A few pictures from the past couple of weeks…

Merritt and I are in Morogoro this week for training, where we're enjoying a little respite from the heat of the Deep South, where apparently the rains have finally begun. We're looking forward to starting our garden upon our return, and turning the corner on our first six months in country. Life is, as I said in my last posting, settling in to a kind of norm here in Tanzania, but we plan on updating our blog more often, as it seems like there's never an end of experiences or ideas worth commenting on. But those will have to come later, so for now, here are some of the recent pictures from our travels. Sorry for the lack of people in them, but whipping out a camera is something that one must be extremely cautious about. At least you can see some of the scenes that make up part of our everyday life here…


The Mtwara fish market. Here you can by fried pweza (octopus) or nearly any other variety of fish fried up in these big woks, three even four feet in diameter, which are housed in these little shacks on the beach. The fish come in and what isn't sold fresh is fried up for more distant markets. Fried fish can apparently last a couple of days, even in the sun and without refrigeration. We don't eat much of this kind of fish, but every once and a while Kali has no choice.


You can see the Mtwara port in the distance, where right now, most of the ships leaving have their holds filled with unprocessed cashew nuts, bound for India, where apparently they have major processing facilities. Anyway this landing site is where the last time we were at the market, Merritt and I saw a man was hacking up what clearly was no regular fish, and which turned out to be the flank of a small whale. We couldn't figure out how the whale had been acquired, but this man was determined not to let the fatty meat go to waste. Quite a sight!


There's talk of this old tugboat being raised, but at least for now it sits half out of the water where it looks to have been resting for sometime. The boat in the foreground, with all the passengers on it, is a ferry that operates between the fish market and the adjacent Msimbati Peninsula, which is sparsely populated. The channel in between Mtwara and the peninsula is narrow, maybe a quarter mile, but surprisingly deep, thus allowing for the port.


Here's some of the famed Makonde carvings. This piece was probably 35 inches high, and you can only imagine the painstaking work to carve out those details. I've heard estimates of the time it takes to complete such works, and it's in the hundreds of hours. The price for one of these larger pieces, maybe 65 to 75 thousand shillings, which is around fifty dollars. That's of course a lot of money here in Tanzania.


Another larger Makonde piece. Let us know your orders, we'll try to comply...


Morogoro. It's great to back in the mountains again, if only for a few weeks. It's not only much cooler here in Moro, but quite a bit more lush, thanks to the arrival of the long rains. It's been a dry couple of months throughout Tanzania, but we're finally starting to get some rain, and its unbelievable to see how fast the place greens up. Suddenly the country looks a little less like a desert and a little more like the East Africa I've always imagined. As you can see, Moro is beautiful, and the laid back atmosphere of the town, not to mention the good food, is a nice change of pace from Mtwara.


Sunset at the Catholic Center of Tanzania (CCT), where our in-service training is being held. I am pretty sure these our grapes planted, though still young, in the foreground, and the trees in the background are mango, which are finally ripe now. It looks like Merritt and I will be eating more mangoes than we'd ever have imagined, as when they come, they come all at once.

As you can see, it doesn't much look like the normal Christmas scenes were used to in the States. In fact it doesn't much seem like the holiday season to us, but we're planning of having some kind of celebration, probably with some of the other volunteers in our region, when we return to Mtwara at the end of the month. Much love to everyone in the States; we miss you all a ton.