Tanzania Summer 2008

Today has been eventful. At ten this morning, we went to the ground breaking ceremony of COSAD. They had invited their partner organizations- Global Citizen Network, Biology without Borders and government officials. COSAD had also organized choirs from surrounding villages to sing as part of the ceremony.

The speech given by the officials were in Swahili and we could not understand much of it. However, we could appreciate the music and the culture of the people of Tanzania. The choir was different from one we were used to since it contained singing and dancing and was very expressive. The choir singers swayed to drum beats. It was surprising to see young boys playing drums and providing drum beats for the choir. The whole community from a particular village was participating in the choir- including the children.

Anh was invited to give a speech about our organization and mission of the trip as part of the program. She was able to give part of the speech in Swahili and the rest in English. Everyone laughed when she explained why (Kwa nini) we love coming back to Bukoba.

The ceremony went on until about 2:30pm after which lunch was served. We were grateful to have good food since we were getting tired of eating Luna bars and Ramen noodles.

For the rest of the afternoon we finalized a house to live in. We decided on living in a house closer to the town to save money on gas. We will move into the house tomorrow morning. It will be nice to have independence since we will be able to walk to work and not rely on someone to pick us up.

Andy