Six-hour pizza

I host TCRS guests at my house. The lovely lady in the picture is Heather, a Canadian PhD student, who visited me with translator Bacilious in December. Heather was my first pizza buddy.

Heather chopping veggies for the pizza toppings.

A view of the kitchen. We didn't have any water that day and had to haul it in buckets. The red bucket in the left-hand corner is one of two buckets we used to haul water. The pot on the stove is what we used to boil water. And we used the plastic bins in the sink to save our dishwater so we could reuse it to flush the toilets. As you can tell, the kitchen was a bit of a disaster, but everything turned out okay.

Two of our four pizzas. We baked the pies on pot lids ;-)

The Hill Top

These photos were taken at the Hill Top Hotel. We went there to swim in the pool and eat at the resturant.


View from the pool at the Hill Top.



The Hill Top dining room--it was a beautiful no-rice meal ;-) Though I do like rice, it was nice to eat something different.

Dr. Livingston…

About 4 miles outside of Kigoma Town sits Ujiji. This little village is known as the place where Stanley met Dr. Livingston under the mango tree. Since we were so close to this famous site, we took a morning to travel to Ujiji to see it. At the Livingston compound there is a concrete block monument that marks where the original mango tree stood, two mango trees descended from the original, and a small museum.


Children who live near the museum—they are used to posing for photos ;-)

One of the two mangos descended from the original tree and Sarah, my friend from the IRC.

Michael, another PiAf fellow, and I pose in front of the monument.

Michael, the museum guide, and I pose for a picture with paper mache replicas of Stanley and Livingston.

Kigoma

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ;-) It was great to be home for the holidays and to see so many family members and friends!

Right now I am spending most of my time in the office, so I do not have recent photos to post. I do, however, have old photos and the next several posts will contain these old photos.

At the beginning of December two frinds and I traveled to Kigoma, a town on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest lake in the world. Here are a few shots from our hotel, The Aqua Lodge.

The view from the back of the Aqua Lodge. It cost about $20 a night to stay here. At night we could hear the water splashing against the shore--so peaceful!!

Another shot from the Lodge.

In the background, on the opposit side of the shore, you can see the hills of the DRC. This is the Eastern part of the country where there is currently fighting between the government and rebel groups. Though the fighting continues, many Congolese refugees are choosing to return.

To the left is a hillside that host the Hill-Top hotel. It is a luxury hotel with a great resturant and a swimming pool! To get to the Hill-Top from Aqua Lodge, you must pass through part of the town and the local prison. When we went past the prison, the prisoners were out working in the fields.

World AIDS Day

At the beginning of December, several went to the camp to take part in World AIDS Day activities. People in Nduta Camp martched from the hospital to the soccer field where they gathered for 3 hours of song, dance, music, drama, and AIDS messages. Overall, the event was a lot of fun. Hopefully audience members also learned more about the disease and how to prevent it.

These drummers started the event and periodically drummed between performances.

This is the shelter where the guests of honor sat, most of whom were NGO workers.

A shot of part of the crowd. There were probably 1,500 people there.

This group of women did a beautiful dance.

These men sang and danced. Their dance was supposed to teach others how to use condoms...

This is a close up of one of the guitars used. It is made from a metal can used to distribute oil.

Spectators who couldn't get close enough to see climbed trees to get a better view.

These kids did a really cute song and dance number.

Water Project

Below you will find photos from a TCRS water project in a village that is about 5 km/3.2 miles from Kanembwa Camp. Projects like this are intended to benefit the refugee host communities, which oftentimes have very underdeveloped infastructure.

TCRS is building one large collection tank to hold water. This is a view from the top of the tank.

In this photo you can see two of the men who are building the tank (right) and some of the villagers who will benefit from this project. The kids are collecting water from the pipe that will eventually feed water to the tank.

Another shot of the kids.

This is one of three collection chambers for water that will fill the tank. This chamber collects water from a spring. Water is then piped to the tank. It goes from the tank to tabs which are spread around the village. All water in this system is moved by gravity.

Mump III

And this is a shot of the Mump from the IRC compound which is where we start our run.