Tank half full?

Well actually, I’m delighted to report that on our arrival back in Muheza, the water tank is in fact almost completely full! For the first time since arriving, we have plenty of water for the house and can enjoy showers, flushing the loo and even rinsing plates under the tap when washing up. Luxury. We will await Monday’s water delivery to see how frivolous we can be for the next week!

Unfortunately the list of fried electrical goods after last week’s power surge has risen to include the kettle and microwave (both of which were almost new). I will have another tinker with them, but at the end of the day, if they are broken we can always replace them.

I too have a (proverbial) tank that is almost full and certainly am ready to seize the next few weeks of work. Having a couple of weeks off really was important, it is only towards the end that I realised quite how much I have given these first two months. I am sure that some of this is ‘the whole package’ of moving to a very different part of the world and trying to settle the family in. But there have been many times when I felt quite overwhelmed clinically. There is just so much need and the complexities of what can, could and should be offered is, on occasion, extremely challenging. There is a song by Avicii that I have grown to love, not least because it is so uplifting,  and there have been times when the words seem very apt, summing up just how I am feeling in those moments; ‘feeling my way through the darkness’, ‘caught up in a dream’, ‘I tried carrying the weight of the world, but I only have two hands’, ‘so wake me up when its all over’.

But for all its challenges, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. It is a real privilege to be doing what we are and to be part of something so very different to anything else I have ever known. I have a number of cases coming up over the next few weeks that will test me (and possibly test my resolve too), but I feel very ready for it. It is a great team here and they could not be any more encouraging for what we are doing nor delighted by what we are achieving.   

Work starts again tomorrow.