21st February 2009 - One Week Already

Time goes fast here, too. Already I’ve been here one week and it feels like it’s time to do some more physical activity. I’ve been concentrating on learning to use the communication tools that I have and am grateful for the opportunity to do that. Yesterday I managed to connect the phone to the laptop and so can access the internet using the phone as a modem. It really is a smart phone!

Next week on Thursday we will go to Morogoro for a Maryknoll Sisters’ meeting, and I’ll stay on there for awhile after that. Then I’ll travel to Singida to visit my old school and friends and when I return I will want to do something to contribute, too. There’s always a lot to do at Emusoi so we’ll see what that might be.

I need to correct my mistake and my exalted opinion of Arusha. Arusha isn’t the second largest city but instead is the 4th, according to fairly recent estimates of population. Dar es Salaam is of course the largest city with 2.5 million, Mwanza the second with 400,000, Zanzibar (the city on the island of Zanzibar) the third with 372,000 and finally Arusha with almost 300,000. I suppose my exalted opinion comes from the fact that Arusha was the city I went to for anything major while I lived in both Nangwa and Singida, so it always seemed so huge compared to those places. Anyway, I wanted to set the record straight.

I’m going to try to post some pictures. One is of Mt. Meru taken yesterday evening and with snow on it. That’s not very usual, especially this time of the year, but it was covered with clouds the whole day and so I suppose it was raining at the top. When the clouds cleared away in the evening there was a good dusting of snow on it and it was really beautiful. Another is of a tree that I like and have seen only in some few places in Tanzania. Because I admire this tree I wanted one for the school (Murigha) many years ago and so bought a seedling (only one) to plant near the entrance of the school. We called it “mbuzi” (goat) because the seedling cost as much as a goat would have! I will be interested to see if that one I planted has survived. Lastly I’ll put a couple pictures of the house. It’s a lovely house, and large. It’s made from cement block and plastered over with cement with a roof of tin sheets. The walls inside are plastered and painted nicely, and the floors tiled in the living and dining areas but throughout the rest of the house, including the bedrooms, the floors are plain cement. There is a steady supply of water and modern bathrooms. Electricity has been quite steady, so the fridge does its job well; the stove uses bottled gas. A difference you would note in the bathrooms would be that the sink, cupboards, shower are built with cement block and then plastered and painted, so you would see a rather unique shower stall, for example. Someday you might see a picture ......

Have a good weekend.