dodry's travels

On Wednesday 21st of july my friend Herry died. He was completely healthy and then that day his heart stopped and he died that instant. Many people from the DSS and Impact went to Utete to get his body. We then drove to Dar es Salaam to bring him to Muhimbili Hospital bec. neither Ikwiriri nor Kibiti has a cooling room. So yesterday they did post mortem and didn't find anything. eventually they said that it was respiratory cardiac failure... So after that we went to his family's house. They had already prepared everything for his arrival.
We went to say pole to the mother and grandmother, the men went to the father and uncle to say pole. then we had to eat food and the coffin with the body came. There was a short sermon and then we proceeded to go to kinondoni cemetery where he was buried. IT is very awful. He was just about to get a new post (that's why he went to Utete to be introduced to the district medical officer) and he was very happy to work with Impact being responsible for adverse reactions of sp+art (malaria combination therapy) in rufiji. he also planned to go to Norway to do a masters in public health. He is the first born son in the family...
How can someone just die like this?!
God gives, and God takes away.....
I hope we shall meet again in heaven...

That was at a taarab concert in kibiti about 3 weeks ago (Kahema, Herry, me) 

One of the last pics taken of Herry. This was on sunday 17.7.05. Herry Kasara (25.8.1975-21.7.05) 

Herry waiting for me so I can take pics from shambas. 

The US wants to give out 30 000 mosquitonets for free in Rufiji. Starting next week. Quite exciting especially because this area belongs to the poorest and they rarely have money to get the nets. Even the pregnant women that get a discount voucher sometimes don’t manage to get the remaining 750 tanzanian shilling which has an approximate equivalent of 75 US cents. So I am very happy for the people here that they can have those mosquito nets. Also the acceptance of it is quite good. The women we interviewed all really like the nets… A difficult thing will be now to distribute NGAO (the insecticides for the net) for free too. A first package is inside the mosquito net but it needs to be retreated every 3 months to keep the repellent and killing capacity. Many people here fail to get the 300 Tsh that are needed for this.. And a mosquitonet without insecticides is almost as helpful as no mosquitonet according to some literature (Heggenhougen, 88 ff.)

So this makes me happy. :) have a good day and enjoy the pics

Heggenhougen H K, Hackethal V, Vivek P: The behavioural and social aspects of malaria and its control. An introduction and annotated bibliography. Geneva: Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO - TDR), 2003.

here they were dancing for me :) 

herry and someone whose name i don't know at kalahari 

sunday afternoon at kalahari bar w kahema, baraka and herry 

fields (shamba) and field houses in the floodplain. they are high up so that animals can't get them during the night. 

on the way from river back to ikwiriri 

since mkapa bridge was built this ferry is no longer needed, so now it's a house for someone.. 

kids are so much in love with digi cams because afterwards they can see themselves... 

south of rufiji 

view from the other riverboard 

my crossing river rufiji. was nice and no crocs or hippos around, i still haven't seen any great animals except goat, sheep and chicken that like the tires of a driving vehicle 

having dinner at mission. rene, herry and judith. 

pagae (who can find the houses?) many people live near the street but have to walk down the valley to get the water 

village executive officer and daniel during interview 

main road running from dar es salaam to kilwa and cutting pagae in two parts 

a man, the village leader of pagae, emmy and daniel (ba graduate of university of dar) 

this girl's child is only 1 week old. and she herself seemed to be a bit scared 

one of the women in pagae. here we asked them to come to the village office because in pagae everything is so scattered that it would take hours to visit them all in their homes 

two traditional birth attendants and emmy.they don't get paid for their job.. and still they help... 

this picture was immediately taken after i didn't want to give dina my camera. She wanted to keep her picture that i took beforehand. As you can see, she wasn't too happy :) 

james and emmy reading bible... we talked about psalm 139. my favourite!! 

my favourite girl at mission :) dina 

emmy having a relaxing moment. she's doing a study here as well on behalf of impact