Day 20

So today we had a free day to sort out various small jobs/activities. We got up later than normal and had a leisurely breakfast on the terrace of More Than A Drop.

As we mentioned earlier we are not staying in the main B&B, we are actually staying in a house just down the road, so each morning we walk up the road for breakfast (to the white gate you can see in the photo) and so far we have seen Kilimanjaro every morning.

Since we have been in Moshi it has been very sunny, following the heavy rains of the previous few weeks and it seems that the flowers are now coming out. These flowers are just outside our house.

Last year plastic bags have been banned in Tanzania. This is obviously a great move for the environment, especially as they used to give out a huge number of the thin single use plastic carrier bags, you got one every time you bought anything. They now have switched to what appear to be paper bags which are pretty strong. We really like them and wish shops in the UK would use something similar.

For those of you who don’t know, More Than A Drop Is not just a B&B, it is a Hospitality School for young girls age 18-20 who have failed their Form 4 exams. It is run as an NGO by an Italian guy who is is trying to improve the employment opportunities for young girls. It is great that the money you pay to stay here goes to support a great project. The girls at the school are offered a 1 year course covering all aspects of the Hospitality Industry.....and of course they can put all that they learn into practice working in the B&B and Restaurant. MTAD has been running for quite a few years and has a great success rate - 90% of students going on to get employment.

Last year when we were staying at MTAD, we mentioned that we were involved with ACTT and what they do. This has led to ACTT now providing a 3 week computer course for the girls. When ACTT do ICT outreach training at schools they provide all the laptops, projector etc. whilst doing the training. This morning Boniface was teaching the girls about PowerPoint presentations so we went up to the classroom to see how they were getting on.

So this is the classroom

And these are the girls receiving their ICT training from Boniface.

I have to say I was very impressed by Boniface. He explained everything slowly and clearly, always checking if the girls had any questions and the girls certainly seemed to be listening and understanding.

After a while we left Boniface to it and headed down to ACTT. It was now gone 11 and too hot to walk so we picked up a tuk tuk virtually right outside our gate.

On arriving at the ACTT offices everyone was very busy. The staff from Mwanza were not travelling back until tonight and so both teams were around. There seemed to be a lot of sorting out of stock and then packing it up so I think quite a lot of the laptops we had collected last week were being dispatched to Mwanza.

So for those of you who haven’t seen inside the ACTT Moshi office I have posted some photos below.

Thomas sorting out stock

 Bruno at his desk

 Winnie at her desk

Hamisi packing up stock to be sent to his office in Katoro

Ally in his workshop

Bakari

Dommy and Vai at their desk.

I realise now we didn’t take a picture of Robert’s office but it doesn’t look a lot different to the rest.

While we were in the office Robert had an unexpected visit from the Chairman of Close The Gap, the Belgian NGO that supplies ACTT with a large number of computers. He was in the country for a specific project and just called in to say Hi. He told us that ACTT were their biggest partner in Tanzania. We had a quick chat with him and then left him to catch up with Robert.

We decided to go to the bank and then on to Mimosa, one of the restaurants we like in Moshi when we want a change from local food. It is quite expensive by Tanzanian standards but the food is generally quite good.

Lunch did take quite a time as whilst the food is good the service is pretty slow.  From here we then walked to Union Cafe as we wanted to see Tabia who works in the Internet cafe there. Tabia used to work at ACTT. My sister had made some cuddly toys that we had passed on to various people we know here who have recently had babies. We had one left and had promised it to Tabia when we had seen her last week. Luckily she wasn’t too busy when we called in so had time for a chat and a photo.

We stopped for a coffee and then decided to go back to More Than A Drop. It was still very hot so we got a tuk tuk. We spent the rest of the afternoon sat in the garden until it was time for a G&T and then dinner. Tonight there is a group of 12 German tourists staying so we are sharing our “house” with 3 other guests...... just for the one night.