Our first Mbeya visit…

We are just back at Language School, fresh from our first visit to Mbeya! It was a wonderful chance to see where we will be living and working come June and we had a great time. Here are some of the things we did:
-we saw some of the work we will doing. We were heavily involved in a basic literacy – for those who don’t read and write in any language – materials production workshop. This will help them to learn to read and write in their mother tongue then be able to move on to Swahili later. This involved us facilitating one language team so they could design the first consonant booklet content-including pictures, stories and exercises. It was great to meet some of the literacy people we’ll be working with and to see them getting excited about their own language!
-we met lots of our future colleagues… and hopefully friends! We were able to spend Easter weekend with them and so had some good time to get to know each other a bit by visiting peoples houses and going for a meal etc.
-we got to explore the town. Although Mbeya has lots of people in it there is not much to the town itself. Though that suits us well as we like being in ‘bigger’ places without being swamped!
-we did fun stuff: with friends we saw a bit more of the surrounding countryside, including a volcano crater lake which we hiked to the top of the rim through rainforest!

So all in all it was a good 4 week visit. We are now preparing to get back into ‘formal’ language learning again… we have 13 weeks of it stretching in front of us!

Following some requests we have tried to put online a few more pics of the ‘general’ surroundings here in Tanzania. Just click on the photo album link on the right-hand side of the page. We’ve also uploaded a couple of videos showing some clips from our 7hr ‘coaster’ bus ride back to language school. Sorry the quality isn’t too great, and the wind wrecks the sound, but we think it might help give an impression of what its like. In particular watch out for all the ‘daladalas’ (the little Toyota minibuses with the purple stripes)… they are the main mode of local transport here. Also see in one of the clips, near the beginning, the ‘conductor’ guy stopping the traffic before jumping into the moving ‘dala’… all the more impressive/crazy considering this is the main Tanzania-Zambia highway! Let us know what you think… we are always interested to hear others thoughts on such daily activities! The clips are located here and here (sorry its on its side... changed it on computer  - no idea why its gone back!).