It was the Best of Homecomings and the Worst of Homecomings

I had a fight with my department head yesterday over teaching methods.    On the other hand I received several packages containing books, and no home is complete without untidy piles of books in the process of being read or simply spilling out of the bookcases.  On the other hand again my proxy server in the states is down currently.  Farewell sweet netflix.   Fortunately, the internet is providing me with some wonderful things like the latest xkcd, in which Randall Munroe asks an important question that should have occurred to me back when I was an undergrad presented with this problem.  Seriously, why do you have a wolf?

Oh well.  I did have a fabulous trip.  I had some work to do in Tanga that not so coincidentally was arranged for a weekend when I could see my old Morogoro sitemate before he left for America and also it was my birthday.

We went to a bamboo forest and toured some limestone caves.

 

Tree full of annoying birds and their nests. 

Sculpture probably for traditional worship
but I couldn't get a story about it.

Into the gaping black maw. 

Unfortunately, a lot of the rock was defaced by graffiti. 

The caves are a very interfaith place of worship, the traditionalists, as always, came first and they leave offerings.  That's grain scattered on the floor, bottles of various things (the darker ones blood, most likely not human) and in the middle there's a bottle of rose water.  People soak twigs in the water and burn it like incense.

This stone is where the Muslims worship because some of the markings look
like words from the Koran.

This is where the Christians worship, there are some stone formations up
in the arch that supposedly look like the annunciation. 

It's nice to see some tolerance going on.  Normally everyone is Christian or Muslim and makes fun of the traditionalists.  Of course, acknowledging only three possible religious beliefs isn't that big a step up from acknowledging only two possible religious beliefs and the logic of worshiping in the caves seems to be because of pareidolia more than anything else, but whatever.  There was also a natural chair formation that was where the king of demons sat back in the days of demon congresses.  I sat on it, though every horror show I have ever seen tells me this is a bad idea.  

 Most of the stalactites were touched so much that they weren't shiny any more, but this was up near the ceiling out of easy reach.

Light at the end of the tunnel. 

Since we were in the area, we also stopped by some sulphur hot springs with healing properties, maintained by an old man rocking a toothbrush mustache.  He presented me with a water bottle full of the water.  

The grasses are free floating islands formed of the dead roots and fronds
that the sulphur kills and which somehow forms a shield and nutrient base for the stuff on top. 

The water is kind of whitish and bubbly.  Also smelly. 

No day is complete without a football match.  Fortunately, Yanga (the Young Africans, a team from Dar) was here to play the home team, the Coastal Union.  In the hot sun.  Fortunately, as spectators, we get to sit and drink water and eat popsicles (frozen mango juice on a stick.  Sold by the weirdest seller I've ever encountered.  Most vendors everywhere yell constantly what they are selling and shove it in one's face, but this man just walked around with an unlabeled closed cooler, and when I asked him what he was selling he muttered something I couldn't even hear.  I can't decide if this was terrible business strategy or good business strategy, since it did make him stand out) while other people sweat for our entertainment.  Popsicles and circuses, yo.  Also guards with really big guns.

So hard to get pictures through the fence I didn't really try.  But I did like that people climbed what I assume would be the light poles assuming they had lights on them.

Can you spot the white person?