First Weekend : Winery, Simba Mountain, and the Market

I'm happy to report that I now have an Internet connection from the hotel! It's 90 Tsh / Mb which equals approximately 100Mb per $10 US dollars. I was able to make some decent Skype phone calls, check my work and personal email, and upload pictures so I'm quite happy.

Since I have limited time before we head out for dinner at Innocent's village, who is our UDOM logisitics liason, I will need ot keep this brief.

Saturday at the Market and Winery

Saturday I went into the market and purchased some Tanzian gifts, more water, candy, and food. They have some familiar food here, and none of it is healthy. The 'Supermarket' as they call it is about the size of a 7-11 and includes the same types of food : chips, soda, some canned items, candy, and a small health/beauty section where I purchased some shampoo and conditioner since there isn't any in the room. They have snikers and mars bars, and M&Ms, but there is limited hard candy, which some of you may know is my favorite. So I got some Tiffany Caramels and hard fruit flavored candy, sugar free red bull (I was surprised they had this, and it's cheaper here too, about $1.25 for a small can).

Later in the day we headed out for the only Tanzanian Winery. The ride there was both challenging and educational. We drove through a number of small villages and could see how some Tanzanians live, carrying water and food to and from their homes everyday and bathing and washing clothes in the lake.

Tanzanian Children

Tanzanians Bathing in the Lake


A Tanzanian Teenacher Fetching Water

A Mckinley look-alike at the Winery

One of my favorite pics of the day outside the winery

Sunday at the Market

I was fortunate enough to run into a group of kids that were more than willing to be photographed - they loved seeing themselves in the camera's lcd screen and followed us around for a few hours in the morning while we were at the market.

A Friendly Tanzanian Child


Me with the friendly kids

We hiked Simba Mountain later in the day, which is about 5 miles out of town. It's not a long hike, but it is technically challenging because the path is full of large rocks and loose gravel. A group of kids helped us navigate our path to the top. I don't have pictures because I opted to video tape the experience. The view of Dodoma was amazing though.

Tonight we're off for dinner at Innocent's village. I don't know what to expect, but I've heard we're having traditional Tanzanian food and will witness some dancing (it's quite possible we will be dancing as well).

Tomorrow it's back to work on our projects at UDOM. There's plenty of work for all of our teams so I'm sure the time will fly by.