This morning we caught up with Gianluigi, the owner of More Than A Drop. He lives in Switzerland and this is his first visit to Tanzania in more than 9 months. He had been on Zanzibar for a few days prior to his arrival here. He told us he is starting up a similar project to MTAD on Zanzibar, however it will be much bigger. His aim is to have a school that will train 120 girls in Hospitality and alongside it a hotel with 20 rooms where the girls will be able to get practical experience. Apparently the builders have started and have predicted that the work will take approximately 8 months. Obviously there will then be staff and teachers to recruit and so the aim is to have the project up and running at the start of 2022. So in the future this could be a great option for anyone who wants some good value accommodation on Zanzibar whilst also supporting a great project.
After breakfast we walked down to Keys Hotel where we spent the morning swimming, followed by lunch. It was very quiet and only one other person briefly used the pool the entire time we were there. This was the first place we have seen people wearing face masks since we left the airport, all be it that most had them under their chins rather than over their nose and mouth. We did only see people outside so I don't know if they pulled them up if they went inside. The hotel also had several hand sanitiser dispensers dotted around.
Mid afternoon we walked back to MTAD, it felt very hot, probably the hottest since we arrived. Robert picked us up a bit later as we had been invited to visit Frank, one of the ACTT agents at his family home. Frank recently got married and has a 4 month old baby son, Nolan. On arrival we were introduced to all his bothers and sisters, as well as his mum and his wife. Frank has been struggling to get his business off the ground and so we discussed some ways of perhaps improving his situation as well as obviously catching up on general news.
On leaving Frank’s we decided to go to Woodlands Bar for dinner. This was a new place for us and we would happily return, the food was excellent. During the evening we were joined by Robert’s brother Charles, who works for the Ministry in Dodoma. He was just stopping off in Moshi during a work trip. It was interesting to chat to him about life in Dodoma and his work with the government. He invited us to visit him in Dodoma at anytime.
Towards the end of the evening Shabani also joined us, having travelled from Mwanza on the bus. This journey takes about 14 hours as the bus goes around the Serengeti rather than through it. Shabani will rest tomorrow and then Robert has arranged for him to drive the car back to Mwanza on Friday with all the computer equipment we need for our donations to the schools in the Lake Zone.
Day 7
We spent the morning at MTAD trying to sort out a safari trip across the Serengeti once we have finished our work in the Lake Zone.
Arround midday we walked down to ACTT to meet up with Robert as we were all going to visit Juan, one of the directors of ACTT. Juan runs a vanilla extract company in Moshi and we went to his place for lunch. We have known Juan for many years and it was good to catch up. During lunch he mentioned that many of the farmers he buys the vanilla pods from are up near Karagwe where Mbusiro, one of the ACTT agents is based. He did mention that his company might like to support a local school in the area as part of our school computer loan project, so this is something we will investigate further when we visit Mbusiro later in our trip.
After leaving Juan’s, Robert dropped us in town as we wanted to do some shopping. We also stopped at Union Cafe for a drink, but again this was much quieter than normal. Below are a couple of photos of typical scenes around Moshi.
Once we had finished shopping we rang Shabani and he came and picked us up and dropped us back at MTAD. When we got out of the car he gave us a bunch of bananas as a present which was very nice of him. I think he had picked up a large amount of bananas on his journey to Moshi that he will take back to Mwanza. We really weren’t sure when we would eat them so we gave them to Millie as a present for the girls at MTAD.
We then did some packing as we are going to give Shabani our large bags to take to Mwanza tomorrow so we don’t have to take them on the plane on Sunday.
This evening we went to Robert’s house for dinner. As usual Mama Diana (Robert’s wife) produced a fantastic meal.
Below are a few photos from the evening. Peter (Robert’s son), Vai (Robert’s niece) and Marc (Dimitra’s friend) were around. We were also briefly introduced to Carla who is the baby daughter of Ana, the girl who helps Mama Diana in the house. We gave Dimitra a small kids camera as a gift which seemed to go down well. As always it was a lovely evening.
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