January 10, 2008

Thursday, January 10th

Dear friends,

We arrived here last night and received such a warm welcome from Florentina. She is a travel agent
whose home we are staying at. She also has many great connections for us here in order to meet the people we need to speak with. We had a wonderful dinner and conversation and fell into bed after our 20 hours of travel.

Today was a busy and amazing day. We started by meeting and interviewing the guides who take the climbers up on Mt. Kilimanjaro. They live in a comfortable village where a clean working water system has been in place for 20 years. They will be our 'model' of what we hope to accomplish. They were so kind and cooperative and had much needed information. They were even comfortable on camera.

This afternoon we took a very long ride up the mountain to visit the native villages that have water 'intakes', sources that exist from streams and waterfalls on the mountain. This was a great opportunity
to see how the people live and how they access water. It is such a difficult way to live, something
we can not even comprehend. Women climbing uneven rocky red dirt paths, sticky bushes, up and down the hill 3 to 4 times per day, carrying jugs of water on their heads.

We won't talk about the drive itself where Chris thought the van was going off the edge of the mountain and hung onto Barb's arm the whole time!

The first day was so exciting and hopeful!