After a couple of very long days I have finally managed to figure out how to access Tim’s files, and copy them across the network onto my laptop, where I will be able to burn them onto CD. Phew. I finally managed it using the network boot disk created by Bart at nu2. This enables you to boot into dos, and then access a network or even the internet at large. I then used SysInternals NTFSDOS Pro demo (which is read only) which enabled me to access the NTFS drive on which all Tim’s files were stuck. This still leaves him with a screwed up laptop, but at least he has all his photos, emails etc…

Phew!

Here we are in Dar, and I had expected my problems to eminate from the suspect travel advisory about terrorism, but no. I am being punished by computers…

The boss here at TechnoServe Dar wanted to be able to backup his laptop, and I suggested upgrading his computer to Windows XP Pro, from Home, since Pro has a nice backup feature, and Home has nothing. Big mistake. Seems that upgrading has highlighted a hardware fault with the computer, and now it is stuck in the middle of the upgrade process with no hope of moving backwards or forwards. I am tearing my hair out here…

Am off to Babati for a couple of days with TechnoServe. Babati is about 200km from Arusha. Interesting to see a different part of Tanzania. Then off to Dar on Sunday for a week. Hopefully will manage to make additions whilst away, but if not, don’t worry…

Made some changes to the site over the last few days – addition of Ramblings section, and some change to the background code which seems to have played mischief with the pictures. Will try and fix soon, but don’t be surprised if there are many pictures of a turkey on this page…

Just found out about all the British Tourists stranded in Kenya due to a terror scare and the grounding of BA flights. Not really sure what to make of it, since the British Government cried wolf recently on Zanzibar, and I can see their motives for doing so still exist – eg Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq, with no “justifying” weapons of mass destruction in sight.

I think that a lot of the tourists are going to find themselves bussed to Kilimanjaro International Airport, and I guess as a budding reporter I should head down their myself. However, that would seem like a good target for terrorists now, since all the Brits will end up there. Have to think about this carefully.

Got the dates all fixed again. That took ages. My hosts at Domain City were a bit tardy about restoring my database, and it turned out they had backed up my error, so I had to figure out when everything was written. This was pretty tricky, so you will probably find pictures and text have moved. The only way I could identify some of the entries was through the dates that photographs were taken, and these were often not the same days I was writing about in the diary. But you’ll just have to put up with any disjointedness, because it has already taken me hours to get as far as this. You can look forward to new entries instead of worrying about the past… Some of those entries will appear in the past… So maybe you will have to worry about the past, and trawl through the whole thing.

Or not. But my proposed story on junk email has been accepted by the Arusha Times!

I just screwed all the dates up, so everything looks like it was put in today. Hopefully my hosts will be able to do a restore from a backup. Fingers crossed, or it will take ages to figure out when everything happened…

Went up to the campsite on the mountain with Yuki. The journey there was a little hair raising. Actually, my mirth at seeing the bus coming down in the opposite direction skidding almost 180 degrees quickly turned into a near fear induced loss of hair when the bus we were on skidded into a ditch and nearly rolled. We came close to being trampled to death as the other passengers leapt over each other to escape. For some reason we stayed on the bus as the conductors (of which there seemed to be about 10, surely for this very reason) rocked it from side to side, alternating from almost getting back on the road, to almost rolling right over onto its roof. Eventually they succeeded, and we were almost crushed again as all the people swarmed back on.

Once in Uru we were greeted by the surprising number of people we are now aquainted with. Stratton is still a BeastMaster obsessed, choir conducting barber, Germin is still a reluctant ladies man, and Stratton is still wise and strong like Aslan. We also met Denis, the freestyler (of which you can see an example – if your connection is fast).

A bus trip to Moshi, at the foot of Kilimanjaro, turned into an hour long shouting argument with the conductor who tried to charge us double the fare, since it was a luxury bus. A little later on it turned out he wasn’t the conductor at all.