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We finally have accommodations of our own. We are in the house of a graduate student who has been the procurement officer for Tumaini University. It has already been fun to be able to cook on our own. Lotti (the owner of the house) is a good young man. He is working on his masters degree at the University of Dar es Salaam and and when he completes his studies he will be able to teach as well at Tumaini. He has worked hard to make these accommodations pleasant and economical for his renters. He has covered the cook top of the electric stove with a set of 4 gas burners. We boil our drinking water and the water with which we wash dishes. For the water we drink we filter it through these ceramic cylinders then cool it in the frig. The house has three bedrooms and all of the beds have mosquito nets which fit to different degrees. Dan and were fighting with ours last night to get a good seal and the mosquitoes were fierce. Then we had a power outage at about 7:30pm and lit some candles, but eventually just went to bed because there wasn’t anything else we could really do. We could see the stars and they were quite spectacular. Then in the middle of the night, the power went back on. To utilize electricity, we have to go downtown and pay a voucher which we then enter into the electric meter at the house. We paid a little less than $40 for what will be a bit more than a month of electricity. We have a gardener, named Sele, who comes on duty every day from 2pm-6pm, and a night watchman with a very young dog, named Luck, who must be part German Shepherd and part lab. He is really sweet. The guard is Jumani and he speaks very little English, but he does a good job and is good to his dog. Jumani and Luck are on duty from 6pm-6am. The gardener and guard are paid by Lotti. Then we have a house lady, named Maria, who cleans and does our laundry by hand and will occasionally cook for us as well. She will make banana bread and regular bread. After the laundry dries on the line, she irons almost everything, including Dan’s boxers!

Jumani and Sele and the not very ferocious guard dog, luk: The reason for guarding the property is to protect outside stuff. There isn't much concern about breaking in to the house but even clothes left on a line overnight can be a target:



The highlight of our day was finding out what was in our vegetable box that we ordered from a produce company here. You may order it once a week and then pick it up the following day at a place called Neema (which means “grace” in Swahili) Café and Crafts. (Will have to do a blog on Neema crafts and café at a later time.) This is this first box of veggies that we have received. You go to the bank and deposit 100,000TSH in their account (which is a little more than $75) and then for $15, Masifio Estates provides you with a box of fresh veggies. Today we were so excited about it, we even took a picture of it. It included 4 small ears of sweet corn, a bag of baby corn, 3 kilos of potatoes, a small bunch of green onions, a baby cauliflower, French beans, peapods, a small bag of baby lettuce, cherry tomatoes, several rutabagas and baby zucchini. We had the sweet corn and a lettuce salad and then a fruit salad of fresh mango and bananas for dinner this evening. We are going to try to start a composting pile with all of the peelings etc., from the produce.

The Vegetable box: