Day one...Lots to Do

I arrived at the volunteer house at around 10:00 pm Saturday night.  The other volunteers stayed up until I got there to meet me...it was much appreciated. The other volunteers are Jenny and John from Belgium/England and Erin from Australia/Peru.  They were all friendly and welcoming and within minutes telling stories of things that happened while volunteering at GHTA.  We were all in stitches and I felt comfortable and at home right away.

Monika showed me around the house and to my very own room.  I was quite happy about that!   There are bunk beds in each room with mosquito netting around the beds….definitely not something I’m used to.  Monika explained that you get into bed, pull the mosquito netting all around the bed, and then tuck it in.  I was very proud of myself the first night when I got myself all tucked in until I realized that I left the light on L The switch was across the room near the door…so I had to un-tuck the net, get out of bed, and then do it all over again.  Now I take my headlamp into the bed with me J

I thought I would have trouble waking up on Sunday morning because of the time change and jet lag but I had no problem.   The first night there were dogs barking and sometimes loud music playing at all hours.  Also, with Tanzania having many people of the Muslim faith (Moshi is a mix of Muslim and Christian with a few Hindus/Sikhs thrown in) there was a “call to prayer” at around 4:30 am (I’ve been told that this happens at random times so you never know when the voice over the loud speakers will interrupt your sleep!).  And then there are the roosters!  They are at the house next door (and the houses are close together) and they start crowing as early as 3:30 am and they are loud!  So I guess I can thank them for me not getting jetlag and slipping into the East African time zone with no problems.

Sunday was a busy day.  Jenny, Monika, and I walked into town.  We went to the Kilimanjaro Coffee Shop for lunch, a regular hangout for Westerners.  The menus were in English and it looked a lot like an American coffee shop.  I had an avocado salad, bread, and passion fruit juice to drink.   The meal cost around $5...a definite bargain. Then we went to buy groceries.  The favorite grocery was closed because it was Sunday so we went to Nakumart (a big Kenyan grocery chain) and we might as well have been in a Hannaford store.  It was a little smaller but it was clean, the selection was good, and there was a lot of help available if you had questions.  The thing that was unusual about the Nakumart was that there was an upstairs that had every household item you could imagine…pots, pans, furniture, TVs, and appliances.  Monika was mesmerized by the washing machines…the volunteer house has no washing machine.  It’s a washtub and manual labor for all of us!  Glad I brought so many pairs of underwear!

Sunday afternoon one of the former GHTA students who works at a salon in Moshi came to the house to give us pedicures.  Her name is Lisa and she is in her mid-twenties.  Monika told us that the woman she works for pays her very low wages so Lisa works for herself on the weekends to earn extra money.  Someday she wants to open her own salon.  She worked on us for around 3 hours straight, most of the time sitting on a hard tile floor.  And the cost was only around $3.50 each.  I am now sporting some lovely purple nails!

The only downside to the day was that the electricity was off for much of the day as well as the water.  The headlamps that I brought as a gift to everyone came in handy the very first night! I brought an extra one and Monika put it on our cook, Margareth, so she would have light to make us dinner (using the gas stove, luckily!).