Crew from WOU
                        in Tanzania

Team Blog
Day One
Day Two

Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
Day Eight
Day Nine

Day Ten
  Sunday
Day Eleven
Day Twelve
Day Thirteen
Day Fourteen
Day Fifteen
Day Sixteen

Day Seventeen
  Sunday
Day Eighteen
After Day 18

Before
The Flight

First Full Day
VIllage Bound
A Birthday
Garden Beds
Hot Springs
Back Again
Jane

Church
Computers
Electricity
No Electricty
Packing
Start Safari
Safari

Heading Home
Washington
Follow up

O.F.F. Site

Email us

It Begins

With a 7:30AM flight, two-hour lead time, an hour and a half travel and a few minutes to spare, some team members set their alarms for 3:00AM. Some stayed up all night while others went to work until they needed to leave at noon.

While the flight to Dulles International isn't worthy of mention, the adventure at the midnight opening night showing of Harry Potter is. Five took a cab to the theater a couple hours early, which became irrelevant when the projectors failed to function until 1:10AM. Despite the broken hearts of the Harry Potter fan club and tear stricken faces during the movie, the last two of the team arrived on time at 2:30AM and the movie-goers found their beds about 3:40AM.

Breakfast at the hotel started the longest of day the year. After several sleepless nights, the smooth but lengthy flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was restful. After some assertive line-cutting and persistent eye contact, the team managed to get everyone on the same flight. By 10:00AM, after just two hours in the airport, the final leg of the journey began. Five hours later it ended in Kilimanjaro airport with everyone showing their yellow fever cards, filing in their international guest cards and paying their $100 for a visa, the team headed for Arusha and Adve's coffee plantation in two vehicles.

The 90-minute drive following paved roads for the most part, with people, bikes, carts,lorries and cars all over the place. Speed bumps the height and width of sidewalks interrupted the otherwise placid drive. Later speed bumps came in threesome the size of parking curbs and spaced so both the front and back tires rose and fell at the same time. After 80 minutes of pavement the driver turned right onto a narrow two-track one-lane dirt road with, you won't believe this, speed bumps.

Farming along the roads included fields of plants that looked like a short tree or not very bushy bush. Our guess that these were coffee plants was confirmed along the way. Banana trees also spotted the flat landscape. At one point rice fields were a part of the farming process. Corn fields with nature wilted dry corn stalks dominated much of the countryside. It was stated that the dry weather has delayed the harvest, which apparently is a dry corn, and closer observation revealed that the ears were poorly developed. At the coffee plantation it was stated that the coffee harvest too is very delayed because the bean berries are not ripening in this dry weather. Huge aloe vera looking plants bordering several fields; later we understood from the driver that these were sisal plants formerly used to make rope but now the market for ropes of sisal was waned and the plants stand unattended.

The plantation house is gorgeous with a central court, a sitting area in the front, a dining room in one corner of the U-shaped compound with an adjacent kitchen and a sitting room in the other corner. On one side were bedrooms for four young ladies with offices in the other leg. The dining table was long, made of six heavy beautiful planks.

Senator WInters was there to join us for a bowl of soup at 6:00 and full meal at 9:00PM. As Gail and Senator WInters engaged in conversation about the welfare of children and women in Tanzania, and Oregon for that matter, the others slowly wandered off to their beds and collapsed with exhaustion.