Tanzania Summer 2009

This is interesting….left Dar at 3a.m. and have to say it was a shifty a business as shifty business gets. But it was fun, got to watch the sun rise and see Tanzania come to life. Nothing interesting happened today since we just drove but we did get to pass through some villages and beautiful scenery. We spent the night at a town called Kahama as we had been told that traveling at night in a van full of Wazungu was probably not an intelligent thing to do. We checked into our hotel at 8 p.m. had dinner and promptly went to sleep, guess everyone was tired today after traveling for 17 hours. We started our journey to Bukoba at 8 this morning. However, at this rate some of us are wondering if this Bukoba business isn’t just a concoction by Andy and Jenna………we have been traveling for almost a whole week now and still haven’t gotten to our final destination, is there a final destination? Well Andy and Jenna are the only ones who seem to think so. The scenery has been beautiful so far with rolling hills and dirt roads in bountiful. Interestingly enough a police officer rode with us for an hour or two, we seem to be attracting a lot of police officers on our trip, but its all fun and plus it makes for an interesting journal entry for Mitch.

Well what do you know….. after close to 50 hours of traveling, we got into Bukoba at 4 p.m. Everyone is excited to finally get here but at the same time after spending that amount of time en route, it feels weird not to be leaving the next day!

Our house is right on the beach of Lake Victoria! It is very charming and our living room is decked out in animal print! However, the bandas are a group favorite… they’re little tiki huts with grass floors in them. We’ve been doing all of the cooking and eating inside the house, so the bandas are mostly just for sleeping. The bandas and the house are right next door to each other, and have a restaurant and bonfire pit between them, which are owned by the Kiroyera tour company (who we are renting from). They also are letting us use their charcoal grills, so we hope to take advantage of that and the bonfire pit soon!

We went on our first tour of Bukoba town this evening, and picked up some food and supplies. Thankfully, the market was about to close so we didn’t have to deal with a large crowd. It started to get dark so we headed back to our house and started dinner. Our first meal was very good! We boiled and mashed potatoes and topped them with butter and sautéed vegetables. It was about a $2 meal for all ten of us!

After dinner, the UEFA soccer championship was on TV. A fundi (repairman/handyman) came to fix our cable so we could watch the game on our TV instead of going out.