I didn’t realize that Halloween is not celebrated outside the US. (I don’t know about Canada. I assume it is celebrated there since we’re neighbors. But the other English-speaking countries, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, don’t celebrate it. The churches there view it as an evil holiday that celebrates witchcraft and other evils…) OK, so it does have witches and bats as part of the theme, but it’s still fun to watch the kids dress up and go door-to-door for candy (or to dress up and go to a costume party.) I think some of the other countries take themselves too seriously…
So, we had our own private Halloween at home. We had gotten some candy from friends and family at home that we saved for Halloween and we bought some in town this afternoon. (The stuff we bough in town was all stale, but the kids and I ate it anyway because it was chocolate.) Charlotte was the only one that made an attempt at a costume. She put on a dress and a tiara and was a princess. I made them come to the kitchen door and knock. Either Leslie or I would answer and make them tell us what they were dressed up as. They had to have a different answer each time. It was entertaining for a few minutes. We couldn’t go door-to-door for an hour, but the kids were happy.
The kids and I had two weeks of break from school. Leslie took a long weekend and went to Ruaha with us, but she couldn’t take the whole two weeks off. So the kids and I went to Bagamoyo (70 km north of Dar Es Salaam) by ourselves. We stayed at the Bagamoyo Beach Resort and had a great time on the beach. It’s really neat, because there’s a coral wall about 100 yards from the high-tide line that forms a huge tide pool at low tide. We saw lots of crabs, jelly fish, sea cucumbers, feather worms, and fish. The kids really enjoyed making sand castles, because the sand was saturated with water and made fun canals, dams, and lakes.
We went on our first safari (Swahili for “trip”) to Ruaha National Park, southwest of Dodoma. It’s about 240 kilometers (150 miles) by plane, but it’s about 750 kilometers (460 miles) by car. The road is paved from Dodoma to Morogoro to Iringa, but then it’s dirt from Iringa to Ruaha. The total trip is about 9 hours (6.5 on paved road, 2.5 on dirt road).
The photos in the album, are in chronological order. I’ve reduced them all to 800×600 pixels for the web. If you’d like any full-sized originals, please e-mail and I’ll be happy to send them to you.
Before I launch into the story, here are some photos of us:
And here are some of my favorite photos from the trip:
Since Leslie had to finish teaching on Wednesday morning before we went, we drove to Iringa via Morogoro and stayed at the Riverside Campsite, and had a great night there. The tented bandas are very comfortable, and the food is great. Best of all, the price is very reasonable. Here are some photos of the dining banda, our tented bandas, and the shower banda:
On Thursday morning we drove through Iringa and then to Ruaha National Park, where we stayed at The Ruaha River Lodge. This was a great place. Nice riverside bandas with an awe-inspiring view of the Great Ruaha River and a great Tea/Dining Banda that also overlooked the river. The Foxes gave us a nice discount since we’re missionaries. Thanks, Foxes! Here are some pictures from the porch of our banda:
Well, that’s enough for now. Between a slow internet connection, power outages, and my malaria, this post has already taken two weeks to write. I’ll post more of the specific stories about various animals later.
