Safe and sound in Iringa Town!

It truly is a blessing to be here in Iringa, Tanzania at the Ruaha School. I was waylayed in Dar for a few days as the director and her husband came to pick me up but got a flat tire (a common occurance) and busted the rim of the tire (a more serious issue). It was a blessing though as I got to meet more Bahais in Dar as well as got to see a little of the city. The new US Embassy is a veritable guarded fortress, which makes sense since it was bombed in 1998.

Iringa is an 8 hour drive southwest inland from Dar Es Salaam in the highlands. To get there we drove through the second largest national park and I saw giraffe, zebra, elephant, gazelle, and buffalo. It was pretty cool, though I didn't take any pictures. Iringa is beautiful and the weather is perfect. Being as it's winter here it is in the 60s and 70s, though it gets pretty windy at night. The scenery kind of looks like Montana with Baobab trees. I'm sure that once summer comes and then the wet season I might amend my statement, but for now it is quite lovely.

The school itself is outside of the main town, next to a village, in its own little compound. It has its own dining hall, dairy, workshop, library, store, soccer fields, basketball courts, computer lab, and housing for staff and students. It's like its own little town. My house is currently being painted, so I am staying temporarily in the girls' hostel in the prefects' quarters. When I move in next week I'll be sure to put up photos, as well as photos of the campus. For now, if you are curious here is a link to a webpage about the school: http://www.monafoundation.org/ruaha/ruaha.htm

Other than that, I have explored the town a bit, including the market which was quite fun. It is really amazing the difference in relative prices of things. Like two kilos of onions or tomatoes (4.4 pounds for the Americans in the audience) costs half as much as a chocolate bar. Something tells me I'll be losing weight here :) The other year-of-service volunteers brought me to a craftshop/cafe called Neema's for lunch. They have panini there which was delightful, and though it is overpriced (again all relative) it supports a good cause as all the employees are either from the deaf school or have some other disability and would be unable to work were it not for the mission.

Well, that's it for now. I promise once I am settled to load up photos and to tell more fun stories. We have a real international crowd here with people from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bhutan, Ecuador, and Sweden just to name a few. But I'll save those stories for future posts.