Mbozi Meteorite

On Saturday I joined some friends on a trip to Mbozi Meteorite. This meteorite is supposed to be the 8th biggest in the world (or the 4th – depending on which guidebook you read), but despite that it was disappointingly small. We had travelled for a couple of hours, overshooting the turnoff by about 20km (as the signpost was barely discernable as such), before finally arriving – so that it’s diminutive stature felt like something of a joke, especially when we were charged for the privilege of looking at it. However, we still had fun eating our picnic there, by the 12 ton stone (about 98% iron), and there were some lovely views to be seen through the trees and on the journey.
Unfortunately, as the day passed I started to feel a bit rough, my whole body began to ache and when I got home I felt so cold and headachy. Malaria? Not sure, but took the medicine on the advice of my neighbours, who then took good care of me all Sunday – providing me with meals. So I enjoyed a quiet Sunday at home, listening to a sermon on my computer on the book of Ruth, and then reading the whole book of Ruth in my Swahili Bible for a bit of practice, writing e-mails, watching Jane Eyre, reading and dozing. Today I’m back in the office, and work continues as usual.

A Sunday afternoon stroll

Monica, Tina (landlady and daughter) and I decided to go for a walk, after returning from attending the early service at church (8-10am) and then going to a café for ‘supu’ together. ‘Supu’ is a stew/watery soup with either goat meat (including offal) or chicken in it, accompanied by chapatti or grilled plantain. Not quite what I’m used to for breakfast, but tasty all the same!

A mountain rises up behind our neighbourhood (as you can see in the picture on the right, my house is the one on the right), so off we set. Not sure if you can call climbing a hill a stroll, but we took our time as we made our way up through the wooded hillside. There was a lovely scent in the air from the eucalyptus trees, birds were singing and at one point a stream trickled down the hill.

We didn’t make it all the way to the top, but we got some fantastic views over the city of Mbeya.


You could just about make out where our houses were (as I’ve tried to show by the red ring on the picture, and the arrow is the drive down to our houses). While the others took a rest, I pressed on and found the main path heading up the mountain – there was still a long way to go, but even after a few minutes more of climbing I could see for miles in all directions. One day I’ll get to the top!!

Chai time at the office

Every morning we have a chai break (chai is tea), sometimes accompanied by fresh fruit from someone’s garden, and always accompanied by mandazi (doughnut like cake things). As you can see, there’s quite a crowd of us working in the office when we’re all there (and not out running workshops or visiting different project locations to gather language data or meet with the translation teams or church leaders…)