Last weekend (Ok it's almost 2 weeks by the time I finally finished adding pics)we drove about 2 hours west of Arusha straight toward Kilimanjaro where we stayed at a working farm for the night. We had a great time. The woman and man that run the farm sell their vegetables, etc in town (you may have seen pics in one of my first blogs of her veggies that she sells from her house http://tanzanytales.blogspot.com/2010/01/produce-day.html). The kids (and grown-ups) had a great time. We went with the Banks and Foley families. The farm rents out rooms and offers full meals with a lot of it coming from their own farm/garden. The kids enjoyed seeing the ducks, turkeys, chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, and even got to ride one of the horses around the yard. We walked through the strawberry patch and watched as the kids gorged themselves on fresh berries. Driving around the area we got to see a herd of elephants going in to the forest. Also, after 'sundowners' (African version of happy hour) we saw an African wild cat. The men and Lara also went out for a night drive with spotlights (one of the benefits of being on private property and not a national park where it's prohibited) and they saw several more cats, a porcupine, and other fun stuff that only comes out at night. The spot that was set up for sundowners was absolutely gorgeous. We looked over the Masaii plains where we could see Mt. Meru, Ngorongoro Crater, and over toward Kenya. The sunset as the backdrop was amazing. Such a great resource and such fun to for us all to see where our food is coming from. 
As a side story to that…I asked Mama Jackie how her weekend was since she had the Saturday off while we were gone. She was very excited that she'd had the day to take a dala dala (bus – sort of like a minivan) to the town of Karatu which is about 2 hours away. I asked her why she went to Karatu and she said that maize is cheaper to buy there. So, she spent her full day off to save a total of 10,000 Ts (just over $7 US). Really keeps things in perspective.
Last week we were invited over to the Peterson's house for dinner. He (Daudi) is like the father of Arusha – their family owns a very large safari company (the one that Matt and I used when we came in November) and they also do a ton of work with the communities in and around Arusha. A really interesting family. At one point during dinner we were talking about snake bites, etc and what they do if someone is injured in the field. Daudi disappears for a minute and comes back with something that looks like it could house a car battery. He said that to treat snake bites, allergic bee stings, etc they just shock the affected area. Amazing. Matt turned out to be our personal guinea pig as he cranked the handle and shocked himself on the chest (as Daudi says 'oh I don't think I've ever shocked anyone near the hear before' – ha, ha). I think this must be a Peterson family party trick, but it turns out that this is something that people here just know. They aren't quite sure why it works, but 'they' think it might be a few different reasons or some combination: proteins are broken down, blood vessels are constricted, and/or it jump starts the immune response. So in addition to the self-cranking car battery size shocker, he also carries a portable cattle prod on his belt specifically for this purpose. Very interesting. (Rat – I hope you're taking notes).
Tierney finally lost her first tooth and the tooth fairy came (we think it's the American tooth fairy because Tierney got a US $1). All very exciting.
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