Dar

  I have had a nice few days in Dar before heading to Iringa.  I have a driver, Miraji, who is exceptional, comes early, knows where everything is, and has a nice car.  He will take me to Iringa on Saturday too.   Wista's Inn is also a very comfortable place to stay, nice beds, good air conditioning, plenty of hot water, great breakfast, and robust wireless in your room, all for $40/night.

Wista Breakfast

 The first day I met with someone at the Embassy about a Community Self Help grant for a water project at Lukani Dispensary.  This was one of the 2013 UMN Engineering projects and a good bore hole has been drilled but we still need a submersible pump with solar power system.  I met with a nice woman named Mike, perhaps a daughter of Johny Cash, who had very helpful suggestions for improving our application. In the afternoon, I stopped at TPH Bookshop and the manager there helped me select books, mostly in Swahili, for preschool, primary, secondary, and village adult.  Some of these I will bring to Kising'a using funds LCP donated a couple years ago for books and others will go to a preschool at Kihesa for Betty Wolf's group, the Huruma Orphanage, and Image Secondary and Namnyaki Secondary school for Maasai Girls which I will be visiting later.

I by chance had two former students come up to me, pretty amazing to run into two students in a town of 5 MM people.  Nelson is working doing graphic design for an Ad Agency in Dar and Patrock is doing web and IT support for a NGO working in Iringa.  I saw him at the Wista's restaurant where he was visiting someone from the NGO staying here.  I thought to take his photo after forgetting to take a picture with Nelson.  I had 80 students in the two semesters I taught at Tumaini and it makes me feel good when I see or hear of them finding good job opportunities.  I still chat online with at least one of them each week.

Patrock

The second day I met with the Peace Corps Coordinator for Tanzania to discuss a position with St Paul Partners for extending Peace Corps Volunteers.  PCVs serve a little more than 2 years in a primary assignment either in Education at a secondary school or as community organizers for health and environment or sustainable agriculture.  There will be 40 Education volunteers finishing in September and about a third of them are interested in extending with a NGO like us for another year.  Lenny gave me instructions for putting together our job posting and we hope to be able to hire another volunteer.  The Peace Corps pays salary, handles visa and medical insurance, and we just need to provide housing.  We have had three volunteers work with St Paul Partners and the experience has been great for all involved.

We wanted topographic maps to support our water projects and help with well site placement.  We heard that they could be purchased at the Government Mapping Office and this led to an adventure in inefficiency that took the rest of my day.  I first went to the Ministry of Land building and although no one spoke English they did understand 'map' and a Muslim woman with a beautiful dress and head scarf took me up a few floors to sit in an office until someone speaking English came and said I needed to go to another building.  He sent me with a young man that was experienced in GIS and very interested in job opportunities and who took me to an office in another building with 7 or 8 men at desks with computers.  I sat next to an older gentleman who had maps and map indexes on his computer.  What I was looking at was digital tif maps about 1 GB in size that they sell for about $17.  I could not tell from the index very well which maps we would want and I asked him to email me a copy of the index file (I had to help him use gmail and add an attachment).  I tried to use the index file with Google maps to identify the ones we would want but could not get cell reception for internet in this big building.  He explained that to purchase, I needed to go to him to select maps and get an order sheet signed that I can use to make a deposit in the Government Bank of Tanzania account, then come back with the pay slip and he would prepare the maps but I would need to bring a big flash drive or a bunch of DVDs.  We really wanted paper maps and somehow I talked to someone on the way out who pointed me to a little building in the back with a sign that said Map Store.  There was a man at a front desk and a dingy back room lined with rows and rows of paper maps with maps for all of Tanzania.  Paper maps here were 6000 tsh, about $3.50, and just what we wanted.  I asked for a block of maps (48 maps in a 6x8 grid) that would cover all the areas we work in.  He went back and started pulling maps and miraculously he had 45 of them in stock.  He filled out a order form and sent me to Bank of Tanzania to pay, or so I thought.  BOT was closed for lunch so Miraji and I went back to the book shop and picked up our book order.  I went back to BOT and went through security and upset a guard because I had returned 10 minutes early to get in the expected line.  I finally found where there were tellers and only a couple people.  The BOT bank building is a massive tower built by a Danish company and as fancy an office building that you could find anywhere in America.  To get into the room with tellers, I had to step into a door in a round tube which caused the door behind me to close and momentarily I was in a tube with just enough room for me and my backpack until the inner door opened.  I went to a teller and she told me that I cannot make a deposit here, only the account holders can make a deposit to their account.  This didn't sound like what I was told, or at least understood but after a few consultations with others, she sent me back to the Ministry of Land.  Once there I found they had a branch for NMB bank where I could make a deposit to the BOT account.  This meant sitting in a line of chairs and advancing one each time someone went to the window.  I got my valued pay slip and was told to go to another window for a receipt but after standing in another line for a bit found out that I was supposed to go back to the Map store instead.  While waiting in line, I saw a public service announcement given by an albino man asking people to not harm albinos.  Africa still has witch doctors which tell people that body parts from an albino bring good luck, kind of like a morbid version of our rabbit foots.  The video had pictures of fresh wounds of Albinos with missing fingers and limbs for graphic effect.  They also had a lot of video of a horrible bus accident near Iringa where 42 people were killed when the bus swerved to avoid a pothole (potholes here are major) and collided with a container truck.  The container crushed most of the bus.  Fortunately, the road to Iringa has been improved and is much safer but not a fun thing to think about 2 days before hitting the highway.  I took my precious payslip back to the Map store and the man was not there but I could see my maps carefully rolled up into a nice bundle.  Someone went to get the man and he took my slip and gave me a receipt, the last important piece of paper, and I left with my maps 20 minutes before he closed.  The desk at the map store was stacked with maps requested by others who didn't manage to complete the process, probably for people with less patience than I.

Map Store

Today, I am going to take a boat out to Bongoyo island to check it out as a R&R place for future group visits.  I will meet Vivian and Brian at Slipway where the boat returns and we will go to dinner at one of the nice restaurants on the pennisula where high end Tanzanians and Embassy people hang out.  Vivian was a member of LCP quite a few years ago and Brian now is in Form III (9th grade) in a UK curriculum program.  It will be fun to see them, then tomorrow, Miraji and I will travel to Iringa. God Willing or Insha'Allah as they say here.