Day 9: Arusha

After the unexpected adventures I had yesterday, today was a less dramatic day where I actually attended some of the Esperanto conference.

Tim was in a session of the Academy of Esperanto at 9am, so I sat in on the first hour of that. It didn't get off to a great start, with approximately half of the Academy members who were supposed to be there turning up late. They seemed to be running on Tanzanian time! By 09.30 they were still getting through the introductions.

I had to duck out of the Academy session at 10 to attend the results of a literary competition. Our Esperanto association was competing in the category "Children's book of the year"...

...and the good news is that we won, with a children's book about Zamenhof which Tim page-set and helped to translate.

At 11am I was signed up to an excursion to the Museum of Tanzanite. I must admit I'd never heard of Tanzanite until I signed up for this event, but it's a gemstone so rare that it can only be found in this specific part of Tanzania. It's incredibly valuable because there's so little of it; the excursion organiser pre-warned us that there would be an armed guard at the entrance to the museum, and there was!

Once we'd got through security the excursion group was given a tour of the museum and probably slightly more explanation than was necessary about the process of mining for Tanzanite.

Then we got to look at some of the very expensive jewellery which they sell in the museum shop.  There was a watch for USD 100,000, which I guess is why they have an armed guard on the door!

Then we watched an audiovisual display about the history of Tanzanite, which was only discovered in 1967.

Initially it was named "blue zoisite", which I think is the correct scientific name, but Tiffany's later rebranded it as "Tanzanite" as part of a marketing campaign.

I was back at the conference venue by 1pm just on time for Tim's next lecture, which was about two famous Esperanto poets from Britain.

They were both born in 1924, so Tim has been arranging republication of some of their famous works as part of an anniversary year.

The lecture went well, although unfortunately it was scheduled over lunchtime so the attendance wasn't as large as it would probably otherwise have been. We went back to the hotel afterwards and had a late lunch outside on terrace. It had been pouring with rain this morning but the weather was brightening up and we were looking out over trees filled with beautiful pink flowers. 

By late afternoon the weather was positively sunny again  

Tomorrow I have another full-day excursion planned to the Arusha National Park, so fingers crossed the good weather continues