Songea

We have made it to Songea Tanzania.  We have been in the country a week and it is already an adventure.  We spent two days in Dar es Salaam buying bus tickets, trying to arrange visas, and arranging for our trip to Songea.  A good friend of MCW is Ambassador Mwakawago. He was the Tanzanian ambassador to the UN for many years and then ran all UN programs in Sierre Leone for two years. He is now retired and living in Dar. We went to his house for dinner to help him break fast (it is Ramadan).  We had wonderful transitional food and tried our hardest not to do something culturally inappropriate.  The next morning at 5:15 we were off to the largest bus station in East Africa.  We manage to get on the ride bus and we were off to Songea. The bus was new, the road was good, and we saw elephants and giraffes out the window on the ride there!  The bad part is it took 15 hours!  Felix (he runs the community center) met us at the bus station and helped us get to the community center which is out side of town.  Songea is the largest town in southern Tanzania. The town has a market that is open everyday and an open air market on Sundays. But there is no grocery store or any store you would find back home.  You either buy it in the market or in one of the many small "stores" which consists of three walls and a counter in front in a space of 10 ft x 6ft.  We live at the community center which is in the town of Kipera about a 45 minute walk outside of town.  We live in a house with Felix which consists of two bed rooms, a common room, a kitchen, and two choos (bathroom - aka hole in the ground).  The kitchen consists of shelves and a table. The bed rooms have a bed, a small book shelf , and a mosquito net. The common room has a table, three chiars, and a desk.  That is our new home! On the community center is two classrooms for the pre-school, a dental center (which has all the equipment but isn't open right now), a couple homes where community members live, a community center, a library (no books though), and a computer room (only two work I think), and lots of kids who want to play soccer.  That is it for now! We will post pictures and more about life here in Kipera later.