Friday, July 25, 2008

New site south of Tanga off road leading back to Dar es Salaam going by the airport toward Pongwe. Close to habitations and to more built up area than previous sites. This site was next to a dip tank of same design as the one at our first site several days ago, but the cattle at this site had already been dipped. We worked 1400+ cattle through the corral / “crush” here. Longer corral and more sturdy but each group had to be herded to the entrance that lacked an efficient gathering area to funnel the cattle into the chute. With brute force the Tanzanians beat the cattle into the chute. Numerous Ministry of Livestock local extensionists do the injections.

CPT Coenen and I first started out marking the cattle with colored markers but then passed that over to some of the extensionists. Hot day again and I got a bit of sun, although this time I borrowed sun screen from Amanda who is red headed and also fair skinned. On each of the days so far we have started out by leaving the Hotel Mkonge and traveling to a Ministry of Ag/Livestock office to pick up Mama Safe (Safe’) and “Freddy” who head the team of extensionists. Today was the first day Mama Safe did not accompany us. She was dressed up this morning when we arrived and looked to have other business to attend to.

After returning to the hotel at work’s completion, we cleaned up and then walked to the Tanga Yacht Club for some refreshments and then supper. One has to buy a temporary membership for either a day or a few days, and then a book of chits for various denominations summing to 5,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about 5 dollars U.S. (exchange rate when I converted at airport was $1 U.S. = 1,060 Tza shillings). Yacht club gets more crowded as the night wears on. We were among the first to arrive when we got there at about 6:20 PM or so.