Tanzania

April 9^th

We wake up and have a traditional Tanzanian breakfast of local fruit, toast and eggs that had a really pale yolk and yummy juice. Passion fruit juice I think...I found a cab driver to take us to the bus to Dar es Salaam. The cab driver is very nice and offers to take us to Morogoro and show us the National Parks for $500. We respectfully decline and he takes us to the bus station....The bus station is crawling with people trying to sell us something. Here buy this food, these bananas, this bag of cashews, these crappy headphones made in China... When we stopped the car our car got mobbed by 4 guys trying to sell something. David and the cab driver got out of the car to buy the tickets and the men dispersed. After a short time David and the driver come back to the car and we head over to the bus we are to take to Morogoro. The driver negotiated a local price for us, because when you are a white person basically everything is at least twice as much as for other people. We made it onto the bus and started our 9 hour bumpy ride to Morogoro. We pass many villages that look the same. Dirty run down shacks with metal roofing and the words Citel written on the sides of many of them. These are extremely poor conditions people are living in. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if these people were living with the land and farming and using what they had, but it seem like people just came in and added things like cell phones and random crappy items with packaging and so begins the litter of the land.

We fall in and out of sleep all day. Around noon the bus stops at a place for lunch and potty breaks.

This is our first experience with a “squatty potty” so here is the deal...It is a white fancy porcelain hole in the ground. You squat and then you use a bucket of water to wash everything down. There is also sometimes a little faucet so you can wash yourself afterwards, because most of the time there is no toilet paper.

After a quick lunch of sausage and French fries, they call them chips here, we are on the bus again.

We finally make it to Morogoro and we find a cab driver to take us to a hotel. Because we are still unable to locate our couchsurfing person Rogers. Our cab driver takes us to a place that is about =20,000 a night which is a little less than $20 US. When we get into out room there is no electricity, we ask about it and the woman says, no electricity. So we rest for a moment and then walk into the town to find internet. It seems the whole town is out of electricity because we see them working on the cables in the street. So we walk and have a look around. Many shops selling random items, many shops selling cell phones and credit places everywhere. Cell phones are a status symbol here so everyone has one. Even some of the poorest people have them. Word on the street is that the breweries are getting upset because people are spending money on phone credits instead of beer. Another interesting fact is that you can see people in huts and then see a huge satellite dish next to the hut.

On the way to trying to find the internet we meet a young man who is in his last year of High School. His name is Michael and he speaks very eloquently. Evidently he was sponsored for 3 years by someone from the US because they saw potential in him. He is hoping to use his education in Economics to help Africa become a better place. He told us about the corruption and politics of the government as we walked down the street to the internet cafe. . We write to Rogers, our couchsurfing friend, one last time. It starts getting dark so we head back to our hotel. We clean up and get something to eat and while we are having dinner who walks in but Rogers. He said he was very sorry, he hadn’t check the internet in a few days and when he checked he saw we had written him so he came by the hotel. He also said that he switched phone cards so the number we had used to be correct, but it wasn’t anymore. Rogers said he would come the next morning and bring us to his house. We did laundry in a bucket and hang it to dry in the room. The air conditioning and fan work well to dry most everything by the next morning . (Oh yes, by the time we got back the electricity was back on. Seems it goes on and off all the time in this town.)