Mystery Solved...

Well we finally met up with Brian Polkinghorne yesterday! Brian is an Australian chap connected with the Anglican church & who works out of Mackay House in the city centre. Mackay house is part of the Diocese and is a local health clinic and I was made aware of him through a work colleague who connected me to Bob from Markham....what a small world (thanks Nadine and Bob!).

We started looking for Brian the day after we arrived however it took 3 or 4 trips over the course of the week back to Mackay House before we finally bumped into him...it was starting to feel like a bit of a scavenger hunt - each time we went there we found out a little bit more information and felt closer to our goal! First trip, we learned the hours of operation. Second trip, confirmed that Brian did in fact exist but was not there and we should come back the next day around 9am - confirming this information took the efforts of 4 people using their bits and pieces of Swahili and effective hand signals or body parts. Third trip, no luck at first, but retrieved a phone number from a kind man who was curious about why we kept showing up. Finally we were about to leave and turned around and low and behold there he was....only to find out through conversation that he had been having breakfast 2 tables down from us at the New Dodoma Hotel! In any case, we are glad we finally tracked him down and will have a sit down conversation with him early next week to find out more about the work he is doing and some of the local regional sites he might be able to advise us on.

We also had another new experience yesterday while at the University. We had noticed an ambulance at one point down below where we sit and didnt pay too much attention until suddenly there was what sounded like a very large choir singing a church hymn in swahili. We went to see what was going on and it was quite a moving event - there had to be 500 people gathered around the ambulance in honor of someone who had passed away. I had chills watching and even as I write about it now I feel goose bumps. We found out later that one of the students meet an untimely death and this was the ceremonial farewell of the student for the family. It went on for at least 15 minutes and we watched in amazement and respect for the tradition. I think it gave all of us in the room a moment of pause....life can be short but there is still alot of love in the world.

off to work now.