The trip back to Arusha took about 4 hours as we made a few stops along the way. One was to get this fantastic picture of our Lake Manyara hotel perched on the top of the cliff. The Ngorongoro looked sort of similar to this one, but it's cliff was much steeper. Look! I managed to post a picture of it--see the hotel so tiny at the top? More pictures to come, finally!

We also stopped to watch 2 giraffes that were wandering through a field full of cows, which was a strange sort of a sight indeed.

Then we stopped at a small market/souviner stall to pick up a few odds and ends. We had asked Hamisi to stop at a fairly reputable one and he said this one was good, but we would have to bargain hard to get a fair price, and as we are not good bargainers we were not too sure of how this was going to turn out. All we really wanted was a few small beaded necklaces and they had the type we wanted, but at 6,000 TS each and we didn't want to pay more than 2,000. We hummed and hawed and tried to leave, but the fellow kept following us and eventually we got him down to 2,500 each, so we were pretty happy. We had been told earlier that a merchant will never sell to you at a loss, so don't feel bad about trying to get them down in price, they'll just quit dealing if they are not going to make a profit, which obviously makes sense. When we were done dealing and paying, the fellow was all smiles and gave us a big handshake and a thumbs up. They love to deal and they get a kick out a hard bargain. We ended up buying 15 necklaces in all....it was fun.

We drove into Arusha town and Hamisi said we'd make a quick stop at the office first, which sort of surprised us until we realized that we were to have a quick meeting with Shabbir. He wanted to know how it all went, did we have any complaints and how our guide was and that sort of thing. It's actually a good way to do business because if you have a problem it's sort of nice to get it sorted out right away instead of writing and/or e-mailing and/or phoning once you are home.

Needless to say we had nothing but praise and positive remarks to make and he happily handed us the comment book where we left a nice little missive about our safari, and I'd highly recommend them to anyone. Shabbir smiled widely and we saw The Teeth once more, in all their shining glory and then we departed the Sunny Safari offices.

Back at the hotel the staff was happy to see us and asked us how everything had been and quickly ushered us into our room for the next 2 days. We freshened up and decided to go back to the tribunal so we went out front and found our new taxi driver, Abdalah and he took us over to the tribunal and said he'd come and get us at 2:30. We went into the guard house and were informed that the tribunal was on lunch until 2:30 so we raced out and just caught Abdalah as he was starting to drive away *whew*. So, back to the hotel, had a little rest and did some e-mailing and then headed out again at 2:30. We knew the routine this time and where to go and what to leave behind so it was much quicker to get into the courtroom this time, however the first 2 courtrooms were closed so we had to go up to the 4th floor. This time there were about 15 people there, mostly tourist-y type folks like us.

The last time was the Major Lemere case and a little bit of intrigue, but today's case was very sobering. The prosecutor was questioning (although one mihgt use the term interrogating) a young girl (who was behind a curtain to conceal her identity from the viewers). She had been raped by 5 Rwandan soldiers on 2 different occasions when she was still "a school child". She had to explain again and again as the prosecutor tried to confuse her and pick holes in her story. It was a pretty uncomfortable thing to listen to him telling her that she was a liar and that she actually belonged to the "Ebuka" which is, he said, a group where witnesses meet to fabricate stories to convict the Hutu and the soldiers.

She was claiming that the Ebuka is an association that defends the interests of surviviors and that she wasn't a member anyhow.

Her voice was so soft and quiet and when he spoke harshly to her you could hear a hitch in her voice as if she was trying not to cry. It was devastating to listen to.

There was a group of 5 women sitting behind us, I'm not sure where they were from, but they came in when we did and they all spoke English and they left before us and they tried to peer behind the curtain to see the girl and they giggled and laughed as they did so. We were appalled at their ignorance and embarrased for them.

We came out of the tribunal feeling quite drained and we walked across the street to where Abdalah was to meet us. We were a few minutes early and we saw a white taxi flash his lights at us, so we walked over and it was a strange taxi driver. We said: "oh, sorry, we're waiting for our driver." and this fellow said: "Yes, he is going to be late and told me to come and get you. Hop in!"

Now that we are wise to the ways of the taxi drivers, we said that we'd just wait a few minutes and see if our driver showed up and sure enough, Abdalah arrived exactly on time! We told him about the attempted "customer theft" and he nattered out this window to the "bad" driver who smiled and shrugged his shoulders, and gave us a big grin. It's all in a day's work!

Razak was charging us way too much (although it was still so cheap compared to what we'd pay here) and when we found Abdalah, Razak was "horrified" for the first day, but now he smiles at us as if to say; "Hey, I got away with it for a few days!" It's all a game and everyone is good natured about it.