Monday December 2 - Wednesday December 4th , 2013 Manow to Tukuyu to Mbeya to Iringa

We made it to Iringa at 8:30 PM after yet another bone-crushing and exhausting Tanzania bus ride.  We left believing the ride was 4 to 5 hours and 7 ½ hours later we arrived in Iringa…..sure glad we ate in Mbeya!  Apparently the bus driver was in some kind of contest to see how many passengers he could load and offload in one trip.....my estimate is 350.  We stopped at every bend in the road where there were more than 2 people....sometimes they did not even want to get on the bus.  Even the Tanzanians were starting to complain.   We had the unique opportunity to memorize both the music and the dance moves of the video that replayed at Tanzania volume [15] throughout the ride.....wow.....not as satisfying as you might think.  On the positive side Sean and I made an agreement that this would be our last bus ride in Tanzania.  We finally figured out that as official senior citizens we could opt out of these kinds of experiences and it would be good for our health!

We had reservations at the Neema Guest House and arrived in the midst of a power outage in Iringa so it was a bit scary to drive up to a dark place but all was well in the end – power went back on quickly – rooms very comfortable and hot showers and we got a nice meal at a restaurant close by even at the late hour.  Life is good! 

Iringa is a city of more than 100 thousand – lots of white faces which is quite a change from Manow.  No one was much interested in us – only a very occasional greeting of Jambo of Shikamo. Clearly we had lost our "novelty" status.  There is a university here and lots of young people.  Lots of western dress and hardly a kanga in sight, and of course many many fancy cars!  It reminded us how remote Manow really is.

We were able to get the cash we needed for our stay at Tandala and did some major shopping for TTF and ourselves.   I went thru my suitcase and left some of the things I would not be using again for the staff at Neema – by agreement of course.   The Neema craft center is a workshop and training center for the disabled.  The guest house is staffed by the deaf but the workshop employs folks with a variety of disabilities.  They work on site but also out of their homes making crafts of all kinds.  We tried to buy some of our things there to support this really worthwhile activity.

We did find some nice things for what seemed reasonable prices.  There are lots of wazungu in Iringa so we did not have too much worry about “wazungu” prices – could be of course.  We were not able to find the shirts that Sean was looking for or many beaded bracelets which I was looking for….maybe in Dar.  Off to Tandala tomorrow