A typical day in Dodoma …
My day starts early .. at least earlier than it does in Bangalore… We were getting picked up from the hotel at 9am for the 1st 2days .. and now we’ve advanced it by 30mins … So I’ve been barely making it to the breakfast-table before I rush to catch our Univ cabs .. Breakfast is toast, eggs and fruit … Its fine .. we’ll be doing it everyday, but I think this should be ok…
The Univ is just 15mins from the hotel, and we go in 2taxis .. I enjoy being with the team here .. We have some very funny people on board .. We have the hoo-haa funny, the controlled-funny, the laugh-ers, the brilliant and the “i’m Always in a good-mood”-folks … So its a good balance of the serious and the light! And that works very well for me! We sometimes have the funniest discussions on our commute.. yesterdays topic - Does water flow clockwise/anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere! We had water shortage at the hotel this morning… and we swore that was coz too many of us were flushing our toilets multiple times to test the hypothesis!!
Once we get to work, we have a small session where all sub-teams share their learnings with each other … From that point on its go-go-go… The internet speeds at the Univ are quite low now… so mail(office/personal) are out of the question.. Keeps us focussed till we get to the hotel I guess!
The people at the university have been taking extra good care of us .. So now we have a fridge with water & soda in our office, and coffee is provided too! We have limited choice at lunch - its basically rice/FrenchFries/ugali(TZ stiff porridge) with some salad and a raw-banana/red-beans curry… They also serve liver/fish/chicken/lamb .. But I dont like liver, the chicken’s too tough and too big, the fish is whole(eyes and scales intact) and the meat’s ok .. :) The veg lunch has been working fine for me these last few days.. so I might stick to that..
After we leave the Univ a lil after 6, and have our discussions around toilet-flushes and other important life-changing truths, we get together at the hotel courtyard sometimes… I have yet to demonstrate to the team about the wonderful invention that the electric mosquito bat is .. We walked to the ‘downtown’ area on Tuesday and passed a church where I think the choir was practicing some awesome African songs.. I’ve made a note to go there on 1 Sunday. I’m sure I’ll love it… We’ve gone out for dinner most days… somedays we’re making chicken noises to indicate what we want for dinner! Dinner usually takes a few hrs for getting taxis, us getting our orders(which is a repeat of the lunch menu most of the time) and people having their beers.. I’m eating in tonight for a change .. Tasks remaining - finish some work for the univ project, take care of office-mail, blog(!), tune in to the swahili music channel, watch cnn, take a shower, and sleep around 1! .. The days are longer in TZ! :)
KwaHeri, Salaama !
