Pictures from Tanzania

http://picasaweb.google.com/acstrat55/Tanzania

There are a lot of them, but I finally got them all up there. I tried to get them all in the right order, but if they get mixed around, I apologize... Also, check back for updates..it took me forever to download all of them and I still have some more to add and I have to add captions-it's still a work in progress.

********Disclaimer*******

There are some pictures in here that are not for the faint of heart. We saw a cow that had a complete fracture of her right hind leg, and of course I had to take pictures. If you don't like seeing legs that are not at the correct angle, be prepared to skip over those pictures pretty quickly. Veterinarians are generally most interested in the gross and disgusting, so of course I have pictures of it. :-) Also, you may have read that on one of the days they slaughtered a goat for us. Well, a couple days later at another site, they slaughtered a steer for us. Again, of course I took pictures of the process as they were doing it, so there are some pictures of the meat being cut up. I didn't take any pictures as the actual slaughter process was happening, but there are some after it had died. Again, that's completely normal for me to see, but I realize not all of you are used to that, so I wanted to make sure everyone was prepared.

******End disclaimer******

So as I mentioned above, I got to do meat inspection on a goat and a steer while I was here. I don't know if I will get used to inspecting the meat I am going to eat while it is alive and then 2 minutes later after it has died. Definitely a new experience for me. But it was very interesting to watch. They went from having 1 live steer to having a full-fledged fire, grill and barbeque in the matter of half an hour. No, I did not eat any of the organs (sorry grandma, no liver for me!), but the meat was pretty good (not as good as the steaks that Jay makes, but it was up there).

Also, in case you were wondering, the cow with the broken leg didn't make it-they had to slaughter her, but that was not at the same place where we had our barbeque.

The last day in Tanga we got to tour Tanga Fresh, which is their dairy processing plant. That is still a growing business here in Tanzania, because most people prefer to drink the milk straight from the cows, they don't want it pasteurized. They believe that they are taking all the 'good stuff' out of the milk, so they are working hard to educate people on the benefits of pasteurizing. Tanga Fresh is very much like a milk co-op that you would see back in Wisconsin-most of the same principles. They got a lot of their ideas and funding from dairies in the Netherlands. They mainly process fluid milk, yogurt and some mozzerella cheese. Someone needs to introduce to them the concept of cheese curds and they would be all set! :-)

That's about it from Tanzania....next up: Kenya. One final note: my good memories of Tanzania will always interrupted by one bad one....I was here when I found out that Favre was traded from the Packers. (you all didn't really think I wouldn't mention that at all, did you?) And that's all I'm going to say about that, because I'm still a little bitter. It could be a while before I'm over this.