Dragonaire and Soccer

Usually on Fridays the boys head to Dragonaire for pizza, described by Lonely Planet as “nice, green grounds, a good mix of locals and expats, and delicious pizza on the weekends.” A pretty accurate description. We went pretty early but after a day of course practicals with the vet students at the University I was totally exhausted and starving. The course practicals were a great opportunity to meet some young Tanzanians and to spend some time with them in the lab. We prepared agar and growth medium, took blood samples from horses, and cut up a chicken embryo.

The garlic pizza was pretty impressive although my expectations were not extremely high. Next time I’ll get one with more on it…Dundy got his with all sorts of veggies and chicken. A large portion of the restaurant was partitioned off for a special function, which ended up hosting a number of big-wig Tanzanians (the local judge, etc.). At least they were big-wig enough to require armed guards and dogs. Other than that the clientele was mostly younger Americans with lots of bug spray. One of T-Man’s local friends met us there for a Red Bull and gave us a ride back to SUA, just in time for the second soccer match. We made about five kernels of popcorn and to my delight they brought out the Swiss chocolate from the freezer. When the French were scored upon, T-Man erupted with, "That's why they're called freedom fries. FREE-DOM fries!" A great way to get the weekend started.

Hot Water!

When I first arrived at the hostel, the first thing I did was explore the room--that is, I opened all the closets and drawers. Behind door number 1: Hot water heater. But to my surprise in my first week and a half of showering experiences lacked even the suggestion of hot water. Bored after a day in bed with a terrible soar throat, I decided to check out the hot water heater again. Apparently I had overlooked the switch next to the tank. Ah ha! I'm an idiot. Looking forward to a warm shower tonight! This makes dealing with my hair much easier.

When I told the Professor about this, he laughed. I guess I didn't want to assume that hot water was part of the package.

I've gotten requests for pictures so I thought maybe a few pictures of the walk to the lab might suffice (for now at least).
The hostel. Looks very much like a compound from the outside but this is about as busy as it ever gets. I've been there for almost 10 days now and aside from the askari (guard) or an attendant during the day I haven't heard or seen anyone. Yes, I am totally spoiled with satellite television. Nope, its not digital. No, I definitely don't get HBO. In fact, I get mostly music stations that switch between AfroBeats and half-naked Americans. It also gets plenty of channels in Chinese, Japanese, and my current favorite Capital Television. It is in English and seems to conveniently loose sound when characters swear and always cuts to commercial when characters are about to kiss. Off to the side are the laundry facilities: a hose and a line for drying. Laundry is this coming weekend's project.

The driveway up to the hostel. Lots of banana trees and corn, very few cars. You can see that the dirt is really deep red and it's pretty moist. It's pretty killer at night sans flashlight. Luckily my cell phone has a built-in flashlight. So key.

Pita kulia (Keep right!). They've been digging ditches all over campus but I haven't quite figured out why yet. Whatever. This is the bottom of the hill, to the right is an ATM (not very scenic) and you can faintly see the stand where the taxis and the dalla dallas pick you up. Mountains in the background, not half bad.

Main administration building. Tanzanians don't really have any real rules other than don't run people over but seem to follow the British system of driving, at least the steering wheel is always on the right.


Here we are! The building closest is the Genome Science Center and the building behind it is a lecture hall. Air conditioning and Internet. Did I mention the mountains? Could they be more gorgeous please?