Ntoma Vocational School

The land here is undulating, and grassy with clumps of trees. Many many banana trees and surprisingly a variety of fur trees are everywhere. There re several types of banana. The smallest are the sweetest ones. The bananas are given as gifts when people meet and visit here.

Relationships and greeting are very importanct in Tanzania. There is a whole conversation of greeting that is had before anyone sits down to have a conversation.

Lake Victoria is down a very large hill from the school. It is five miles winding up this hill on a red dirt road from Bakoba. The road had many ruts and large whole that all the drivers wind around from side to side. The school is made up of many building and about 6 houses where the staff lives. No running water because all of the water storage tanks have cracks in them and no one knows how to fix them.

We are in a little two bedroom house. The floors are cement. There is no air conditioning, windows are opened with screens all over the house. There is a nice breeze all of the time. There are banana, avocado, and papia trees outside our are windows. 

We arrived here on .Thursday and have spent the rest of the last week resting from our trip.  We have also been building relationships with the staff and the students here.  There are 105 youth in the vocational school. They are being taught skills in restaurants work, hotel work, office work, cooking and sewing.

They are all excited about learning art of any kind.  They are really exited about the computers. Communication here is very hard.  They do not have what we call wifi.  They have modems. 
they also do not have electricity all the time.  We had an outage last night that lasted all night.  They are predicting that there is going to be another one today.  So I am working fast to finish this. When the power is on we plug things in to try and juice everything up fast.

Coondi (the chef for the school) took me to Bkoba Saturday so I could exchange money and use the internet cafe to email out. A young German woman who is teaching here for a year went with us.  Bakoba is about as big as Lebanon, Ohio (100,000 people).  The downtown is easily walked if you have good shoes and strong legs.   It was all a lot of fun.  Nothing is flat.  There are cement water run off ditches everywhere you have to step or leap across, depending on how wide they are.  No constant steps up or down.  Everything is cobbled together from what was available when they built the street we were waking on.

We went to two banks and the lines were very long in both of them.  Our German teacher said that we could exchange money at the white mans grocery store.  So that is what we did.  Coonda made sure I was not cheated and we were all happy.  They white man's grocery is run my and Indian and is about 20x20  feet squire.  It sells a lot of brands we know at a very high price.

We then went to the outdoor market.  It has many many little booths that do not look like they could stand but do and they are full of every kind of fruit and vegatable you can imagine.  Mounds of green bananas that were cut from the trees and are attached still to the huge stalks.  They are all so close together that it is hard to go down the middle of them.  Everyone is telling you about there products, of course. everyone is dressed in wonderful African clothes with bright colors fabrics and designs. 

The food is quite differant then we have at home.  A lot of the fish are dried and then ooked.  Lot of the vegitables are stir fried.  They eat way more carbs at a meal then we are used to. Sometimes we are not able to eat all they give us.  Our kitcheon does not work so they bring food to us three times a day.  They bring us juices everyday.  They are freshed squized and yummy.  Freshed sqeezed pinaple juice is the best.

I will end now and tell you about the church service next time.  Plus I want to try and do  pictures also.

Love to all for now.