Sunday, August 21, 2005
Saturday, August 20
Home again, with my piles of dirty clothes, files of photos on my computer, tons of memories, sorting out the papers and detritus of the trip, and feeling just a little lost. Africa is still stuck in weird weather. I’d intended to go to the beach near Dar today before returning to Mwanza tomorrow, but it was overcast again so I called the airline and moved my flight up a day. It must have been raining a bit here too, because the grass is a lot greener than it was a week ago.
I got everything done in Dar that I wanted. I met with Pam White (Dir. of USAID Tanzania) at the embassy, and she is enthusiastic about coming to Mwanza on Oct 29 for the graduation of our student entrepreneurs. She is very nice, but all business – as I expected when meeting the chief officer of a big bureaucracy, but still it is such a marked change from how you approach a Tanzanian official.
I also met with the new Tanzania Peace Corps Director, Christine Djondo, and she will come to the graduation also. So with Atiba from TechnoServe coming too, we will have the people I wanted to bring together, unless the lead-up to the Tanzanian national elections on October 31 becomes violent.
And it is still possible that the new US Ambassador, Mike Retzer, will also be there. I left more writeups of what we are doing for the people who are planning his schedule of activities. Retzer has done a lot of fund raising for Bush, and owns 20 McDonalds in Arkansas and Mississippi. I suspect the embassy staff must have all kinds of office pools going on how long it will take for McDonalds to open in Tanzania.
Home again, with my piles of dirty clothes, files of photos on my computer, tons of memories, sorting out the papers and detritus of the trip, and feeling just a little lost. Africa is still stuck in weird weather. I’d intended to go to the beach near Dar today before returning to Mwanza tomorrow, but it was overcast again so I called the airline and moved my flight up a day. It must have been raining a bit here too, because the grass is a lot greener than it was a week ago.
I got everything done in Dar that I wanted. I met with Pam White (Dir. of USAID Tanzania) at the embassy, and she is enthusiastic about coming to Mwanza on Oct 29 for the graduation of our student entrepreneurs. She is very nice, but all business – as I expected when meeting the chief officer of a big bureaucracy, but still it is such a marked change from how you approach a Tanzanian official.
I also met with the new Tanzania Peace Corps Director, Christine Djondo, and she will come to the graduation also. So with Atiba from TechnoServe coming too, we will have the people I wanted to bring together, unless the lead-up to the Tanzanian national elections on October 31 becomes violent.
And it is still possible that the new US Ambassador, Mike Retzer, will also be there. I left more writeups of what we are doing for the people who are planning his schedule of activities. Retzer has done a lot of fund raising for Bush, and owns 20 McDonalds in Arkansas and Mississippi. I suspect the embassy staff must have all kinds of office pools going on how long it will take for McDonalds to open in Tanzania.
