special issue for philly

ewo i michale kochani, to specjalnie dla was :)

i'm in the middle of nowhere, in Ifakara, actually. the only way to get out of here is going back, as i came. the road ends soon. there's also train (tazara - tanzania-zambia line) passing a couple of km from here. i'll try to get on the train tonight to go to Mbeya.

suprisingly enough, Ifakara turne out to be not-such-a-lost place. even though it's very small with no paved roads and dark at night and i haven't yet found any coffee here, it seems to be an important place. it's a valley, where there's the biggest malaria transmission in the world. that's why there's a research institute generously financed by the gates foundation. i was lucky enought to meet two interns catching and feeding mosquitos there... more details when i'm back. it's very interesting!!!

now about my travel in general: me and two other friends got some money from the Uni of Warsaw to research african and afro-shirazi art. we're here for 6 weeks with no particular plan. just going from one place to another, doing interviews and taking pictures of whatever falls into our hands. the guys have already gone noth, in the direction of Kenya, but i'm still heading south. i'm planning to make a loop around Tanzania (we've already been to the east coast). now i'm going south and west, then maybe to lake tanganyka, lake victoria, arusha (north) and close the loop in nairobi.

visiting fairtrade places here is just my hobby :) it's just so interesting to see in practice what i'm talking about so much;) i've got some addresses from the IFAT website (www.ifat.org) and so i'm trying to visit some of the producers. i've been so far to Bombolulu Workshops near Mombasa and to Kwanza (handcraft) in Dar es Salaam. i'm hoping to go and visit coffee producers of KNCU near Moshi, but they said it would cost 100$ to go there. i'll try to negociate the price and we'll see...

so much for now. the last couple of days, since i left the guys have been amazing... i'm meeting at least one super-interesting person a day :)