Järvzoo

LIPS - Xbox 360

Sister Maria with her husband Henrik invited for a gaming evening in her new apartment. The game for the evening was Lips which is a karaoke game given to Maria by me and Jonas in Chrsitmas present. I was by far the worst singer and lost most of the time. In the video you can see my cousins Tobias and Marianne performing - you be the judge if they got talent or not?

Window view - Christmas day

Christmas eve @ örnv.1

My dream of white christmas came through. Lots of good food and nice family time.

Countdown for Christmas :-)

Home sweet home! Now 3 days left until christmas eve. Will be great to celebrate home with family. On picture you can see me and my younger sister Maria dressing the christmas tree as well as our house from front and back view. The old Corolla in front of the house is my dear car that needed a lot of hands on yesterday but is now running again :) Not many hours of daylight - sunrise 09:10 & sunset 14:34

Bollnäs, Sweden

I would not call it proper winter weather but at least a little bit of snow back home. Hoping for some more before Christmas. Picture is of the market square in Bollnäs.

Bus to dar

in mikumi getting lion food while tire is changed 


Visiting the Liljas

Went to visit my cousin Daniella and her family in Johannesburg. Johan made a brave attempt to do a South African braai in their lovely house. They seem to enjoy their new South African life and luckily the bad experience of a break-in to their home didn't scare them of.

Table Mountain

Cape Point

Mpumalanga - Blyde river canyon

Testing of HIV platform

Busy this week testing the platform in secondary schools by the help of counseling students at the university

Taarab Concert, Iringa

Chelsea-Liverpool 0-1

Went to watch some football but was not the only one who went to one of the few places in iringa that shows the 'big' games.

Päivi in Iringa

My Finnish extra mom is in town to give some lecturer at the university and to keep an eye on me...

Ruaha 29th Oct - 1st Nov

Anders finally came over to Iringa from Dar together with another countryman Ola and they dragged me out to Ruaha. It turned out to be quite a nice trip as we saw some spectacular animals. Some of the better memories from the trip will be the elephant that came up 5 meters from the fire place and the pack of more than 20 wild dogs. On the last day we drived around not seeing much but eventually we found a leopard laying comfortable in a baobab tree which made it by far my most successful game viewing experience in Ruaha so far.

Malaria no thanks!

After a month of thousands of mosquito bites and several friends suffering from Malaria I decided to play it safe and bought myself a net.

Tumaini graduation

After graduation I was invited to a friends graduation as according to the customs there was a lot of cake feeding going on.

ICT for Community Development

Organizing this course have been a lot of work but also lots of fun. Have put in a lot of effort to be a good host and give a positive experience of Tanzania. My car was turned into a Daladala. Participants came in from Finland, Nepal, Uganda and South Africa. Now when course is over life can go back to normal again :)

Surpricing help

I have now been in Tanzania for almost a week. Heidi came over from South Africa for a visit and timed her flight to land at the same time as I landed. Was nice with company for the long bus trip to Iringa and this time the 8 hours travel felt quite short. It was nice to come home to my apartment after 2 months of traveling. After first night in apartment electricity was switched of as bills had not been paid while I was away. I went to sort out the payment and was promised to get the electricity back within 2 hours... which did not happen and evening had to be spent in candle light.
On Saturday we went to Ruaha national park as Heidi had booked a flight back from there as there is no regular flights from Iringa. We spent the night at the governmental bandas which is a simple accommodation with no service but at a nice location just by the great Ruaha river. In evening as we were sitting by the fire we heard some noise and sounded like something was coming towards us. Since it was dark we could not see the hippo until it was just 5-7m away from us. Quite scary and I think Heidi almost shit her pants :) Otherwise we did not see that much wildlife but we did on the other hand not spend too much time driving around as car was giving some problems. For instance it did not want to start and we had to push start it a couple of times.
On Sunday Heidi got on her flight and I had to drive back by myself. On my way back on the washing board road and in the middle of nowhere one of my tires exploded. I switched of the engine and had a look at the damage and soon realized the reason for the terrible noise... Now I had double trouble on my hands as I did the mistake of switching of the engine on a car that does not want to start. Once I started to change the tire masai kids came out of the bushes and I got surprised that there would be anyone around as had not seen a house in last hour of driving. Suddenly I was all surrounded of curious kids that found the whole event quite amusing. One took the chance to touch my hair has I was sitting down, another kid tried to get into the car, a third tried to help me and the rest were just giggling a bit.
Finally I managed to get the spare tire in place and was ready to leave hoping that the car would start... Then two older masai ladies came by and wanted their photo taken, I though "great!" as it could do for a good memory... However this was an excuse to get some money out of me but then I thought "why not?" and still had the photo taken. I was glad there was some people around so that I could get some pushing help but for a change the car actually started and I continued to Iringa at a very slow and safe speed and was very happy when I finally got back home. Today I went to buy a new tire, never thought they were that expensive! Feel good to be back in Tanzania and feel welcomed by adventure and unexpected challenges.

Joensuu, Finland

Kolli

One of the few nice days so far in Finland.

Tampere, Finland

Nice view from my hotel room in Tampere/Tammerfors where I went for a meeting.

My baby sisters wedding

The highlight of this summer was my sisters wedding. A good reason to go home and experience a bit of swedish summer. Seeing my sister happy makes the older brother happy too :-)

TEDC 2008

Lake victoria, Entebbe

The Nile, Jinja

Football in Kampala

Indian wedding

Yesterday went for am indian wedding in Dar es Salaam. Was exciting but felt a bit strange as i did not know the couple getting married. Asked some inappropriate questions in my attempts to understand the customs and got told somethings you are not allowed to ask :-) but how will you ever know if you dont ask?

Tanzanian handbrake

Here you see every lorry and bus carrying an external brake

Congratulations Spain

Many sad Germans and two happy spaniards at shooters when Spain won european championship. At least sweden almost got a point against Spain in group play.

Al-Jazeera restaurant

The stopping point for all buses heading to Iringa. Had some mishikaki and chips. Now less than 2 hours left of 7+ hours journey from Dar es Salaam.

Shake it

Midsummer party with live music and dance. Anders and Christian got to show their ability to shake their hips but dar from as entertaining as watching the skilled lady dancers.

Student arts

One of the drawings made by a student for the HIV platform

Salama bomba

Some advert along the way for playing it safe

My apartment block

If you manage to spot christian on the balcony you have found my apartment. A comfortable place in a good and safe compound. Now on a bus travelling to Dar for weekend. Had expectations of watching Sweden play quarter finale on saturday but might compensate with a scandinavian midsummer party instead.

Mbuzi choma

Spent Saturday evening at a farm outside of Iringa where a great mbuzi choma was organized.

2-0

Happy celebrating after the 2-0 victory over Greece. Managed to convince few friends to assist in supporting the blue and yellow. They did a great job but missing some fellow countrymen.

Ruaha Crew

On Sunday car was packed by tents and camping equipment for yet another trip to Ruaha National Park. It is a 2 hour drive on bumpy dirt road away from Iringa. Before reaching the park we had our first encounter with the wild life when a huge Kudu antelope jumps out of the bush and in front of the car, luckily we avoided running over this creature with horns longer than a meter. The park gate is just by the great Ruaha river which gives an impressive welcome with crocodiles and hippos in the water and on the sand banks. Since dry season just started the was a lot of water still in the river. Our plans of camping changed when we realized we could stay in the more comfortable bandas for a lower price than tenting. Arriving at the bandas we were welcomed by two giraffes walking around between the bandas, in the river next to bandas there was hippos and on one of the sandbanks Mr Big Daddy Crocodile was catching some sun. Afternoon game drive was Ok but we failed to spot any cats. Evening dinner by camp fire was fun, we played some silly games kept going until after midnight when my birthday started and the Finnish guys sang for me :)
In morning we got up at sun rise for a game drive with high expectations of finding some cats. But five hours later we still had not found any cats although we even got some advices on where to look. Eventually we saw a male and a female lion walking towards some shadow about 30 meters from the road. Once they made themselves comfortable we could hardly see them because of some grass in the foreground. But we decided to remain to see if they would get up on their feet again.
After some minutes we saw a lonesome buffalo bull walking in the direction of the lions. We all got a bit excited hoping lions might make an attack. To our surprise we could see the opposite thing happening as the buffalo attacked the lions and the lions run of in fear. The buffalo continued following the lions and chasing them away as saying: "this is my neighborhood get lost stupid cats!"

This action came to be the highlight of the trip which all in all was fun and exciting.

Nice surprice

Yesterday got a surprice visit from Finnish students that gave me early birthday gift (cake and survival kit). So much cake that needed to make some calls to get some eating help. Some times it pays of to mention you have birthday coming up :-)

Busy busy

Things are quite fine here, been quite busy lately. I am now running computer clubs at two schools and having students to help me develop especially graphics for the HIV/AIDS platform I am working on. I have also been to couple of schools collecting more stories from the students on how they are affected in one way or an other by HIV. Have had my old friend Christian from Kidugala days to help me out which has been very helpful. Things are moving forward quite well but sometimes it is couple of steps backwards, but HEY after all this is Africa :) Please feel free to view some of students samples at http://cs.joensuu.fi/~duveskog/EEPD/index.html

Looking forward to next adventure wich will be camping in Ruaha National Park for my birthday which is soon...

Pizza evening

Had a nice pizza evening at the home of my Finnish 'boss'. The whole Finnish community and few others including myself was present.

Kitonga

Went for swimming but pool not inviting so did fishing instead.

River camp site Iringa

Picnic after getting shit sacred by a giant snake.

50 cent

Was in Dar es Salaam over the weekend and was told 50 cent was in town as well. Not really my piece of music but thought I could not miss that as it is quite a big thing for Tanzania having such a famous artist performing on Tanzanian soil.

Ruaha Sunset

Sunset at ruaha hilltop lodge