Moshi, Tanzania

I have made it Moshi just fine! The internet here is not as easy to get to so may only be able to access it once or twice a week. The bus ride from Nairboi was amazing and interesting. The roads, if you wanna call them that, were mostly dirt and incredibly bumpy!! I made sure I booked a window seat and stayed awake the whole time. I saw a few zebra and gazelle off in the distance as well as many Masaai. They were the most interesting part of the trip but I had trouble getting picutres of them because they always seemed to be on the other side of the road! We would be driving along and there was nothing for miles and the all of a sudden a few Masaai would being walking from nowhere to nowhere. Also after areas of nothing you would see a small village of their huts, ah it was just fascinating.

Moshi is a very different place than Nairboi and Tanzania is very different than Kenya. There is a lot of vegitation and everything is green and there is not a ton of dust and dirt. This is mainly because of Mt. Kilimanjaro as Moshi is at the base of it. Due to this there are also a lot more mazungu here. You will also see Masaai walking around town in their traditional dress whcih is always neat. The town is not a big city like Nairboi. It has that "small town" feel to it and is very quant and cute! There are tons of tailors on the sidewalks with their peddle Singers and chatting away. People here speak Kiswahili with very few knowing fluent English but some speak bits of it. There are not tribal issues here as there are in Kenya. It is a lot safer and I feel prefectly comfortable walking by myself as I did not feel that much in Nairboi. Instead of matatus they have "dala-dalas." They aren't "pimped out" as much as matatus and rarely have music and would never dream of TVs. They don't have rules about how many people can be in them and yesterday I was in one that seated 15 comfortably and had 25 instead. I have had to stand once already haha.

The house we live in is very nice. I have a shower!! It is cold but hey its a step up. It does take about a half hour to walk from the main road to the house though. There are still power shortages and they dont happen on a schedule so last night it went off at 7:30pm and was still off when I went to bed around 11. It is odd to have it go off at night because during the day I dont seem to notice it as there is plenty of sunlight but at night its reading by a kerosine lamp! There is always power though when the president is around. His Moshi house is on the same street as us (it stops being paved right after his land haha). The second day I was here I actually saw him drive by in his convoy of cars. It was quite interesting as no one waved or cheered or did anything as they would in America. The host dad is orginially from Kenya and he as well did not understand the reservations of people around us so he waved and the president waved back at us.

I found myself a bit taken back at the orphanage and these babies are blump and very well feed! Hunger does not seem to be as big of an issue here as Kenya. The orphanage I am at is interesting. No one speaks fluent English so I go the whole day without talking to anyone (can you imagine that?!) which gets very lonely. I try to do what I can to help out but no one seems to give me much direction or want to include me. I'm not sure what to think yet and am going to give it another week. They have a school that the older kids go to and I am hoping to try that out next week and see if that is any better. Their ideas on raising children are a bit different and hard for me to get use to as well. The head sister (it is run by Catholic nuns) told me not to hold the children as it was not good for them and they would then long to be held all the time and get jealous of each other. As I understand her view I also think that children need to feel loved and I they should all be held for periods of time to feel that. It is just very different from the last place I was at as they were all about giving the children as much love as possible and here it is more of just teaching the children to survive on their own. The other thing I have trouble with is the way their potty train. They take the small children out of diapers and directly into only using small toilets they put on the floor but often when it is not potty time they just wet themselves. They have no transition period and expect them to go straight from one to the other. Ah I am sorry I am babbling now but its hard when I have so much to say and no one to listen!! haha. I pray things will get better and that I will find some clamness in all of this.