Blogs from East, Tanzania, Africa

Last Tuesday Lisa and I had the amazing opportunity to sit in on a day long meeting between MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) and KMT (Kanisa la Mennonite Tanzania). It was a celebratory farewell for the current MCC representatives in Tanzania as well as the welcoming of the new representatives hosted in thanks by KMT. MCC and KMT have been partners for many years now and it was so interesting, in that Lisa and I are both looking at potentially working with MCC in the future, to see the interaction between the two and also the projects that were in the works as well as those that had been completed. We also got to see the opening of a water project that had been a long time in the works! So in all it was good day ... read more

I will keep this brief as it is difficult to type on an iPad. What a rush thisweekends has been. I have never hadw such long flights or layovers before, but it turned out to not be bad at all! I was picked up at the airport by two really nice Indian fellas. One by the names of pitamber, whom I met via couch surfing and his friend Rajesh. Rajesh is a pharmacist an. Pitamber is a traveling marketer. We drove through the crazy traffic of Dar Es salaam into morogoro (a 3 hour drive). The drive was fun, complete with conversation of India vs us customs, Swahili lessons, african music ands tusker, the local beer in tz. We will camp out here tomight and Continue On to Iringatomorrow. The hotel we are in is freaking ... read more

Here is a quick little story for you: Levi and I were driving out in a rural area in the bush with a pastor from MCC and his five kids, all 8 of us crammed into a suburban car. His kids speak some english, and one of them, 8-year-old Jared, all of a sudden asked me for my email address. So I wrote it down, and he wrote down his for me. He specifically stated that his was 'yahoo,' and seemed really proud of it. When he noticed mine was a gmail address, he said, "I tried to make a gmail account once, but for some reason it didn't work." I couldn't believe I was sitting in this car filled with kids, driving down a rural bumpy road, and talking to an 8 -year-old african boy ... read more

The north To start from the beginning we didn’t arrive straight from Moshi to the beach but started the travel in Dar es Salam by visiting a friend of the Sister. Her boyfriend currently works outside of Dar in Tegeta. We stayed at their place for three nights and had time for a daytrip northward to Bagamojo where we were to visit the Art College, an independent school for artistic education such as music, dance and artwork. Perfect for the Sister who is, for those who don’t know her, addicted to dancing. Meet a finish girl who studied there as well as Margaret, a Swedish lady we got to know at the festival on Zanzibar. Nice people who showed us around the place. At this time the semester for the school had just started, meaning that ... read more

Interesting and slow process to get our visas. Once through customs had to sit outside and wait for Precision Air to open at 0530. Good people watching.... read more

We visited a second Maasai village before leaving our camp at Arusha. It was smaller than the one at the Masai Mara, less homes and people, and its proximity to the town meant that the villagers weren't as sheltered from the modern world as before. Children came running out to meet us when we entered the village, and our Maasai guide played on his mobile phone while we spoke to the children and let them snap away on our cameras. It was bizarre to think that they keep so many old ways and yet they've got Facebook. It made it less real, but it was still an interesting visit. The guide this time spoke to us about circumcision of young Maasai, explaining that teenaged boys who are to be circumcised wear black instead of the traditional ... read more

Let's start off by noting that this is a sort-of-mirror blog from the original over on that other site.. http://viajesperegrinos.wordpress.com/ And as this is a travel blog, I'll limit my posts to my travel experiences.. check out the other site for complete readings. As I've been up and running for a few weeks.. I'll post up the past few ones and indicate the publishing date. Let me read your thoughts and ideas!... read more

PUSH had their Christmas Party over at the George and The Dragon. Shots were had. Jello shots. Thankfully, after a long week of 12+ hour days, we stayed long enough to grab a bite, a few pints and head off home. On a business positive note, made the acquaintance of the managing director of PUSH mobile, who has a keen interest in social networks and social media. We agreed to talk later this week. Saturday, tried to sleep in, but just couldn’t do it. Had a lovely breakfast at BlackTomato, directly across from the apartment. Internet was intermittent, along with the power outages, so getting a decent signal was a problem. Decided to head up north to do some sightseeing. A little historical tourism. What the map showed to be some 30km north of Dar, ended ... read more