TAN: IDDI MOSI

The end of Ramadan is upon us at last. There are two days of national holiday to celebrate the end of the observance of the month long Muslim fasting.
There were tremendous downpours in the early morning. At times, the corrugated metal roof sounded as if were being beaten in. In my semi-slumber I expected to find the roof caved in just halfway across the room. The others were amazed to find almost no evidence of the rainfall on the ground a couple of hours later.
The power went out almost right after I got up at 6 a.m. and would remain off until just before we left the house at 11:30 a.m. I spent the morning getting seven days of blog prepped and ready to upload at the office. We headed off to rendezvous with Maina at the office. We found the space open, so phoned Maina to tell him he didn’t need to come and that he should enjoy the national holiday instead of worrying about us.
I began the long process of uploading my blog entries. The others checked their email and Arnaud and Lilia headed off to change some currency just as Rafael arrived. We had a nice chat with him. Still couldn’t get everything nailed down, but it looks like we will be leaving on Saturday to spend four or five days out in his village, northwest of Handeni. We will either have Rafael or some of his colleagues as our guides and liaisons with the community.
Arnaud and Lilia eventually returned after trying to find us on the wrong floor of the building and we headed out to find an exchange office that was still open. It was a national holiday and Dar was practically a ghost town. Close to 99% of the business establishments were closed. We headed for a big hotel downtown to be turned away because their exchange was only for guests. Ended up at the Pita Kepap on Samora Ave for a late lunch. It was nice to sit in the shade and spend a while conversing.

SMS has caught on in a big way here.

Headed over to the port to check on ferry schedules for Arnaud and Lilia. They are planning to head for Zanzibar in the morning. We wandered by one last exchange place to find it closed for the day as well. The others headed back to Micocheni to get out of the heat. I headed for the office to finish my uploading and get some other work done. The uploading was painfully slow and further hampered by connection timeouts. I finally finished up a bit after 11 p.m. Got to the ground floor of the building to find myself locked in. It took a good 20 minutes to raise the night watchman through yelling and banging on the door. Made it back to Micocheni to find my French colleagues engrossed in a game of Tarot. Chantal was on her usual roll and wiped the floor with the others.
Had a screening of the DVD for Arnaud and Lilia who were very impressed and were ready to head out on safari right then and there. Finally made it to bed around 2 a.m.