Umeme ya Jua

today is the close of our second day in iringa, in the southern highlands of tanzania after a few harrowing days of travel.

first off, iringa is beautiful, it's atop a bluff overlooking some crazy scenery of mountains/hills, hopefully we'll post some pictures. the weather here is lovely, warm sun, cool air and chilly nights, such a welcome relief from the coastal weather which is hot and getting much hotter. there are lovely blooming trees here and it's much cleaner than zanzibar. we hooked-up with this solar project here run through "neema crafts" i think you can look it up online. it promotes sustainable development and employess disabled people at a fair wage. apparently there are an inordinate amount of disabled people here and it is quite a difficult life, with limited health care and almost no chance of employment. this project is really awesome, they sell beautiful handmade crafts but are starting to get into solar panels for charging batteries, cellphones, and lights. it's an awesome project and the people building it are friendly and knowledgeable and can understand my swahili, so that's awesome.

so we're settling in here, there are some struggles with getting everything worked out, and whatnot, but overall it's nice. we have to talk to the woman who's the head of the project when she gets back next week to see if we will be working long-term or just kind of floating through and learning what we can.

the harrowing journey was quite ridiculous involving a small commuter plane from zanzibar to dar, a taxi-driver who literally didn't know how to drive, a 8-hour bus ride through the mountains and a ridiculous sun-down trek around iringa with our full bags looking for a non-existant hostel. but we're here.

i'll keep everyone updated, and you all do the same for me.

love. annie