January 7th – after a bit of time

The holidays are over.  I have collected on what I think is the entire account of kisses and hugs missed over 3 months from all my loved ones – although I think John Paul and Luke might still owe me a few.  I have enjoyed wonderful holidays with good friends who welcomed me home with warmth and generosity.  I continue to reconnect with others and plan a trip to Florida in February to spend time with sisters and cousins.  

 

I cherish my time in Manow and each of the students and friends I was lucky enough to meet.  I can't measure all I gained from them and all they taught me, but I know I am more now because of having known them all.  Their gifts to me will give to everyone I meet from now on.  I am forever grateful to the Tanzania Teaching Foundation and Nancy Winters for developing a program that invited me to participate by being at the right time, for the right amount of time,  and in the right place.  I am forever grateful also to Sean Sheehan for being the right partner for a slightly obsessive compulsive [okay moderately obsessive compulsive] and slightly goofy, oddly liberal Lutheran lady in Africa and to Tine Albrecht for coming to Manow at just the right time and sharing her skills, good humor, good advice, printing and computer skills and good teaching with all of us.

Yes it does say that on the blackboard....what can I say?  We are not detail people and it was the only day we had someone to take our picture!

For Kate…..Bugs and lizards I have seen and snapped in Tanzania……

Kate you were right….spiders are not the only bug in Africa.  I saw very few as it turned out.  I suspect the peppermint soap and shampoo did the trick and kept them away.  My partner Sean claimed the spiders in his room were appalled by the stink and pestered him to do something about it…..he was resolute thank heaven and did not say a word.  I did not photograph spiders for obvious reasons.....Here is what I did see and they are quite a group:

Ngama lizard I think

Outside my tent.....sort of looks like the baby monitor with spots instead of stripes

rhino beetle

caterpillar??

we were told this was a "baby monitor lizard" but it could be like a warthog is a "baby rhino"...no telling

Great looking lizard - green with orange head at the Iringa airport

enlarged photo of some praying mantis type thing

a baby lizard who made himself at home for a couple of days in our kitchen 

Isn't this cool....power was off and the photo taken by the light of my head lamp

On our lunch table in Dar es Salaam - shedding his skin maybe?

Love this guy but no idea what it is - it stayed very still and never took off from our front  porch

December 11th thru the 13th Iringa – Dar es Salaam

We drove back to Iringa and arranged for our flight to Dar.   You may recall our pact to never get on another bus in Tanzania?  Well having discovered the bus ride from Iringa to Dar is yet another published 8 hours – which is probably 10 hours TZ time – we confirmed our pact and bought 2 tickets to fly to Dar from Iringa.

Sean was able to find the embroidered shirts that had eluded us on our last Iringa visit and we spent a nice day and night with a new friend Iris we met at Tandala.  She has been living in Africa for about 5 years and has traveled all over.  She spent some of her childhood and has relatives who still live here – a very interesting person with a real zest for life.  She is on her way to Zanzibar to spend the holidays with friends there before driving back to Germany.

 We arrived in Dar rested and ready to see what we could see for the couple of days we would be here.  We stayed at Luther House with air conditioning!  Luxury indeed.....

We took a walking tour of the city and it was very interesting.  We found a botanical garden with a lovely restaurant on the border so we had a couple of delicious meals with them.  Here is Sean sporting one of his neat shirts in the outside dining area.

Here are some beautiful birds nesting in a tree outside this lovely hotel – again they are very acclaimated to people taking pictures of them…gorgeous.

We found the fish market

 

Safety First!

More importantly we found the Hyatt Regency on the way back from the fish market and had a decadent brunch with the hoi polloi – as scruffy as we were after walking all morning in the heat, we were treated like we actually belonged there! 

I visited the cultural museum which was very enjoyable.  Lots of new art work by local folks as well as historical artifacts from the colonial period, Photos of Julius Nyerere and tribal artifacts.  I closed my eyes thru the arachnid exhibit.  Really????  How are spiders and scorpions cultural?  They are well known barbarians!  Oh well a small thing to be sure.

In general I was pleasantly surprised by Dar – had only spent one night there when we arrived and it turns out the bus station is not the only sight to see!

We are ready to be home with our families.  A long flight begins – 36 hours and then Seattle!

December 10th - Ruaha – lions, giraffes, zebra, but alas we missed the leopard……

We were hoping to take a walking safari but the guide for those was in hospital recovering from malaria so….we had another day in the park  with Habib and covered a lot of ground looking for the leopard….unfortunately they are very good at hiding and we never did get to see one….the tse tse flies were getting pretty tiresome so we gave up the search.  

We saw lots of birds and Sean got some wonderful photos to bring home for Linda who is an avid birder.  I am not the photographer that Sean is but I did get some nice shots.

I do love the Marabou stork....it is an ugly bird and proud of it!

The lowly warthog....or as some unscrupulous safari guides tell you....a baby rhino!

The rest of our time at Tandala we spent relaxing and enjoying the elephants who came in daily to the watering hole and almost always walked by our tents on their way.  They often joined us for our  pre dinner drinks and catch up for the day.  We were also treated to bats at night – one in my tent that had to be dispatched by one of the Masai guards – lots of birds and the animals, including the leopard , who came thru the camp each night on their way to the watering hole.  Truly a wonderful experience for me.   After a week we were ready to begin the last leg of our journey home.