In the morning we traveled to the village of Lindi to meet with the project manager of the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF). The AKF is a partner with TPP in southern Tanzania. We listened to a presentation about how AKF is structured locally and how they function. The purpose of the meeting was to strengthen the relationship between AKF and TPP and to determine on what areas we should be focusing more attention.
We returned to Mtwara and checked into the Naf View Blue Hotel. It is a small hotel but it was clean, had air conditioning and a hot water on demand system in each room. I have stayed in a lot, lot worse. Every hotel we stayed in on this trip had flat screen TV’s and a satellite feed. I thought that was quite good considering how remote some of the places are.
The Naf Blue View is also Muslim owned so the job of fetching the beer was again my responsibility. I wandered into the main area of the village where the central commerce takes place. We are talking dirt roads and real third world types of stores. All I found was stores that sold soft drinks and no beer. About every other store was a selling cell phones. I felt a bit uncomfortable being the only white person walking through the area but I didn’t get harassed. I did purchase a bag of cashews from a street vendor and a couple of prostitutes propositioned me. No, I absolutely, positively did not purchase what they were offering. I’ve done some stupid things but nothing that stupid.
I was faced with a dilemma. No beer and I was being counted on to be the supplier. In a desperate move I asked the guy at the desk of the hotel where I could get beer. He said, “tell me what you want and I’ll go get it.” I told him and gave him the money. Shortly he returned with some tall cool ones. I was a savior once again. It is important to be a contributor to the trip, not just an observer.
Before dinner there was a meeting to allow everyone to give their impressions and recommendations. That is an important exercise because it allows everyone to assess the projects from a perspective other than their own.
One thing we learned about the Naf Blue View is that you should put your food order in many hours ahead of time. They apparently go out and purchase the food and then prepare it based on what is ordered. To bring some levity to the situation and to pass some time we started a pool to predict when the last plate would be served. The pool fee was 10,000 Tanzanian shillings. That is about $6.50 US. I, being the optimist had the earliest time. That gave me the largest window. I lost miserably. The latest time won which was about 2 hours later. As annoying as it might have been waiting for our food, there was a lot of frivolity aided by the pool and the beer. After all that, the food wasn’t bad.