This is my last full week of being in Arusha and so I'm gathering my things and re-packing for departure next Wednesday. These last couple of weeks have been really cool here, but today the sun came out really early and it has been sunny all day. The wind is strong today, and I remember that such is the case during these winter months. Murigha (Singida school) was a really windy place, and as the rainy season gets further and further away, the dust blows something awful. Because we had planted a lot of trees on the school property, that helped so much to deflect the wind and also to keep the dust down. People used to come to the school just to get away from the wind and dust and to enjoy the trees. You might ask why they didn't plant trees themselves. Well, it's really hard to have a tree grow in an environment where goats and cows run quite freely. Supposedly the herds (some really small herds, but groups of goats and cows) are cared for but the herder is often a small boy (or girl) and sometimes playing gets in the way of watching the animals and so what shouldn't get eaten does in fact get destroyed. How did I get off on that track??
I drove into downtown Arusha on Tuesday and was once again amazed at the amount of traffic. Cars and trucks and bicycles and motorcycles and carts and buses and pedestrians are all vying for a place on the single lane road. Some days are less congested than others, and some times as well, but I guess I chose the wrong day and time to go. There are a lot more cars and motorcycles around these days because there are a lot of second-hand ones being brought in and so somehow affordable to a certain group of people. Most of these vehicles come from the Far East and it seems that some of them are good bargains and others are real lemons. I don't know how you can guarantee to get a good vehicle, but maybe that's part of the bargain. Petrol (gas for cars) sells at $3.50 per gallon and many folks buy only a gallon at a time. Sometimes that's true also of taxi drivers, and they might ask you to pay part of their fare first, stop to put in some gas, and then take you where you need to go.
When I went to buy my bus ticket for Dar es Salaam today I was reminded about what happens on a Friday. The ticket seller was not there, and when asked where he was, the reply: He's gone to pray. Friday is the holy day of the week for Moslems and it's important that they go to pray around noon time. The official day off here in Tanzania is Sunday so Christians don't usually have that conflict of balancing work time and prayer time. Anyway, someone else finally got around to selling me a ticket but he didn't have a pen with which to write out the ticket so I now have one less pen. I didn't want to ask for it back because there was a fellow in line behind me and if I had taken the pen then he wouldn't have been able to get a ticket. And so it goes. Thanks to the children of my home parish I have lots of pens!
I'll write one more post early next week before I leave Arusha. Have a good weekend.
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