to Ifakara, by road

The alarm goes off, but instead of my usual morning grumpies, I find my soul irresistibly rising and swelling with the joy of the church music that floats up to my window from the church next door.

After breakfast at the hotel, we pile into two buses, and set off toward Ifakara. Helen points out baobab trees by the side of the road, ancient and otherworldly and amazing. There is laughter in the bus, and African hiphop blaring from the radio. I fall asleep.

Then it's time for lunch at a national park. We eat sandwiches and chips among frolicking elephants, grazing zebra, lumbering buffalo, scampering monkeys.

Back into the bus. Back onto the good tarred road, that eventually turns into dirt road. 65km of dirt road, which we travel at 20km/hr. The sun sets, we are tired. There are jokes about "Tanzanian kilometers." But mostly it's gotten quiet. We are getting hungry again too.

Nearly 11 hours after departing on what was supposed to be a 7 hour trip, we pull into the training center campus, and are greeted by women with glasses of juice. The air here is fragrant with frangipani. There's dinner waiting on the lawn. We eat by candlelight, drinking African beers and imported champagne.