We’ve been in Tanzania a couple of weeks now and here on the western side one thing stands out – homes are drab. The exterior anyway. Dirt brown brick houses line the road from Zombe to Sumbawango and on to Mbeya. No colorful paint or decorative designs here, no five gallon buckets cut in half and filled with plants; few trees around the homes. Coming from Zambia, this is mind-boggling. Occasionally I see some “landscaping” but it is not the norm. Homes here all seem to be of the same vintage, the livable ones at least. We wondered if this whole area is a “housing development” for settling people; Tanzania has one of the world’s highest refugee populations. There are an astonishing number of unlivable homes mixed in with the newer ones. It seems as if when a home falls apart it is left there and a new one built next to it. This gives a village a haunting look, homes abandoned when their owners became zombies or something. I’ve got zombies on the brain.

The Great North Road runs through this country. Jim wants to start a campaign with the promise to make the Great North Road great again! We crawled along its length for close to 10 hours one day and yes, great is not the word I’d use to describe it. We pulled over to eat something and stretch – not a scenic spot, either – and I broke the coffee press. My precious! I could have sworn the press was plastic but when it flew out of its holder and broke into pieces, plainly it was glass.  Jim laughed and said the look on my face was priceless. What luck that our camping destination that night was a coffee plantation. After that long drive the plantation was a relief and right at the reception were coffee presses for sale. Now we have a new precious, and a bag of ground coffee to go with it. Life is good.