Hail

Monday, February 25, 2019

We only have one more month left to enjoy Arusha. These next weeks will pass quickly and I still have many things I want to accomplished. There’s no particular place I want to go, but I do want to get some more fabric transformed into a dress or two if I can find what I want. Ray’s mother gave us a whole ktenge cloth, but it’s not particularly patterned to make a good design for a dress. Still, having a big black star on my stomach and butt might be strangely alluring. We’ll see.

My morning passed slowly with email and blogging. John is reading and evaluating a manuscript for a publisher who wants to know if John thinks the book is worth publishing. It’s always something with John!  I decided I had better read the passages in Acts my homies want to discuss at our next meeting this Thursday. I’m always worried that I will scandalize them, but so far they’ve been enthusiastic about my flights of exegesis.  Then, I tried to respond to an email that was forwarded to me by a friend. The email’s author said I had made several mistakes in my blog on the World Vegetable Center. I am always glad to get corrections, especially on names, so I tried to make the proper corrections in that posting. By the time I finished with that, the morning was over.

We made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. We are still enjoying the cheese I packed with us from Spokane. We could never afford to buy it here. Next year, I plan to pack some parmesan cheese with us, too. We still have some of the ketchup, mustard, and peanut butter I brought along this year. It seems odd to bring peanut butter to Africa, but the local product is very oily and often tastes stale to me.

As usual, we had laundry to do. I got it started in our big red bucket, and then John took over and did the three rinses and all the wringing between them. I wish we could find a mechanical wringer of some sort to make this all a bit easier. Today was the first time that I wished I had a washer and dryer here.

Just before 3:00, there was loud thunder and soon it began to rain. That’s not unusual, but then it began to hail—really hard. I had never seen such big hailstones in Africa. They were amazing and bounced all over, even through the open door to our apartment. This went on for perhaps 15 minutes, and the noise on our metal roof was deafening.  Mazo said he had seen something similar when he was a small boy, but not since then. Immanuel, who is in his 20s, said he had never seen anything like this before. So, it really was a surprising phenomenon for all of us.

Mary Lou took this short video of the hailstorm.

Some areas of Arusha had accumulation which looked like snow on the ground.

Nothing else of import happened. I did make choroko again with Russian sausages from Meat King, and we ate this stew on rice.  John said it was very good, which is all that counts when I cook.

Enlarging the Circle

Sunday, February 24, 2019

It was cloudy when we woke up this morning, so we expected it to rain later in the day.  However, we made it to and through church without any showers. John was the speaker this morning, so we didn’t get to sit together. Mary Lou and I were late in entering the building and ended up sitting on the other side of where we usually sit. The changes in where we sat made everything seem a bit weird to me, which prompted me to consider how habits can become unconsciously ingrained reality.

The glorious Sunday bouquet.

The smallest Sunday School watoto singing for us.

Irene, our fashion queen, and Mary Bura.

John did a fine job though he ran a bit long. I’m up on March 17, so I made sure to purloin a large print Bible to bring home. Our rat-chewed Bible got left behind at Uru Shimbwe somehow, but since it smelled bad, it’s probably to our advantage that it is missing.

We had decided that we would go to the Ethiopian restaurant, Spices and Herbs, for lunch after church. Our friend Eric Rowberg had told us that there would be some sort of fashion show there today from 11:00 to 5:00. However, when we arrived, there was no sign of any kind of show, so we just got a table and ordered our food. Not long after, Eric and his wife, Bernice, came and sat at a table with a gathering of wazungu and black Americans. John and I went over and greeted them and then returned to our table to complete our meal.

How we looked before we got completely messy eating with our hands.

A pot of Ethiopian coffee.

 Just before our coffee and dessert arrived, Eric came and invited us to their table. Most of the other wazungu had left, but we were introduced to another man also named Eric—he said he was a winemaker—, and three African-Americans: an older man named Pete, his son, Paul, who lives in Niger, where his wife works in the U.S. embassy, and a younger woman named Erica who is in Tanzania for two weeks to visit her Uncle Pete and see the sights. The Ethiopian restaurant owner also sat with us. Eric and Bernice have known all of these folks for decades and so there was a lot of story telling and bantering. After we had been chatting together for an hour or so, most people went out into the courtyard to look at some art that was being loaded into a van, but Paul and I remained at the table. It was then while asking Paul about his experiences in Africa that I discovered that Pete is Pete O’Neal from the Black Panthers, who has been in exile here in Tanzania for almost 50 years now.  What an unexpected encounter! He seems like a very gentle person and is a great storyteller. He definitely has built a very worthwhile life for himself here in Tanzania. (https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-black-panther-20120129-html-htmlstory.html)

While we were at the restaurant, it began to rain. John walked to Kijenge to get us a cab even though Eric would have been happy to bring us back to Kundayo. The electricity was off when we returned, but the rain soon lessened and did not really pour again until nearly 10:00 p.m. The electricity, however, returned about an hour after we returned.

As usual on Sunday evenings here—Sunday mornings in Spokane—we tried to have a video chat with our granddaughter Peri. Getting connected took several tries and about halfway through the half hour, the video went off. We could still converse, which was only semi-okay, as a great part of the joy of these times are seeing Peri’s silly antics. We can tell that she is really growing, and we are likely to be surprised at how big she is when we return to Spokane at the end of March.

Partying On

Friday, February 21 - 22, 2019


We spent much of Thursday settling back into life at Kundayo and getting a lot of dirty clothes sent in to the laundry service. Socks and underwear got their usual stamping in the big red bucket with our nifty little toilet plunger. Mary Lou was off at the Albino Peacemakers, so John and I decided to go into town for lunch. We chose to eat at FiFi”s Bamboo, which is newly reopened. The prices were very reasonable and the food was outstanding. I had FifFi’s special chicken and chipsies. The chicken was fried or roasted and then buried in a thick layer of sautéed onions and peppers. It was delicious!  John ordered Kilimanjaro pork, and it took forever to prepare. We had to wait and wait and wait, but there really wasn’t much else to do. We watched all the wazungu who passed by on the street outside. There seemed to be an unusually high number of them, some in groups who were likely on safari.

After lunch, John decided to get his beard trimmed and then walk to Benson’s—the big appliance and electronics store in Arusha—to see if they could fix his camera, which he had dropped at the Archbishop’s house. None of the photos he took after the lunch on the second day were visible. I found a nice green bjaji and headed to Meat King shop there. After that, the bjaji took me me back to Kundayo. John also returned soon with the news that Benson’s would call him next week to let him know if they could or couldn’t fix his camera.

After dark, I saw Mama sitting outside in her usual place and went over to greet her. After a while, Mary Lou joined us, too. This led to a longer conversation than I had intended because not only did Mama want to know about our experience at the Archbishop’s house but also about how we live at home. She was as always surprised to hear that we don’t have any daily house help and generally do all our cleaning, laundry, shopping and cooking ourselves. In contrast, she has a small army of servants who do everything for her. While we we talking, Her grandson Sydney brought her a large bowl full of fried chicken, so she insisted that Mary Lou and I eat some with her. Soon after, we bid her goodnight and returned to our apartments.

It rained hard during the night and was still pouring when we got up. The rains don’t usually start until March, but there can be occasional downpours in February, too. Mary Lou usually walks the 2.5 kms to the albino women’s sewing workshop, but this morning, she wasn’t sure what to do. There was a group of students from Colorado College huddled in the restaurant ready to go on a camping safari. They looked pretty miserable, but their guides, who were sitting on the restaurant veranda, said the rain would end about 10:00, and it actually did. Mary Lou took my umbrella with her, but she never had to use it.

Mary Lou wanted me to go to Shoppers with her after she finished her English lesson at the Albino Peacemakers. She was going to walk to the produce market near the Impala roundabout and then alert me to call Ray and arrange to meet up with her there. However, when she still had not called at 1:00, Ray came to Kundayo to ask what was happening. Anita, who has only  a half day of school on Friday, was along with him. We called Mary Lou and discovered that she had lost track of time and was still at the sewing workshop. So, we drove there to pick her up and then started to Shoppers.

Shoppers is fairly far away, and there was street construction on the main road. Ray took alternate streets, which I had never been on before, so we saw new places and another big market. On our way, Anita told me that it was her mothers birthday. Then when we arrived at Shoppers, Ray stayed with the car, but Anita got out and followed me into the store. I was a little surprised, but Shoppers is a big place full of all sorts of merchandise that a little Tanzanian girl would find interesting. Right away, however, Anita headed to the greeting card section and so I let her choose a card for Honorina. At only 5000 Tsch. ($2.17) it seemed a bargain. Then we walked up and down the aisle looking at things. I had very little I wanted to buy, just some  milk, peanut butter, dish detergent, and samosas for John. Anita kept looking all around. I had to go to the bakery section since that is where the samosas are sold.  I had a feeling what was going to happen. As soon as Anita saw the cakes, she wanted to buy one for her mother. How could I say no, when for less than $10 I could buy a large chocolate layer cake on which the bakery would write “Happy Birthday Honorina” in pink icing?  So, we bought the cake and then a big bottle of orange soda and were set to check out. Ray came to the check stand to help carry our purchases to the car and was taken aback by Anita’s shopping spree. In the car he told her that next time she was not going into the store with me, and then he turned to me and said, ”She is dangerous in a store.”  Anita was unfazed and beaming as she held the big cake box on her lap.

Who could resist Anita?

 John had gone to lunch with our friend Eric Rowberg, and wasn’t back yet when we returned to Kundayo. I ate three of the samosas I had bought for my lunch along with half of a perfect avocado. Soon after that, Beatrice carried in a big tray with two casserole dishes on it. Mama was sending me fried chicken and cooked bananas. There was a huge amount of food, so I divided it with Mary Lou and abandoned the dinner plans I had made. Perhaps an hour after the chicken dinner arrived, Beatrice returned with another tray on which there were three frosty bottles of beer, two Kilimanjaros and one Safari. Mary Lou and I cracked up because the night before Mama had mentioned something about having a beer tasting for us. She wasn’t around, however, because she needed to be at her women’s prayer group. So, Beatrice opened a bottle of Kili and a bottle of Safari for us and our tasting began. I found some peanuts,  Mary Lou made some microwave popcorn, and we had a great happy hour on our veranda.

I prefer Kilimanjaro.

The day ended with our fried chicken and baked bananas dinner and a dish of fruit salad. It had been a day of many unexpected surprises, all of them good.

Uru Shimbwe

Monday - Wednesday, February 18 - 20, 2019

Today we began our trip to Uru Shimbwe, a Chagga village north of Moshi, up in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. We have been going there ever since 2012, either with students or family guests, and this time with just ourselves and Mary Lou. John arranges for us to stay in the home of the Catholic Archbishop for Tanzania, whom we have never met. However his brother Adolph and nephew, Victor, have become friends and host us in the Archbishop’s huge house when we are there. It’s a wonderfully quiet and beautiful place to be. Mount Kilimanjaro usually makes dramatic appearances in the early morning and evenings, but hides behind clouds during the day.

Our view of Kilimanjaro.

 We all got up a bit earlier than usual, and by 9:10 we were out by the highway, waiting to wave down a “coaster,” a smaller sized bus with real seats—usually. By 9:10, a coaster stopped for us, and we were on our way to Moshi. There were three seats as promised, but they were ones that folded down in the aisle between the regular upholstered seats. Sitting lower than the other passengers made it difficult to see out the windows, but the seats weren’t as uncomfortable as I had thought they might be. I counted regular seats for 24, and there were 36 people in the bus.There was only one stop along the way, so by10:50 we were at the Moshi bus depot. The entire trip cost us each 3000 Tsch ($1.30), a truly remarkable bargain.

Victor had said he’d meet us in Moshi, but his father was in the hospital, so he sent his brother Richard to get us and take us up to the village. We stood by the big mosque until Rich came, and then he stopped by a grocery store so we could buy snacks and water. After that, we began the climb up and up on the dirt road, one switchback after another. There were women coming down the hills, carrying large bunches of bananas on their heads. Rich said they walk 15 kms down into Moshi to sell their bananas and then climb all the way back to the village.

Just when I thought neither the car nor I could take another jolt, we arrived at the Archbishop’s house. Once we were unloaded and shown our rooms, we had time to tidy up a bit before we went up to the second floor balcony, where we were going to have all our meals. John and I had a first floor room, while Mary Lou was on the second floor right beside the veranda. The house has many rooms, six of which are ample bedrooms, each with its own full bath. The Archbishop’s quarters are on the third floor, and John, who has actually stayed in them, says they are even more simple than the guest rooms.  Victor is currently building four more single rooms on the west side of the house, where there had been small balconies. He hopes to increase his tourist business, especially with people who want to relax  for a day or two after they have summitted Kili.

The gate into the compound.

John is looking down from the second floor balcony.

The front part of the compound.

Mary Lou's room. Ours was similar though slightly larger.

We were relaxing on the balcony, when Alex, the cutest chef ever, came with fresh fruit juice for us. That was soon followed by a lunch of beef stew, rice, pickled mangoes, and greens. Alex made a dramatic entrance carrying the hot pot of rice on his head.  The food was excellent, even the pickled mangoes, which I wasn’t certain I would like. There was always hot water, tea, and coffee available on the veranda whenever we wanted any.

Alex bringing our lunch.

After lunch we had an open afternoon in which we could do anything or nothing. I chose to nap and read, while John and Mary Lou decided to take a short walk down the road and explore the nearby farms. Chagga villages are not a group of houses in a circle or gathered close together with fields around the village Instead, because of the many sharp ridges and deep ravines, houses are built along the top of the ridges and seem very strung out. The main crops traditionally have been bananas and coffee, which grow well together, as the banana trees shade the coffee trees, which need shielding from the sun. Now, however, people are beginning to construct terraces so they can grow more maize. They are destroying the soil by clearing the trees and natural plants.  Victor, who is very ecologically aware, laments this destruction of the natural balance of traditional agriculture.

Village women.

A typical shamba.

A woman carrying a large load of grass back to her cow, which lives in confined quarters.

Part of the glacial runoff water system the Chagga use for irrigation.

Terracing

Deforestation caused by terracing.

Alex served dinner soon after 8:00 p.m. It was a vegetarian meal, with a mushroom sauce on rice and mushroom pizza. Soon after we finished our meal, Victor appeared. He had been at the hospital with his father all day and seemed very tired. However, he outlined the schedule for the next day, when he would lead John and Mary Lou on a hike to a nearby waterfalls. This hike would be impossible for me even with my somewhat improved ankle.

There was a huge, bright moon, so we all enjoyed that and the dark silhouette of Kili looming to our north before we finally retired for the night. When I took my evening shower, I noted how soft the water was, probably because it is glacial run-off.

We all got up early Tuesday morning since Victor wanted to leave the house at 7:30. Mount Kilimanjaro was out in all her splendor, so we took a lot of photos before the clouds moved in to cover her for the day.  Alex served us a breakfast of omelet, crêpes, and French toast (?) with plenty of honey. He was wearing a different chef’s uniform, which matched our tablecloths. Right at 7:30, Victor appeared and the hikers got into his car for the drive to the trailhead. I have only seen this hike and the waterfall through photos others have taken, and it looks beautiful. John says that the hike has some demanding parts to it, so I was surprised when they all returned by 11:00.

I'm enjoying my breakfast with Kili behind me.

Alex's second uniform.

John and Mary Lou at the waterfall.

While we all sat up on the second floor veranda and I listened to reports of the hike, Alex brought us a large platter heaped with avocados, bananas, and pineapple and watermelon slices.  Lunch was served at 1:30, and although I cannot remember all we had, I remember there was both rice and mashed potatoes, which were excellent. I think the stew was with chicken. And, as with all meals, there were sliced avocados.

I had spent my morning reading and intended to continue in the afternoon. On the main floor of the house, there is a large lounge with sofas all along the side walls. This is where we usually met with students to hear Victor’s Bibi recount her life as a young wife, then widow, who raised 5 remarkable children, one of whom is now the Catholic Archbishop of Tanzania. She kept her promise to her husband that all the children would get educations even though that took great effort and sacrifice on her part. I had been hoping to see her again, but she died last December. Victor told us that he still has not recovered from the trauma of this loss, and we could see vestiges of the funeral and family gatherings in the stacks of plastic chairs not yet returned, the newly constructed grave with flowers on it, and the extra people still staying on in the compound. As a side note, Victor said he had to buy 25 big buckets of mbege, the local banana beer, for the funeral meal.

Victor's Bibi.

Bibi's grave next to the house.

Mary Lou wanted to walk into the main village “center” which consists of a Catholic church and school, a dispensary, and a few bars along the road. I don’t think John was as eager as she to take this walk, but he did it. When he returned, he gave me a report on Mama and Baba Tesha’s retirement house, which is almost completed.  I always liked their old house with its outdoor kitchen and have good memories of gatherings and meals there.

Local school children.

At 7:30, Alex served us dinner for which the main course was spaghetti with a very different, barely tomato sauce and mince. Victor had been in Moshi all afternoon at the hospital with his father, but he came back up the hills to meet with us again at 8:30. He had told us about an indigenous plant, the oysternut, which grows on vines attached to large trees. In the past, the Chagga had ground and pressed these nuts for oil. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telfairia_pedata)  Now, however, it much easier to buy a bottle of oil in a shop, and so most of the oysternut vines have been destroyed. Victor is trying to reintroduce this plant into Chagga life by raising seedlings, which he gives away free to Chagga farmers. Once there are more vines bearing the fruit, Victor hopes to have constructed a press for processing the nuts for oil. Also staying in the house—though we almost never saw them—was a young couple, she from France, he from Madagascar, who are volunteers helping to raise the seedlings. Victor said he would take us to visit a place where oysternut vines grow on our return trip to Moshi the next morning.

Oysternuts. We ate the nut from the opened shells.

Soon after we turned in for the night, there was a vigorous storm with strong winds. Since John didn’t realize that there was sliding glass for the windows, we had an exciting time for about 30 minutes while the wind blew our drapes up and over our bed.

The next morning, all was calm and bright, and Kili was once again unclouded and beautiful. For breakfast we had the best scrambled eggs I have ever eaten, deep fried potato slices, crêpes, wonderful bread, and avocado slices. Victor wanted to take John and Mary Lou to see the land he has bought right next to the border of the Mount Kilimanjaro National Park. He plans to create a camping site there for climbers who want to acclimatize some before making their climbs. I had thought I could ride along and perhaps even walk around the site, but Victor did not think that would be possible for me, so I was left behind again. While the others were gone, I packed up for our return to Arusha and read some more. At Uru Shimbwe, I finished reading The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, and also read She Would be King by Wayétu Moore and Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck.

Breakfast with the best scrambled eggs ever.

The hikers ready to go.

A local pub.

John stirring a big pot of mbege, the local banana beer.

Mary Lou tasting mbege. The master brewer is in the background.

As soon as the hikers returned, we loaded up and headed out on a different road than usual. Victor said that his grandfather had built this second road to and from the village so that if someone blocked the road we normally use, he and his family could still get out and down to Moshi. Very soon, we stopped at a shamba, where Victor took us into the banana and coffee groves to show us the oysternut vines and explain more about how they grow. Unfortunately there was no fruit on the vines at this time, but we did see little seedlings growing on the ground, and empty nut hulls all over.

Bananas are grown everywhere.

Coffee trees are grown among the bananas.

An oysternut seedling.

Then, it was back in the car and more jolting through the forest until we finally joined the paved road back into Moshi. Victor was coming to Arushi with us because he had a problem with his phone which he needed to resolve. I don’t know how we would have survived without him at the bus depot. There were gangs of men who jostled, grabbed, and pushed possible passengers toward “their” buses. We were literally shoved up into a bus in which we had been assured were three empty seats. There were absolutely no empty seats, so we fought our way back out and went to another bus, all the while struggling against over aggressive touts. We found a much smaller bus which was fairly empty, climbed in, and waited over half an hour until the rest of the seats were filled. All the while, we watched as the gangs manhandled young women and older men, shoving them toward the buses they wanted to cram full. Some of the younger women looked as if they were in tears. I couldn’t believe it; it was similar to scenes from “The Gangs of New York.” I could imagine this happening in the Congo or even in Kenya, but it was something I had never expected to see in Tanzania.

Once we left the bus depot, we had a very uneventful ride back to Arusha. We said good-bye to Victor just before the bus stopped and let us off right across the highway from Kundayo Road..  Ray saw us and came to help carry our bags, and by 4:00 we were safely back home.

Since we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast except some gingernut cookies, John decided to get us some kuku na chipsies, and we had a very early dinner. I had washed my hands and face before dinner and was appalled how incredibly dirty the water and washcloth became. So, once we had eaten, I took a long shower. Then, I watched a bit of MSNBC. The news seemed pretty much the same as it had been before we left, so I turned off the TV and went to bed.

Disappearing Bride

Saturday and Sunday, February 16 -17, 2019

Saturday was another day during which I stayed inside the Kundayo compound and did odd tasks such as washing socks and making spaghetti sauce. John as usual walked down Kjengi to his favorite produce and fruit market to buy bananas, mangoes, and avocados. He also stopped by the small Kjengi store to get some tomato paste for the spaghetti sauce. However, the most exciting moment of the day was when we were on the garden terrace and Mama, who is not usually out before noon, came to talk with us.

Socks hung to dry.

Mama was all dressed up and ready to go to a wedding which had just been called off. Mama had been to the bride’s “sending off” party, a.k.a bridal shower, on Thursday, and all seemed well then. However, early Saturday morning—the neighbors say around 7:00 a.m.—the bride’s former boyfriend came to her house, supposedly to give her a wedding gift, and she and he disappeared. The official signing of documents, etc. was to occur at the church at 8:00, but the bride did not appear. Finally, around 11:00 a.m. the wedding and following feast were cancelled. Mama was ready to drive out to Njiro to be with the bride’s mother and find out more about this strange event and then give us an updated report when she returned in the evening.

Mama dressed for action.

Of course everyone was all aflutter, and though I have no idea of sequence, it was determined that young woman had left her phone behind and no calls came in or out on it all day. The police were trying to track her former boyfriend, who is mixed Tanzanian/ Greek and quite wealthy, but when they went to his house, he was not there. However, his German wife and her children were! No one seems to have known about this wife. She reported that her husband had been acting strangely and had moved out of the house 3 months before. Now people were really getting concerned that the girl must have been  abducted by a jealous former boyfriend. Still, there were some who wondered if the two missing persons hadn’t worked out a disappearance together.

Also interesting is that the bride-to-be is also mixed race, Tanzanian/ British, and because her father died when she was very young, she was raised for many years by a British family who owned a nearby coffee plantation. The groom-to-be, however, is “pure Masai” as Mazo put it.
I have no idea how that may affect the negotiations of what happens when a marriage does not take place, but things could get very complicated and even nasty.

We went to bed still not knowing the resolution of this mystery. (John kept wondering who was getting to eat all the food that had been prepared for the wedding guests.)

Sticking with our routine on Sunday, we got up and prepared to go to church. John had gotten an email from George stating that he had found John’s camera in the back seat of his car and would bring it with him to ACC. John was very relieved! I was looking forward to hearing what my friend Terry would say in the sermon she was scheduled to give. She’s definitely not a linear thinker, so I anticipated some interesting content.

Sunday's flowers

Again, as usual, Ray picked us up at 10:00 and transported us to church. There seemed to be fewer people than normally are there, but as there were no big conferences going on in town, there weren’t as many possible visitors as last week. The service proceeded according to the usual format, and Terry did well—although she used most of a book I read back in the 1970s and spoke far too long—and then one of the elders walked to the platform and asked for prayer for Claire and Amani, a couple who were to have married yesterday but had not. OMG! This was the same couple Mama had been telling us about on Saturday. They are members of ACC and their bans had been read each of the past three Sundays.

After the benediction, I approached Rebecca, the elder, and told her that we knew of the strange disappearance of Claire, etc. Rebecca then told me that Claire had returned last night, but didn’t divulge any further information. So, while we now know that Claire is safely home, we still don’t know the circumstances of her disappearance or what may happen now with her and Amani. The ex-boyfriend is still eluding contact. Mama Kundayo has stayed inside all day today, so we have learned nothing new from her.

Rebecca speaking with Mrs. Olson, who is wearing a curiously furry dress.

John talking with Roland Bunch, the author of Two Ears of Corn.

After church, Mary Lou announced that she wanted to eat Indian food again, so we took a taxi to Taj, one of the two Indian restaurants we like best. We had gone there while Mary Lou was on safari, so it was new to her. However, she had no idea what to order since she knows nothing about Indian food. In the end, she made a good choice, mutton in a mild green sauce. I had chicken coconut curry and John had another mutton dish. It was all excellent. Just as we finished our meal, it began to thunder and soon we were in a deluge. John called Ray to come get us, but for some reason that took half an hour, which we spent huddled under a thatched roof getting sprayed when the wind blew.

The, we were back at Kundayo again and we could relax and begin packing for our trip to Uru Shimbwe. We’ll catch a coaster bus along the highway and ride to Moshi, where one of the Catholic Archbishops’ nephew’s will meet us and take us up the hilly roads near Kilimanjaro. There we will stay at the archbishop’s house until Wednesday, when we will return to Arusha. There is a lovely waterfall that John and Mary Lou plan to hike to on Tuesday, while I just sit looking out at Kili—I hope it’s visible—and reading. We will not have internet there, so I will have no Trump distractions.

World Vegetable Center

Friday, February 15, 2019

The day started early for me, as I had signed up to accompany John on a field trip to the World Vegetable Center this morning. We needed to be at the Naura Springs Hotel by 8:15 to accompany others from the ECHO conference who were also going to the same site. When we arrived, via Ray, there was a crowd of people waiting to board buses for four different trips, but John’s new friend, George Mkanza, was also going to the WVC and asked if we’d like to ride along with him in his car, and so we did. George is a retired former bigwig with the Lutheran church here in Tanzania and drives a nice car with air conditioning. The AC was irresistible.

A fourth person, a woman from Sweden, but now residing in southern France, also rode with us. I never could find out why she—“I am Karen” (pronounced Car-wren)— was in this group, but she spoke a lot about how she had lived in Denmark, Italy, and now resides in France, and was often in Nairobi in the 1970s and 80s, when according to her it was truly beautiful. At WVC, she was quite forward in asking questions as setups for her opinions on a variety of topics. At one point, she announced that she has swum in all the oceans and seas in the world and thus is an expert on plastic pollution. She rode back to Arusha with us later, and I still did not find out why she is here. However, she did disclose that her tourist visa is expiring soon, so she is not working with any organization here.

The World Vegetable Center is a large plant research facility out toward Usa River. (https://avrdc.org/about-avrdc/new-locations/eastern-southern-africa/) This Tanzanian center is part of a worldwide network of centers which focus on breeding traditional vegetables to be disease and pest resistant and grow better in regional climates. On our tour, we saw laboratories where research was being done on combatting white flies, which have recently become a scourge in Tanzania. We learned  how indigenous plants, such as African eggplants (We called them “bitterballs” in Liberia.), nightshade, and amaranth, are being improved and reintroduced to the local farmers. Now 84% of the vegetable seeds planted in Tanzania come from the WVC. One of the buildings I liked best was the big seed bank, in which all the many seed varieties are  being safely kept for decades.

Workers in the extensive vegetable plots.

Conducting research on how to combat the white fly and other vegetable pests and diseases.

Raising amaranth, my new favorite vegetable.

At the seed bank. (The Swedish woman is behind me)

Seed packets which are supplied to farmers.

I managed to keep up with the group until the last part, a tour of the extensive crop fields and huge greenhouses. I could see much of this, but walking in the fields would have been too difficult for me. Instead, I sat in a covered shelter and read until it was time for lunch. Staff had prepared a very generous buffet of rice, African eggplant stew, red beans, fried chicken, chipsies, amaranth greens, bananas, and watermelon. It was all delicious, even the African eggplant, which, given my memories of eating it in Liberia, I hadn’t expected to like. The amaranth greens had a slightly different taste than the common plants used here, but the flavor was very pleasing, too.

I thought this was a large plot of tomatoes, but Dr. Dinssa told me these fruits are really African eggplants.

We know this as choroko, but they say they are mung beans.

Alt our table for lunch was Dr. Fekadu Dinssa, a seed breeder at WVC.  In conversing with him, we discovered that his oldest son recently graduated from Stanford and is now in Seattle working for Microsoft. Once again I was struck by how many of the people we meet in Africa have family scattered all over the globe.

Discussing amaranth with Dr. Fekadu Dinssa.

Lunch: the greens are amaranth and there is a small African eggplant in the stew.

By 1:30, George was ready to leave, so we loaded up and headed back to Arusha. Karen, who again chose the front seat, chatted all the way and had a way of touching George on his arm when she would lean over to make a point. Hum. We remained virtually invisible in the back seat all the way back to town.

Once back at Kundayo, we realized that John’s camera was missing. I remembered that he had picked it up from the table after lunch instead of letting me put it back in my purse. Obviously, he had left it on the back seat of George’s car. Thus began some frantic emailing to friends to get George’s email and so on. We didn’t get an answer from George by bedtime, so stay tuned.

I gave Mazo some of the literature I had picked up at WVC, and we had a good discussion about plants and gardening. He would have loved the tour we had, but the center isn’t open to the general public. They not only could not handle very many guests but also wouldn’t want the risk of people trampling around their experimental plots and maybe carrying in other insects or plant seeds. It’s a research center, not a demonstration farm, so I feel very fortunate that I was able to see this unique place.