Sunday, and finally a day of rest.
It was good to sleep in, even if just a wee bit. We had planned to go to a local Methodist church in the morning, but had not got around to checking the times. In any case, Dr Pip had organised an outing to the Tanzanian Cultural Centre to the West of the city. Felix our Saturday guide, had organised a dala dala to pick us up from the front school gates, so we were able to speed along at a cracking pace oblivious to expectant passengers waiting by the roadside along the way. Actually it could not go very fast, though not without a brave attempt. The speed humps mean that vehicles have to slow to a near stop, and in our case, the engine rattled so much we had to slow from an attempt at 80 to a sedate 60 to prevent the valves from shattering. The more mechanical among us may have a better idea of the problem, but possibly a combination of no oil, worn valves and loose tappets.
The cultural centre had an art gallery with mainly local Tanzanian artists, including painters, sculptors and carvers. We were really taken with the works of one of the artists who was very gifted across several media including oil on canvas, sepia wash and bronze sculpting. The sepia was paintings were most appealing but a smallish one was $US4,000, though we were assured that the price was negotiable. We did not feel like testing just how negotiable, and we had quite a job trying to shake off the attendant who was anxious for a sale from the rich Europeans.
Instead we found the centre’s cafe which made excellent coffee including cappuccino.
We visited the carving workshop where a couple of craftsmen were chipping away carving mahogany animals. There must be thousands of craftsmen all over Tanzania carving lions, elephants, giraffes etc, because every tourist spot has countless items. Jen was keen to get a giraffe, therefore we did just that. Again, we are conscious that we have a long journey ahead of us, and mahogany, while beautiful, is also quite heavy.

The gallery had some very impressive life trees: whole trees carved in myriad life and human forms, often stylised and some grotesque. The one pictured here, apparently took some eight years to carve.
Our daladala returned around midday and took us to a lovely garden restaurant, Le Patio. We enjoyed some fine pizzas and some South African chardy, which was most acceptable. Dr Bob is from the Margaret River in WA and he is very knowledgable about wines, his son in law being the principal winemaker at Xanadu Wines. We got a bit if a run down on the chardy wine method as well as some tasting notes. So we spent a lazy couple of hours in the shade of a large tree (not sure of the species but looked not unlike a Moreton Bay Fig: clues anyone?), eating pizzas and drinking good wine.
Eventually our dala dala came back for us and we returned to school, a drink at the Water Hole and catching up with our returning safari travellers. They all had a wonderful time in the Serengeti, reporting lots of animals, including babies. We will have our safari starting Monday 24th, so we are quite excited about seeing the animals.
So, not much of interest in today’s report, but it has been good to have a quiet one. Tomorrow is the start of our second and final week at the school, and we will be busy for a few days finishing off the med checks.
Check in again later in the week and hopefully we will have something of greater interest to report on.