Whoda thunk?

Often, I find myself sitting doing something like eating breakfast or then realize, "Oh shoot! I forgot to put that in the blog!"

I wanted to tell you about several things from dinner last night. First of all you have to remember one important thing about Dodoma, right? DUST!

So when you are eating at an outdoor cafe (and it seems nearly all restaurants are outdoors,) you have to pick a table far enough away from the main road so that your food doesn't taste dusty. So we picked seats farther from the road and several guys were washing the dust off the chairs and tables so that we could sit.

Several vendors came by offering cashews, bracelets, CDs (I think) and just an opportunity to give a cute kid some money, but I was amazed at how mild the sell was. You didn't seem interested -- no pestering, just kept walking.

Talia, don't look

The other thing I meant to tell you is how to wash your hands. As you can imagine, eating chicken is a hands-on experience. They come over with a plastic water jug filled with hot water and a basin. They have this "soap" caked into the lid of the water jug and you're supposed to flake off a little soap and while the woman pours the warm water over your hands. Paul told me the soapy stuff is the caustic stuff that in the US they tell you not to have contact skin.

The other thing that Dennis reminded me that I wanted to point out is this thing outside my door. Know what it is?

My own personal door bell. Hmm. Whoda thunk?

There's not a great deal to talk about today, my last full day in Dodoma. I started off today with a quiz or a Chemshabongo (literally means boil brain.) They all did very well. We went over a few more forms, got some great feedback and then Dennis, Cassandra and I worked for the rest of the day on making updates and reports. We went to lunch at the same place as yesterday "Humble House," where I got Ugali (the stiff porridge) and beef. It was excellent, but too much food. I paid for me and Paul since he paid for us yesterday. Both of our meals together came to about $2.50.

The view from the office window

We came back to the hotel, had a meeting on Skype which was pretty frustrating because we couldn't get the audio to work for over 20 minutes. Paul ended up borrowing my key and running up to my room to grab my computer and that's what we used.

After the meeting we went to the Chinese restaurant for Indian food. Yes, you read that correctly. The Indian restaurant is right next to the Chinese restaurant, but the Chinese restaurant is more comfortable and they have no problem serving you on that side.

Our waitress seemed to have some trouble with our order so instead of writing down what we ordered she wrote an X next to the items we asked for right in the menu. That's not a Tanzanian thing -- it was all her.

Paul treated us to dinner to thank me for the great job I had done on the classes. He was really happy with them.

Remember Paul borrowed my key to get my computer? He gave it back to me but not before he opened HIS room with MY key by accident. Makes me think perhaps there is just one key for the whole place?

Last night I introduced Dennis to the magical powers of Melatonin. He finally got a good night's sleep. Just now I gave him all of the pills in the bottle minus what I need for the rest of the trip. I think he's going to be getting a lot more rest for a while. Now all we have to do is find him a local supplier.

They don't like people reusing bars of soap. Every day they give me two small bars of this Eva soap. I would prefer to reuse the ample soap that's left over. I even thought perhaps if I left it in the soap dish in the shower I might be able to keep it, but no. They throw out the "old" soap and give me a new one every day.

It's late and I'm tired. We are hitting the road at 7AM tomorrow for a looooong trip back to Dar Es Salaam. First we have to travel about 3.5 hours back to Morogoro, drop off a person or two and then the 5 hr trip to Dar. Hopefully all of the commotion from Obama and George W's visit will be over and we won't have any problems. A lot of businesses had to close today because it wasn't possible to get to work.