Radio Furaha spreads its wings

Sorry for the missed day, we were busy teaching and getting diesel. When last we heard from our intrepid professors, they were on a mission to obtain diesel fuel. The fuel truck arrived some time on Tuesday and we pulled into the station as the initial surge of folks gassed up. The line clearly stretched down the street and as Dale maneuvered the assault vehicle (oh, sorry, I meant the Range Rover), the little attendant waved us in the out direction and said just wait, he has an extra long hose for us. We waited a couple of minutes nose to nose with the outgoing vehicles and then when the one in front of us was done they backed out into the street and we pulled up. I handed the attendant 150,000 Tanzanian Shillings (about $100) and said 150,000 please. He never counted the wad of money but filled it and stopped when the money numbers reached 150,003 shillings. We are paying 2020 shillings per liter or about $5.00/gallon for diesel.

After that victory, we headed home to pick up the rest of the crew. They went to an after school program run by the nuns nearby. Some played games, some worked on their English and some just watched. This is a chance for Sharon, Carrie, Caleb, Annica, and Tobie to get to know some of the kids and help with these programs. The kids are also going up to the after school events at the International School to play soccer and basketball.

I have been working on getting Radio Furaha streaming on the Internet. With limited resources and Internet connectivity here, it is best if we send the audio stream off to some server provider and let them worry about too many people connecting to the service. I chose "listen2myradio.com" as our provider as they have servers in Germany, England and the U.S. We have the streaming service set up so that all one must do to connect to Radio Furaha is to set your browser to "furaha.listen2myradio.com" and let the little radio player download. We finally got that all working on Wednesday afternoon and are in the testing mode. We should have the streaming going permanently in the next couple of days.

Radio Furaha is at the headquarters of the Iringa Diocese of the Lutheran Church of Tanzania. That is about a 2 block walk from our apartment and many who work or volunteer at the Diocese live in our apartment block.

The radio studio includes two control/studio rooms and a central conference room that can also be a large studio.

The station is on FM and runs 24/7 with music, spiritual, health car and personal advice programming. It is hoped that by putting Radio Furaha on the international Internet, others (especially in the U.S.) will help support the radio station and be able to reconnect with their families and friends here in Tanzania.

Just a couple of other interesting happenings. Last night we went to Lulu's for dinner. Tobie ordered a "cheeseburger" and what arrived was a cheese sandwich on a large burger bun. He was disappointed but a quick order of the beef to accompany the cheese brightened his spirits. I have not been checking in with the IT faculty as I have been busy with class. This morning I looked in on the original office assigned to me in the "old" science building. Previously there were 3 or 4 faculty members and books and computers. All of that is gone now and apparently the faculty have moved to their offices in the new Science Building. The new science building is still under construction and the workers are still putting up forms for pouring concrete on the 5th floor above the offices. But, the faculty have moved there. No facilities, no network, and no students in the area, but the faculty has moved up there!

It is late and I need my beauty rest. Tomorrow is an early class and then we are hosting dinner for the Americans in the apartment complex. We will need to drive to the market to buy cases of milk, pop and other heavy stuff. This is always fun as the Range Rover attracts lots of attention when the 7 of us pile out and spread out to the surrounding stores. See you later!