Trip to Lake Jipe

Hey Friends,

So this week at work has been filled with all sorts of field trips. On Wednesday we had the chance to visit two villages very close to Moshi town where Qoheleth has built Soil Stabilized Block houses. It was pretty neat to see. Our big trip though was yesterday (Thursday), when we got to see a community bank office the orginization built in a small village near Lake Jipe. Lake Jipe is a border lake with Kenya and the Kenya side of the lake is actually a national park. The trip there took about three hours and was the scariest ride either of us has ever experienced. Our driver was a 20-something year old who drove his Ford Ranger rather aggressively. This is not abnormal for Tanzanian drivers, and would usually only be slightly concerning, but on this trip we happened to be traveling on narrow dirt roads winding their way up a mountain with a very steep cliff falling off into the valley. Of course there were no guardrails, and at points the road was even under construction. Needless to say we were quiter relieved when we made it to the village.

The scenery around the village was beatiful (pictures to come later) and we spent the first hour of the trip just looking around and visiting the community bank office. Unfortunately, there is a very bad drought here right now, so the seed storage facility attached to the bank was extremely empty, a very bad sign. After talking with the employees there and having a pepsi, we headed off to see the lake with our boss.

When we got down to the lakeside, we found that we couldnt actually see the lake at all over the tall marsh grass. There were a couple of fisherman with their small makeshift canoes around though, and after negotiating with them for a short time, our boss convinced them to take us down the marsh canal to the lake (once again, pictures to come). It was quite the experience, and we were happy to escape animal attack free.

Other highlights of the trip included eating a sour beanlike fruit straight from the tree and being dragged along by our guide as he tried to buy charcoal (we're not really sure why).

That's about it for now. We're going to the mountain town of Lushoto for the weekend and then we start hiking Kili next friday.

Miss you all,
Z&M

PS - you can check out the website we've been making for Qoheleth at sites.google.com/site/qohelethfoundation