an additon if you will...

my post yesterday felt a bit hasty, not quite full of the detail i try to include. so to remedy that i will try with a description of our self-described harrowing journey here, which jonathan described so accurately in the comments. by the way, thanks for the comments! chris also uploaded some pictures onto the picasa web album so you can use the link on the side of the page to see them.

so to begin with chris and i were a bit nervous about taking a small african communter flight anywhere, but we were given a discount on the tickets after sitting befuddled in a office for a very long two hours. so we went, and it was not so bad, a lot shorter than the ferry and not as cold but we got a little nervous when we had been sitting on the runway for about a half an hour and the pilot apologized for the delays but there were some problems beyond their control. hmm. then someone at the back of the tiny plane said something in swahili and about four swahili-speakers promptly stood up, grabbed their luggage and left the plane. quite worrying. but then we were off and there were no problems i am happy to say. we navigated the taxi stand much more successfully than our first arrival into the country, bargaining the taxi drivers to a mere 10,000 TSH, a full 15,000Tsh less than the first time. believe me these are achievements.

a fairly unremarkable stay at the YMCA in Dar other than our passing a data cd to an investigative journalist in the canteen of the hostel, this is how things are done people. the next day we were set to take the semi-luxury bus to iringa, but our pre-arranged taxi driver didn't show so we were forced to find another. one young man was so earnestly insistant that we agreed. off we went but after the first really necessary stop (the other intersections we merely slowed down) the driver stalled, not once but over and over again. after many "tsk" sounds (a noise to convey disapproval) we got going, only to repeat the process many times. finally at a major intersection, our young driver got so nervous, he couldn't start the car at all, turned around and asked chris "unawesa?" or "can you drive?" so amidst the frantically honking horns and shaking fists, chris first attempted to climb directly into the front seat, got stuck, thought better of it and got out and ran around. thus begun chris' new career as the first mzungu taxi driver in dar. i felt bad for the poor driver, it turns out he was borrowing the car, and he seemed quite relieved when i told him the same thing happened to me when i learned to drive manual.

the bus was what i like to refer to as "the poor man's safari" because while hurtling through the scenery we managed to spot elephants, giraffes, gazelle, and some baboons. a bargain at $15 compared to the hundreds you pay for the serengeti. but as i mentioned, it was a great change of scenery, the coast is beautiful, but the beauty here is much more rugged and i somehow resent it less. because you have to think the ocean is beautiful, it's so obviously beautiful, of course you love it, but the scenery here is breathtaking and more wild. think my aversion to the band which has been referred to as the poor man's mountain goats.

anyway, upon arrival in iringa we (well chris if you want to point fingers) decided against getting a taxi to go to the chosen hostel and decided to walk. with our big backpacks and all. nothing much needs to be said other than for everyone to know that we were lost and i hadn't eaten since breakfast and the sun was setting. enough.

but that's plenty said about that adventure. we're having a lovely time fiddling around with solar panels, chris doing most of the fiddling, me translating to the employees of the solar workshop. who by the way are wonderful people, patient with our swahili, eager to tinker, and incredibly welcoming. i've never worked with people with disabilities before, and honestly i often forget that i am now, we're learning some sign language and learning a ton. one interesting tidbit about swahili if i can explain it correctly is that each noun for a person is in the m/wa class which means it either begins with m or wa ie mtu/wat (person/people). but if you want to discribe a small person, you can take it out of the m/wa class and put it into the k/vi class, to make it diminuitive. the words for people with disabilities are all in the ki/vi class already ie kiziwi (deaf person) interesting. it wouldn't fly in our p.c. world.

that's about it for today, the internet access here is really fast for some reason so hopefully i'll have the chance to post often.

love. annie