Day two - Massae Girls Lutheran Secondary School

MGLSS

 

Day two of our journey started in Arusha, where we woke up at the Equator Hotel. We had a rather English Breakfast – baked beans, bangers, meatballs, bacon, toast, corn bread, tea or coffee and a lot of local fruit.  The Mango and Papaya were fabulous.

 

We stored some of our bags and loaded the rest into our tour bus.  We stopped at a few stores in town – we were not able to bring all the school supplies we wanted to, so we brought cash instead and bought them locally, We stopped at a Foreign Exchange Branch, or Forex, to get some local currency.  I exchanged $200 US for a staggering 234,800 Tanzanian shillings – a wad far too big to fit in my wallet, so stuffed them in a pocket.  The smallest bill is 500, and coins go down to 10 Tsh.

 

Next we stopped at the main office of JM Tours, the company that has arranged much of our trip.  The company is run by a Swedish Ex-Pat, who is married to a Tanzanian.  Her husband is an architect, and shares the building with the tour company. 

 

We also visited the Shoprite – a super grocery store that reminded me of a mexican grocery store I used to occasionally visit in Santa Clara.  Several of the girls on the team also helped the local economy by buying art from the street hawkers.  We had a quiet lunch at a coffee shop called "Stiggbucks"; many of us also had specialty coffee drinks. My mocha was as good as any I've had in California. Lunch for 11 of us, including mochas or sodas: 85000, or about $73.

 

We climbed aboard our bus and drove west for about an hour until we got to Mogadishu, home of the Massae Girls Lutheran Secondary School. Note that I've been misspelling the schools name up until now...  The school is on break this week, but a fair number of girls and staff are still present – some of the students are taking remedial courses, and the rest live too far away to go home and be back in a weeks time.  We were directed to the guest quarters, and we got moved in, and then were given a campus tour by Jean Wahlberg.  W finished our tour just in time to catch evening chapel, which was quiet, meditative and mostly in Swahli,  I did okay singing one of the songs, as I knew the tune and Swhaili is very phonetic. We didn't do so well when the tune and words were unfamiliar,

 

We have a cook for our several day stay – it was much safer than trying to cook for ourselves :-)   He had a fabulous dinner ready soon after chapel; we had some south african wine with dinner, and most of us turned in for the night at about 8 PM.

 

So – what's the news on my jet-lag program?  Not as good as yesterday... I woke up sometime between 1 and 2 AM, and soon discovered Rick reading in the living room.  By 2:30 all the guys were awake, so we sat and chatted for awhile.  We all got back to sleep for at least a little while before the roosters and dogs started barking pre-dawn. I did get a hour of so sleep before the day started.

 

Next:  Computer Wars.