Tanzania - Day 1

After 30 hours of travel time with little sleep, we arrived in Dar es Salaam at midnight Sunday. Going through customs and the drive to our guest house took another hour, we got to sleep at 1am. The wake-up call was bright and early ... 5am. We loaded up 4 landcruisers and wound our way through the Monday morning Dar es Sallam traffic heading west to Morogoro.

We stopped for breakfast 1 1/2 hours out of Dar es Salaam, at a roadside, thatched roof, open-air cafe adjacent to a petrol station. We had a nice breakfast. Some had the Tanzania breakfast custom of chicken soup which consisted of broth and a boiled chicken leg (Scott). Others settled on the safer American favorite of scrambled eggs and toast.

Another 1 1/2 hour drive brought us to the town of Morogoro. Turns out this is a failry large town of about 200,000 people. Driving through the city to get to our hotel was difficult with a combination of trucks, cars, motorcycles, bikes and pedestrians sharing the same space.
Our accomodations are very clean and comfotable. It is a walled compound with 4 large single-story dorm type cement buildings. We are about 1/2 mile down a dirt road from town. It is very lush and tropical and the grounds are well landscaped.

Because if the humidity and jungle landscape, this is a very active area for malaria. Most of us are on medication but even with this, there is no guarantee. The malaria misquitoes are out from dusk until dawn. We ask for prayers in protecting us all from this dangerous disease.
We spent an hour unloading our gear and gatting our rom assignments. We then headed out to the job site, a 30km drive west of town. The job site is located in a large, remote open field away from town because of the lower cost of real estate.

Our morning job site ritual is to have a team member pray for our safety and for our family at home. This morning's prayer was given by our senior missionary Ron. We held a moment of silence for our long-time fiend and team member Jack and his wife who went to be with our Lord last year. Ron then gave a moving prayer for Jack's family and for healing hearts for all who came to know him. This was a very moving moment as we all loved Jack and miss his leading us in our morning worship song.

Job Site
The locations of the 4 buildings were excavated and a couple of the team members flew out a week earlier to layout the foottings for the metal trusses. This enabled us to hit the ground running by building trusses and setting up scaffolding.

It was a very warm and sunny morning and there is no shade at the site. A few hours into our work day, several team mebers were over taken by heat exhaustion. All recovered well after an hour or two of rest and rehydration. The afternoon brought cloud cover, a breeze, then a cool driving thunder storm which lasted 30 minutes. We continued to work through dusk then packed up for the 30km drive back to our lodge.

We had a productive day completing the smaller of the 4 buildings, a 45 x 30 ft structure for the pastor's home and completed truss assmebly of a 70 x 30 ft dining hall which we will erect and roof tomorrow. The other two building are a 150 x 30 ft dorm and a 60 x 30 ft classroom.
Needless to say, we were all exhausted and barely made it through dinner consisting of rice, potatoes, cabbage and chicken. After showers most retired by 8 to rest for Tuesday's 5am wakeup call.