I really don’t want to blog tonight and I don’t know where to start but if I don’t I’m going to loose this feeling of excitement and exhaustion. I am remote and feel like I am in the middle of nowhere. We left for a small village that we are working with starting a chicken project with a women’s group.  We were greeted with a substance that was put on our forehead as a blessing.  We greeted the women and they brought us into their home and cooked us ugali and mashed ocra.  We ate on the floor with our fingers, the tanzanian way, talking about the village and what her group does.

We spent the afternoon making clay pots with them stoking the fire to harden them.  So many villagers showed up and sat and watched us.  We sat and I asked each of the children their names. There was one girl there who was 13 and when zoe told them her age she said that she had a sister who was the same age but was sent to Dar to work as  a housekeeper.

We then left for Ioli where we are starting 2 other pilot projects, a sustainable beehive project and a solar charging business for the same group.  We were greeted in the same way at the door with the traditional greeting from the elders and women.  In this village the way you greet someone is to ask them into your hut to sit for five minutes before chatting outside so we were pulled into a dark mud hut while we listened to them call out their greeting.  The truth is that most of the time I have no idea what is going on and only find out later when it is explained to me by Moshi.

Soon after we left the house to sign the guest book (every village has one) and sat with all the men drinking coffee.  It is a tradition in the evening to drink coffee but many times people do not have enough money (less then 5 cents) for a cup.  Moshi suggested that I buy coffee for everyone as much as people can drink.  It cost me 5 dollars and was the best money I have ever spent.  People were so happy and wanted to talk.  We spent the evening with Moshi and the beautiful Yasenta talking about our worlds.

After that we had dinner and then left for the old way of honey harvesting.  After the bees were smoked out of their hives we licked our fingers under the stars.  Magical.

We arrived back at the hut exhausted and we lay down on beds inside the mud hut with mosquito nets covering our bodies.