The bananas are getting smaller

After finally finishing my blog last night I settled in for sleep. No book, tv or radio required, I was exhausted! So I turned on the fan above my bed. It's not a typical ceiling fan, it's an oscillating fan that's been mounted to the ceiling above the bed. So I turn it on and it gently purrs, "buzz, buzz, buzz, KRACHATACHA, buzz, buzz!" Of course I might not be spelling that right as it's a Swahili fan.

I knew this was not going to do, so I made found my way out from inside the mosquito net over the bed and turned it down to a lower speed. If anything it was worse, I pulled my way out again (it's not easy to find the opening in the dark!) and thought, ok, this is a classy enough hotel that it has an air conditioner in the room. I'll just put that on. Well, I hadn't dozed long before I realized that it had two settings -- off and freezing. I struggled out of the net one more time turning it off hoping it would keep the room cool enough to last me the night. It didn't, but I didn't mess with it again.

All was forgiven when I woke up the next morning and saw this out of my bedroom window:

The view out of my window this morning

Hey, I just realized that Google automatically put those three picture together in a landscape for me... amazing!

Can you imagine waking up to that?? It took a while before I could compose myself to take my curtain-less shower and get out for breakfast of dosai, baked beans and hot dogs (they call them sausage, but they're really hot dogs.) The bananas were even smaller and sweeter than the ones I had in Dar Es Salaam.

We went into the office and then disaster struck. I kept trying to log my computer onto the internet and it just didn't want to. Eventually I  was able to get the computer and eventually even the internet going but all of my documents are gone and essentially locked away from me until I return. My hats off to our IT department who got me on my computer enough to at least get on without my files. They told me how I can connect and try to pull my files off from Cambridge, but I think I'll have to see if I can find a way to live without them.

Fortunately almost everything I need for THIS project is in the cloud and almost everything I need for my other project is stored right on the hard drive so I didn't lose too much.

Our office building in Morogoro

For this first part of training, I only had two students Dennis and James, and they were sharp as tacks. They're geeks who are learning to take over my part after I leave. They vacillated from "This is EASY!" to "That's too hard!" But we had a lot of fun and I'm sure they'll do just fine.

For lunch Joel took me and Cassy (a new person hired for the project) to a place called Rick's Cafe. It was a nice lunch, but it took 45 minutes from order to serve. I still really needed to go to the bank after all of that, so it was a long lunch. I waited behind people trying to deposit piles of Tanzanian bills and when I finally got to the desk, the clerk reminded me that they won't exchange denominations of bills lower than $20. I had forgotten that from my trip to Mozambique last year! So I pocketed the money I had and went to the ATM outside and pulled out piles of bills myself.

Joel Masharubu

We stayed at the office as late as we could manage, rushed back to the hotel and were picked up by a different driver. When the drivers greet me they call, "Asante Mama!," essentially saying, "Thank you, Mama!" Joel and I had been invited to dinner at the house of a Greek fellow named Chris who has lived in Tanzania most of his life. This is also Joel's friend who has arranged my whole trip this coming weekend to Mikumi Park. It was a lovely evening where Joel and Chris reminisced about Tanzania in the old days before the roads were built and people they knew in common. Chris's wife and daughter joined us and made terrific pizza (they explained that their daughter had married an Italian, so it was ok that she was making pizza.)

I got to give Chris the money for the trip and lo' and behold, he was able to take US Dollars after all -- he was going to deposit the money rather than exchange it so he didn't mind. So that leaves me with most of my pile of shillings for the rest of my travel -- and I'll still probably have to get more, but at least I don't have to walk around with all of that cash. So my hotel and guide are paid up for the park this weekend and all I have to pay is my park entrance fee.

The driver brought us back to the hotel and what do ya know? I've got a shower curtain! It's very exciting. Of course that doesn't approach the excitement I have about my safari! I'm so excited about it that I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to teach my big class tomorrow!