Finally working

We arrived at 8 am on the dot Monday morning for work. At 8:30 am our boss rolls in (from there after, we have been coming it at 8:30). He gives us an hour and a half 43-slide power point presentation about the NGO. Then he clears off his desk, moves into the other room (it is a small two room office, the total size is similar to a double dorm room) and leaves us alone. He gave us full reign over his files and project reports, but no real guidelines on what we should be doing.

We have spent the past couple of days pouring through all the project reports and files. Some of the files, as we slowly learned, have nothing to do with Qoheleth's work, but relate to the projects of similarly-missioned organizations. And of lot of the literature is in swahili.

Two days into work and we had our first holiday: Wednesday, October 14 is Neyere Day. The late Julius Neyere, often referred to as Mwalimu (teacher), was the first president of independent Tanzania. He brought together the country by instuting Swahili as the national language, an action that has lead to Tanzania being a much more peaceful country than it's East African neighbors. Though a bit of a socialist (he nationalized schools, land, everything), is he often referred to kindly and nostalgically. And we were more than happy to tip our hats to him on our day off from work.

The rest of the work week, was similar to the first half: full of us translating random packets and asking our boss lots of questions.

This weekend we plan to just relax in Moshi.

over and out,
Z & M