Karibu Moshi

We have arrived safely in Moshi! Our bus got in around 5 pm last night and we were greeted by our Moshi liason at the hectic bus station. She is the leader of the Visions in Action (VIA) volunteer program here, and while we are not officially part of the program, she has been kind enough embrace us as if we were. She met up with looking as if she had just left her New York City appartment, wearing her Soho shirt and Ray Ban shades. She proceeded to demonstrate her own stylized version of Swahili with phrases such as "hodies" when speaking to the volunteers (generally in Tanzanian culture one says "hodi" before entering someone's home, sort of an alternative to knocking). She has a rather colorful vocabulary in both languages.

The bus station is a 5 minute drive to our house, which is an easy walk without our mountains of luggage. The house is wonderful. We have a large fenced in yard that is big enough to toss a frisbee around in and two friendly dogs (Max is thrilled). When the morning haze clears, we can see Kilimanjaro from our window, adding extra incentive to climb Kili if we didn't have enough already. The house is one story, filled with four bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen. During the day there is a woman who cleans and takes care of the house, and at night we have a guard.

We were constantly questioning the roommates on how to use things as we made dinner last night. One of them was telling us how to use the propane stove in case the power when out. Literally as she said that, the power went out. It works quite nicely. Apparently the power goes out every friday night and one other random night.

All in all we are extremely happy with the set up and the other housemates here. We look forward to meeting up with the VIA leader tomorrow to discuss volunteer placements. Also, we have a potential lead on where we can teach frisbee.

Love,
Zahra and Max