Take Me To Post Comment Form Hi friends-Neema and Furaha here reporting from Dar es Salaam. Several of us are fighting stomach issues-perhaps from amoebas (if you know what I mean). We are being so very careful-using bottled water for everything, avoiding certain foods like lettuce and unpeeled vegetables and fruit-yet several of us have had to resort to lomotil and pepto bismol.

We arrived in Dar es Salaam Saturday afternoon after a long, arduous road trip. The country side was beautiful-acre upon acre of sisal farms. We stopped in Segera for lunch-as we were leaving an impressive convoy of new landcruisers drove up-each occupied by a driver, some official and an armed guard. Turns out, they were federal judges stopping for lunch.

It is so very distressing to drive through productive, beautiful farm land seeing desperate people with baskets and baskets of fruit and produce trying to sell them-Dr. Moshi says most of it will rot. These poor farmers have no way to market their produce. One enormous bag of oranges can be purchased for $2,000 TZS-or about $2.00. Yet, you go to the Save Rite grocery store in towns and they import fruit from South Africa and sell oranges 3 for a $1.00. Dr. Moshi doesn't understand why more hasn't been done (at the local level) to help farmers with logistics-moving produce to markets, etc. Maybe this gives you an insight in to some of the problems the Tanzanians face. Oh, there is plenty of money-NGO's out the wazoo...but their govenrment has become 'top heavy'. Lots of bureaucrats-

We were all excited as we made it in to Dar-Tanzania's major center and capitol in everything but name. Dodoma is the parlimentary capitol. Dar es Salaam is a city of about 5 million with a mix of Africn, Arabic and Indian influences. As soon as we all threw our bags in to our hotel rooms we jumped in to the pool.

More news tomorrow about our meeting with the Minister of Education.
Salama.

Sunday, several people attended mass at