Sara bike accident... 6 stitches but no severed tendon

Chom was riding a bicycle with my daughter Sara sitting on a rack on the back. A piece of a sticky waffle she was eating had gotten stuck on her arm and she leaned to try to eat it off her arm. In the process, her foot got stuck in the spinning spokes in the back wheel, and the spokes cut deep into her foot's flesh, peeling away a slab of tissue about 5 cm across.

I arrived on the scene a couple minutes after the accident to see my daughter's little pink shoe, covered with blood, on the road. There was blood on the road. Chom's bike was discarded on the side of the road. It made me very scared for Sara. Local villagers told me that Chom and Sara had just been taken on the back of a motorcycle to the nearby village clinic.

My son Ty and I ditched our bike and hopped on the back of another motorcycle to the clinic. By the time we got there a nurse had wrapped up Sara's foot in bandages and an ambulance was called.

Soon we were on the way to the little hospital at Mae Dtaeng. Xrays to see if bones were broken. Fortunately no broken bones, and fortunately the tendon was not severed.

Then they laid Sara on a cot and injected anesthetic, and thoroughly cleaned the wound. Soon the doctor was sewing her up. An hour later we rode the ambulance back home. They did a good job, and the wound looks clean and like it will heal nicely. A nice relief from the American medical system, everything (including antibiotics and pain killers) cost less than $25.

Chom and I feel bad that we weren't more risk-averse... that we should have foreseen that her foot might have gotten caught.

For Halloween I was a corporate pirate. Here I catch a hug from Sarah Palin! What a gal.

I like snow! This is the first time I have seen it for real. SARA.

Snow!!! We've been blessed with a white Solstice, and Ty and Sara's first major snowfall.

Snows of Mount Kilmanjaro

On the way to Dar Es Salam (early Oct 08) the plane passed over Mount Kilmanjaro. Here's what's left of the snows...

To the right is a photo of the mountain in snowier times.

Blown cellulose

We're moving along in construction of our homes! Yesterday Chom and I spent the day blowing cellulose insulation into the attic spaces of three homes. 14" deep, R-49. The cellulose is made of recycled newspaper with boric acid added as a fire retardant. It's a 2-person operation. One is manning a 4" diameter hose, spraying the insluation. The other is downstairs, constantly feeding the blower/agitator with 25 pound bales of cellulose. I was upstairs crouching in the attic space doing the blowing. To keep the dust down, I would keep the hose submerged. Cellulose would bubble and spurt up like lava.

We were glad to be inside! The rest of the crew (20 or so at the site yesterday) were out in the pouring rain, doing emergency repairs. It's the first heavy rain, and there was some damage to some of the intermediate plaster layers on the strawbale walls. Others were dealing with erosion helping direct water that was puddling dangerously in the newly bulldozed grounds.

We've also just started shingling!!! Come one, come all if you want to pound some nails.

View from the Kempinski Hotel in Dar Es Salam

Today's "Daily News" published in Dar Es Salam had a story with the following:

In 1998, a year before his death, Nyerere met with top level staff at the World Bank in Washington DC. The officals had asked him why he had failed in some of his political ambitions. His answer must have dismayed them. He answered: "The British Empire left us with 85 per cent illiteracy, two engineers, and 12 doctors. I left office 13 years ago. Then our per capita income was twice what it is today. We now have one third less children in our schools and public health and social services are in ruin. During these 13 years Tanzania has done everything the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have demanded."

I'm here in Tanzania right now working with as a World Bank consultant for the first time in my life. I'm helping the Tanzanian government put in place regulations that make it easier for renewable energy generators to connect to the grid and sell power to offset Tanzania's use of expensive diesel fuel for electricity generation. Seems like a win-win-win situation. Cheaper electricity. Less fossil fuels burned. Local people develop small scale projects so the money circulates within the economy rather than going to Saudi Arabia to purchase diesel.

Has the Bank changed? It seems that parts of it has, anyway.