A full Saturday

Shortly after the wire-melting, smoke filled car incident, we made our way to the beginning of our walk. It was a gorgeous, but rather hot day. We had plenty of water, and Chipe and his friend to watch out for us on the walk. The trail was a variety of paths cut between farmers plots together with paths laid out by dried up riverbeds. We were very pleased with the quality of the trails, and joked that perhaps a gift shop would be up ahead. Throughout the farms were various homes of the farmers. As is typical in Tanzania, the homes were made of bricks made of baked red clay, and mudded in, with corrugated tin roofs, normally held down with large rocks. In this area, it seemed that each of the farms had a few houses built with sort of a courtyard in the middle, so there was a place to do things other than farm. We saw kids playing, various livestock – including chickens, roosters, lambs and pigs, women outside preparing some vegetables, or people just talking. We occasionally saw someone in the fields working the land. Of course, all looked at our international group with curiosity.

We continued around the paths and through the riverbeds for a while, occasionally backtracking due to a path that closed in. One member off the group began to feel poorly. The sun was hot, and we had not had lunch, so it was not surprising if you had not had enough water. She was not going to be able to carry on with the walk, and one of the driver/guides agreed to stay with her and walk her back to the car when she was ready. I offered to stay with her, as he did not speak English, and our Swahili wasn’t really up to much of any use. Plus, I had supplies in my pack. We were fortunate that a farmer was at his house and brought chairs out for us to sit. He was looking after his 11 month old son, and we believe his wife was working in the fields. My friend was really not well, and we had given her water and a protein bar and tylenol, and fortunately I had some super duper expanding towels that were compressed to about the size of a dice. We put water on it and it became a nice cool compress for her to use to cool her down. Thanks Jan for the last minute going away gift of the towels..it really helped. We stayed with the farmer for quite a while, trying to ask questions in Swahili, but really unable to interpret the answers. As the dark clouds moved in, and some time had passed we started our path back to the road. It was unclear whether our guide had any idea how to get back, but there were enough people in the area working their fields, that every so often he called out something to them, and they exchanged words and laughed. Either they were helping us find the way, or were laughing at us. Either way, we eventually made it down.

When the others returned, we headed back to the hotel, with no further incidents. A cold drink and a shower, and we were good to go. Our hosts from the university then came by to meet up with us and let us know they had a last minute meeting called in Dar, and were not going to be with us this week as we wrapped up, though might be able to meet us in Dar just before we headed out to our various destinations.

We had been invited to dinner also that night to the home of a wonderful couple who owned the mini-mart down the road. After meeting with our university colleagues, we walked over to their home, where Fatima prepared a meal for the 10 of us, that was just fantastic. A homemade Indian meal and a terrific family made the evening great. We watched some of the cricket match, and learned more about how cricket works, and how it is nothing like baseball at all. Fatima and Manez have two terrific pre-teen daughters who were also excited to have guests – and an audience for their dance routine. These girls were some of the brightest and confident kids I’ve seen, and so friendly and welcoming to 10 strangers – or new friends! Mostly, I think they were glad to have an audience. The dance was great and entertaining. We also got to see their 8 dogs. Yesterday was also dog day! We had not seen more than 1 or 2 dogs the whole time we were here. At the farm earlier the farmer had a dog, and now our hosts had 8 dogs. I am really missing Shane and Rusty now.

We headed back to the hotel following very full day and had a competitive game of euchre with the help of some flashlights.

The night was capped off nicely by what sounded like a freight train running through my room at 1:30 am, but turned out to be a generator and a team of exterminators trying to remove the bee infestation in the tree overlooking the courtyard.