The first week of the October Home-Building Expedition has flown by and the team are making fantastic progress on the worksites. After a half day supporting the fundis, or local builders, on Wednesday morning, the team spent the afternoon playing with the children who stay at Kimashuku Children's Home. Kimashuku was built with support from Vine Trust volunteers between 2011 and 2013 and is always a favourite for new and returning volunteers to visit. After the first week on the worksites, the houses are beginning to take shape. Once the sites have been cleared and the foundations marked out and dug, stones are…

Our October Home-Building Expedition Team left for Moshi, Tanzania early Sunday morning, with Team Leader Wendy already in-country ready to welcome them to Tanzania. Wendy was honoured to be able to attend the home-opening ceremony of Bibi Angus and her grandchildren, whose new home had been constructed with the support of our School Expedition team from West Calder and James Young high schools in June/July earlier this year. The home-building team arrived safely on Sunday evening to be greeted by our Tanzanian coordinators, Ben & Elly, and Wendy. The team took Monday morning to cover some inportant information during their in-country orientation…

(By Dr Julia McLean) I have just returned after working for 2 weeks on Jubilee Hope on Lake Victoria in Tanzania which was an amazing and very rewarding experience. There were 3 doctors (including a very experienced Vine Trust volunteer) and a pharmacist from Scotland and as soon as we arrived we were made to feel very welcome on the boat. Before commencing work, we were given a tour of the boat and an introduction to tropical medicine by Dr Simeon, the national doctor, which proved to be indispensable. On the boat, we consulted upstairs under a canopy. We saw…

Good evening and final greetings from MV Forth Hope and its delivery voyage! We are now at anchor some 8 miles from the Amazon City of Iquitos where we will be arriving at 6.30am later this morning 7th September. We will have covered just under 6800 miles in 42 days. (40 at sea). Already plans are being made for the ships deployment and a high level visit to see the vessel at work in just over a weeks time from various Government Ministers, the Vice President of Peru and our Patron HRH The Princess Royal. Tonight however is about the…

Perhaps hard to imagine but basically, wash down all paintwork that you can safely get to, cover in soapy water, then rub with a polypropylene scourer and some Jif or Cif or whatever it's called these days and rinse. Bill and Martin have been enduring just that today as we remove the brown streaks from the Atlantic crossing.  Thereafter it's a touch up job before we start using a drone to capture some river shots etc ahead of an official visit to inaugurate the medical work on the 17th September south of Iquitos. In the meantime Robert Cavanah who joined us…

Wednesday 00.49 sailing at 6 knots across a moonlit stretch of the Amazon, like the closing scene of the film The Hunt for Red October. The big difference, we still have 1120 miles to run until we reach Iquitos. We are however on the home straight even if there are potential challenges due to the main river levels.  That being said, their is a new Peruvian navy ship BAP Castilla on its way to Manaus and it has a deeper draft than Forth Hope, so we are not anticipating any big issues! Corned beef has made a couple of appearance…