Sunday

From Waldie's World in Africa:

Sorry for such a short and abruptly-ended email last time. I thought I could get more info into it but in the end it was pretty worthless.

Anyways, I'll try to briefly catch you all up on what we've basically been doing for the past couple of days. I think we last wrote about going to Bagamoyo and seeing the bus stop at the evening. That evening (Friday) we went to a cultural center for African dancing. I think it was supposed to be traditional dance but it really seemed more like something to entertain the wazungu (white people). but we enjoyed it a lot, whether it was traditional or not, though we were very tired (and Chris fell asleep for a minute during it). He also got some audio tape of the singing. We'll share when we return.

Saturday we spent resting around Dar. I slept in! And we caught up on errands and such. Perhaps that's when I last emailed? I can't remember what else we did this day. Oh! we saw the fish market in Dar. It was an interesting site (and smelly).

Sunday we went to church at St. Joseph's, a large cathedral-like church right by the water front. They have many masses in English and Swahili so we attended the English mass. It was fairly normal as far as Catholic masses go, nothing too different. Sunday at noon, our friends with whom we spent the first night in Dar came to pick us up to have lunch at their place and pick up the luggage we had stored at their home for the week. We walked in the pouring rain! to the bus stop, waited 45 minutes for the bus, took an hour bus ride and then walked another 25 minutes to get to their home. This was the commute. Can you imagine doing that every day to get home from work! Unbelievable. Oh, and the walk was through mud and rain water. One way was flooded so we had to walk through another whole pile of water apparently to avoid the other pile of water. It wasn't too bad, though I know we walked through some sewage. Poor Jackie, our friend, had a broken shoe by this point so we weren't feeling too sorry for ourselves.

At their house their generocity continued unabaited. They had much much much food for us, as well as sodas and wine. And they gave me (Waldie) 2 scarves and Chris a tshirt. It was very nice.

Today we woke up, checked out of our hotel and took a 7 hour bus ride to Dodoma, Tanzania's capital. We've just ridden through town one time but it seems extremely small for the capital though. We were picked up at the station by Dr. Dixon Chilangani, a friend of our friend (Chris's professor) in the United States. Dr. Chilangani is the dean of Msalato Bible College on the outskirts of town and offered to put us up for 2 nights until our train leaves for Mwanza.

This place is beautiful! It's a little compound for the college with houses for the faculty, as well as a chapel and some office buildings. The house they gave us has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, big living room, kitchen, and another extra room. It has running water and electricity and a stove and fridge. It's unbelievable. Chris and I walked in and were like "yea, we could live here for a while!" but anyways, they also have been extremely generous. Dr Chilangani and his wife fed us dinner this evening, though they cooked meat and we couldn't out of respect say we didn't eat meat. So yes, folks, we had meat. We made it through the meal ok and feel alright but i have to be honest and say i think we'll stick with vegetarianism!

Anyways, we're here on the campus and I'm not sure how often we'll be able to check emial because we're using the Dr's office. But I wanted to give you the update. We are still doing really well, have had no sickness at all, have seen some BEAUTIFUL countryside, and some cute children on our journey thus far.

We'll keep you posted as we know more.

Love, Waldie and Chris