Still Doing Stuff

Hey everyone,

We apologize for being delinquent in our updates. Last week our boss was out of town, so work consisted of doing a significant amount of reading on various topics including the impact of tourism on the poor population, the outsourcing of tax collection,and the structure and impact of various microfinace organizations (a topic which Max has become very interested in). It's been interesting but we're excited to get out and visit some villages, which we've been promised we'll do this week.

We also finally started taking Swahili lessons last week, as our conversational skills were not improving as much as we had hoped. Our teacher, Mama Semiona, is a retired Swahili teacher who used to work and still lives at Old Moshi Secondary School, Rafik's alma matter. The lessons have been going very well and she's given us some swahili children's books to look at which have been helpful. During our last lesson she even gave us a soda!

The highlight of the week by far though was our trip to the second hand market on Tuesday. The market, called memorial (or mei morea by the locals, who have no word for memorial), consists of rows and rows of booths constructed from sticks and tarps in a large field. The booths mostly sell clothing, with everything from t-shirts, to suits, to leather jackets. Some of it is actually pretty good quality as they have jerseys from every sports leage (NFL, NBA, Hingham Youth Soccer, English Primier League, LA YMCA Basketball, etc.) as well as Patagonia fleeces and Keen shoes. Needless to say we were overwhelmed by this mall of Salvation Army gems and could only settle on matching spandex Barrack Obama shirts (Max's is a little tight). We will definitely be returning there though.

Friday after we wrapped up some reading in the office we went to a local crafts village where several artists were painting and carving. We used it as an opportunity to practice our Swahili and we even bartered for a couple of good deals (we think) in the process. Saturday night we found the one Halloween party in town at the big expat bar here. It was fun, but hardly compares to Halloweens past.

That's about all the excitement here for now. We can't believe how quickly the weeks are passing. We have one more weekend before we climb Kili and we hope to make it out of Moshi for a quick overnight.

We wish you all luck in dealing with the coming of winter.

-Z&M