Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I worry that sometimes in my effort to discuss the hardships facing life here in Tanzania and the people who live it daily, that I may be discouraging people from visiting the country.  That would be a shame as, Tanzania is a beautiful country and to her visitors the people are kind and gracious. I highly recommend coming to Tanzania on vacation and not just because I would like the company.  I like to sit and just take in the beauty of this amazing country.  From the snow capped highest peak of Africa that is actually a set of three dormant volcano cones called "Kibo", "Mawenzi" and "Shira" to be collectively called Mt Kilimanjaro.  It is a tourist favorite as it is climbable without having mountain climbing skills.  The youngest person to climb it was 7 years old, however there is now an minimum age of 10 years.  The oldest person to climb it was Martin Kafer at 85 along with his wife Esther who was 84 at the time.  The trip up can take as long a...

I am currently working on several projects to prepare for the team coming over in September so they can have "shovel ready" work projects.  Unfortunately none of that is too glamorous.  So I am going to clean off some photos of work/play projects I have been doing lately. The last of the tools I purchased with the generous donations to the electric tool fund was a jigsaw.  I am very excited about what I can do with that and my new find of plywood.  For those of you who don't do facebook, a Peace Corp friend helped me track down a source of plywood.  It is the boxes they ship motorcycles into town in and since they ship a good many in I am hoping it will be a steady stream.  It is thin plywood but I am still excited about the project I can do.   The giraffe above and attempted elephant below though were my first jigsaw projects using some of the scrap wood from other projects.  Both were cut free hand (no template or drawing) out...