trips.schrull.us

We enjoyed a very good dinner with Bishop Makaya last night and actually slept very well in our tiny little guest house room. The bed was very comfortable and the ceiling fan kept the air moving and at a nice temperature.  The morning shower was also good.   

But the room is too small. 

 DWT is building new guest rooms (not houses, but rooms intended for short term visitors like us).  We are helping out with the expense for this and we hope that they will be able to be finished by the next time we visit.  We think of it as our “Tanzanian Time Share.”  As of right now, however, the guest house consists of a foundation and some half-bricked walls, so THAT’s not an option.

The Bishop and our friend Daudi thought of the Kasulu Motel.  This is a LOVELY resort and we have enjoyed excellent dinners there as part of each of our prevous visits.  The guest houses are really cute little cottages and the price, at 25,000 Tshillings a night (less than $17.00 USD,) is more than reasonable.  But it is several miles down Route B8 from the center of Kasulu, which means that folks would have to spend a lot of time and fuel fetching us to and fro.  The drive is much shorter from the compound (our friends insist our chauffering us) and we can easily walk down to Kasulu Bible College if we want to.   Admittedly, at this time of year it is a very dusty walk, although due to some of the route being paved, not quite as dusty as it used to be.

Behind “Door Number Three” we have a room in the compound next to the chapel that Bill has stayed in in the past.  It had been rented by a women who often visited the UN compound across the street from DWT, but became empty just this week.  One catch: no furniture.  So they have gone out a bought us a bed.  Our frends Helen and Alister Sammons, who have been teaching at the Bible College (Helen) and doing surgery at local hospitals (Alister) for the last two years and who are returning home to Britain shortly after we leave, have offered to lend us a few other furnishings.  It has also occurred to me that if need be I can perhaps purchase a few other pieces of furniture that can be moved to “our” guest house when it is completed next year.

Today has been divided between the Diocese Western Tanganyika (DWT) offices and the Kasulu Bible College (KBC) internet room.

It’s not unusual for there to be issues with getting internet availablity throughout the compound and almost every year Bill has to diagnose why only a few offices have accesibilty or some such thing.  During the raining season there are a lot of thunder storms and equipment can get zapped pretty easily.  Bill diagnosed what this year’s root cause is and determined that a switch needs to be replaced.  (Some day we will learn to plan to bring a d-lync router–or whatever the flavor of the year is–with us whenever we come; there is always a use for them somewhere.)

Next up has been KBC internet room.  Bill has installed a new network printer and three of five replacement thin-client stations with new monitors.  We will replace the remaining two workstations tomorrow and plan to replace the other five workstations and monitors next year.

We enjoyed a lovely lunch with Olivia, my sister of the heart, and Daudi (the KBC principal, in case I didn’t mention it) and met their youngest daughter Gracenarie.  She was born a month or two after we left last year and our very strange faces scared her.

In a little while we will return to the DWT compound to see our new home, and then dinner with Helen and Alister.

Due to excessively slow internet speeds, I have not been at all successfully in uploading pictures.  So today, I am starting this post with a picture (I hope!)   

High-light of the day:  Our welcome at the Diocese of Western Tanganyika compound.  Honored guests here are welcomed with singing, dancing and the waving of green branches.  Think of Palm Sunday – the original one, minus the donkey.  We have participated in such welcomes in the past.  This time WE were the honored guests.  It was so good to see so many of our Kasulu friends gathered in one place, all greeting us.  

Eight hours earlier:  we had an excessively early morning, as predicted.  We made it to the airport and were completely ready to check in a full hour before the Air Tanzania staff opened up the check-in desk.  We were considerably over-weight, as expected – 63 kilograms to be precise at a cost of over 300,000 Tshillings.  Which is not quite as bad as it sounds, given that the ATM will give you 100,000 shillings for around $61.00 USD.  

Then came three breakfasts, punctuated by a three hour flight to Kigoma.  The first was tea and a couple of samosas (deep fried dough filled with a mixture of ground chicken or beef).  There was tea and rolls and butter on the flight itself, followed by yet another breakfast in Kigoma with our friend Daudi after we landed.

We left the computer equipment at the Diocesan Compound after our festive welcome and drove back into Kigoma to find our Guest House.  It’s new.  It advertises “self-contained rooms with TV.”  Our room is clean, with it’s own bathroom.  It is also small.  VERY small.

 It is a very tight fit to get us and all our luggage in it.  It also appears that they forgot to pay the electric bill as the power is out.  (Here in Kasulu you pre-pay for your electricity.  When you’ve used all that you’ve paid for it goes out.  Right then and there.)  There is also a matter of toilet paper or lack there of.  Fortunately, I bring some of my own for just such occasions.

Time to do a little cleaning up before going back to the compound for dinner and a visit with the Bishop and his Editia. 

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Our first day in Tanzania is always spent “doing business”. After waking up to and dozing through this morning’s worship from the Lutheran Church next door we had a pleasant breakfast at the hotel and had them help us out with getting airtel cell chips for the two phones and cellular modem. Of course there were issues with two of chips: the cellular modem would not register and one of the phones would not let us dial out. A trip to the airtel store revealed that Bill had put the chip in the modem backwards. So THAT was a quick fix.

We then went to our new vendor (we don’t know what happened to Al Noir, our previous vendor and friend; Bill hasn’t been able to reach him all spring) and verified that the five flat screens and printer that we are bringing to Kasulu were ready for pick up. We went to a book store where I picked up a the Swahili Anglican prayer book and hymnal. I wanted a set of my own; and then I found out Bill had forgotten his set. So I’m guessing that he will probably get as much use out of them as I will.

We went to Air Emerates next. We wondered if we might have enough airline points to upgrade to business class for the Dubai to New York leg of our journey home.  Of course we are way short on points to do that and as we only fly on Emerites once a year it is looking unlikely that we will ever have enough points.   But we can dream….

We’ve moved from our original hotel to the Tanzanite Suites, which at $70.00 per night is much more affordable and also within easy walking distance of our new vendor.  Our previous hotel had been selected in part because it was close to our previous vendor. 

Lunch was easy. The Tanzanite now has a restaurant, so we ate here as soon as we checked in. 

We returned to our new vendor to pay for and pick up our equipment.  With the help of one of the store’s employees, we were able to carry everything back to hotel and not have to hire a cab.  It was time for a nap…except  that other phone that wasn’t working? Bill ended up buying a vodocam chip for it. They are much more available in this section of Dar than Airtel chips are. The phone isn’t working yet, but they tell us it takes an hour for it to register.

 
So now Bill is napping and then we will go out for an early dinner at a Lebanese restaurant that Dad and Shaw scouted out last year. It will be an early night as we are planning to leave the hotel at 3:30 am for a 6:00 am flight to Kigoma.

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