The Curiosity

On your mark, get set, GO. And I begin writing my first blog now. So what better topic than to write about curiosity, expectations and the butterflies. Let me start with my travel itinerary.

Unless Emirates pilots go on strike or Bangalore traffice jams prevent me from boarding the flight, I should reach Dubai by early morning on Friday. And what do I expect to see in Dubai ? Arab King or Shaikhs of Dubai or Dawood and Chhota Shakeel .. May be. But Rodrigo gives this news now that Kate from CDC will travel from Dubai to Dar Es Salaam in same flight with us. So I should get to meet Kate atleast. And for those of you who do not know Kate, she is our NGO Partner and she is from US.

I am supposed to take next flight to Dar Es Salaam in afternoon and I should land in Tanzania by 3:20 pm. And this is my Jambo to the Country of Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar .. or to say .. land of ‘Hakunaa Mataataa’.!!!

We will stay at Hotel Mediterranio for 2 nights before we leave to Dodoma on Sunday morning. So this is where I should meet the legendary team ‘Dodoma Kikoa 1’. And the stalwarts are, from East to West - Roku from Japan, Sean from Australia, Sindu and Sandip from India, Lucia from Slovakia, Wolfgang from Germany, Beth, Dan and Liz from US and Denise from Canada.

So how do I picture them. Roku should be a silent person. Japanese are known for their genius. And I just love the way they speak English.

Sean said he likes to run. And he promised me that we will play cricket when we meet in Tanzania. Let us see if he brings the spins of Shane Warne or the charisma of Ricky Ponting.

Sindu is from India, and she is a likes to talk and talk and talk. I have met her twice in Bangalore.

Sandip is Sandip. And that’s me.

Lucia is from Slovakia. And I have not met anyone from Slovakia before. And let me say this. You look beautiful. In your picture atleast.

Wolfgang is from Germany and he is interested in politics. He is sort of a tech genius. He is the one who set up google docs, added a few interesting gadgets to our ning sites. He said he plays guitar. So let us look forward to listen some german songs during our camp fire nights.

Beth will be my colleague for assignment at UDOM. And let me tell you beth, I loved your spirit to volunteer, inspite of the fact that your team lost the basketball game.

Dan is from Kansas City. And I believe Kansas City is the best city is United States. Why? Because that’s the only city I visited in US.

Liz is from Colarado. I know they have a lot of ski resorts there. Liz can say hello in 16 languages. I am going to ask her to say Hello in ‘Hindi’.

Denise is Canadian. For an Indian, Canada is country where you find more Punjabis, than anyone else. I will ask her if she has heard any of the famous ‘Sardar Jokes’.

And I guess a short get together at Dar Es Salaam should be interesting. Let us see how many of my projections go right.