George McCain!

Two nights ago we went out with a big group of Americans that we met at our hotel. Amongst the crew were the three UCLA med students Alicia already mentioned and the four people from Boise that I think we mentioned as well. Only one of the group, Jennifer, went to Gonzaga (I originally thought it was the whole lot of them). Jennifer lived in Moshi previously and after a bit we all went down the nearly deserted street (Moshi gets rather quiet at night) to the "East Africa Pub and Resturant", a very local watering hole. Everyone was very happy to see us and we ordered a pile of $1.50 Kilimanjaro beers (500ml!) and one Sprite, as the local custom is to put a dash of Sprite into your beer (rather good too).

After a while we met one "Paul", who deals in Tanzanite, a very expensive gemstone only found in an area north of here. Paul was quite loaded and was all about us importing Tanzanite. One of the people from Idaho is a Canyon County DA and he tried to convince the guy that selling Tanzanite in the US was illegal. This somehow got us on the subject of politics. Nearly all East Africans love Obama, but Paul was all about "George McCain". All about George McCain for 15 minutes until he finally went away.

All in all, a very hilarious evening. We did the short walk back on competely deserted streets and went to bed, only to be woken up by trashed 18 year olds getting wasted at the hotel bar downstairs. That is a story for a later day...