On Saturday, October 8th, our family boarded a bus heading north to Arusha, the second largest city in Tanzania and the jumping off point for the “Northern Circuit” – the national parks and conservation areas in the northern part of the country. The bus trip took 13 hours!! Ugh! But we had a lovely 5 day break before meeting back up with the students to continue the program. Here are a few highlights of our time in Arusha before heading out on the Northern Circuit.

There will be more posts to come of our adventures in the national parks. Stay tuned!

We spent a few relaxing days at Vijiji Center, a quiet retreat outside of Arusha.

We met up with Jon’s friend Musa who is Maasai. We first stopped here, in Mondulichini, for lunch and to see the market.

The weekly market in Mondulichini.

Next, Musa took us to his boma up in the beautiful hills. A boma is a collection of family houses and a fenced area for keeping goats and sheep safe at night. You can see the fence, made of very thorny acacia, on the right.

Musa’s mom (in the Luther shirt) and other family members greeted us with song and dance. I joined in. 🙂

Musa’s relatives. The Maasai are pastoralists and spend time out with their animals every day. The goats and sheep graze near the boma and are brought in at night. But now, during the dry season, the cattle are taken a long ways away for better food and water. The cattle stay out with men from the boma for weeks at a time.

Musa took us to his alma mater, Noonkodin School. It is a private boarding school in a very rural, very beautiful area in the hills. The students were studying for their upcoming exams.

Aziz is another friend of Jon’s and works with Musa. He is a driver and is not Maasai, but knows a lot about the culture. He was a great driver and taught us a lot about Tanzanians and Maasai.

We visited another school in Mondulichini – a school for Maasai girls with a specific mission to give them an education and economic security.

The jacaranda trees were blooming everywhere! Not only were they beautiful, they smelled wonderful as well!

We spent one night at TCDC, non-profit retreat center. There we loved watching the black and white colobus monkeys eating jacaranda flowers up in the trees!

We went back to Zanzibar with the students a couple weeks ago and I am finally getting around to posting some pictures from that trip. We spent 3 days and 2 nights on the island and spent most of that time on guided tours. The tours were great – it was so nice to have someone coordinating our transportation, teaching us about Zanzibar and organizing the whole group of us!

Below are several photos. I’m having a hard time uploading all the photos I want to share, so I’ll just start with this batch. And since we are leaving reliable wifi service for 6 weeks, I may not post the rest until November!

Zanzibar Town, the newer city around Stone Town on the main island, Unguja, Zanzibar.

Trucks full of coral stone. The buildings in Stone Town were made of this stone, hence the name. Current construction also uses this rock.

Stone Town, the historic old city in Zanzibar. Stone Town has unique architecture, with Indian, Arabic, German and British influences.

Alley behind our hotel in Stone Town. You can see the coral stone in the hole in the wall on the left side of the photo.

Low tide! Kizimkazi beach.

Kizimkazi. The children were having so much fun! You can see the white boat (the same one in the photo above) at high tide.

We went on a super fun, interesting tour of a small spice farm. So many spices can grow in this climate! We saw: ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, vanilla, cloves (what Zanzibar is famous for), allspice, lemon grass, cacao, black pepper and more. We got to smell and taste pretty much everything!

A Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkey. We saw many of these monkeys at Jozani National Park, where  a few large groups are living. Other groups are found around the island, but nowhere else in the world besides Unguja Island, Zanzibar!

On October 8th, we will be leaving our home for 6+ weeks of travel and research in Northern Tanzania. We will return to our house for 3 weeks before we leave Tanzania. The University campus is our neighborhood, and in the 10 weeks we have been here, we have really enjoyed walking around and becoming familiar with the campus. We take morning exploratory walks, afternoon walks to the pool and mid-day walks to study areas or to the cafeteria. It now feels like home and I know we will be happy to be back in November. Here are a few photos to introduce our neighborhood.

We walk by this mosque nearly every day, although it really depends on our route: on the road or on the dirt path? To the dala dala stop or the cafeteria? So many options!

Walking across the bridge to get to the main part of campus.

Afternoon ritual for Jon and the girls – swimming at the University pool (bwawa la kuogelea).

The girls have become so comfortable in the water and are really improving their swim strokes. Going to the pool has been a great afternoon routine.

This is part of the athletic fields. There is usually a soccer game in the middle (and about 10 other soccer games/practices around!). I have been running around the track every few days for exercise (mazowezi). There are also lots of people playing basketball, using the chin up bars, practicing boxing and karate, or just sitting around watching others exercise. 🙂

The campus is really quite nice. There are many dirt paths and dry areas, but also many trees, shrubs and quiet study areas.

The campus is hilly so there are some nice views in places. This is the cafeteria where we eat regularly. Up a little higher you can see the Dar skyline and the ocean in the background.

Walking to the Engineering College cafeteria. We’ve only eaten there a few times because it’s farther to walk. But the food is better. 🙂

Whoops! I posted this back in September, but I accidentally made it a new page rather than a new post. Who knew blogs could be so complicated??  Anyway, a bit about our homeschooling here…

We have been in Dar for 2 months now! I just realized the other day that our time in Dar is more than half over. In 2 weeks, we will leave for a 6 week adventure up north and then we return for only 3 more weeks in Dar. We’ve had a great routine in Dar so I thought I’d write a bit about what we do here before we leave!

During the week, Jon is busy going to classes with the students, teaching is own class, or preparing for our trip North. He is keeping fairly busy with work here as well as work still back home at Luther. The girls and I also stay busy with school work in the morning and various activities after lunch.

We have mostly been focusing on math and African studies, including Swahili, during our mornings of homeschool. Doing school work gives us a nice anchor for our day and provides necessary structure. I have a few goals in mind of concepts I want them to learn (dividing decimals, adding fractions, etc) and we are meeting those goals through our morning work. Also, Lily is learning cursive, Sylvia is firming up her English skills and they both do a lot of reading!

The great thing about homeschooling here is that we have so many adventures where learning occurs outside of the house – going to the National Museum, touring Zanzibar and Bagamoyo, exchanging currency, cooking Tanzanian foods, and speaking a little bit of Swahili. I try to make room for all the learning that can be done beyond the books while we are here.

Our afternoons are usually filled with violin practice for Sylvia, special projects like mapping or drawing, trips to the local market, or swimming at the pool here on campus. Our days go by pretty quickly and by evening there is just enough time after supper to play a game of Hearts or Euchre.

So there is a little glimpse of what we do every day. And without further ado, here are a few photos of our school days.

At home, working on Swahili and a map of Tanzania.

We really like to study outside at one of the many study areas on campus. We often meet Jon between his classes. Our favorite place to study is by the cafe that sells the best samosas!

Walking to our study areas.

Recently, the girls created miniature parks for their doll and dog and then drew a map of the area. And took lots of fun photos.

We recently spent a morning at the Village Museum in Dar. It is a great museum and we really enjoyed our time there. The museum features a collection of dwellings that indigenous tribes all around Tanzania build. There are over 120 tribes in the country and we learned about many of them at this museum. They did not have examples from each tribe – otherwise we’d have been there all week! 🙂

We loved that we could go inside each one and look around. It was fun to imagine that we lived there…And here’s where the girls would sleep, and where I would sleep as the first wife…

Lily had fun reading the signs. At each house, we learned about the tribe’s location, social structure, what they ate and how they prepared it, unique traditions and how their dwellings reflected all those things.

Many houses had displays inside with items like cooking utensils and cookware, beds, farming and hunting equipment, musical instruments and items used in celebrations.

When we finished walking around, we watched a traditional dance show. I don’t remember what tribe these dancers were from but we really enjoyed the music and dancing.

A few weeks ago, one of our contacts at the university invited our family and all the students to her house for a meal. Paulina is the Dean of Students at UDSM and she has played a pivotal role in making sure we are well cared for here. She sets up our housing and the dorms for the students as well as their home stays, manages our guards and cleaner, facilitates transportation and excursions, teaches us how to cook, takes us shopping, and in general helps us all to feel at home here.

She invited us to her house so we could get out of the busy city and see another side of Dar. So we all piled in a dala dala, then the DART bus (rapid transit), another dala dala and then taxis to get to her house on the outskirts of town. Paulina and her husband Amani have a lovely home in a quiet neighborhood. We all really enjoyed our afternoon at their house.

Paulina’s house

Amazing food! She cooked all morning for us! And I’m jealous of her “summer” kitchen, on the right.

Paulina has a set of 3 year old twins at home. And a set of 13 year old twins off at boarding school!

We had fun playing with Amani Jr. and Amanda.

The gang!

We were escorted back to the DART station by Paulina’s children, her nephew and two young women who work for Paulina.

You just never know when you might see a cow. 🙂

At the DART terminal. Yes, we are on the “edge” of town, but there are still so many people!