From my window.

Today, the team dawned without further commitments but to continue working in our respective projects, so I had time to admire the landscape through my window.

A view that really inspires me and make me reflect about the things I had seen and known of Tanzania, with the perspective: "from my window".

Tanzania from my window was a country with a few tourist attractions, e.g safaris, and Massai warriors, like in the movie/book "The White Massai" ;), so after Phil´s game the other night, where each of us should briefly explain their view on Tanzania before departure and what it is now, I realized that Tanzania does not fit in the same frame anymore!

Here some pictures how Tanzania looks for me now:

How does Tanzania look at "from your window"?

Patience and Kiswahili lessons

Today was the day to go back from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro. Due to some immigration and visa challenges from the Zanzibar trip all of us were supposed to meet today with an immigration officer – scheduled for 8am. As most of us had already anticipated this didn’t happen on time.

All of us practiced patience and we finally left Dar at 2pm.

Back on the road to Morogoro everything went back to normal, we and our luggage squeezed into the bus  and we passed on street market and vendor after the other.

Squeezed into the bus on our way to Morogoro

Street markets outside of Dar es Salaam

Everywhere else this bicycle would be classified as overloaded, not in Tanzania!

Street vendor taking a nap under his stand. He fell asleep reading "Simplified English Grammar" - I wonder why?

Finally back to Morogro some of us had their first Kiswahili lesson. We will have a follow up lesson next week, hopefully we still can then rememer the greetings, numbers, animals and so on!

Usiku Mwema!

Uluguru mountains in Morogoro welcome us back!

Midway presentations

The foyer of the lobby was buzzing with 3 professional looking IBM teams about to go into battle for their midway presentations. All 3 teams have put in the hard yards despite having the odd night out or weekend trips such as Zanzibar. The crew from the Zanzibar trip are no doubt still recovering from the several ordeals that transpired over the last 48 hours – this included but was not limited to being chased by beggars down the ferry wharves, hustled by bag handlers wanting an easy buck, spending 3 hours detained for ransom by the immigration port authority at the Zanzibar dock and then spending a good part of the following day in several medical clinics after one of the team members cut his head open on some overhead rocks.  Boy was it good to see that aircraft coming back! Let’s get the hell out of this place – it’s cursed! Anyway, from all reports each team had a fantastic morning with their presentations.  Personally I can only speak for the RITA team and despite leaving our team lead in the hotel with his head wrapped in bandages we managed to pull our presentation together after an early morning team meeting and re-shuffling who would present which slides.

It was a nice relief to have succeeded with our 3 hour midway presentation and have it behind us. After the presentation, I sat outside with the RITA team and ate my lunch. I had beads of sweat racing down my chest beneath my shirt – it was hot and sticky and occasionally I would dab my chest to catch the sweat beneath my shirt. Sweating to saturation was now a regular part of my day.

We return to the hotel and hear the fantastic success stories running around the teams. It’s time to go out for dinner and celebrate. You can sense the new breathing space that everyone is now enjoying after putting the midway presentation behind us. Great job team – Well done!!!!

The Maasai - A day for a lifetime - Saturday, March 17th of 2012

Part of the team left at 5am to go to Zanzibar, and 5 of  us stayed in Morogoro (Sonja, who has already been in Zanzibar, and  the others that will go after assignment).

For the 5 of us who stayed in Morogoro, we went to visit a local  Maasai Village, about 40 minutes away from town.

The Maasai (sometimes spelled "Masai") are a Nilotic ethnic group of semi-nomadic people. They are among the best known of African ethnic groups, due to their distinctive customs and dress. Many Maasai tribes throughout Tanzania and Kenya welcome visits to their village to experience their culture, traditions, and lifestyle.

And there we were...

      At the Maasai Village we had lots of fun as you can see on the pictures below (Sonja helping them with the yoghurt), traditional jumping dance, traditional singing, and playing with the kids and adults. Maasai music traditionally consists of rhythms provided by a chorus, where they sing harmonies while a song leader sings the melody.

Besides all the fun we had, we will never forget the warm welcome we received from them, their smiles, their happiness to have us there with them, their tender, and their curiosity. Although not speaking the same language we were able to exchange smiles.

Today has been one of those memorable days.

Asante Sana! Thankful! May you all be happy!

The Misty Mountains of Morogoro

They say that the CSC assignment is a different experience, quite unlike any other. And I agree...

So let me try out something different, quite unlike any other post yet on this blog....

The misty Uluguru mountains....of Morogoro..... are quite a striking feature of this beautiful region of Tanzania.

Our hotel, where the entire CSC team is holed up, is at the foothills of the Uluguru mountains of Morogoro....in fact, so close that we see the hills rising high from all points of the hotel.

And the peaks and the clouds give a breathtaking backdrop and effect to this region, and to the Morogoro town in particular. Sometimes misty, sometimes clear, but always majestic.

Let these pictures speak for themselves, and you might just agree with me.


Ashish
#ibmcsc tanzania

1) View of the mountains from the Office of the Regional Commissioner, Morogoro

2) View from Mzumbe University, Morogoro

3) On the way to Mikumi National Park

4) View from the ARC Hotel, Morogoro

5) View from the ARC Hotel, Morogoro

Service Day at the Homeless Orphanage Morogoro

March 16: Most awaited Visit to Morogoro Homeless Orphanage or should I call it “Home of Hope”

We were all ready wearing our IBM Kabila La Mtandao T-shirts for our service day. We were welcomed by Mr. Robert L Simba who runs this Orphanage. He briefed us about how this organization came to be and that there were 52 children in that facility from various ages some even going to the university. He left his career as a lead guitarist and vocalist to start a shelter for the homeless…

We went around the facilities and were impressed with the clean and neat surroundings with toilets. The facility itself is a large campus with a impressive garden and a view of the mountains. We met the children and they all looked very happy.

The children greeted us with some awesome songs and they were a good group…the sense of rhythm and timing and their vocals impressed us. They sang 3 songs one on Tanzania, one a jingly song about their culture to which they swayed and another one on how they do not wish to be street children and want to lead a normal life like us. We were touched…One of the things that really struck me was their smiling happy faces the harmonious and friendly atmosphere and how well behaved they are as most of them were picked from the streets. The looked like one big happy extended family…

We distributed some gifts we brought for them…like candy, color pencils, crayons, coloring books, lots of balloons and pin up thingies…they loved the wooshie pins Jonathan bought and the IBM ones…I had forgotten my smiley pins in the hotel and we also did not bring in our laptops so Ilona, Jon and I went back to the hotel to pick our laptops…

Augusto brought 2 footballs for the team and there were some real mean soccer players here..budding talent…the team played football, Frisbees (yes, Ian brought a lot of Frisbees) and most of them were drowning by the time we got back with out laptops…luckily Ilona and Jon thoughtfully packed some bottles of cold water and then it was time for lunch…

One of the girls prayed (grace) thanking for the food and fellowship. The food was cooked over wood fire and was very delicious. There was 2 types of rice Tanzanian rice and pilaf rice, fried chicken, lamb curry, fried potatoes, peas curry and a spicy curry for the pilaf rice. We were also served some bottled drinks and water.

After the lunch we rested for 10-15 mins and then brought out our laptops..Petra was teaching the kids how to type, insert pictures, Augusto lent his phone with the music, Jonathan uploaded the pictures and showed them to the kids. The kids were overjoyed seeing their pictures…

Loved playing with the children and as I am typing I am teaching the boys how to use computers to record what happened today in their center.

Amos, Erick, Ezekiel. Fredrick, Jackson, Ally, Boniface and Aly2 and Patrick, are around me now and I am showing them my laptop. They are very friendly boys and I showed them pictures of my family and our trip to Mikumi national park. I learnt the names of all the safari animals in Swahili…

Lion- simba, giraffe is twiga, elephant is tembo, wild buffalo is nyati, zebra is pundamilia, imphala is swala, harte (wild) beest is nyunbu, Wild boar is ngili, Hippopatamus is kiboko, fox is mbweha, bird is ndege, baboon is nyani, centipede is tandu, ant is mchwa, fish is samaki and dog is mbwa…Phew ! enough Swahili for the day…

We continued to play some balloon tennis (that’s how Ilona described playing with balloons), football and then it was time to go…we regrouped in the hall… Phil thanked Mr. Simba and his staff for the opportunity and each of us shared how we felt for the 7-8 hours we spent with the children…everyone was ecstatic and we were sad by the end of the day to leave them…they joyfully bid us goodbye

I take back with me the sweet memories of an extremely fruitful and fulfilling day of these wonderful super talented kids who are eager to learn and absorb whatever you put in front of them…

Tanzanian Food is Wonderful:-)

We have been in Tanzania for half a month. This is a wonderful time for us. The cuisine is an important part of culture so we try to eat some Tanzanian food every day. From my point of view, they all are delicious, I do like them. So let me share some of what I eaten recent days. Enjoy them :-)

Chips mayai (Chips fried with eggs), I think you absolutely can cook it at home.

Tilapia, it is my favorite

Lunch box during meeting with our hosts

The network speed is not fast so I have to stop to upload more pictures. I would like to share the following picture as the last one- we are in Tanzanian restaurant.