Henry Meets Duma

I apologize if I am misspelling the cat's name; it may be Doma, but for the purpose of this post, we will call the cute kitten Duma. He is one of our friends' many pets (they also have a small brown goat, two guinea fowl, a large tortoise, two large dogs and assorted lizards) and is right at that cute small kitten stage where he's still big enough to play. If he lives through our visit it will surprise me. Henry loves playing with him and squeezes the kitten quite violently, but the cat keeps coming back for more.

Yesterday afternoon was full of a bus ride (not a dala dala but they're probably working us up to that) to the YL house a little south of here in Dar. It is in a neighborhood more typical of the city, where many residents share a very small space. I am thus far unable to figure out how they draw boundaries, but there are definitely set boundaries for 'this is my space to live in, this is yours'. The staff meets in the house to pray, sing, provide study space and education for youth, and they do clubs for the youth here too. It is a very small house by our standards, but was quite nice within the neighborhood. Baby and Wildman had fun with the ever-present array of drums and percussive equipment and enjoyed the chalkboard and erasers.

After our visit, we boarded our bus to return to the training center (also known as our friends' house) when we suddenly veered off of our path and stopped. It was a little concerning until I realized that we had met up with the rest of our group arriving from the U.S. and in a carefully orchestrated scheme, we were becoming part of their grand welcome to Tanzania. There was a hired African brass wedding band playing worn instruments very well and very quickly and loud, and we all left the buses to ride auto rickshaws (like an enclosed moped with 3 wheels and a backseat) and many rode on the backs of bicycles (think of a small luggage rack with a cushion that you ride on) back to the training center. The wedding band played fervently all the way there, standing in the open back of a pickup truck and never missing a beat. The kids loved speeding down the road with the wind in their hair!

After a time to visit and refresh for those who had just flown in, we all (over 100 now!) sat down for an amazing catered meal of fresh seafood, various curry dishes and delicious sides of every kind. Afterward, everyone spilled into the living room for wonderful worship and fellowship. I smiled seeing Ruby in the middle of it all, and she did a great job following the Swahili singing while playing a bell.

We had a good night of sleep and are now getting ready for breakfast and another day of adventure!