Arriving at school

I'm now at The School of St. Jude, just out of Arusha, in Tanzania.  For those who are not familiar with it, their website (in need of updating apparently) is
http://www.schoolofstjude.co.tz/

The Riverside shuttle bus - a Toyota mini bus, quite comfortable, left on time at 8am this morning from across the road to the hotel I was staying in.  I was expecting what I remember to be a "typical African journey", ie, a very long, hot & dusty trip with a bus full of people, luggage, chickens, boxes etc etc etc.

How wrong I was.  The bus wasn't full, my seat was comfortable - and I was sitting right up the front, so my view was perfect.  We had a bit of traffic getting out of Nairobi since it was peak hour traffic and then we carried on along a road that was tarred.  In places though, they were still building the road (it won't be too long before there is a continuous road, in great condition, between Nairobi and Arusha at least) so there were detours along dirt roads.  One stretch was along seriously rutted road which was busy in both directions.  It was dusty and there were a mix of people pulling platforms of jerry cans, pushbikes, motorbikes (the pillion seat had 5 crates piled high, all held on by a single cord), cars, vans, mini buses and trucks.  Some of the mini buses and buses have "names" on the destination panel above the windscreen, and I just had to smile when one called "Terror Surprise" tried to overtake a truck&trailer and then realised there was a heap of traffic and he just couldn't squeeze through.

We had a loo/drink stop where there were the usual assortment of items also for sale, and then a very quick border crossing at Namanga which took just over half an hour.  This was really quick.  Anne - there was a Guerba truck (!!) arriving at the border, and we'd been tagging a Dragoman truck heading south as well.

The tarred road continued on the Tanzanian side - and we arrived in Arusha just after 1pm.  I was expecting to arrive closer to 4pm.  The Arusha I remember was a small one horse town.  The Arusha of today has mushroomed, and I will be seeing the town centre tomorrow.  But with the road the way it was, the thought of riding a motorbike across Africa soon will be easy.

The only animals today were cattle, goats (with their Masai herdsmen), donkeys and a camel - not an elephant in sight.  And my cameras stayed tucked away all day.

This afternoon, I had a brief tour of both parts of the campus I'm at - Moshono Campus.  I met some of the volunteers and staff.  Tomorrow I'll be updated on my schedule, and will be meeting with the people from the Marketing Department as well.  I'll also be going into town, and maybe over to the Usa Campus to see what it's like over there.  It sounds like I'll be extremely busy for the time I'm working here.  I have a desk and computer in the office section!  There is wifi connection so they've organised my laptop to connect to that as well.

My room is far bigger than I thought it would be.  It has a double bed, lounge, huge open shelving area, coffee table, bedside table and an ensuite with loo, shower and handbasin.  And still lots of free space to walk around.  The block that it's in has been dubbed "Bondi".  I've had dinner upstairs in the Bondi kitchen with the other volunteers working here and who are in the Bondi block.

So, that's it for today.  It's full on from tomorrow .....