Rafiki Returns

Violet is working on a project in Dodoma, the capital city of Tanzania, and she invited me to travel with her to her bi-weekly meeting, so of course I said yes!  Liz decided to hang back at the hotel, as she was understandably “architectured out”. We headed to the train station for a 6am departure, but the train was a little bit delayed. The train station was so nice! Escalators, air conditioning, glass face, very modern.  Violet said that it was built by a Turkish infrastructure company only 2 years ago but it cuts the travel time to Dodoma in half. So it was only 4 hours for us and we arrived at 10am.  The project Violet is supervising is a large complex called The National Prayer Conversional Center. It is led by the famous Tanzanian preacher Christopher Mwakasge and will accommodate 15,000 people from around the world for one week in August when complete.  The structure for the campus is currently in progress but the main auditorium structure is complete, by an E...

We landed in Dar at about 10:30 on Monday.  Fun fact Mwanza is so famous for fish that people check in buckets of fish that come out at baggage claim!  Checked fish buckets The amazing Violet was there to greet us at the airport with a big hug, cold water, and a car with air conditioning. Man, is it hot here in January.  It’s about 90º and muggy, and the sun is simply relentless. We first dropped Besha off at his University where he teaches - Ardhi University.  This was formerly a part of the University of Dar Es Salaam and is where I originally studied when I first came in 2005. It was nostalgic as usual coming back to the campus… We then drove to our hotel to drop off our bags.  The hotel is wonderful, we really lucked out this trip with hotels.  It is literally right on the water, called Hotel Mediterraneo. It was developed by an Italian and the grounds are so beautiful. Hearing the ocean waves, it is so tranquil and a huge contrast to the city chaos. Mo...

Mwanza is a BUSTLING city. Pedestrians, motorbikes, bajajis, cars, busses, all moving around the city in a chaotically choreographed dance. Just getting to our hotel, Hotel Kingdom was a challenge because Alfred had to make a u-turn in the middle of all of it. So here we had to bid farewell to our amazing driver and guide and meet up with Richard, my rafiki who I have known since 2005. It was just so good to see him and introduce him to Liz. He is ageless and looks exactly the same. The reason we are in Mwanza is because Richard suggested it as a place where a lot of Tanzania vacationers go on holiday.  Don’t be fooled by no one on the road - this place was chaotic! Fish centerpiece at a traffic circle in town Richard met us in our “posh” hotel and we headed to this awesome nightclub right on the beach. He wanted to take us to Lake Victoria which is a huge lake that is surrounded by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. We were right there on the shore - it was just beautiful! We took a Bol...