Drumming, chips, post office and travels

As promised, here you see Denise and I playing the drums with the Gogo tribe. You may notice that she is getting extra special attention on how to play the drums - but apparently I am a natural. This night was a blast. I'm not sure what we expected, but it wasn't to have a huge village come out and put on a special performance of their traditional dance. This is a village of about 3000 people. Lots of children. Each person or family builds their own home. I'm guessing they don't get too many visitors, and certainly not typically a group of 10 people from 7 different countries. I know for certain they don't see too many digital cameras. The kids just loved having their picture taken and wanted to see the picture on the camera. All we had to do was turn our camera around so they could see the picture and we'd be swarmed by kids..all looking for themselves in the pictures. To quell a riot, we had to put our cameras away, as the kids were going crazy with excitement. In the end we donated some shillings to the village kids, which are going to be matched by the university. They're going to make sure the donations go directly to the children. We have had several sources tell us that if you want your donations to go where you want your donations to go - you really have to reach out and do it directly so that you can truly see it having a direct impact. There are alot of different directions donations can go that don't always reach their intended destinations, so we definitely learned that being involved directly is the best way to go.

We had our last day at UDOM yesterday. We finished our final presentations on Wednesday, and tied up all our deliverables on Thursday. We were given some UDOM polo shirts to take home with us. We also had wanted t-shirts - for workouts, etc. - but were unable to find them. As we were leaving the building this girl on the staircase was wearing a cool UDOM t-shirt. We commented on it, and she noticed. We started talking with them, and by the time we were done, they agreed to go back to their hostel and buy the shirts and bring them to our hotel for us to buy from them. Of course, there was an expected markup - but that was fair given the service - she had to return to the hostel (the campus is huge), and then shuttle into town. She texted Denise, and we met her outside for the exchange. We could only get a few, as we couldn't commit for 10 people - but I'm glad to have it. Mostly I was glad to have yet another happenstance experience where something we wanted appeared when least expected. Honestly I thought the girl was going to sell Denise the shirt off her back right on the staircase. I an't recall if I blogged about it, but a few weeks ago, she ended up buying earrings right out of a waitresses ears. I swear the girl was about to take her t-shirt off - but we stopped her (fear that we might have to reciprocate ;-) ) - and said we wanted to know where to buy them.

We went out to a local Dodoma restaurant last night for one last experience of a place where our choices would be chicken and chips, meat and chips, egg and chips, or piza and chips (we're not exactly sure what the last one is). I risked egg and chips again - and here you have it. As this was an upscale restaurant (it had a floor to go with the plastic table and chairs), I got some garnish of papaya, cucumber, and tomato with the egg and chips. A risky last meal in Dodoma - but I have survived.

I will spare you most of the tale of trying to mail a box of literature back from Dodoma post office. I went to the post office - "can I send this box to America" - "yes". Ok, "what do I have to do to send this box to America" (pointing at address on box). - "you can't send the box to america today" - "why not"....."customs person is not here today" (in the capital city main post office) "come back tomorrow". "when tomorrow", I ask. "sometime between 9 and 11". (our bus leaves at 9)..."when between 9 and 11"...."sometime", he says. "Can you be specific" -..."sure - sometime between 9 and 11".....

and so I trudged back to the hotel, box in hand..ready to toss it onto the train tracks. In the morning I gave the box to our host at UDOM when he came to see us off, and I may or may not see it again.

We took the bus to Dar - stopped in Morogoro at the Hilux hotel for lunch. Got here around 4:30. Long ride - euchre games, book reading and napping I am in our last hotel for the trip. I will go out now to meet my friends and enjoy our last night together.