Schools Out! and other stuff

Oren and friends after last day of school

When a blog has not emerged for over 10 days, it is a good bet that we are busy in some ways after work, because I usually work on it Monday or Tuesday evening these days. But it has not been a typical two weeks, either at work or on the home front.

We were entertaining visitors in our last entry and Kate and James, having returned from safari have been with us again in the past week. Oren was also heavily into exam week which he was relieved to finish last Friday. The last week of school was a breeze by comparison, and there were quite a few days of in-class parties and school ceremonies. They also got their results back and I was quite impressed with Oren's work. I think he was even taken aback given the difficulty of the tests. But in the British system they generally make the tests very hard and grade on a generous curve. Consequently an 80% can be a high A. Oren found that he had high 'A's in Math and Science, and A+ in History, and also Geography.

Before I get to the end of the week and last day of school activities it would be good to back up and recall some of the other highlights. Kate and James got back before the weekend and on Saturday we took them to Snake Park, a favorite place for the kids. It is a kind of herpetarium with every venomous snake one can find in East Africa. It is quite interesting and at the end you get to hold some animals including some of the non-venomous ones. The mole snake was one the kids liked the most as you can see by the photos.

Our guests also went with us to church last Sunday which was nice because Rebecca was preaching. She did an excellent message on Jesus calming the storm and began with a harrowing story of getting caught in a mountain storm on Kootenay Lake as a child with her family. When everyone was really on the edge of their seat, she said "that is how you should feel when you listen to this story". She asked the question about why God leads us into storms, (because it was Jesus' idea to cross the lake) but reminded us that he does go with us-- it is his trip, not ours, and when we remember that, we can have assurance that he is master of the waves and water. (I did not do it justice, and tried to record it, but the phone recorder app shut itself off after 5 minutes). Here is a link to the written form: Jesus and the storm. After church we took Kate and James to Georges, one of our favorite after-church restaurants. We met some fellow Mennonites there who had been in MCC in Indonesia in the late 90s-- Jim and Laura.

dinner at Khans

Monday was the last week of school and I am really relieved to have a break from getting up at 5:15 am. I do still intend to swim in the morning when the kids are out of school, but the super early wake-up was to allow me time to get their stuff ready, as uniforms and everything we need for the day has to be ready by 6:30. The pool is now around 58F in the morning, but the wetsuit is amazingly warm. It is very strange experience to swim in it because everything around you is really cold, but you just don't lose any of your body heat; even though you are completely wet in very cold water.

Rebecca and I had a pretty normal day of work Monday. I am still acting Country Rep. as Sharon is still in Ethiopia. On Tuesday, I went with Lucia, our finance officer to Longido, about an hour towards the Kenya border to do a financial review of one of our partners. A bit dry, but it is nice to get to do some work out of the office right now. We got back in the afternoon without any problems--and no traffic tickets which is becoming more challenging these days as there seem to be new road rules on a weekly basis.

On Tuesday evening we went to Khan's barbecue, an outdoor halal restaurant on Mosque street near the central market. They make excellent Swahili/Indian food and the owner is very friendly and gregarious. The kids love it, especially the Jelabis for dessert. It is a very unique cultural experience that our guests enjoyed thoroughly.

Wednesday during the work day Rebecca took Kate and James to visit the school for severly physically and mentally disabled children MCC supports in Arusha--Step-by-Step Learning center. Kate Luger is an occupational therapist, and James Long is a music teacher for special needs students, so we were really interested to hear their impressions of a special needs school in a very low resource setting. Personally, I think the school has been extremely creative about finding appropriate  therapies for the children they have using very simple materials.

James singing with Bryson

They spent a part of the day there and had a great time seeing the school, but also interacting with the children. They had some very good advice about finding a better way to restrain a boy, Bryson, who has CP and very little limb control, and even explored possible connections to donors who make special needs wheel chairs for lower income countries. Kate and James found it engaging enough that they returned on their own on Friday and spent another day working with Bryson and even took some measurements to get some consultation from colleagues in the US. My impression from talking to Kate is that it is emotionally hard for her to see kids with such challenges in settings with so little capacity to help them. But on the other hand, to recognize that a school like Step-by-Step is hugely committed to treating every child with dignity and the staff genuinely care for and do the best for the children with what they have.

We parted ways with James and Kate from Wednesday after school through Thursday evening--this time it was us who left. Rebecca, me, the kids, and Zoe, our SALT volunteer, loaded in the MCC landrover and headed up to Karatu on the way to Ngorongoro crater to visit the maternal and child health project that our Maasai partner (NDI) is implementing. I wanted to collect some data from the health centers there and do a spot check of the meds that had procured through our project. Zoe and Rebecca have both wanted to see the location and community where this program is implemented as it is very remote and on the edge of a game park. I had to get us permits before we left on Wednesday as entering Ngorongoro is a multi-step bureaucratic process (moreso than other game parks because it is a conservation region). I had to visit no fewer than 2 offices and a bank in Arusha and Karatu, then when we got to the gate, still had to get 2 more stamps from different officials before driving in the gate.

On edge of Ngorongoro crater.

We arrived in Karatu on Wednesday evening and stayed in a hotel. Rebecca and kids and I stayed in one room to keep it cheap, but it was fine, only very cold. (Karatu is higher than Arusha I think.) We left Karatu the next morning because the plan was to drive into the crater region, visit the project site, then drive all the way back to Arusha by Thursday evening. I did pretty well, driving there for the first time without any guide, and got through all the bureaucratic hoops without a hitch. The drive to the ward where our project is, is quite far--about 60 kms on very rough road around the lip of the crater, and down the far side. the project site itself is spread over another 40 kilometers where there are a number of villages and sub-villages.

The land is very high and open like highland steppes one would imagine in Mongolia. The panorama is incredibly vast, but it is cold and very green with short tufts of grass. It is not flat like the savanah though, there are gigantic depressions that rise to distant mountain peaks. The people are also very spread out but tend to live in small communities that one can see in the distance. It is very pictureque and we even drove up to Embakai crater as it is at the far end of the project site. Most of the day was spent driving and we picked up Laangakwa, our project director at one of the villages and he took us to Embakai then back to health centers where I was able to verify that their dispensaries were fully stocked with the meds we supplied. I was also able to get some data of trends for births and ante-natal care visits over the past 12 months to see what impact we are having. (I will be presenting some of these findings at the CCIH conference in Baltimore in July.)

The kids were surprisingly good considering what a hard day of driving it was in the park. The landrover airconditioner was also not working so we had the windows open. By the end of the day we, and the entire contents of the car, were covered in dust. We looked like we had been on a tractor plowing all day and the kids said they felt like they were suffocating from the dust they were breathing all day. We drove, covered in dust, all the way back to Arusha and got back to our house about 7pm. Zoey stayed the night with us so we had a very full house, and had to share our bed with David so Zoe could have his room. Needless to say we all had showers and had to wash everything.

We took the kids for the last day of school on Friday. It was also Oren's 13th Birthday. Actually both kids very happy to go back for the last day as there were some school celebrations involving candy. Oren also received two Year 8 awards at an awards ceremony-- for enthusiasm and effort in both Mathematics and History. At the end of the school day, Oren's request was that his two best friends Abraham and Abraham (one has a french pronounciation) could come home with him. We agreed and they all came back with us after school to Gymkhana to have dinner. There were no world cup games on that night which was too bad because Gymkhana, our 'country club', has a nice large screen TV. We had dinner and James and Kate joined us. It was a lot of fun, and when we got home we played a game called "Werewolf" which James taught us. It is a kind of group game that reminds me of the card game Killer, but with more roles. We all played and had a great time before going to bed.

The next day we had Oren's Birthday party with cake and a piniata (a family tradition). Oren wanted one with the face of "Chica" a character from a video game (don't ask). But we do our best to be creative and clever, so I made a pretty good likeness that they enjoyed smashing.

I can't say it was not a relief to have them finally go home. I feel like we have been running on all cylinders and next week is nearly as full. We are heading to vacation time which I will say more about next week. James and Kate leave tomorrow as well and should be back in Baltimore on Monday.

There was much to be thankful for this week--especially the answered prayers that our kids would make a transition to a new school situation and make new friends. Oren was particularly worried about these things and right now he is looking quite happy and successful.

Father's Day, Visitors, and A Little Night Music

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. Myself included. The photo features me in my new FD attire that arrived this week. The hat was bought here to replace one I lost a month or so ago. The sun, as rarely as we have seen it in the recent past, still burns my head quite badly. Rebecca, David, and Oren surprised me with it on Sunday morning. The goggles and wet suit arrived this past Wednesday with some visitors I will talk about later. The suit did not arrive a moment too soon as I could barely stand to get in the pool on Monday and Tuesday as the water temp went down to 60 and is threatening to drop into the high 50s.

So backing up through the week, I have to say that work has definitely slowed up as we move more into the summer months. This is because vacation time starts for people both here and in the MCC headquarters in the US. Our partners are less active as well, by and large, and we are between reporting periods. Sharon, our country rep. is in Ethiopia doing a program evaluation for 3 weeks and I have been left with the job of interim rep. during her absence. Without her and other staff coming and going, the office seems pretty empty. I have spent some time helping our Mennonite Church partner prepare a proposal to renew their work on training health workers to identify skin cancer in people with albinism. I am also trying to get ethical clearance for some qualitative research we are doing to better understand why Maasai women in our maternal and child health program robustly prefer to have deliveries at home rather than go to a facility with a skilled attendant. But other than that, it is pretty slow.

The kids are finishing their last 3 weeks of school and last week was spent with Oren studying for exams that began this Monday. Because this is a British system school, final exams are a huge thing. Oren has an entirely separate exam schedule during the week and has 12 1-2 hour exams between Monday and Friday (2 to 3 per day). It is honestly quite daunting, especially for Rebecca who has needed to help him understand how to revise all the material he has learned over the whole year so he has a chance of remembering at least some of it during the exam. We have no idea how he will do, but I have even more sympathy for the  end of the many Harry Potter books that described the Hogwarts kids' anxiety about preparing for exams at the end of the year. Much is at stake.

Despite the slow week in some ways, Wednesday was a big day because we had some long-expected visitors finally arrive from our home church. Kate and James, some friends from our small group in Baltimore, came out to see us and have a little vacation in Tanzania. We were very excited to host them and to get caught up on news from church. (K and J were just starting to date when we left, and it was great to see them so happy and excited to be on this adventure.) They also brought a lot of booty from home (including the wetsuit and goggles) and some birthday presents for Oren (fortunately he does not read this blog.) His birthday is June 29th and we want to be ready. It is also the last day of school for the boys.

This is K and J's first time in Tanzania. We met them at our home after choir practice on Wednesday evening. We had our favorite cabbee pick them up from the airport as this rehearsal was our last before a concert event we were to be part of on Friday. They were quite tired on the first evening, but Rebecca was able to catch up on news with them on Thursday when she took them to the market for fabric to get some outfits tailored here, then on to Coffee Lodge to see some of the handicrafts.

Friday was Eid which is a public holiday in Tanzania. The kids were thrilled to be out of school, but it is a day that is hard to plan around because it is based on the day that the moon is seen by the naked eye by an Imam here, so we are never sure until the night before, what day it will be celebrated. We were hoping it would be Friday, and we all went to the Cultural Heritage Center together to see the arts and crafts. From there we went directly to church for the concert event.

This was quite a spectacle with about a dozen choral and solo 'acts' of sacred and secular music to celebrate love. There were some very impressive musicians including a concert violinist, and a mixture of Swahili and Western soloists and choirs. The biggest contrast was our choir's rendition of excerpts from Vivaldi's mass, (the choir did Gloria and Rebecca and another woman did a beautiful duet Laudamus Te ). This was juxtaposed to two Swahili choirs that did some hauntingly beautiful swahili harmonies. They also came dressed to the 9's and well choreographed. It was really a beautiful evening and we were very happy to have J and K share it with us as James is a music teacher. They loved the Swahili choirs especially. I have posted a brief excerpt on the bottom of the page.

Saturday, J and K, left for a 5 day camping safari. They are currently somewhere in Tarangire, the Serengetti, or the Ngoronogoro crater. Our family had a Saturday at home studying with Oren. On Sunday I was a Sunday school teacher while Rebecca did a Baptism for a young man with quite a testmony of forgiveness for an abusive family situation. We went to see Incredibles 2 in the afternoon and had a quiet evening at home that night.

That brings us back to Father's Day where we started. This week is the long slog through exams for Oren and we have already spent two evening cramming for the next set. Both Oren and the parents will be happy when they are over.

Oops, the power went out again. We have been having electrical problems in our house almost weekly. That will make tomorrow morning's 5am wake up that much harder. Wish us luck!

One of the Swahili choirs

First Folk Dance

Oren convincing David to jump in 60F pool.

Rebecca starting this week: One of the challenges of moving to a new place or a new country is finding the right ways to really be connected in a new community. Having moved a lot in my life, I have learned that this process usually takes about a year. And I’ll be honest – it’s always been a tough first year, any time I’ve moved. This first 9 months in Arusha has been challenging in all the expected ways – people are nice, but we are just not known well by people here yet. We are still working to be connected regularly to a community we are part of here.

It’s not all bad. We have really focused on trying to make sure we have good family times, with certain rituals each week. We really enjoy our Friday evenings at Gymkhana to relax as a family, take a swim or walk (these days the water is cold!), and then have family movie night. We’ve played a lot more family games this year on weekends when we don’t have many plans. We often take walks together around our compound.

We continue to work on building community. I have made friends with some women in the expat mission community by going to a bible study with them (but we honestly rarely see one another outside of that context because our kids are in different schools, we go to a different church and we live far away from all of them). It has been helpful to get advice from them, to share prayer needs and to hear how they have handled challenges. We've also enjoyed getting together with one family that attends our church, as well as several others we serve with as Sunday school teachers.

And recently, there are a few other ways we are growing in a sense of community. Because of being part of the church council at our church, I am getting to know a group of very diverse people. Paul is also becoming active in the church, by serving in the Christian Ed committee as well as the Evangelism & Outreach committee.

And because of that, we decided that we would take a chance and help to facilitate an international folk dance for the church this past weekend as an outreach/fellowship opportunity. We were glad for a partnership with another American couple; she teaches swing dance locally and is an accomplished dancer, and they both really enjoy social dance. They were able to bring several dances to teach, and we also prepared a long list of easy folk dances, remembered from our Bujumbura days. We cleared out the center section of chairs in the sanctuary, hooked up our iPod to the main sound system, and waited to see what would happen.

We really didn’t know what to expect – we invited a number of the expat families we’ve gotten to know here. But in fact, the people who came to enjoy folk dance were mostly young adult Tanzanians. We knew some of them from choir; others we met for the first time. They were really delighted to try line dancing, two Israeli dances, and several American squares or cotillions. They loved the circle Swing dance, and the Virginia Reel was a blast. After almost 2 hours of dancing, we all enjoyed a nice Swahili dinner outside in the courtyard. Many of them asked, “You’re doing this every Saturday, right?” 😉 We will try again after the school holiday season, but it seemed like a very positive way to build community across cultures at our church.

Making music with people at church has also been a good way to be connected. We’ve mentioned choir before. I also often get to help lead worship music in church. The last time I did, I was able to involve several young adults who are part of our church youth group, and who were really interested in contributing to the music (they’ve been hoping for something a little more up-tempo). I am especially grateful that I’ve gotten to know them because I give a ride home to the youth group leader after each church council meeting (he lives quite close to us). I really value what this guy talks about on those rides home, as the youngest council member and a young, professional Tanzanian; I wouldn’t get that perspective without being invested in some way in the church.

Finally, I was able to connect a bit more with a very different group of people on the other end of town. I’ve been waiting all year to see if there is any kind of parents’ association at our kids’ school and finally they held the Annual General Meeting last week. Only 14 people showed up to the meeting and they had 12 new positions to fill. Just about everyone was drafted to do something. I will now officially serve as secretary for the next year. We shall see what that means, but I was glad for the few conversations I could have even on that one evening.

On less fun health issues, David has been complaining of a sore ankle for the past few weeks. I finally took him to get it looked at and x-rayed. It turns out that he must have broken the end of his fibula (in the ankle) sometime in the last year, and it hasn’t healed. This was a total surprise to all of us, and it will mean at least one more unexpected doctor’s visit when we spend a month in the US in July/August. Also, Oren was very unwell on Sunday night, and so I needed to stay home with him Monday. He rested most of the day, but we also were able to get some studying done in advance of his comprehensive exams next week.

Another big event this week: Paul preached on Sunday. He felt very good about the sermon and it was very well-received. Sadly, I didn't get to hear it first-hand, as I was teaching Sunday school. He will give a synopsis here. 

This is Paul, I put in a link to a recording of the sermon below. One of my best, I think. If you get a chance give it a listen. The theme came from Samuel's rebuke of Saul in which he rebuked Saul saying "Obedience is greater than sacrifice." The conclusion went something like this:

When we divide the church because of our disagreement on doctrine, how can we not stand condemned, like Saul, who disobeys Yahweh’s word for the sake of his piety?

Samuel reminds us: “Obedience is greater than sacrifice,” Jesus said: “This is my commandment—that you love one another as I have loved you.”

And yet, like the Pharisees, we create hedges of piety around our unloving disobedience.

I am not pointing fingers here. It is a place where almost all of us fail. I confess I often find myself more sympathetic to the rationalizing heart of Saul than the moral consistency of David.

But obedience means that we remain in communion--in the same congregation, with those with whom we disagree. Can you worship with someone with whom you disagree? And not consider them morally inferior or reprehensible in some way?

Pastor Tim Keller famously asked the question Do you dare to worship a God who can contradict you? His question challenges us to worship the true Lord rather one we have created in our own image.

But I would ask: Will you dare to be part of the same body of Christ with those with whom you disagree? Or are you in danger of making his body into an image of yourself?

We are called to love out of obedience---even at the cost of our most preciously held prejudices!  

On this Sunday, as we celebrate the many cultures who are gathered here today, lets remember our unity in Christ, and celebrate our differences as well. 

Click this link here to listen to the whole thing.

Paul's sermon.

Ordinary Time

David and others in Sunday school becoming Seraphim, during Paul's lesson

Rebecca here: There are some weeks when we are just here living life, like we would any place. We went to work, went to church, hung out with various friends. I’m not sure any of this is really blog worthy. But, for the sake of posting something and keeping our families up to date, I’ll write a little something. And perhaps it is fitting to have an ordinary week as we have now fully entered Ordinary Time in the Christian calendar.

Nai, hard at work

The highlight of this past week was our MCC team meeting on Friday. It was actually a school holiday, and the kids were along for the ride, so we offered to host the meeting at our house. We were especially glad to do this, since not all of our team members had visited our house before. We were also very happy that our housekeeper, Nai, was here to help us prepare a Mexican burrito lunch for the team, with her fresh, homemade tortillas. It was also extremely helpful to have her here to help wash up.

Team meetings offer our team the time to be on the same page in terms of what we are involved with in program, to share highlights and challenges personally, and to have discussions about policies and procedures. During this meeting, Sharon also blocked out some time in our agenda to think about and experience some of the issues of working cross-culturally. I've been assigned to this task of "orientation" and so I had the challenge of thinking up some activities that would be more active. 

Fun with friends

We broke up into two teams, and did a photo scavenger hunt, trying to think of problems in life that all humans have, which have very different solutions, depending on the context. Getting drinking water, drying clothes, bathing, and cleaning the floor are all accomplished in very different ways in Tanzania than in North America. It was interesting and fun to think about these issues together. I will add the photos and explanations into my orientation materials, to help any new team members adjust to the context here. We also enjoyed a couple of interesting role plays, looking at different cultural understandings of money and relations between women and men. Overall, it was a good day together, and during each team meeting, it feels like we are all able to relax and share a bit more.

need power to get water...

Our one significant challenge of the week was our electricity. A few months ago, some major rewiring was done to our house, so that we could be in control of paying our electric bill directly. Since then, the power seems to overload every now and then. But we lost power midway through our team meeting. A “fundi” (local repairman) came and fixed something, but sadly the power failed 20 minutes after he left. And due to our meeting, all our power banks were already depleted. We waited and hoped for another electrician to come, but he was apparently out of town. We passed the time as darkness fell, with Paul teaching us all to play poker, and it was fun for a while. But at about 7:30, we decided that we were sick of sitting in the dark. We drove back into town to Gymkhana for a very late Chinese dinner, bringing all our power cords with us and charging up all our computers and phones while we watched half a movie. The electrical problems continued through Saturday. Then we started running out of water, because we need electricity to run the pump to pump the water to the top of our water tank, so that there is water flow into the house. Finally, on Sunday night, the whole business seemed to be repaired, hopefully for good.

Oren with friends at IBES

Our kids were off school Thursday as well, and so we met Australian friends a little way out of town at a beautiful playground facility. It’s located at an organization which trains early childhood educators, builds and sells playground equipment, and offers burger fast-food restaurant training through a working burger joint. The kids all really enjoyed playing with their friends (ok, the 12-year-olds enjoyed hanging out) and having lunch together. I enjoyed talking with my friend, their mom Katie, as well. Later in the afternoon, one of Oren’s school friends came over to have some study time with him. There was also a bunch of horsing around 😉.

Abrahams and Oren

Saturday was similar. Both of Oren’s school friends named Abraham came over and there was a much higher ratio of horsing around to studying. But I suppose a full and worthwhile life includes having fun with your friends. They really enjoyed our Mexican burrito leftovers for dinner (the boys had requested this specially). The trouble is that it is tough to drive them home at night – It was almost 2 hours round trip for Paul in the dark with blinding lights coming at him the whole way. Arusha is just a little too spread out for frequent visiting outside of daylight hours. 

On Sunday after church we invited our Australian friends to join us for carry out pizza at Gymkhana. It was a really good time for all of us. Paul and I really enjoy talking and sharing thoughts and experiences with Mike and Katie. Oren and their son Harry played two rounds of chess; it was a draw both times. David really enjoyed playing with the other 3 younger kids on the playground. We are sad that these friends will be away on home assignment for the next 3 months. But that is just how one must roll in this expat life.

Kilimanjaro from our house again

I'll add a word on my work activities here since I’ve been writing this week. The MCC Tanzania program hasn’t had a lot of written orientation material. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past months writing up various kinds of handbooks and in-country resource guides to try to help people new to MCC or new to the context get their bearings and figure out how to live here. Luckily, I have a lot of old material and experience to draw upon. It’s been fun to try to think of what people need to learn and know right when they arrive. I’m close to being finished with this work in progress. But I am realizing that we need similar materials, but in reverse, to help the Tanzanian young adults who go to serve in North America each year. There are many quirks of life that would be strange or inexplicable to someone from here, and I’m hoping to prepare something helpful for them as well. In fact, we have two young people preparing to go this summer; I have spent a long time on the phone with them almost every week, working on their visa processes with them. We are just waiting for each visa to be approved at this point. The other major part of my work is supporting our SALT volunteer, who is wrapping up her term of service in July. Sharon and I made a visit to her partner organization on Tuesday, to have a final debriefing.

butterfly hunting...

...and catching

Well, I’m going to stop trying to make a mundane week sound extra interesting! There will be many more interesting things to report in the next week, as Paul will be facilitating a folk dance on Saturday and preaching on Sunday.