The bishop and Bugando.

Mwanza is the second Largest city in Tanzania. It doesn't feel it. It doesn't have that urban feeling that dar has or even the slight agressiveness that surrounds you in arusha. The buildings on all the granite cliffs alow the shanty town shacks to blend in with the topography. There are some larger buildings including Bugando Medical Center (BMC) it is on the side of a hill, is nine stories and looks out over mwanza harbour. It is an ugly concrete building and we visited it on the first day with the bishop. Mange Manyama ( a Phd student working at U of C from bugando) had given me an email of introduction to a professor Magori there. O course he was away from Mwanza while I was there. This is only important because next time I come I want to offer my services to do some teaching . Bugando was to become a little bit of a thorn in my side when at Nansio because of the difficulties of getting any referals to them.
The bishop is physically not a big man but almost everything on ukewere circulate around him.
The bishop picked up Warren ( a pharmacist)and me from the airport. We arrived from different directions -me from Dar es salaam and Warren from Nairobi though ironically we both travelled through heathrow on British airways at the same time. We arrived the day before the large contingent from Canada and the bishop put us to political use right away. The first trip was to a convent to meet with the bishop's sister for a medical consult. Which reminds me I must get some support stockings for her. We visited Bugando and also the bottling plant where he made sure we had a supply of bottled water for the whole of the caravan. we then went to mds supplier of the medications for the caravan. This is where I saw Warren in action for the first time. A truly amazing sight. Excessively pharmaceutical anal retentive behaviour. We met up there with Rainer Tan the on the ground coordinator/Cida intern. Warren made sure we had all the drugs and Rainer made sure everything was paid for and loaded on a truck. Pity that, because we weren't leaving on the ferry until the next day and mds was not open on the Saturday and that nothing would be safe on the truck overnight, we had to unload the truck into a local dawa (pharmacy) for overnight storage and reload in the morning! I know that is a long run on sentence but it was a long African run on behaviour. That night Rainer, Warren and I stayed at a very seedy place called the geiter lodge. (12,000 shillings a night--about $9).