Getting things going and a week-end to explore

August 3, 2017

We woke up at 4:00 and gave up trying to sleep. I barely slept at all and Ron slept fairly well until 4:00. We read until time to get up. I went to work with Ron and Robin who is another person from the US working on the project here. He arrived a couple of days before us and he is staying at the same lodge. A driver picked us up and I realized that I was mistaken. It is possible to walk to town fairly easily. I was thrilled. The three of us spent about ten minutes talking about an itinerary for Saturday. All of us want to take advantage of the chance to explore the area and quickly came up with a plan. Elice who is the staff member here helped us and will arrange for a driver.

I then left to visit a craft center that trains disabled people in various crafts to support themselves. It was a five minute walk from Ron’s office. I was welcomed and offered a tour. Yabet showed me the weaving room, sewing room, woodshop, ceramic studio, jewelry making area, paper making area, dying yard, silk screen area, and being sleep deprived I cannot remember anything else. I observed people who were deaf, were missing limbs or had damaged limbs, were wheelchair bound, and I saw two dwarfs.

 In addition the center has a 10 room guest house and a café with ESPRESSO!!! This small town just got bigger. Many of the waiters were deaf. In 2004 the population was 113,000. I feel sure it is much bigger by now. The craft center has a great shop where you can purchase lamps with shades made from fabrics they print, placemats and woven shawls, beautiful teak trays with carvings, dresses, shorts, men’s boxes, shaving kits, cosmetic bags, coin purses, jewelry, cloth toys, cushion covers, etc. I got a couple of cotton woven shawls for gifts and some cards made from elephant dung.

As I was leaving the man who waited on me asked where I was going. I told him to the grocery store and he went outside and called a friend, Ernest, to walk with me to help me find it. It was a sweet gesture. It took a few tries before we found a grocery with the items I wanted and then I spied a bank and wanted to get some of the larger bills changed into smaller denominations. It took much longer than I wanted but Ernest patiently waited. We then headed back to the intersection where he went back to where we started and I headed for our lodge. He invited me to stop by his shop sometime. I said I would. He never asked for any money. In my experience most often when someone in poor countries offers to help me  they ask for money afterwards. I was surprised. When I mentioned it to the manager of our lodge he said that will not happen in Tanzania. Florida in Ron’s office said the exact same thing.

I came back to our lodge and was tired from being on concrete and asphalt all morning. The manager approached to say the plumber had come and was working on the bathroom faucet but left for parts. He wanted us to change rooms to avoid any inconvenience. I felt moving would be the inconvenience but after three tries telling him we would stay put I was nudged again to move. So I threw everything into our suitcases and they moved our bags and I set up the new smaller room. It has a hair dryer and it s brighter room with more windows. It only took about 20 minutes to get us settled. Ron called and invited me to lunch so I walked back to town and we ate at the crafts center café on the veranda and had a delicious meal of two sandwiches: roasted veggies with cheese on one and curried chicken salad on the other, each with a small side salad of cukes and tomatoes. Yum. Ron had a sweet tooth and I wanted an Americano so he got us a cinnamon roll and two coffees and we both were happy. The veranda was on the second floor so we could people watch easily and we delighted on seeing so many colorful African bright printed materials worn by the women on the stret below us.  Afterwards we walked next door to Ernest’s shop and bought a small painted stone bowl. It cost more than I wanted to spend but I wanted to acknowledge his kindness to me.

August 5

Notice the small rock on top of the massive one

Today we wanted a break so we could explore the area. We  hired a car and driver and headed out with a guide we had hired through Yabet, at Nema Crafts, the place that trains disabled folks. Goodluck grew up in Iringa. We drove a relatively short distance to the Igeleke, literally "rock under a rock" site. It is the site of ancient Here there are petro glyphs from 30,000 years ago. It was discovered by a German archeologist in 2008, hard to believe. The site is also called the Iringa Rock Art. There were paintings of homes (boma), giraffes, lions, elephants, humans, eland (largest Africa antelopes) at the base of this huge rock with an overhang. It was a thrill. 

Tricia next to a candelabra tree

The scenery overlooking the valley was gorgeous with mountain in the distance.

We drove back to town and let Goodluck off at the Nema Crafts center and we headed to Isimilia Stone Age site ,an archeological site about 15 kilometers west of Iringa. We were met by Christopher, a volunteer guide. He is trying to earn and save enough money to finish his degree in Archeology at a university in Dar Es Salaam. He has completed three years of his degree. In the 1950’s  archeologist unearthed one of the most significant Stone Age finds ever identified. Tools found here are estimated to be between 60,000-100,000 years old. First we visited the small museum with well displayed stone tools.  Then the gift shop after I admired the museum director’s shirt. None of the way cool shirts with African fabrics worked for us but Robin got a great shirt for his grandson.

Next we took a very long hike (over an hour) through a steep valley where there are pillars of limestone. These were formed when rain seeped into cracks in the volcano layer of crust over the limestone and eroded the limestone leaving pillars that were protected by a lava capstone. See photos. These were very similar to the ‘chimney’ pillars in Cappadocia in central Turkey that we visited when back in 2011. 

As we were coming back to the museum area we encountered an American couple and chatted for about 15-20 minutes. The man was a Peace Corps volunteer and the woman was visiting him from Alaska. They looked like they might be in the 50’s or 60’s. I thanked him for his service. He was teaching biology in a secondary school here. In Tanzania there are many tribal languages but Swahili is the official language and children learn it when they start school. They have classes in English starting in secondary school although they have not studied English before starting secondary school. What a challenge for teachers and students alike. The man spoke Swahili and I was impressed.  We have encountered many English speakers here.

We have been surprised at how little liter there is in town at the tourist spots. It is quite a contrast to our experience in Ahmadabad. The paved roads here are mostly in good shape, particularly the highways. Once you get off the highway the roads are dirt and rutted both in town and in the rural areas. Many women wear their hair very short, like ¼ inch and many women wear turban like head scarves in bright colors that match their dress. Today in the rural area we saw women carrying huge bundles (perhaps laundry)  or five gallon buckets of water on their heads. I cannot imagine what that much weight does to your spine.

We drove back to Iringa and stopped by the Nema Café at the craft center and had a delicious lunch. We were hungry as it is 2:00. After a good lunch we headed home to rest and read for the afternoon. I searched the web looking for other eating options. Our LP tour book only lists four places and one of those is our guesthouse. The three of us have grown tired of the Indian fare here and need to find other options.  Lo and behold the number one restaurant is Mama Iringa so off we three went. It was a long bumpy ride up the hill on several dirt roads to this lovely setting. The menu was Italian and so was the owner. I felt like I was on a movie set or back in colonial times. The dining area was large and opened to the courtyard. Because it is winter now and quite chilly at night they have festooned the wall facing the courtyard with while cloth that was some how anchored to the floor. I suspect there was a wooden rod in the hem of the cloth. At any rate it was quite lovely and atmospheric. We ordered pasta and bruschetta. Ron had pumpkin raviolis and I had gnocchi.  Robin had linguini with eggplant pesto. All of us enjoyed the meal. Afterwards we visited their gift shop with beautiful garments made by orphan girls learning a trade to support themselves. There were two beautiful jackets made from the fabulous African prints but both were too small for me. Bummer! Robin got a elegant purse with a beaded clasp for his wife. The prices here are amazingly inexpensive.

When we got home Ron headed for bed. I stayed up for awhile waiting to finish my eye medicine regime before calling it a night. 

August 6
I slept to 4:30 AM but couldn’t get back to sleep. Ron woke up at 6:00 and we read until about 7:00 then I got up to start the day. I went over to the kitchen to get a thermos of hot water so I could make us fresh coffee in the room. All that is available in our guesthouse is instant. Being snooty north westerners we don’t drink instant coffee. I brought two pounds of ground coffee from our source in Portland and two coffee cones to make coffee here. After coffee we had breakfast and came back to the room to work on our computers.

Ron had a very successful meeting on Friday with stakeholders in his project and he wanted to transcribe his notes. Afterwards we will head to town for lunch and to visit the cultural museum and the Masai market.

Our walk to town was fun. The cultural museum was housed in a beautiful building built by the Germans in the late 1800’s and consisted of five rooms, Other parts of the building were used for other purposes such as a gift shop and café. I assumed the upper floor may have been offices. The building was recently restored and the museum is about a year old. The displays were well captioned.

We walked over to the gift shop and ran into Bill and Mary, the couple from Alaska whom we met yesterday at the Isimila Stone Age site. They invited us to join them for lunch. We ordered lunch and visited until they left and we finished our meal. Next on our agenda was the Masai Market. It consisted of 15-20 small stalls with vendors selling beaded jewelry, wood carvings, baskets, a few had cotton pants for women and some had the Masai shawls Ron wanted. Upon inspection we discovered they were made of acrylic and factory made in Morogoro, a town closer to Dar. Ron decided to pass. Every single vendor urged or begged us to come into their stall and I refused because I wasn’t going to buy anything and didn’t want to pretend I was. But it drove home the point of how hungry these small vendors are. Some follow me around when I am out and about trying to get me to buy their wares, many of which are souvenirs for tourists and not what I am interested in buying.

We came back to our guesthouse and I worked on the blog while Ron worked on transcribing the rest of his notes from his Friday meetings.