First, Strange
Situations
Being
picked up by immigration Officer at highway checkpoints:
During the weekend of Jan 31/Feb
1 2020, two cohorts in our class (R.H., A. S) were picked up and escorted to the Immigration Office. Peace Corps recalled them to Dar es Salaam, where they had to
spend four weeks studying Kiswahili four hours a day, with their work
suspended at their school sites. This was for their safety, to minimize immigration harassment. All this is due to we did not have our work permits yet.
In the week of
March 5, we finally got our work permits.
A week later, we got notice to
evacuate from Tanzania due to coronavirus.
Second, Ok, Now About Trips To Town
It is
expensive to go to town. For two nights for a place to sleep, hot showers,
meals, and bus fares, it is about 31,500 Tsh (~13 USD). Dry goods groceries can
run over 50,000Tsh (~21 USD).
The guest houses are not first rate hotels, but
we all look forward to the hot shower, which uses the technology of heat-on-demand,
not the regular heated water tank technology in our USA homes.
HIV/AIDS can
be transmitted through sharing needles, and from mother to infant through
breast milk feeding. It had killed a lot of people in Africa, and is a major
public health concern. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percent of the
world's population, more than two-thirds of the total infected worldwide were Africans
(some 35 million people), and 15 million had already died.
Peace Corps has
HIV/AIDS education training programs for PCVs, so we can help educate the villagers
or students.
Sights In Town or On the Road
Finca Bank - Muhammad
Yunus was awarded
the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Grameen Bank, for their
efforts to create economic and social development (micro lending).
FINCA International is a
not-for-profit corporation headquartered in Washington, DC that uses
market-based solutions, like microfinance and social enterprise, to catalyze
economic growth, expand financial inclusion and alleviate poverty in
underserved regions worldwide.
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| Big boulder, Iringa |
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Iringa's Sunset Hotel fire pit area -
built among the boulders
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Sunset Hotel stairway to a guest room
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Sunset Hotel's embankment of
recycled bottles among the flowers
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| Quartz rocks from Iringa to hold the plant |
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| Stand on the left is another "petrol" station for motorbikes |
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"petrol" station in village - plastic cans and
funnel to pour petrol for motorbikes
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| pile shopping at the market |
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| More pile shopping: the shirts are about 10 cents USD each |
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| Rugs made of rags |
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| More shops. CocaCola and Pepsi both have bottling plants in Mbeya |
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| Kanga - cloth wrap with blessings on the fabric |
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kitenge cloths -
African wraps worn by women
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| More kitenge on the left, and tie-die shifts (in Hawaii, they are called mumus) on the right |
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| Some skirts and shirts made from kangas in my closet |
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| Since banning of plastic bags in June 2019, vendors used paper bags. Some are recycled government documents like in the picture. Some are paper from someone's notebook. Tanzania is on the forefront in banning plastic bags. |
I also have
other wonderful views.
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| Cassia yellow trees are flowering - lovely, all over villages and towns |
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| Rose trees dot Mbeya city center |
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| My favorite-three amigos of acacia |
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| Canna at the guest house |
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| Another canna lily cultivated at a guesthouse |
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| Can't beat this picture! It is not a scene from a calendar--I took this picture of a sunflower! I can literally say we have sunflower fields, rolling hills, and this is not Provence. |
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| My favorite beverage - iced frappe mocha, at the Ridge Cafe In Mbeya, the Ridge Cafe is a place to hang out and collaborate with other cohorts, and use the internet. It is listed on TripAdvisor.
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| The grounding plug for American laptops cannot fit into Tanzanian wall socket. |
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