Projects and weekend activities

Another day - and exactly one week since I left. I can't tell if it seems short or long. The first four days of the work week went pretty fast. We're starting to make some real progress on our work. We were all tentative about our assignments, as the projects are all outside of our normal types of job roles. As we got more engaged with the university, most of us are seeing that we bring some good capability to the table, and we are getting much more confident in leading projects of this magnitude. Its great getting more and more confidence, and frankly its pretty interesting. I would guess I could start my own university by the time we get done talking to all the key people in the key functions. The great news is that tomorrow morning we are going to a school to meet with the principal and key administrators. Its an all girls school in Dodoma. I'm pretty excited to be digging into the project, and pretty happy to get to a school and hopefully visit with the children as well.

Today after work we came back to the hotel, with plans to take a walk to find this Australian fellow who was going to help us out finding things to do. We got back to the hotel..I tossed my bag into my room and evacuated, as they had just sprayed for mosquitos and I needed a mask. Three of us took a walk down to the diocesan health clinic to find this guy - but alas - it was closed. We got the deal on their hours and will try again when they're open. We continued walking around (carefully)..and decided to look for this coffee house - Rose's Cafe. As we were looking around and just about to give up, Denise remembered a landmark, and we looked around and found it! Yahoo! So we got to the place..read the hours - every day 6 pm - 10 pm. Since today falls in to 'everyday', and it was 6:30 pm, we went to open the door (the doors are more like solid wood barn doors with no windows). Of course - it was closed - this is Tanzania. We headed back to the hotel to get back before it got dark. We forgot our flashlights, and it is generally not safe for us to be out.

When we sat down for a cold drink, and we asked the waiter about things to do. He was very helpful, and shared info about crafts places, music, and markets. We asked specifically about going to a winery. We had a glass of this Dodoma wine the other night - and it was really excellent. As it turned out, a rep from the winery was at the hotel, and the waiters dragged him over to talk with us. The winery is not open on the weekend, but he agreed to open it up and personally take us on a tour on Saturday. We're going to finalize details tomorrow.

I think we have a plan for this weekend, and we're hoping next weekend is a safari at Mikumi National Park. Our hosts are doing all the planning for us - which is very generous, so we will await the details. We think that is a long weekend, so we're hoping they can find capacity to accomodate us.

There is some talk about chartering a plane to Zanzibar or possibly Serengeti one weekend. Feel free to chime in on the comments and let me know how you'd feel about getting on a chartered plane here? Would love to hear from you - I'll take your guidance on this one. We're going to have a terrific safari in Mikumi - and we should be able to see all the big safari animals there..so what do you think?