Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

Welcome to Conversations with Barnabas Bear which I hope to make a regular feature in the blog rotation.  A couple of items up front, the conversation is fictional (hopefully that was obvious) but are pulled from some of my (Steve) conversations and observations during my time here in Tanzania.  The main purpose of these is to help everyone get to know the people in Tanzania a little bit better while having a little bit of fun.  I would love some feedback on these so I know if I should continue and if so what types of conversations Barnabas needs to be having.  The stories are told from Barnaba’s point of view and because of that they are in English though I try to reflect some of the problems with the English translation. It is Saturday about midafternoon and Dad has decided it is time to go do some shopping in town.  Normally I love going into town for any reason and especially to eat.  Only it is very sunny and hot right now and I am sweating away my winter fat.  I just finis

Last week I taught Barnabas and a Peace Corp Volunteer friend how to set up an extra electric (umeme) outlet in their new residence.  Yes that is my friend Kyle who came to visit at the site.  Fortunately his organization he extended with has provided him with a residence in town near their site and he is starting to get to work on some projects with them.  This unfortunately means he will not be joining the FDM site but it is good for him. So his new residence has one electrical outlet on wall opposite of his bed so he wanted an outlet near his bed.  Most (all affordable) extension cords in town have a short cord typically one meter in length.  We planned to do this work on Sunday because for some Tanzania reason they are shutting off the power in several regions (like shutting off electricity in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia) every Sunday for the next three months.  They are doing this to install or switch over some electrical equipment (the descriptions get more va

Well after writing about habits last time and working to get myself back into certain habits like my blog, Barnabas stories and walking, I have to say the beginning of 2016 has turned into a failure so far.  Not because I have not tried.  I am currently looking at my internet speed of a "lightening" 57 KB/s  (3G is required to provide peak data rates of 200 KB/s and 3.5G is supposed to be in the MB/s).  What has happened to blazing speeds last year of 100 KB/s where I could actually access Google mail without it constantly warning me to switch to the old version for slower speeds (the version that prevents me from doing much of anything).  Well since returning the Vodacom internet I normally use and have paid for is not connecting at all and that has forced me to seek out other carriers who have slower speeds. As for fixing the Vodacom, I have done everything I can do to search out solutions and going to the store in town is a waste of time as they have around 50 people at