Rocks from Space & Rides in Pickup Beds: MBEYA

This past weekend we decided to get out and see another city. Early Friday morning we (me, Charlie, Anne, Lennart, and Br. Emmanuel) left Hanga and caught the Super Feo bus to Mbeya on the main road at the turnoff at Milayoyo. The seating was a little cramped with five seats across instead of the normal four for a coach bus, but we made it. We picked up Sara and Cara along the way in Njombe. It was nice they were able to catch the same bus! They only had to stand for about 45 minutes of their 3 hour ride i think.

We arrived in Mbeya at around 2pm, had some lunch, and they spent the rest of our afternoon walking around town. We did a lot of walking all weekend. It was great to see another city center...most of the roads here were even paved! The size of the city itself is a little deceiving, though. We walked around all of the streets of downtown multiple times in the afternoon on Friday, and again on Saturday...even though the city has a population of nearly 300,000. It is a pretty sprawled place.We stayed at the guest house / conference center that Hanga has in Mbeya. The rooms were great, the food was great, and we were even allowed to use the conference room to watch TV and the new DVDs that we bought. (Toy Story on Friday night, Blood Diamond on Saturday night, and Michael Clayton on Sunday) Our hosts were so good to us all weekend: driving us around in the pickup to find a pizza place on Friday night, to the Cathedral for Mass on Sunday morning, and even all the way out to the outskirts of town where we got to see this giant rock that fell from space...literally. supposedly it is the eighth largest meteorite discovered on our planet. We had to take at least a few pictures with it :)

You can see Anne was very excited to finally arrive at the meteorite site after riding in the back of the pickup for the 94 minutes that it took us to get there (at least 20 of those minutes on very bumpy gravel roads)

On Sunday Anne and Lennart came back to Hanga with Br. Emmanuel, but the rest of us stayed in Mbeya for another day. We wanted to get to the top (or at least near the top) of one of the mountains surrounding the town, but were told it would not be safe to try to climb ourselves. So we did some more walking around the town during the day, had some great Indian food for lunch at the Mbeya Hotel, and then were driven up one of the mountains later in the day...most of us riding in the back of the pickup. You can see a little bit of the sprawl of the city below.

Before we headed back to the Guest House on Sunday afternoon we stopped by a place near by to use the internet. I didn't need to check my mail, so instead I found these kids outside shooting some pool. They were very excited that I came over and was talking with them and one of them even offered to play me in a game. Of course I couldn't deny this offer...I am older and have played a good amount of pool before so I should at least have a chance, right? Well, long story short, these kids were hustling me. They killed me and then I had to cough up the Tsh 500 (about 50 cents) for the game token. It was fun to play with them. Though I think they were trying to teach me to say some words i shouldn't be saying in Swahili. Kids will be kids.

Travel back on Monday went smooth, I taught one day of class on Tuesday, but today and tomorrow there is no school because Standard IV is taking the national tests. That means only six more days of teaching this school year! The whole school will have terminal examinations (yes that is right, FINAL EXAMS for first through sixth graders!) the 24th and 25th of this month, and then they are done.

I have heard there is a full container with many many books coming by the end of this week, though ;) That will keep me busy for the month of December when I wont be teaching. Look for pictures from the books arriving in Hanga on the next update sometime this weekend.

Thanks for reading!