another safe arrival and more on uru

On Friday we had our second visit to Uru, mainly to talk to the remaining families and see the rest of the biodigesters. We were only able to visit two additional families because the rest were dealing with family issues. We have started to formulate more specific data we want to collect, so while we don't have a ton of families to ask, we are getting a clearer sense of what we specifically want to find out from the farmers. One interesting factor has been that is seems like people in Uru are less likely to quantify time and income than we are in the U.S. We want to find out how much time and money the biodigesters save the women of the households (we just found out that it costs 2,000 tsh for a bundle of firewood), and how much more income they are able to earn, but these questions are quite difficult to answer as we did not ask them to remember this information when the biodigesters were installed in January. We will be back to Moshi and Uru after our week in Dar and Zanzibar to wrap things up and make sure the broken and unfinished biodigesters can be used.

Saturday we took the Dar Express bus to Dar es Salaam, which is not the official capital, but is basically the capital of Tanzania. We safely arrived in the afternoon and took a taxi to the University of Dar es Salaam housing set up by Godfrey, the professor we are visiting here. The hotel where we are staying is kind of off in the middle of nowhere, but on Sunday we figured out the Daladalas (minibuses) to get into and around the city. The city is huge, there are 3.5 million people!

Sunday was quite an adventure. After we arrived on Saturday we talked to Godfrey, who said he wanted to meet us at 8:30 am to go to a meeting at the university where there would be Americans. We thought we'd be meeting and talking to him, so in the morning we met him at the restaurant at the hotel and he told us we were going to an English church service. This was quite the surprise, considering none of us are Christian. But knowing he just wanted to make us feel at home, we went. He introduced us to the people running the service, and he went off to the Swahili service (which we decided we probably would have enjoyed more). We were stuck, but I was kind of excited to see drums and other instruments emerging. It was quite an interesting crowd, and very informative to here about peoples' reasons for coming to Tanzania. Many of the Africans at the service were from other countries, and most of the Americans were there for missionary trips, which I didn't even know existed any more. There were also a few other Irish, English and American people who work at the university. The whole sermon was about serving G-d and having the job of spreading Christianity throughout Dar es Salaam and the world. We were a little uncomfortable.

After that Godfrey had told us to take a Daladala to the mall, probably to make us feel at home, but instead we explored the city. It was HOT. We went to Mwenge where we found a neat semi-touristy crafts market where we got Natalie a wooden jewelrey box for her birthday and Melea and I got some jewelrey. We also had lunch at a very local place - the usual - rice, beans and greens. After, we took a Daladala to a huge market with rice, beans, veggies fruits and tons of spices, and then we walked around the city. We found an ice cream shop (much needed) and the national museum, which was quite different than any museum we've seen. Artifacts were left unprotected, there was a huge dead decaying fish sitting in some liquid, old cars owned by government officials sitting outside and rusting, and so much more randomness. We also tried to get to an Ethiopian restuarant for dinner, which ended up being closed Sundays, found a Malaysian restaurant that was full for the night and ended up eating back at the hotel.

Today we will have lunch with Godfrey and start meeting with some more NGOs... check back soon! Tutaonana (until later)!