Sydney, but meantime, once again, we’re dipping into our own bank accounts. Which would be fine, if Rebecka’s ATM card hadn’t expired the week before. Seems we’ll need to use Daz’s which is a little bit of sore point, given he’s still waiting to be repaid (by FWS so he knows we’re good for it!) for the first $8,000 he spent when he got here. Anyway, Rebecka works out she can transfer, via the internet, money from her account to Daz’s so that we’re not actually using Daz’s money, despite us using his card to withdraw the cash. She does so. All is calm and almost organised. Beck asks for Daz’s ATM card as everyone finally jumps in the ute (Lucas included as he needs a lift to town).

This arvo:

• Driving into town, we give three Tanzanians mammas a lift, stopping the ute each time, and helping them to climb into the tray with their various baskets of veggies and buckets of water. We always take anyone wanting a lift, despite it slowing us down considerably.
• Mid-trip, Shona and Rebecka yell out the window to Daz, who sits in the ute tray, while they sit in the front, Rebecka using a pillow to prop her aching back. They confirm that they will go ahead and purchase 600m of barbed wire, 250 u-nails (“not sure how many in a packet, so you’ll have to work it out,” go Daz’s guidelines), 35 timber posts for not more than $2 each, but not the 4-inch nails which Daz is now about to purchase.
• They don’t make a point of it, but they will also purchase food for the entire week (which sounds easy but actually involves a long haggle at the veggie market, a trip to the local supermarket for bread, butter and low-fat milk, a trip to the other supermarket for olive oil and other bottled specialties, a trip to the deli for the meat… yadda yadda, goodbye three hours!).
• Arriving in town, the girls drop Lucas off, explaining that they won’t be able to come to his house for ‘greetings’ (to visit his family) today as tey are very busy. He looks at them with complete incomprehension – he has after all, just offered an invitation – there is no room for anything but an acceptance. Despite the unlikely response, he decides to forgive the girls their strange Western ways and they arrange to meet again in two day’s time.
• Girls make a bee-line for Beck’s physio, as they’re an hour late for the appointment. Physio seems to think she’s progressing nicely. He massages her back into mobility, outlines a few more twice-daily exercises and asks to see her in a week. Finally, she’s on the improve.
• Girls head then to Via Via café which houses the Tanzanian Conservation Foundation, hoping to get some info about Corky’s volunteer discount. No such luck. Given it’s 2pm, they decide to order lunch and discuss the latest dilemma – Daz has called to advise the incredible volunteering duo – Eamonn and Brendon have announced that they will be leaving next week, after two very impressive weeks of volunteer work with FWS. “I thought they were here for a full month!” Rebecka cries. “Oh no, we need them!” Shona returns. “But hang on…Actually, maybe that’s right… Eamonn was only ever out of Australia for one month, so with travel either side… yes, he would only be able to work for two and a half weeks”. The girls, calm down, but feel annoyed by their own stupidity and sad the time has gone so fast. They talk about introducing minimum terms for volunteering but decide it’s a dumb idea – after all, that would have meant Eamonn and Brendon would not have been eligible to come at all – which in turns means Daz would have no help with the timber work that Brendon has been doing day in, day out, and that the cement slab for the shipping container would not have been poured (Eamonn oversaw it’s entire construction) and that the fence posts that will soon surround the FWS volunteer house would never have been erected. Okay, enough chats girls, on with the job. Paying the bill, only to find some of the team from Support For International Change (they work on HIV-AIDS care and have given FWS heaps of time and information right from the early days). Shona heads over and has a chat to Emily, who advises that yes, we should visit them now that we know their address and that yes, Corky will have to pay park fees, no there isn’t any volunteer rate, and that we now only need to find out what amount he should be paying. Accidental ticking off a job, we love that.
• To the market. Haggle, haggle. I take 45 minutes to return with a replacement flask for the one we purchased the week before (it exploded after one use!), and a bucket for our mop, while Shona managed to buy baskets full of spinach, eggplant, okra, potatoes, onion, oranges, bananas, carrots and avocadoes. Sometimes some shoppers make better progress than others.
• On the way back from the markets, Shona ducks into the patisserie to buy four loaves of bread. I return and remember to duck in to buy some butter, low-fat milk and I treat us to a couple of pre-packaged fruit juices.
• Outside, packing the toolbox with the newly purchased veggies, Shona is harassed by a mamma selling sweet passionfruit (sweet, white flesh, yellow casing – different from home). When she says no, the mamma claps her hands in front of Shona’s face and yells at her, “I have a baby on my back, I need to feed it!”. Before Shona gets a chance to react, a street kid pushes in front of the mamma and starts begging for money. Hand out, palm upturned ready to take money, and then hand closes and comes up to the mouth (to imitate eating). We know that ninety nine percent of the street kids here don’t use the money Westerners give them to buy food, but instead to buy glue to sniff. I cut in and say “Sorry, not today,” but like the mama, this kid is insistent. We jump in the car, he has his hand on the door, so I can’t shut it, I ask him to remove it. He does so and then moves quickly to the rear of the ute and stands behind us as we try to reverse. We know this trick, so we slowly slowly begin reversing, and he takes his position as self-appointed traffic controller to help the Westerners find a break in traffic. Clockwork, he’s soon asking for 200 shillings for his service. Again, we apologise. “Some days… it’s harder than others to say no,” comments Shona. “Yep, some days the desperation seems real rather than a case of trying it on and seeing how you go,” I reply. She nods and we pull up at the hardware shop.
• Girls get a call from Daz who advises he’s purchased 10kgs of 5-inch nails, not being able to get the 4-inch he hoped for, but they’re not working out, so he really needs us to locate 4-inch nails. Text back: “On it. At hardware shop now”.
• Fifteen minutes later: barbed wire, 4-inch nails, u-nails purchased. This hardware shop is about the only place in town with set prices (reasonable ones, too!) where you get what you ask for without any tricks. Shona packs the barbed wire and nails into the toolbox in the ute, arranging it around bread loaves and veggies.
• Let’s get some money out with Daz’s card before we buy timber. No card. Yes, we asked for it but forgot to ensure that it was actually handed to us. Oh well, it’s 5pm, let’s ‘research timber’ anyway…
• So, to timber. Long story short: 5 dusty timber yards. 2 girls. 0 wins. All yards offering 5m poles when 3m is what we need. Cutting is possible – for a price. Quotes ranging from $10 per pole to $2.50, despite us explaining the absolute maximum we can pay is $2. Hours later, we pack it in with the plan to do it all again tomorrow.

And that, fws friends, is a typical day in Tanzania. Beck xxx

G'day Corky, we're almost outta the ground!

Corky arrived today. Some call him Robert Cork, fws environmental engineer, but he’ll always be good old Toughen-Up-Skirt-Corky to me. Well, that’s what he said to me when we met in Tanzania in 2003 while volunteering at The School Of St Jude. I was whingeing about something not very important, and he turned to me and muttered “toughen up, Skirt”. For some reason, I took no offence, thought he was hilarious, and have liked him ever since. He’s been volunteering in Cambodia for 12 months, implementing all sorts of environmental engineering solutions from rainwater harvesting systems to model farms and vocational skills training. All the while, he’s been answering the 7,000 fws emails Daz, Kels and I fling at him daily. I’m very excited to have him here not just because I like him but also because he’s been here before (means he’ll skip all that orientation-culture-shock stuff you get the first time you visit a different culture) and because he’s going to get working on our enviro-systems. That’s the aquifer (which was his idea, but he seems to have gone off it lately – can’t wait to argey-bargey with him about why!), the drip irrigation, permaculture, grey water, biogas…all those things. Some come before others, naturally – and in fact, he’s only here for two days before he heads off across the Serengeti to Musoma, near Lake Victoria, in Tanzania’s north west, to complete a 2-week permaculture course. Truth be known, I’d love to attend with him but I’m not for two reasons:
1) the means of travel – a 15-hour non-stop ‘local bus’ trip across the Serengeti. Sounds nice. Isn’t. No loo, no food, no water, no air-conditioning, no seating space…Er-yuk. I’ve done it once before and swore never again. So see? Corky’s right – I probably do need to toughen up, Skirt. 2) The second reason I’m not going is a bit stranger. It revolves around the fact that I feel glued to somewhere I’m not. I feel a bit glued to FWS Australia – despite the fact I’m here in Tanzania. See, I’ve spent the past two weeks, working via email with Ben and Kels (who are based in Melbourne) to put the final touches to our new website. We’ve been working on it for a year, and well, I want to be around (near my inbox that is) when people start contacting me to say that it looks so fantastic and professional that they can’t wait to donate their life-savings and beyond to our awesome cause. Yep, that’d be the type of email, I’d be sad to miss! So I wait.

I also wait, along with the whole Kesho Crew, for our shipping container. We've even dug out the area it will sit on the block (we're about to add some reinforced concrete as a slab for it to sit on). Yes, it’s going to make life easier. At the moment, Daz is getting a wee bit over loading up the ute with picks, hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows, chainsaw, grinder, ropes, buckets for drinking water, chains, a generator, spades, trouls, nails, nuts and bolts each morning to drive 1.6km to the block and then spend 20 minutes unloading it all… days work…and then locating it all and loading it into the ute each afternoon to drive home. We really want to find ourselves a half-decent shipping container so we can use it as secure on-site storage and whack all this junk into it each night before slamming the door shut and locking it all up. We’ve had about 15 call-outs to looks at trashed versions – one even had the roof eaten away by rust – so hopefully now with Corky coming today and two new volunteers – Eamon and Brendo coming tomorrow, we might get a shipping container squad happening. Aim: clean, slick container on our land, being used as storage by the end of the week.


Up on the block, we are almost-almost out of the dirt. Woohoo! Our volunteer carpenters Jai and Blair have been cutting, sawing, grinding away to create the floor joists for the common room. Upon these will sit our floor. Imagine…Kesho with floors. Just a hop, skip and jump away from Kesho with walls! Hard to believe we’re already there in just a few months! Daz, Jai and Blair have slowly been introducing power tools to the Tanzanian crew. A bit scary. Having worked hard for everything their entire life, the Tanzanians don’t quite get the idea of not putting their full body weight behind a power tool…which of course, sends the power tool reeling off in all sorts of fast and frightening directions. Some guys showed a bit more promise than others, so they’ve been getting “lessons” while the others go on with their other jobs. We’ve got Mudi 3 on the grinder (he’s cutting out tin plates to go over the bottom of our footings to help prevent termites) and he's doing great. Mudi 2 is doing a wonderful job of pouring the concrete his crew mix, into the straight, clean timber moulds Jai & Blair made. This so far has resulted in the most delightfully smooth concrete sleepers for our walkways that you could possibly imagine. “You couldn’t even buy them this clean at home,” reckons Daz.

Daz, Shona and I have started having morning “toolbox” meetings where we plan out what we each need to achieve each day, who needs the car, who will take the house keys, who will be contactable by phone (one of us is always running out of credit), who will be here to let Agnes, our cook, in, who will be home in time for Daniel to return from school…who is going to do the week’s shopping (always one of the girls, it seems!), who is going to return the soda bottles to the local duka (small store), who is going to give Elizabeth all the clothes we need washed, who is going to take photos of the building progress, who is going to buy steel or cement from in town… I’m not sure why we thought we could progress efficiently without these meetings, but now we’re having them, stress levels are reducing, as we all know what to expect from each other. Looking back, I truly can’t believe we tried to operate without them! Even so, Shona and I have still been having some fairly emotional experiences. We knew we’d come against some bureaucracy in the Tanzanian system, as we tried to finalise getting all sorts of permits and documents, so the slowly-slowly mode of operandi was no surprise. What was a surprise was when Shona turned around to one official, smiled sweetly and then said, ‘Ah yes, slowly-slowly in Tanzania, but we have been trying to sort this since April. It is now October, so that is slowly-slowly enough, I think.” Too funny. Cheeky but always polite. Anyway, I think Shona somehow made her point, as things seemed to move a little bit more quickly for us in that office, after that comment.

Another very strange thing we’re finding is that you can speak to the government officials here. You just ring their mobile number. True. Last week I spoke to some minister in Dar Es Salaam about our NGO status. He gave me a mobile number for the State Attorney of the Ministry of Home Affairs, who I will ring this week. Imagine ringing some department of the Australian Government and being told you need to speak to Alexander Downer, here’s his mobile. So one minute things move slowly-slowly, and the next you stumble upon a shortcut you could only dream about at home. And this is how we live with it. For every obstacle, we find a miracle around the corner.

Case in point: Yesterday, I wanted to get money out of the ATM. First ATM, no. Second ATM, no. Third ATM, no. Fourth ATM… seemingly yes, but then no, and no indication of whether or not the transaction would come up on my statement – I feared that since the transaction was mainly processed, I’d get a bank statement saying I’d received the $400 I was trying to take out when, in fact, I didn’t get. This meant I had to go into the bank. Queue. Talk to banker who didn’t care very much about my dilemma – preferred to pretend that I just wanted to get out more money. Then, finally getting point across, I was told I needed to wait another hour until they counted the cash in the ATM machine at the end of the day. Went out to break bad news to Shona, who waited outside. In telling her the news, I spotted a vehicle out of the corner of my eye with the “Selian” logo on the side. Shona and I have wanted to find this NGO for two weeks. We went and sat by the car for an hour until the driver returned. We waved her down, told her how we thought maybe Selian could work with us (they do HIV care) – and of course, she’s an Aussie too, and stoked to be tackled by us in the middle of the street. Would love to help us out. See? Without the bank dramas, we would not be meeting Sarah from Selian next week for dinner and info-collecting. This type of stuff happens to us 80 times a week. I love it. Every time something seems not to be going ‘right’, you just remind yourself that the universe is just preparing to dish up another spectacularly useful “coincidence”.

House gossip?

1. Breaking gossip: It’s probably top secret, but a blog’s a blog’s a blog. So here we go: Jai seems to have met himself a ‘girlfriend’. Well, nobody knows if it’s serious enough to venture into “girlfriend” territory, but he is not sleeping at our house every single night. Make of that what you will.


2. Daniel had a great “cakey-o-cakey-o” birthday last week. Here they sing “cakey-o-cakey” instead of ‘happy birthday” which I think is fitting. Most people only care about the cake on your birthday anyway, so why pretend otherwise! We took him up to a yum-as chicken place I remember from being here last time and we gobbed down marinated chicken, chips, sodas and cakey-o-cakey. Daniel also got a spin of the ute under Dad’s guidance (not bad for a 14 yo) and got some bow & arrow lessons from our guard, Januari. One of his more unsual birthdays, he reckons. He’s also been going to school down the road at Edmund Rice Secondary, where he’s been teaching instead of studenting. Why not? He came home with cool sayings and taught us how to say “muzuka” (cool) instead of “nzuri” (good) when people ask how we are. So now we’re heaps hip and totally down in the hood, etc.








3. Nolasco’s wife Getruda and her neighbour Elizabette, came to teach us to make chapatti. I wasn’t really up for it because Edwina and I spent the entire year of 2003 having our neighbour Josephine try, try, try to teach us to make chapatti. Every weekend we would patiently, open-heartedly, once again, aim to learn to make chapatti. No good. Anyway, I got involved with the shenanigans and did all the twist, plumping and pushing of dough required, and admittedly they were yum-as. But it’s a trick. I know it’s a trick. As soon as the African disappears from the room, so does the success of the chapatti. This I know. So if Shona starts talking about how we can make chapatti, I’m going to have to suggest you ask her to give it a burl on her own to prove it. I wish her every success, but honestly, I’m not feeling positive… take care, and keep an eye out for this container with me!

Beck

PS Shona and I bought three hens and called them Kelsey, Anne and Edwina, so really the FWS girls are all here in Tanzania.