Woop! after waiting to establish a stable internet connection which was predominantly the reason for this pause in blog writing I am raring to chart my journey once more. 

So I have settle in rather nicely in my temporary Dar-es salaam home, which is really rather comfortable. The people are nice and apart from the power cuts and the very hot heat (which the Tanzanians also complain about) aspects of Dar are really rather wonderful. 

As well as settling into a new home I have also had to settle into a work evironment. …

I apologise for the lack of blog over the last couple of days, after a 10 hour journey from Moshi and Dar I have safely arrived to a rather beautiful house very near the Americn embassy in Dar, I will write a more indepth blog in. We almost found a friend for Daisy a beautiful gorrilla but they wanted 50,000 euros which is £20 and iut most definitely wasn’t worth it. 

Will write more and in more detail soon. 

Continuing from the visit to the Chaga Village from yesterday feels like a forever ago.

But a recount just for you. The visit was thoroughly wonderful. We started out meeting a family, on the way we were greeted by children, all eager and shouting Jambo! As we stopped a small boy ran after us for 300 meters, became all shy as we waved and said hello. We then approached a family, the houses were made out of mud, inside one of the huts which was a cylinder shape, made from straw and mud and had a dome shaped top, was quite small, (I banged my head on the door on the way out). Inside the hut some goats a bed and a kitchen, the smoke and charcoal filled the entirety of the hut and it was blackened. The family seemed poor but happy as they posed for pictures, we spoke to them in the limited Swahili that we possessed. 

We were then lead to a waterfall as I struggled to get down the slope to the bottom where the waterfall lay 20 children followed us down there, some of them carrying younger brothers and sisters and some were as young as 4 seemed to easily climb down the slope, if they could I definitely could. The waterfall itself was beautiful and the young people went from 20 to double as they came to see the muzunghi (foreigners).

We then had a chance to try the local brew, it was made from banana and maize, the taste was rather familiar  a cross between larger and wine but the texture was quite difficult to get to used to as it was not refined and had a thick and bitty texture.

As I am completing and catching up on the rest of the day on a Saturday, Friday is going to be brief recount on what happened.

The last two days have been really quite enjoyable, with only 1 more full day left in Moshi and of orientation the current team of 9 will be witling down to 3.

Yesterday we had a very interesting speaker called Mama Bindi, who is a human rights lawyer, and especially focuses of female rights. She raised many interesting points about female and male equality.  That a lot of Tanzania’s law and even its Crest is portraying equality between men and women, the different traditions, cultures and religions don’t really allow for this to happen. She spoke about the gender specific roles and rights of passages drilled into women and men from an early age, outlying that the man is strong and the women is weak and must be kept under his foot. A lot of these things are not just in the African culture and society.

But then she went on to talk about land laws and that if a husband dies, the woman has no right to the property that they lived in. In a tribe scenario, even if a man is wrong he will not be told so or punished because he cannot be seen to look inferior to a man. And even though by law a women is protected she shared a case study about 200 cases of rape being reported in Hospital from that only 50 were taken to the police and from that only 3 were put on trial.

Hearing Mama Bindi and seeing the power she had and the organisation she’s founded, is reassuring that people are fighting for equality and that strong women won’t let men (sweeping generalisation) make all the decisions.

Yesterday’s discussions were very provocative and provided a good background about the political issues and systems in Tanzania.

As well as the talk, we discussed more about some of the areas that we should look at whilst we are at our placements and what projects the previous group was doing.

Today we had a cultural adventure, the two main things we were seeing was Mount Kilimanjaro and  a Chaga Village.

The ride to Kilimanjaro lasted about 50 mins, and we passes some beautiful houses, lots green and schools. More worrying was lots of buildings along the route we took, with red crosses on them, when I asked why the buildings had red crosses Baba Ian answered that the houses and shops were going to be soon demolished for a new road. All of them had a place in a community and it felt rather odd the amount and the lack of consistency on the X’s.  It also lead me to wonder, what the government was offering in return for this property, if it would be enough to compensate for what was lost and if the local people had any say in the matter at all.

Kilimanjaro was big, really big! But what else did you expect. It was a bit cloudy so we couldn’t really see much of it in the distance.  Although if someone says they climbed the top of Mount Kili ( a 6 day journey) I’m not going to be hugely impressed, the guide that took us there had climbed it over 20 times and what was more impressive was the men that carried all the pots and pans up and back down the mountain, now that didn’t look easy. Never the less I didn’t walk beyond the entrance base to the mountain.

Following this we were taken to a lovely waterfall and a Chaga village. I may I have to write about and post images and videos of this another day, as its almost 1 and I have to be sharp for tomorrows planning session. 

I think I need to take more pictures, I have taken an epic 1 image on my camera! Appalling!

So on day 3 I am happy to say that I am very much awake and have not been bitten; the same cannot be said about my roommate I hope it remains this way.

 The majority of today was spent learning some Swahili and going through risk assessments (to be very honest it wasn’t very interesting, but we venture out to buy a Tanzanian sim card which was rather fun, although I did think I was mocked in Swahili by the men serving us. On the plus side I went into the post office and bought some stamps and the lady looked rather impressed and retuned my smiles, I think we are now friends. J.

In general I think it has been a quiet day, I’m not sure where the majority of today has gone and on doing what but it has all gone rather quickly.  The conversations earlier in the day did inspire me to think about what it is that I could offer and bring and will hopefully be spending the 10 hour journey to Dar on Saturday exploring and developing these ideas.

I think I may have to venture out some more tomorrow; I’m going to be teddy hunting! One of the guys has bought a teddy named Daisy to Africa and is taking pictured of daisy with the food here and going to the market, all to chart his journey and to send the images back to his six year old sister to whom Daisy belongs.  As the group of 9 of us will be splitting off in 3 we thought Daisy could make some friends tomorrow and then one can come with us to Da Es Salaam, and we can explore our journey and adventured through (currently called Rose). I think it’s a fab idea. Rather excited.

I’ll keep you posted. 

For some reason the wi-fi yesterday stopped working at 12, maybe there is a curfew .. so here we have yesterday’s blog. May I also thank everyone on their support for the blog and the trip, it’s really very appreciated an makes me feel all special. 

Blog - 19/9/2011

Second day in Moshi, 

Let me set the scene, 5am you have prayer calls from a Mosques and at 6am music is blaring, motorcycle engines roaring, people, music blaring and the sun shining blazing through your curtains.

Being in Moshi, isn’t the culture shock that I expected. The roads are similar to that of New Delhi, hot, dusty and a golden colour and. The people here are really friendly, many I’ve come across, speak good english and will take time to converse with you and speak to you in Swahili and teach you a few words. 

I haven’t been around as much of Moshi as I would have liked but I hope to explore more tomorrow. 

Like many other places I have observed Moshi town, is a cross between the traditional and the modern, from the dress, to the speech and food. 

I also tried two Tanzanian dishes today, the first was Mayagi and Chips which is scrambled egg with tomatoes, peppers and onions. For dinner I had a pilau which chicken with spiced rice, which i’m definitely going to have again, although this time ensure that the waiter heard the terms that i’d like it to be spicy rather than ‘please don’t make it spicy’.

First day of orientation went well, it was nice to find out more about what was happening and where it was that we were going to live an overview of what the 3 months may look like.

Really quite excited to see the next 12 weeks take shape. 

1 Delayed flight, a connecting plane to Kilimanjaro in the total darkness, mini –bus drive in the night and getting settled into the hotel in Moshi later, it still doesn’t quite feel like I’m in Africa, I don’t know if it was because I was expecting it to be very different that I’d seen before, or only because I have only seen it in the dark but I don’t feel disconnected from all that I know.

9 of us travelled together and we’ll be spending a week in Moshi for orientation, not to sure what that will entail but I am looking forward to.

Just a quick first impressions post!

Looking forward to getting to know the people I’m out here with some more, learning Swahili and more about the African culture.

It’s rather late and I imagine tomorrow will be busy.