Tales of Tanzania (Pt 1)

Arrived at our 'home' for the week yesterday at about 5pm our time, after leaving the UK at 6am on Friday morning!!

Today we have had lots of totally new experiences!!! Including an extended morning of worship when we attended a church service that lasted about 2hrs. We had gone before breakfast intending to have chapati's on our return. However, we were there so long that the chapati seller had sold all her chapati's! It was about 12 o'clock.

Zoe and Robert and the Church Lane teachers left after this to continue to their school. Janet, who works for Tanzed and is acting as our guuide this week arrived to look after us.

She had some meetings to go to in the next village so we went with her. This was our next great adventure. Boarding a Dala Dala that was already full! An eight seater people carrier was soon to have its carrying capacity literally stretched to the max!! After playing musical chairs for about 5 minutes we were shoved into the back seats. Mr Collier, Mrs Buckley and Janet were perched on a ledge behind the driver! At this point there were 20 in the vehicle.

During a very sticky and tightly packed journey we were to make two stops. The first was to add more passengers! YES, MORE passengers to our already overloaded bus!!! The second was when the bus stopped and refused to go any further up a slight incline. At this point the 5 in the boot were removed to walk along with Mr Collier and a few internal passengers. We also collected extra occupants who clung on to the edge of the vehicle for dear life!

Once in Kidodi we visited a school to see a workshop were a community project was taking  place to help the local people develop new skills. From here we went to visit a friend of Janet's who had recently had a baby. Mrs Wain was in her element and baby Holly, so cute, even with the addition of eyebrow pencil a Tanzanian tradition to make the baby look even more beautiful was just gorgeous!

Then we hicthed a lift back catching a bus which turned out to be our driver Jacob who had transported us from Dar to where we are now.

Dinner at our hotel and then bed!

What a wonderful day, one we will never, ever forget!!
Pictures to follow tomorrow =)