Around Moshi town

Ibrah drove us around in his van during the first few days to help us learn our way around and get acquainted with the area.  This is Moshi-Arusha road, the main road.

Our van full of ladies! Martina and Amanda in the back, Chrystal and Stephanie in the middle, and me in the front.

They drive on the left side of the road, so here you can see Ibrah on the right.  We were passed by a wedding party, which Ibrah said was not normal for a week day, and I just barely caught a picture of the band-in-a-truck driving by!  They were very loud, and followed by honking cars.

We went by the bank to get out some Tanzanian Shillings.  The exchange rate at the time was 10,000 shillings = $6.40.  Julia made little cards for us to keep in our wallet that had the exchange rate printed out for every 10,000 shillings, so we wouldn't have to do any calculations in our head.  There are armed guards at every bank, but it is still a little strange to have so many people just hanging out in front of the ATM.

We stopped at a cafe and little grocery store, and saw this rainbow!

This is on the outskirts of Moshi, headed into the area where our school was, called Kaloleni.  Behind the clouds in Mt. Kilimanjaro, which was frequently clouded over.  But 1 hour later it could be clear, you just never know.

Typical houses for the area.  Dirt floors, metal roofs, and (if a nicer house) outhouses for bathrooms.

You could always smell something burning.  It's very hard to get used to.  Many people here burn their trash, and the neighborhood might have a permanent burn pile that is always going.

The neighborhood where we lived is called Soweto, and had little shops along the main road with signs like these.   Soweto was a pretty nice and safe area, but even so Ibrah told us we should not walk around at night.  We used an internet cafe in the neighborhood a few times, and also found a great little fabric shop where I bought some African fabric!

We also saw this Brewery on the outskirts of town.

There was a place called Pamela Bar not too far from us, and we went down and enjoyed a Serengeti.  It was pretty good!

Home in Moshi

After the car ride home, we arrived (in the middle of the night) at Ibrahim's house in Moshi.  I took these pictures at different times over the course of the trip.  Right now Ibrah has the volunteers living in the back part of his personal family home- but he has plans to move his family to a different house nearby, so that the volunteers will all live in the compound together.  

This is the front gate, that stays locked at all times.  At night he pays a guard to sit right inside.

I first saw this form of security system in Uganda- broken glass pressed into the top of a concrete wall.  Those are baby clothes hanging to dry.

This is the back section of the house- and the window in the middle was our room.  This house was a very nice house by Tanzanian standards, it had tile floors and glass in the windows.  Most houses we saw just had the metal bars, but no glass.  Also, for some reason they don't put screens in their windows.  You would think that would be popular because of the mosquitos, but you don't see it much at all.  We left our windows open night and day.

Our room was plenty big for four people.  Two bunk beds, and a lockable cabinet.

This is in the front section of the house.  You can see the dining area, and to the left would be the living room.  Through that opening is the kitchen.  Ibrah has a cook named Lightness who also lives in the house, and cooks all the meals.  At the table are Amanda and Stephanie *(more about her later!), and in the chair is Chrystal.

In the courtyard we washed our laundry in buckets and hung it out to dry!  We were definitely schooled  in the proper way to wash laundry in a bucket.  We were doing a lot of dunking and swishing, so Magembe (Ibrah's brother) showed us how to really scrub the clothes and get the dirt out.  Ha!

This is Ibrahim, the director of Afrishare Solutions.  On our first day he gave us a Tanzanian culture and customs class that really helped us understand and participate in the day-to-day life in Moshi. Ibrah and his family are Muslim, and it was a really great experience to live in the same house as Muslims, and really get to know them well.  Ibrah is a very smart scholar of the Koran and the Bible and we had some great intellectual discussions!

This little drop of sunshine is Rahim, Ibrah's son.  He is absolutely precious.  He is almost 2 years old, and will soon be a big brother!  Ibrah's wife Deborah, is due with another boy in April!

Rahim runs the house!  He would come into our room just to see what we were doing and play with us.  He picks up a lot of English from the volunteers, so I worked on teaching him "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle".  

Here he is "honking" Amanda's nose!

After Julia arrived I got this great shot of the ladies with Mt Kilimanjaro in the background.  This picture was taken just steps from the front door of the house.  Some days it was cloudy and you couldn't see the mountain, but I never got tired of the amazing view!

Julia, Chrystal, and Amanda.

You might notice in the pictures that you've seen so far, and in the ones coming, that in a lot of them we are wearing skirts.  I hardly ever wear skirts back home, because for me it's just not practical or comfortable.  But in Tanzanian culture, they are very conservative, and women always wear long (below the knee) skirts, and keep their shoulders covered.  That's not really a Muslim thing, it's just a Tanzanian thing.  Really, only around 1/3 of the country is Muslim, about 1/3 is Christian, and the rest are either native religions or not practicing.  We did occasionally wear "trousers" around Moshi town where it was more accepted, but we wanted to honor the culture of the area, so tried to stick to their guidelines as much as possible.

*Stephanie and Martina (who you will see in future posts) are two amazing ladies that we met after arriving at the volunteer house.  They are both working with an organization from the US called Mama Hope, and will be living in Ibrah's house for 3 months.  Stephanie is coordinating and fundraising for a construction project to provide housing for over 70 orphans who are attending a school called St. Stephen's English Medium School.  (An English Medium School is a school where instruction is mostly in English, as opposed to Kiswahili).  Martina is also fundraising and overseeing a construction project on the school itself, to expand it with more classrooms for the Nursery and Baby classes.  Both of them have considerable international business and service experience, and are just absolutely lovely people.  We spent so much time with them while we were in Moshi, and actually donated some of our fundraised money to their projects.  There will be another post about that later!  Enough for now, I'm getting ready for bed!  <3 p="">