Arrived in Tanzania

On my way to Microinsurance conference in Dar es Salaam.

Arrived in Tanzania today at Kilimanjaro airport (about the size of a regional airport in the States. I looked out of the plan window there were no visible lights except that of the runway. Decided to stay at hotel Protea near Moshi. Wanted to get some time in around the countryside before heading to Dar es Salaam. It was raining today so I didn't get to do as much as I would have liked. Couldn't even see Kilimanjaro even after it stopped raining. (You can where I would have been able to see  Kilimanjaro had it not been cloudy there on the view below) .

While I was waiting for my flight to arrive at the nearby KIA hotel I got to see some interesting wildlife like the blue and orange lizard below and several colorful birds. 

I did get to talk with a farmer near the Moshi area. Now that rains have come they are preparing their fields. He will plant second season of maize in December with expectation of May harvest. Also plants potatoes (I think sweet potatoes along with the maize ) . He said that had an "average" harvest in September. He also works job at local hotel. Will head into Dar tonight. I had planned for an afternoon flight by 540 Aviation decided to do maintenance on planes this month so they cancelled their flights to Dar. Rebooked for this evening which i tried to avoid. Not a fan of arriving in a unfamiliar city at midnight. Oh well, best laid plans...

(Blog update) I did may it on the 5 p.m. flight. I guy named Robert from Fly540 Aviation really worked hard on getting me on once he discovered there was an available seat.  A lot of other people wanted that but he got me on after about 30 minutes with the folks at Precision Air.
 
 Looking forward to the conference and meeting with people to discuss what they are working on Will try to get some info back to the research team back home. Thanks to John for the NDVI satellite images from BOLE. Interesting. Thanks for sharing comparison with MClean county too. Thanks to Aslihan for crop yield updates too. Askar your questions about planting cycles are on my list, so hope to have the answers soon for you. It's nice that we now have people with Katie looking at three different solutions, weather index, area based crop yield, and NDVI satellite remote sensing. I'm agnostic about which approach works best, but will meet with a researcher who has been doing a lot of field work on insurance demand. Will share results of that discussion with you. Later, Jim