Travel Day

After three days in the Game Parks, we spent an evening in Arusha. We wanted to have a low-key dinner, so we decided to just stay at the hotel and eat – several members of the group had already used the hotel restaurant in days past, and it was fine. My theory is that they sent the cook home early and had to either hire a new one or perhaps drive out to the suburbs to retrieve him, as it took almost an hour from the time we ordered until it arrived. Most of the food was just fine once it arrived – my curry was a bit salty, but quite delicious. Some of the meat dishes could have used a bit less time on the fire, from my observation. At least it gave us all time to it and chat, and added yet another story to our canon.

On Wednesday morning we all had breakfast at the Equator, as usual, and the we bade goodbye to the hotel staff and loaded ALL of our luggage into the JM Tours bus. This is the first time we had all of our stuff with us since we arrived, as each previous trip allowed us to take only what we needed for that journey and leave the rest in storage at the Equator Hotel. Since we are not returning to Arusha, we had to take it all with. The Bus was quite full.

We spent an hour or so in the morning at the Mwagaza Education Project, which is a joint venture between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the ELC Tanzania. One of their goals is to help instruct teachers on how to teach more effectively. Teachers in Tanzania only get a short practice period before being thrown into the classroom, and often have too few materials for too many students – class sizes can reach 60 per instructor, and many schools have approximately one book for every 10 students. We saw their campus, and they graciously chatted with us, even though they have a major conference beginning tomorrow.

We made one last dash to the Maasai market for a few more treasures, since we are headed out of Maasai territory, and then had a marvelous lunch at a restaurant called the Flame Tree. We made an excellent choice, not only in my opinion but that of former president Bill Clinton, who (apparently) ate there when he was in Tanzania in July of 2007. His photo was on the wall next to our table. This was another example of Slow Food, but since the food was universally excellent and bread and drinks appeared immediately, we were not disappointed.

Next on our trip was a stop at the Makumira University College, where we met Carol Stubbs, who gave us the grand tour. She and her husband are teaching music at the university level, and have (as far as they know) the only Bachelor of Music program in Tanzania. Classes ended last Friday, so the campus was pretty sparsely populated. The Bethel group that visited Tanzania two years ago spent three days here, creating window screens for the Chapel. We got to inspect their work, which still looks excellent. After a nice visit, we once again loaded up the bus and headed out.

On our way to Moshi, Kilimanjaro made another surprise appearance, The top of the mountain gradually started to show thru the cloud cover, until the entire top was visible. we stopped for a moment to get our cameras out, and most of us snapped a photo or two.

We arrived at the Uhuru Lutheran Center about 6 PM, and got all our bags unloaded and into our rooms. We could relax for a few minutes, as our next appointment was at 8 PM. We all met Pastor Godbless and several of the Elders of the Kikarara Parish for dinner, and we had a nice chat with them. They will be by tomorrow morning with several vehicles to haul us and our stuff up the hill into Old Moshi, where we will stay until Sunday afternoon. Should be a fine time.