Good to be back in Iringa

We left for Tanzania Friday night Sept 23rd having dinner with my sister and brother-in-law at the Downtown Woodfire Grill for a nice steak before going to the airport. Our cars are nicely covered in storage between BMW and Mercedes Limos so they will feel at home while we are gone. Claire, who stayed at our house last year, and her friend Amy will be at our house watching Paka and Mickey. (Our family expanded when we found Paka in a tree behind our house for a couple days. Paka is cat in Swahili and she is a very nice cat)

This time we are going with another couple, Richard and Joan, from Shepherd of the Valley in Eagan. Our first trip to Tanzania was with Joan and this is the first trip for Richard. Richard was going to teach Physics (like I was going to teach Chemistry) but now that the science program is delayed, he will teach a couple Math courses and I will teach a couple Computer Science courses that I taught last year. Joan is a retired Biology teacher and will be looking for areas to work with students. Sue was going to teach in a new nursing school but that program has been delayed until March (a recurring theme) so she too will be looking for other opportunities, hopefully together with Joan.

We have been back in Iringa for almost a week now getting settled in to the house. Our trip was good and all our bags made it. Kenyan Airways was very nice and it was good to get into Dar at 9 in the morning. We hired our taxi driver for the day to take us downtown for lunch and to a wood carvers market for the people traveling with us to see. A group from Arizona came in that evening and we all shared a bus to Iringa the next day. The 8 hour trip took 12 because of stops for radiator repair (first with a bar of soap, then super glue mixed with sand and finally epoxy) Such unplanned stops have benefits visiting with children along the road or one stop where we could get a cold beer (not Peter the driver, he happened to find his brother in the town and both were under the bus working on the radiator).

Richard and Bo interacting with the children who stopped to see what was going on. Two older boys ran off to get water for us. The water was dirty and went right into the radiator (and out the bottom).

The gardens at the house are even more extensive this year and we have ripe strawberries. This is the dry season and our well watered gardens are an oasis that attracts a lot of birds. The Region water engineer, who is a friend, visited us and noted "You use a lot of water here" so I guess he views the gardens differently.

Sue enjoying a beer looking over at Tumaini, the building under construction will be the new science building.


We are also using the volunteer car and I am readjusting to using a stick, driving a big car on the left on crowded roads.


Town is full of jacaranda trees with full purple blooms. This is our first time visiting this time of year and the trees are beautiful. They are dropping their blossoms now so will be bare soon.

Classes start October 10th and next week we will be getting organized for the term. I have met a couple times with the staff at Global Outreach about digital content for education in their computer labs. Two of the staff are Tumaini IT graduates and one was my student. I also will be working with Bo, Teri, and Mathew on water projects for St Paul Partners. Teri is a former Peace Corps Volunteer we hired for 6 months and Mathew is our Tanzanian Project Manager in Iringa. You can read about some of these projects at the blog.

We have met several people in town who will be teaching at Tumaini and it looks like we will have a fun time working together to support education. Sue is a little disappointed about the delay in the nursing program but on the other hand this means that she can find projects in Iringa and not have to travel to Ilula so much. Hopefully she can get together with nursing staff from an associated school south of here and help plan the books and curriculum to prepare.