To Tanzania: Morogoro and SEGA

Claudia and I made it to Morogoro. Although the flight was short—1.5 hours—it was a long trip. An hour drive to the airport. Then the flight. Then about an hour at Tanzania immigration. A real adventure at the TZ airport ATMs. The third one worked for us. Claudia took out 30,000 shillings, which sounds huge. $12. I grabbed a bit more than that. But we probably won’t need much.

The drive from the airport to Morogoro was 5.5 hours, including a brief dinner stop. Above is a jumping Saturday night market in Morogoro.

We are staying at SEGA Girls Secondary School. It is a US-sponsored school, with guest quarters. The school has 280 students.

It is a very nice school. The nicest we’ve seen in Africa. Girls have come from all over the country to go here. One of our “guides” lives a 12-hour bus ride away in Arusha. Below is the courtyard of the visitors' quarters. That is a lemon tree right in front. Confusingly, most African lemons are green and limes are yellow.

The second shot below is a detail of a butterfly on one of the flowers in the foreground.

And in the same garden, Claudia has a new friend. You can see this guy is as big as her hand.

On Sunday, we met with some of the school staff. They have a large team of staff other than teachers. They walked us to the main dining area for the girls—the Big Banda, which means “meeting place.” There we met our guides. These are four students—two in Form 4 (seniors) and two in Form 3 (juniors) who are assigned to accompany us around the campus, take care of us at the student meals, and generally keep us company. They are a wonderful group. Nailat, Jovina, Christina, and Elizabeth. Below, Claudia is led to our assigned table by Christina.

The screen above Claudia (the back is visible) is for Friday night movie nights. Notice Claudia is the only one with shoes on. Everyone takes their shoes off to enter the hall and some other buildings.

We got a thorough tour of the campus by our guides.

They hold religious services on the campus on Sundays. This covers several religions. Below are the shoes of the girls outside the Muslim service.

Sunday was also laundry day for a lot of the girls. They all hand-wash their own clothes. There are some clotheslines available, but the bushes are preferred by a lot of them.

After the clothes are dry, they iron their uniforms. They have a separate laundry building, where some wash and it appears all of them iron.

Some of the irons are below. They are heated by charcoal. I’d never seen these before. To be honest, I don’t hang out in a lot of African laundry rooms, but they were definitely interesting. Below, a girl is fanning the flames to get these three irons heating strong enough. The stick is to open and close the lids.

From the fire into the frying pan, below some of the girls are making buns of some sort. Interesting how all these activities were going on without any supervision from staff.

Second below is a map of Tanzania made out of empty water bottles to wall in a flower bed. They try not to throw away any more than they have to.

Below is the water tower for the facility. They truck in water and fill the barrels. I thought the mural was creative. Claudia and two of our guides are in front.

Below, Jovina, Claudia, Christina, Elizabeth, in the Big Banda as Claudia shoots a pic of “the Christmas tree.” The tree in back on the left with orange flowers.

The tree is so-named as it blossoms in December and is beautiful for Christmas. It is a great tree. Note the student carrying a 5-gallon bucket of water in front of the tree.

Compared to Ngong, Morogoro is significantly more provincial. Ngong is much more cosmopolitan—a low bar. We have observed a few other differences.

This part of Tanzania appears much more Muslim. The school is within earshot of a temple, so we can hear the calls to prayer.

I’m not sure what this means, but we also see more people, particularly women—since they do most of the shopping, carrying loads on their heads, as the above girl is doing. Part of this is, I think, less affordable transportation options.

One other clear difference is the mosquitoes. They are very numerous and this is a region where they carry malaria. Claudia and I are somewhat lax on the malaria pills in Ngong, and there are few mosquitoes and we’re told they don’t carry malaria. Here, they are thick. We sleep under mosquito nets, but my room is well-populated each morning outside the net.

Below is the picture Claudia was taking above.

Rhona is on the staff at SEGA and is in charge of communications. She is also our primary contact for our activities at the school. On Sunday afternoon, she took us to Morogoro town for shopping. Actually just looking around, since none of us was interested in buying anything.

Below are Rhona and Claudia in a fabric store. Below that is the first floor of a market.

Note the albino man in the green shirt. We have seen several people with the phenotype here. I researched this.

This area has a very high rate of albinism. There are also some horrific cultural issues surround it. For instance, by some people, it is considered good luck for the afterlife to be buried with one or more albinos. The albinos are kidnapped or purchased for the burials. They are either killed for the funeral or buried alive with the deceased. Sometimes albinos are kept as human pets.

Avocados from the market. They’re huge. As are the snails (see above). We’ve also seen some giant other fruits/vegetables. The breadfruit are the size of a large watermelon. The pineapple is normal sized, but fantastic. It makes such a difference to eat the fruit when it ripens in the field.

Below is a tailor on the street outside the fabric store.