Take 2

We have a house! It's actually a split level home, with one apartment on the bottom and one on top. Grace Mendola will take the top and we'll inhabit the bottom. We move in, in one week - which is cool and a little scary. The best part is the neighborhood, so we think. This new home has a gated entrance, but most of the homes nearby don't have a gate. That means people of often out and about. Secondly, we're about 100 yards down an alleyway from a busy market area. When we visited the house last, there were hundreds of people milling about and all kinds of shops - fruit, electronics, house products, etc. I didn't see any other wzungu (white people), but our part of the apartment has a bide (pronouced bi-day) in one of the bathrooms, so I imagine a European lived there at one time. We are really excited to move in. We'll be about 5 minutes drive from the Lyattu's place. We'll also be just minutes from a major road, so we hope getting around the city will be okay. One thing that is almost unthinkable considering less than 1% of Tanzanians own cars, is the traffic. It must be that most of those owners are in Dar. It's basically out of the question to venture out between 7-9am or 4-7 pm (of course that's unrealistic), but even on the weekends we've already experienced 2+ hours of traffic for a length of drive equivalent to driving from Campus to Worthington. It's just so hard to believe it's going to be like this everyday.
On Sunday we met a really cool woman named Anglea. She's a nurse from England and works on a health project with other doctors. She's invited us to see her efforts this week and we're excited b/c they've been successfully able to turn responsibilities over to indigenous leadership and authority, while strongly sustaining the services. I guess the head guy is quite adept at starting projects and then training others to lead them. I'm hoping we'll get an audience with him at some length this week. He travels often, so I don't know if he'll be in.
Most importantly, can someone please update me on the Yankees! I can't get a fast enough connection to load the espn page. Also, if there is buckeye news perhaps someone can fill me in. Ah, the things we take for granted in the states - fast Internet connections, highways, driving laws (though I must say I'm have fun), billing options (everything, I mean everything, is pre-paid - no "bill me later" stuff), everything Trader Joe's, the sports page every morning, free nights and weekends on the cell phones, free refills, diet pop, water from the tap, snack foods (3 musketeers), and no mosquitoes!!! We have a lot to be thankful for....