Arusha, Wednesday & Thursday, February 8 - 9, 2017


John has to get up much earlier than I want to in order to get to his conference before 8:00 a.m. when it starts; otherwise, he ends up on a chair in the back with no table on which to take notes. I continue to lie abed until at least 8:30, though I don’t always fall asleep again.  Furthermore, with John gone so early, I have to crumble my own Wheetabix into a bowl, slice a banana, and pour milk on it. Obviously, I have been severely spoiled.

As usual, I’ve spent my mornings over on the garden terrace trying to connect to the internet and then praying sites won’t time out instead of opening.  It’s a maddening exercise in hit or miss, with far more misses than I can handle at times. Still, as I listened to myself complaining about this to John, I suddenly had to stop and laugh since when I first experienced wifi in Africa in 2001, I thought the continent had been ruined and there would never again be a “real” Africa.
Now, even the Masai women out in the farthest bomas have smart phones in little pouches hanging around their necks. When Ron and Colette were here, we reminisced about the days when we had to make an appointment in advance at a big city post office in order to make a phone call home, and there was no such thing as regular mail delivery where we lived. Now, those seem like the good old days to us, but I wonder if I would enjoy living like that again.

John seemed to enjoy his second day at the ECHO symposium as much as the first, and he returned home full of information about low tillage, water problems, and efforts to create better seeds. His day began with an amazing small-world happening; each morning, a sign-in sheet is passed around, and John noticed that the young man sitting next to him was named Jacob Yoder. When John asked Jacob where he was from, he answered ”Iowa,” and they soon discovered that Jacob had grown up near John’s hometown of about 2,500. Furthermore, John’s brother was Jacob’s high school physics teacher, his best friend is the son of one of John’s cousins, and John went to grade school with many of Jacob’s aunts and uncles. Now, Jacob is in Burundi doing agricultural work with Mennonite Central Committee. I’m always amazed how many current and former MCCers there are in international development work.

While John was having his exciting day, I called Ray and asked him to drive me to the Lutheran bookstore, only I discovered that it isn’t the Lutheran’s anymore. There was not nearly as much to look at and think about buying. I had told Ray that I would have lunch somewhere downtown and then call him to take me back to Kundayo. I fully intended to go to the Naz Hotel for their lunch buffet, which is fairly cheap, but I ended up at the nearby Bamboo FiFi’s, which is new and not cheap at all.  Shocked at the thought of paying 18,000 Tsch. for a sandwich, I decided to buy a fruit salad (6,000 Tsch.) and chipsie mayai, best described as a french fry omelette (7,000 Tsch.). The fruit salad turned out to be huge and incredibly delicious with mango, papaya, apple, grapes, watermelon, pineapple, and banana in it. I ate half and had the rest boxed up to take with me.  Then the chips mayai came, and I thought I would choke.  It, too, was huge and had a small green salad as a side. I ate the salad and managed to stuff in about a third of the c.m. When the waiter asked if I wanted to box up the rest, I gave an emphatic no.

The wifi connection at the cafe was excellent, and since I had my iPad along, I caught up on Facebook and email before I left. Then, I walked over to the Naz and visited the tiny grocery store at its entrance. Every store has one or two items that aren’t found elsewhere, and here it was Pear’s soap and wine from Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania. The flowery description of the red wine I examined remarked how well it paired with wild game. Because I didn’t want Ray catching me with a bottle of wine, which would cost more than he makes on a good day, I left it on the shelf. However, I may give into temptation and buy it before we leave.

After I called Ray to come and retrieve me, I walked back into the Naz and looked at their buffet. It looked pathetic with very few choices, so I felt better about not eating there after all. On the way back to Kundayo, we stopped so I could buy some bananas, and as I stayed in the car, a half dozen hands reached in shoving bananas at me. If I am out in a market, I can handle the confusion of women trying to get me to buy their produce, but in a car, I am trapped, so I took the first bunch shoved into my hand, paid the lady—a bit too much, I think—and told Ray to escape quickly. I could tell that he was not convinced I had bought the best bunch, and he was most likely right.

On Thursday, the third day of the Echo symposium began as the former two: too early for me.  In addition, something had gone awry with the cable TV during the night, so I could not find out what the judges had or hadn’t decided about Trump’s travel ban or it Nordstrom was going bankrupt because of Trump’s tweeting.  In addition, I had less than an hour of wifi access before it, too, disappeared. So, there was nothing to do but read and do launder more socks in the big red bucket. After that, I decided since John got two tea breaks with snacks and a lunch each day, I would again eat out again by ordering something from the Kundayo restaurant. Unfortunately, unless one orders a day ahead, it’s hard to get a real salad here. So, I ended up with a hamburger and more fries. The hamburger was good, but the fries I couldn’t handle.

John surprised me by coming back early.  He said he was tired and wanted to rest a bit before returning for the symposium's closing banquet. I felt so sorry for myself being left again that I poured some cooked red beans the cook had given me to taste and poured them over the french fries left from lunch and then heated it all up in the microwave for my dinner. That tasted about as good as my mood was.