Script and Service: Field notes from a travelling pharmacist on global aid, work, and adventures

At the start of the best UK summer in decades, amid dramatic scenes of a British Wimbledon champion but pre-Royal baby fever, I took a trip to London. Arriving at Heathrow at 7am on a Saturday, I rode the tube to central with fresh eyes. Still wearing African dress, a "borrowed" Kenya airways blanket around my shoulders and a suitcase full of Tanzanian tea and sachets of gin (why doesn't anyone offer to help me with my bags?), no one says hello or makes eye contact. I top up my Oyster card and touch-in like it's something I've done every day for the last 6 months. It gets busier and I have to move my bags off the seat. I know this because a women told me to - not directly, of course. She's telling me via her friend: " That woman should move her bags. Then you'd be able to sit down". I get the message, discreet as it was. One of the downsides to understanding the local language is that you realise what everyone is saying about you. It...

Having reached the 6 month mark on my Tanzanian tour of duty I felt I was owed a(nother) holiday and 5 nights on Zanzibar was my gift to myself. The down side was a compulsory night beforehand in Dar Es Salaam and all the stresses of a stay in the big city. I slept at the TEC (Tanzania Episcopal Conference) - I didn't realise it was the centre of the Catholic Church in Tanzania - as if I hadn't been surrounded by enough Nuns, now it was the turn of the Bishop's. I haven't had such a socially awkward dining experience since being invited to a meal in Nyangao and needing to discreetly flick the ants off my chicken drumstick. I have a new favourite taxi driver in Dar, Nasoro, who shepherded me through the furore at the ferry terminal with the sage advice: "Don't let anyone carry your bags". "Don't let anyone sell you a ticket". "Don't stop walking until you get inside the ticket office". I felt well taken care of and more tha...

After receiving a grant of 1.2 million shillings from the Tanzanian Development Trust, my neighbour James, a biomedical scientist/VSO volunteer, was able to organise a series of outreach visits to local villages to test residents for HIV. Having nothing better to do on a Saturday morning in the African bush, I tagged along. Before we went, permission to attend had to be sought from the village elders. Early in the morning stocked up with test kits, lab equipment, HIV counsellors, student medics and a couple of people who needed lifts along the way, we set off. This time we went to the village of Ndawa - only 15km away but a 90 minute drive along sandy tracks into the bush. On arriving we were introduced to the village elder and given a tour of the school. Later, after setting up in the meeting house and preparing the equipment for testing we awaited willing volunteers. Part of the package was a drum to announce our arrival and encourage participants but sadly today the drum was l...