Greetings from Tanzania

click to enlargeHi everyone!

I arrived safely to Tanzania on Friday, January 23rd after almost two days of travel! I had an 11-hour layover in London, which gave me the opportunity to go into the city and have a quick visit with my friend from college, Blake. Once I made my way back to Heathrow Airport and to my flight’s gate, I got an unexpected, early welcome back to Tanzania. Yuster, (Assistant Director of Art in Tanzania and Kari’s wife—Kari is the Director and my boss) was sitting at the gate for the same flight! She saw me first and called my name. She changes her hairstyle quite often, so I didn’t even recognize her at first and even once I did, it still took a moment for everything to register because I was so caught off guard. She was returning from a trip to Finland in preparation for a music festival and doing some promotional work for Art in Tanzania. We talked while waiting to board, went our separate ways during the flight, and then Kari was there to pick both of us up at the airport. What are the chances!?!

I’ve now been here just over a week and things are going well so far. Even though I’m returning to the same area and the same organization I worked with last time, there’s definitely still an adjustment period after arrival. Many things have changed since I left here a little over 8 months ago. The volunteers are all living in a new house that used to be an old hotel. I do miss the old house because it felt like my home here, but now I have my own bedroom and my own bathroom, so no complaints there! Most of the staff is the same, so it’s nice to be surrounded with old friends who were so excited to see me again.

My architecture partner in crime, Frances Jemini, has arrived. She’s an architect from Virginia and we’ll be collaborating on the Art in Tanzania architecture projects over the next 6 months. She has a blog, if you are interested in learning more about her: http://www.jeminilink.bravehost.com/. We basically have two major project areas. The first is doing some renovation work around the hotel because it is definitely a work in progress. It currently doesn’t have a kitchen, so our food is prepared off site and then transported by car to the hotel. So our first task this week was doing some as-builts and schematic design for the new kitchen. The second project is going to be creating a master plan of a 90-acre piece of land that Art in Tanzania has purchased about a half hour north of Dar es Salaam. The first building to be constructed on the site will be a primary school (because we already have sponsors to fund that project), but there’s plenty of room for lots more (including something like my thesis project). Everyone seems supportive of me balancing my time between architecture and video projects, so I also have some video projects under way including a music video for the infamous Dudu Baya, who is now under our record label, Mzuka Records (which I named!—it means “spirit,” but has become a popular slang word that everyone uses to mean “cool”).

Thank you in advance to those of you that reply to my updates. It’s so nice to hear from everyone and it really helps me keep in touch with what’s going on at home. I may not always have time to respond to each of you, but please know that I do read all of them and appreciate them!

One final note, I had to buy a new SIM card because my old one expired, [so ask Betty for the new number]. (011 can be used if your phone doesn’t support the + symbol).

Enjoy my first picture collage from this trip!

Lots of love,
Moriah