Thursday, November 20, 2014

Sad day for the Arusha Maasai Market

For any of you that have come to visit, I’m sure we’ve brought you to the Arusha Maasai Market to buy gifts before you left.  It’s a crazy mess of almost 200 stalls that sell all sorts of curios from paintings, to maasai beadwork, to wood carvings.  But late on Monday night into the early hours of Tuesday the entire craft market burned to the ground.  This is made even more tragic by knowing that the market is mere meters from the main fire station.   Hundreds of families lost their livelihood as all of their inventory is now gone.  Most (all?) likely don’t have insurance to cover the loss. Of course the rumors in a small town are rampant, but I just feel for all of the families impacted by this.  So sad. 

(fire picture linked to video)

And now it looks like this:

Maasai market fire

Maasai market fire

A few people have asked me if there are any funds being raised to assist these families.  I haven’t heard anything official yet, but I will update if/when I hear of anything.

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