Saturday-Monday

On Saturday we went to a museum. It had all of the different kinds of houses that the tribes in Tanzania live in. We listened to some traditional music and watched the people dance.

There were a lot of school groups there on a fieldtrip. They loved seeing the blonde white girls. They all wanted to shake our hands so they could touch a white person. Aunt Carol started taking pictures of them and showing them on her camera. They loved that so much! Everyone wanted their pictures taken, and the children were so beautiful so we didn't mind.

 

Sunday we went to church. Kirsten and I went to young womens. They taught in English, I'm not sure if that was just for us or if they normally do that but we were grateful for that. Sunday school was a mix of Swahili and English. The people were so nice; they invited us to their girls camp on the beach! Sacrament meeting was all in Swahili. I'm sure it would have been really funny for the people there to listen to Kirsten and I sing in Swahili.

 

After church we made our way over to the bus station. A lady named Immaculate drove us in her car. When we were almost there a bus merged over into us! Immaculate's car wasn't too damaged, it had some of the paint scraped and the front bumper was a little damaged. She pulled over and gave that bus driver a piece of her mind. She managed to get him to pay for all of the repairs. Easily that was one of the more terrifying moments of my life. 

 

The roads here are crazy. There are no defined lanes; generally there is a right and left lane, but if a driver wants to they can just go on over into it. The busses are notorious for this. I guess they figure if they are in a head on collision they'd win every time. The roads themselves are littered with potholes. The bus we were on was packed. It was a 3 and a half hour ride. I'm glad we were near the back so I couldn't see the crazy driving of the bus driver. I'm sure I would have died of fright.

 

We got up early Monday morning so we could go on a hike up the mountain here in Morogoro. We started around 7:45 and just started walking up. On our way up to the mountain we saw so many women walking down carrying bananas on their heads. We had to take pictures of them discreetly because they understandably do not like people to take pictures of them.

 

We asked a boy if he wanted to be our guide and when we pointed to where we wanted to go he looked at us like we were crazy, so we kept going. We found a man who was willing to guide us. Uncle Boyd told him he'd give him 20,000 shillings, about $12 to guide us up and back down. That is about 2-3 days work for the people here so he was more than willing to help out.

 

The people on the hill were very poor. It was so interesting, the further up that we went, the more excited and amazed the children were to see white people. One would see us and then they would all come running to look. They always looked at a distance though, they were to afraid to get close. The trail went straight up the mountain, no switchbacks for them! We probably didn't bring enough water with us, but we managed. The people there grow corn all the way up the mountainside. It was a beautiful view clear up there. We ended up hiking for 5 hours. We were all very tired by the end.

 

Sorry for the long post. A lot happened these past few days. I tried to keep things concise so if you would like to hear more about something or see more pictures of things I can definitely post more. Just leave a comment. These are not even a fraction of the pictures I have.