Monday, October 12, 2009
Once again around midafternoon it appeared that rain clouds were coming from the South, but again they had dissipated by evening without dropping rain. This past Saturday we were without electricity all day. It finally came on some time during the night. We ate peanut butter and dried fruit, with leftover chicken and dumplings for dinner. Speaking of chicken, I know that free range chicken has a sort of following in the States among natural food devotees, but those that we have eaten here in Tanzania would never pass muster with Jim Perdue—very tough. On Sunday we had a trip to the Zambia border in the college car with Mwankenja and Verywell. We attended a church service at the border, after which the evangelist insisted on taking us to dinner at a local restaurant. Karen and I had fish with rice, which was very good. One of Verywell’s brothers, Meshack, joined us for a time in Tunduma, the town on the border. On the way back Verywell treated us to a visit to his home village where we met his mother, along with his father’s two other wives, and a couple of his siblings. According to Verywell, polygamy is still legal and not uncommon in Tanzania, although it may be slowly dying out among educated non-Muslims. On the way back we also visited the Mbozi Meteorite, said the be the eighth largest in the world. It is a local tourist attraction, but Mwankenja, always able to get mileage out of his status as a pastor, convinced the caretaker to charge us all the resident rate, as opposed to the higher tourist rate. The meteorite is several kilometers off the highway and there are no signs until you reach the final turnoff. There were no electricity problems on Sunday and as of 7:30 PM none today either.