First day in Moshi, TZ July 4, 2007

I had a wonderful first day today

On the way from Kilimanjaro Airport to the house I am staying at in Moshi, the van we were driving was stopped by the police doing a road block. The policeman found numerous violations and just went on and on about this and that. My host sister, Sara, said these policemen are probably just hungry for money. For a while, we didn’t offer to pay, so the policeman started to write down a list of violations on a piece of paper. This wasn’t a carbon copy form or anything, just some guy writing on a clipboard on paper. He kept on writing, and finally it was time for us to pay the guy off with some money. For $7, the police let us go.

En route, I saw a bunch of maasai women, men, and children. Of course the women carried heavy baskets on their heads! It was cool to see. I also noticed that a lot of corn and sunflowers are grown in the area, my host sister informed me that farmers like to grow sunflowers here so that they can sell it to someone to make oil. Also, I found out that this region has the best bananas and plaintains!

Turns out there is a wedding going on this week, so I decided to join that wedding to see what Indian weddings are like. Apparently they celebrate the wedding for an entire week!

I finally got settled down and took a shower. I was happy

I got breakfast, some coffee, and some tea. I noticed that the maid was cooking with coal in the kitchen! (yes, my host family has a maid!) and after some chatting with some family friends as my host sister is doing a Henna tattoo on one of the ladies who came by… we went out to town!

We walked around town, and got some money exchanged, and purchased a prepaid cellphone so that I can get a hold of people around here. We had some great juice, and we got both of our eyebrows done for a dollar (it was threading)!

I already saw some great souvenir shops with tons of neat maasai-influenced wood carvings, art.. etc…

After dinner (home cooked food was delicious), we headed to the wedding party. It was so pretty! The bride was gorgeous! We got some free Henna and my host sister will give me a Henna tattoo later. Food was served, and it was really good too, my fav was this potato thing with spicy chips… I am eating so much!

We got home around 7pm, and I had been fighting this jetlag/lag of sleep… I posted some blog entries, did a 30 min work out, and went to bed

I got some prep work in the morning, then it’s time to visit KCMC!