The New Road

How cool is this?

I've been trading emails with some folks that want some advice about code generation and today one of them sent me a gift:

When I was in Tanzania, I stayed with a family that lives in Old Moshi at the foothills of Kilimanjaro. One day we hiked three hours up the foothills to a water fall. About two hours up, I stopped in front what looked like a log cabin. It was really cool, a log cabin surrounded by banana and avocado trees that sat on a hill looking down into a valley of coffee plants. About 15 feet from the log cabin, in a gully, a man was working at a forge with a giant bellows (see attached picture). He and the other people who live on this mountain are Chagga. Anyway, I wanted to take a picture and asked the people I was with to ask him if he minded. He turned out to be very friendly and showed us a number of artifacts that he had in his cabin including a ceremonial horn that was over 100 years old (a rams horn with silver decoration that is used to call people to meeting), a kind of giant dipper with handle (used to drink ceremonial banana beer - yes, they brew beer from bananas in Tanzania), etc. The man is a craftsman and makes both metal and wooden items for market and showed us some bowls, etc. that he was taking into town (that weren't for sale because they were "spoken for"). Anyway, I asked him if he would please consider selling me one small bowl that I admired....and he did.

Now, it's yours.

Long story short, it's a small token of thanks, but one that has an interesting history...from the man with the forge on the foothills of Kilimanjaro.

That is SO COOL. I can't wait to see what the bowl looks like.

I'm trying to describe what these folks do. It's basically giving access to impoverished people. But I'm really not sure about the specifics.