speed post

At an internet cafe making a quick update so sorry for typos...

Everyone is here and having a good time. We leave for the mountain tomorrow morning. I'll continue to post short updates as long as I have battery life and a signal. With any luck there will be a summit photo next Sunday. Anyway, here's a quick summary of the last 3 days...

Friday

Linda, Kellie, Ted, Donovan and I spent the morning and early afternoon exploring Moshi. We started at the Sokoni (market) downtown. It was a vibrant collection of colorful vegetables, fruits, grains, meat and fish. Everyone was dressed in the tradional colorful African clothing which help make it an overload of colors. Truly amazing to see. We did snap a few photos which I post when I get a chance. We then had lunch at a local Indian owned hotel where I tried Ugani (like polentia but white). That afternoon we drove up to the foothills of Kili and explored a village (Fukenia) near where Donovan lived. Very lush with an amazing diversity of plants, trees, flowers (phots will be posted. That night we had drinks on the roof top bar of a downtown hotel (Kindoroko) hoping for views of Kili which was in the clouds. Then pizza at and Indian owned Italian restaurant. Indians came to Tanzania to help build the railroad and later stayed on as business owners. That night Lisa, Donna, Jane, Jim, Jon, Mike joined us.

Saturday

This morning we were offered our first cloud free view of kili as we ate breakfast at the hotel. We started by exploring another sokoni near the hotel. This was an outdoor one similar to a Sat market in Portland but much bigger and with a larger variety. We then crammed onto a dalla dalla (bush taxi) to drive out to a very remote Masai villege (see link to the rigth about the Masai). They rarely see Westerns if at all and they were as curious about us as we were about them. Things eventually warmed and they were eager to show us around the villege, a collection of a few very primitve buildings and the corals they keep their livestock in. We handed out school supplies to the childern who were so excited. When we would take a photo they were so curious to see what the camera did and what the photo looked like. By the end of an hour we had half the villege following us aound. Kellie was of special interest with long blonde hair and had many Masai suitors.

Sunday

We headed back up to the foothills where Donovan had lived. We saw the house where he lived and offered a hostel type enivornment to travelers. We then hiked around foothils for about 2-3 hours seeing many Chagga (see link to the right), touring a school a church and several homes. Tonight we'll have our preclimb meeting and check out equipment. Tomorrow we head off the Londorossi Gate to start the climb.

That it's for now, gotta go...
jw.. jw... (up up up)