We made it to Arusha, and I made it onto the internet, finally. This is us, disembarking from the plane (Airbus A350) in Arusha. I just meant to take a snapshot, but the plane was too big, so: panorama.

We met Claudine, one of the facilitators (social workers) here, and also Trice (which comes from “Beatrice” but is pronounced like the second syllable of “Patrice”), the director for Zoe in Tanzania. (By the way, while on the topic of pronunciation: Tanzania is pronounced “Tahn-ZAHN-ee-ya” by the locals.) There will eventually be 14 of us, the last four arriving while the rest of us conk out. Apex UMC is the biggest contingent, I believe. For four of us, this is our first Zoe trip.

We had the chance to ask Trice some questions, so I asked about other expenses the Zoe kids have, other than food. The answer is “none”. When they start the program, they are living at starvation level, so any money they manage to get goes directly to food.

Then Claudine took us to change money (2,600 Tanzanian shillings to the dollar in denominations of 2,000, 5,000, and 10,000, so the money expanded in volume pretty quickly). After that, we took a stroll around downtown Arusha. I regret not taking pictures. I will try to be a better tourist in future. The population here is over 600,000, and it’s pretty busy with traffic and motorcycles and jitneys (three-wheeled, enclosed-ish cab). There’s not really a sidewalk (usually), so pedestrians just mix it up with traffic. There’s a lot of horn-blowing, but it works. We had a chance to walk around in a local market, but we passed it up, being pretty jet-lagged. People walk here much more than they do in the US, unsurprisingly.

After that, supper (which only some us barely stayed awake for) and then immediate crash into bed. Now it’s bright and early, 6:30 am. I’m not normally an early riser, so this may be the only early-morning post.