If you want to grow roses, don't plant potatoes!

Oren looking like Harry Potter in his uniform.

This blog begins with a new proverb! It was inadvertantly invented by our Country Rep. Sharon who was telling us about trying to plant some roses from rose cuttings, which according to a youtube video could be stuck into potatoes then planted and they would grow new rose bushes. She gave cuttings stuck in potatoes to her gardener who planted them in one of her gardens. Several weeks later he proudly presented the fruits of his labor. A verdant garden devoid of roses but full of potato plants. "If you want to grow roses, don't plant potatoes" I sagely observed, which sounded quite profound in a 'Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy' kind of way.

But in many ways, the proverb was apt to several of the activities I participated in this week, culminating in the harvest festival at church this past weekend which Rebecca will say more about later in this entry. I got back just a day before the multiple activities of the weekend began because I had spent most of the weekdays in Musoma, a town along the Eastern shore of Lake Victoria where I was visiting one of our partners to help them write a proposal to extend a project they are currently working on. The adage about wanting roses and not planting potatoes seemed particularly a propos advice as we worked on how to align activities and outputs with the outcomes we are hoping for.

Precision Air to Mwanza

I have been to Musoma twice before and although it is a charming town on the lake, I have no fondness at all for the trip. It is a classic 'You can't get there from here" situation in that there is just no good travel route between Arusha and Musoma. Either you take a horrific 12 hour bus ride straight through the Serengetti which is all dirt roads, or you fly to Mwanza, another town on the lake, not much closer than Arusha, but from where you can take a croweded bus for 4-5 hours that at least goes on paved roads. All in all it involves many transitions. From my house to the hotel in Musoma I took a taxi--airport shuttle--plane--taxi---bus--and taxi. The plane was the shortest and most expensive part of the trip.

I went with Lucia, our accountant, as one of the tasks we had was to do a bi-annual financial review of our partner, who happens to be the Tanzania Mennonite Church (KMT). We left Arusha about 6am and got to Musoma about 6pm. We stayed at the Grand Victoria Hotel which was built about a year ago and I stayed at it last year. It is already starting to look a bit dilapidated, but did have some amenities including internet.

We were picked up and taken to the church headquarters, a short drive away the next morning after breakfast. We spent about 3 hours with the project coordinator and accountant going over financial procedures before breaking for lunch. At that time Lucia packed and we took her to the bus stop so she could return to Mwanza and catch an early flight back to Arusha the next day.

I planned to stay another day for a field visit to some of the future project sites. I spent the afternoon with a local dermatologist talking about collecting data for the project on people with albinsim who are referred to the local health center for skin cancer treatment--cryotherapy or surgery. Our project involves training health workers to identify and refer patients with albinism for treatment when they present with suspicious lesions. (Sadly, many ground level health workers have limited experience diagnosing and refering patients with albinism who have skin cancer at treatable stages.) It is the leading cause of death among people with albinism in Tanzania.

I had a quiet evening but ended up working late since I was away from family and was trying to do some revisions on the research proposal I am trying to get ethical clearance on.

Field visit to local dispensary.

The next day I was taken on a field visit to some very remote dispensaries and health centers to meet some of the health workers that have been trained by our project. It was interesting but hours of driving. I also felt bad taking the time of nurses and health officers who often had a long line of patients waiting to see them. Some were running maternity clinics and had about 100 mothers with children waiting.

Alex and Specioza in front of clinic

As we walked up to one dispensary we found three men with rifles who were not wearing uniforms. They looked pretty intimidating. I was a bit nervous, and Alex my very understated Tanzanian colleague from our partner said casually, "Hmmm, looks like some trouble here." Fortunately the men left quickly as we arrived and zipped off in a motorcycle. When we asked the nurse what had happened she said they were trying to get the names of several pregnant school girls so they could find the men who impregnated them. I don't know what ever came of that, but it did not give me much comfort to think about the potential for vigilante justice of some kind.

We did have a good visit at the clinic and the nurse who was trained described the 8 albino patients she sees who have benefited from the training she received.

hotel view--Maribu storks on the roof of a building.

When we got back to Musoma town in the afternoon, I too caught a bus back to Mwanza so I could catch an early flight. Dividing the long travel into 2 days was a bit better and I got back to Arusha on Thursday afternoon.

Rebecca will tell about what she and the kids did while I was away and about the Harvest festival over the weekend:

Paul was away for just four days, so it wasn’t too difficult for the kids and I to keep on going with the normal routine. I will confess the hardest aspect of his absence was getting all of us out the door by 6:40 every morning. There are a lot of pieces to put together before we leave the house for the entire day. It’s also harder to get everyone to bed, since usually one parent reads a different book to each kid at night. We fell back on our current audiobook, The Once and Future King. Still, the kids were really helpful. Oren buckled down and did his homework independently. David helped me cook shrimp one day and burgers on another. We will have a lot of weeks like this coming up in the next 3 months, so we had better get used to it!

Paul returned just in time for one of the busiest weekends of the year: Harvest Festival at our local international church. Apparently this is a Lutheran tradition: once a year, the church holds a big fundraiser for a charitable cause. The weekend began with a special concert on Friday evening. We had to leave work with the kids, grab a take-away dinner, and get to church for choir warm ups by 5:30. Have we talked about our experience of the choir here? It’s really the most eclectic group of singers we have ever been part of:  African, Western, and Asian styles of music are so completely different! Some people read music, some find harmonies by ear, some are just learning to sing. Some love baroque music, others prefer folk and others contemporary Christian gospel. Trust me, singing together in unity is NOT EASY! But we have been learning to know and trust one another, working hard, practicing for heaven.

We sang together on Friday night and it actually came together fairly well, even with a few people joining us at the very last moment, having not rehearsed at all for the past 6 weeks! A wide selection of other musicians also brought gifts of music. A choir of Maasai girls sang and have already mastered all their traditional dance moves (wriggling the shoulders) at a tender age. A quintet sang wonderful a cappella hymns. We enjoyed a fiddle, a harp, a piano piece, a folk duo, and some very moving songs by a Moravian choir. It was quite wonderful how the director just danced with his baton and energized the congregation to join in.

After a quick break for tea and cake, most people returned to the hall for a bit of folk dancing. Paul led the whole group in an Israeli circle dance. The children were already light on their feet before Paul began teaching the vine step, but a wide variety of people of all ages joined in. And when the circle turned into a snake, with Paul at the lead, the little Maasai girls squealed in delight as they were pulled around the tight bends and in between the chains of people dancing in opposite directions. You really have to participate in this dance to know how fun such a simple set of steps can be. Sadly, our kids were not as engaged as the African kids, and so we headed home right after that, at almost 9 pm.

On Saturday I left the guys at home to go to a 3 hour Worship Committee meeting. This is what you need to do in a church without pastoral staff! When I returned home, we enjoyed a family game and then baked about 10 dozen gingersnap cookies to sell at the Harvest Festival auction. It’s always a fun family activity to make the little balls of dough, roll them in sugar, and then have one family member manning the ovens. I needed a little more time that afternoon to complete the sermon for Sunday, but we ended the evening with family movie night, postponed from our Friday night tradition. Since we watched Infinity War earlier in the year, we had to recognize that we were pretty much completely lost in the Marvel Comic Universe. We’ve been catching up a film or two every month, and we finally got to Captain America: Winter Soldier this past weekend.

We got to church early on Sunday and it’s a good thing because there was a lot to do! But the Sunday service was very uplifting. The Sunday school kids processed into the sanctuary carrying all kinds of produce. And then they sang a song that my kids had learned at a Valley Baptist VBS years ago – it’s still great for kids. The music team leading congregational singing was vibrant and uplifting. Our multi-cultural choir sounded better than I could have imagined, and we were really able to bring praises into the congregation. I gave the sermon for the day, so I really can’t offer a disinterested review. The text was Psalm 126, a psalm which invites us to look back and give thanks for God’s gracious acts in the past, and then look honestly at our current obstacles and pray for God to do it again. It ends with beautiful, mysterious harvest imagery: “those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.” I really felt called to help the church give thanks for the harvest we represent – a harvest of all nations, reaped from the sacrifice in tears of Jesus’ own life. It’s also a call to dig deep and plant, to invest in this community, even when it’s hard to be a multi-cultural church with no pastor. I hope that people were both encouraged and challenged.

When the service was over, people had another short break for tea and then we all started in on the auction. It was incredible to see the variety of gifts people donated: from bunches of fresh herbs and cookies, to farming implements, artwork, 100 lb bags of maize, a massage and a magnificent quilt. Many people came, prepared to spend generously, and it was a fun process (though a bit long in the end – we didn’t leave until after 3 pm). I was on the worship committee team, writing receipts for people who paid for their auction items. It was a bit much to need my brain cells again, that soon after preaching!!

Anyway, we ended the day with some time to catch up with our friends the Taylors, who just returned from home assignment in Australia. It was so lovely to sit on the veranda at Gymkhana, enjoy cold drinks, hear their news, and have our kids enjoy playing again. It was a good way to relax after a long, hard weekend of planting – enjoying the harvest of our efforts.

 Paul again, signing off with one last cautionary tale: Having had such great luck with dentist last week, I decided to try my luck at a local barber shop. There was a kind of high-end one at one of the 'muzungu' shopping malls (cinema complex). I went in and a middle age man, brimming with confidence invited me to sit at his chair. I told him what I wanted to which he nodded vigorously, then picked up a shaver and for the next hour or so, hacked at my hair with the abandon of  a 5-year old with a weed whacker. He never picked up a comb or scissors. My new hairstyle would have made Sid Vicious blush. I spent another hour at home with my own razor shaving down to a crewcut that at least looked even. So what I have learned is that Arusha is great for dentists, but barbers--not so much.

Bonus video: Moravian church choir at our shared concert