Travel Day

Well, today was quite an adventure! I want to start off with a prayer request for one of the students of Hanansif. This evening a young boy, Omari, was taken to the hospital for malaria. Normally, when malaria is caught early, it can be treated very easily. However, it seems that Omari's malaria was caught much later. He was having seizures when they took him to the hospital. Please pray that God would heal him and that He might be glorified through this. Omari has a strong spirit and we are all praying that he pulls through this serious illness.

Our day stared off early at the school in Mkuranga. We woke up around 4:30am to get ready to head out to Dar Es Salaam. We left the school at 5:30am, just as the kids were waking up. Our team had another long ride to Dar, but this time it only took around 3 hours to make the trip. Nonetheless, it was just as bumpy as the first time! We rode in the back of the HOCET truck and bounced around on the unpaved roads. Luckily, there was not as much water in the road this time so we got through pretty easily. Once arriving at the City Center in dar, we ate breakfast and got ready t o welcome another member of our team, Geophrey. Geophrey is a native of Tanzania who now attends school at FSU. He is going to help with our chicken coup project. We will be leaving tomorrow to head out to his home town, Mwanza, to hang out with his family for a day or two. Once Geophrey arrived at the city center and introductions were made, we headed out to a tanzania chicken farm about an hour away. This chicken farm was awesome and had around 24,000 chickens in it! It was very helpful to compare this farm to what we are working on at the Shamba. Originally, we had planned to purchase laying hens and sell the eggs. However, the farm we are at today was raising broiler chickens and after some comparisons, it might be possible that the type of chicken we purchase for the farm will be changing. More updates on that will follow!

After the farm a few of the girls went with Geophrey's sister to her boutique in another part of dar. We got to go to a market and get pineapple and bananas (so delicious). Plus, we all got to purchase some kangas. Kangas are basically a piece of cloth with a Swahili saying on it. They are extrmely useful and functional. Women here in Tanzania use them for skirts, dresses, tableclothes, to carry things, and even as towel (they dry super fast). We love these things.

Our evening is concluding here in Dar Es Salaam. We ate dinner and had some great hang out time with the younger kids here at the city center. Everyone is getting showers and going to sleep. We have another early morning tomorrow as we will be heading out for Mwanza at 4am. Please pray for us that we might have a safe trip. We will hopefully be passing through the Serengeti and Mt. Kilimanjaro too! We are all pretty excited.

So that was our day today. I am so excited to be here in tanzania working with Hananasif. The kids here really are amazing and super encouraging. I will try to write more about them next time.

Cultural note for the Day;
Here in Tanzania it is traditional for the man to pay his future brides parents in order to marry her. Also, in order to get invited to the wedding, potential guests must either donate money or help out with the ceremony in some way- ie bringing food, music, etc.