Rains on Birthday Week

David's friends at his birthday party. 

This final week of October has been framed by two key features: the arrival of the rains, and David’s 10^th birthday.

Arrival of the Rains
It was so interesting to realize how sensitive we have become to the climate here in Arusha. Generally, the weather here is more or less comfortable to the human body – maybe it’s a bit on the cold side at times, but we really don’t need climate control. We live without central heaters or air conditioning, with our windows open and a light sweater always on hand, to put on or take off as the weather shifts 20 degrees over the course of the day, from 60 to 80 F or so. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when, on Sunday night last week, it was incredibly hard to sleep. It had grown very warm and claustrophobic. We all seemed to suffer from really bad, disturbed dreams; and then a terrific wind started up near dawn. Clouds began to blow in from the west, gathering and building up in big piles on the slopes of Mt. Meru. And by Tuesday night, Voila! the rainy season started in earnest.

Rain in this part of the world is always a blessing. Water for drinking, moisture for crops: none of these are a given here. But it did cause some personal complications. For one thing, we had just been celebrating the fact that the new East African highway, which will connect us perfectly to East and West parts of Arusha, is coming along nicely. I had used it several times in the week before rains to get to some friends. My 40-minute trip was cut down to 20, using a combination of paved, gravel, and dirt access roads. It’s hard for the construction company to finish off the unpaved gravel or mud portions in torrential rain, so we are hoping they catch some days of at least partial sun in the next few weeks.

Piñata adventures

On a more personal level, this was the week when we needed to create the annual birthday piñata for David. He had envisioned a huge fat spider, made from connecting two balloons with papier mâché. Paul and David worked hard on creating this terrible creature, which was at least 70 cm long when they were done. They left it out to dry all night. By morning it was…just as wet as the night before, after a full night of pouring rain outside. Paul waited until Thursday evening, but then he needed to take drastic action to dry out the papier mâché enough to paint. He decided to put the whole beast into our gas oven on low heat, with the door open.

First, the balloons inside started expanding with the heat, tearing the still damp newspapers that were stuck on. So then Paul got a pin and popped the balloons. Immediately the balloons began contracting, pulling the newspaper in along with them. It was pretty much a papier mâché disaster. But the sign of a great artist is his ability to take the materials given to him, however hopeless they seem, and to shape them into something marvelous! Thankfully, David was not too upset when the horrible big spider morphed into an equally terrifying large wasp, using the head and body of the Spider, with a cardboard thorax (containing the candy) glued on in the middle.

On Friday evening, we realized we had far too much birthday party work to do. We enjoyed a short time of play at Gymkhana and sat down for a quick family dinner at this awesome local barbeque place called Andrews. I am really happy whenever I hear my kids appreciating things about Tanzania, and comparing them favorably to things in the US. Oren was raving about how delicious the grilled chicken was, and David was happily gnawing on a goat leg for as long as we would let him. Then we headed home – Paul to paint the wasp piñata, and me to bake. David had passed out invitations at school with reckless abandon (in my view), and

David helped to decorate his cake.

though I was only just starting to get 1 or 2 RSVP’s for the party the next day, he told me that there might be, “…like 29 kids coming, or something.” I decided it was prudent to bake two cakes.

The Friends’ Party

We worked hard all morning, preparing snacks, cleaning the house, clearing surfaces, and closing off half the house. our experience last year at David’s birthday was that kids found their way up into the bedrooms, and the resulting combination of cake, juice, and piles of Legos was not something we wanted to see repeated. We also prepared a number of complicated games involving the theme of being nature explorers. I drew up a list of tasks that kids need to do, find, or act out for a photo scavenger hunt, to be played in teams. Paul created one of his epic rhyming fill-in-the-blank treasure hunts. We bit our nails as we looked outside at the extremely changeable weather, praying that the sun would come out definitively. We also decided that it would be good to have a craft for kids to do when they arrived, to keep them occupied in smaller groups. So every kid could decorate a paper bag, into which they would later put their candy from the piñata. 

Craft-making

When the kids arrived, we were really happy to learn that they were interested in making origami bugs and butterflies. They each took turns at the craft table, and then just jumping on the trampoline or wacking our tether ball around. But we began to notice a worrying trend. Just about every kid that David invited from his class brought along another sibling or cousin or friend (in the case of one kid, he brought 3 random friends from his church and a younger sister!!). No kidding, out of 7 friends from David’s school, there were a total of 9 kids who came along for the ride! And that’s not even counting the non-school friends who came as a family, because we know them all. By the time we really started all the games we had 21 kids to deal with, only 11 of whom David knew. I didn’t even have phone numbers for some of the kids who were dropped off. It was a situation that would be unimaginable in the US. Paul was saying, “Where is Chris Ballard when I need him?!?”

By the grace of God, we survived the insanity of a 4 team tournament of gaga ball, played on our trampoline. Then, the kids actually settled down and did really well with the photo scavenger hunt in 3 teams – each team having an adult photographer (or Oren). The treasure hunt was sheer madness unfortunately – the kids heard the rhymes, completed them and then stampeded or charged or crashed from one location around our house to another. There were injuries. It was bad! At least no one fell off a ladder. But somehow, they found the keys to the outdoor container and found the basin of “Stolen” birthday gifts.

We decided it would be wise to move on to cake. That’s hard to mess up! I was really glad we had a table and a bunch of chairs outside. And then we had the kids smash up the piñata. The chaos was slightly more organized. Finally we showed the kids who were interested the results of the photo scavenger hunt, by the miracle of photos instantly downloading onto iCloud. Other kids just wanted to keep jumping on the trampoline and running around, which was fine. I will say that the kids had a very fun time, and most of them are very lovely children when you interact with them one-on-one, rather than as a noisy, revved up herd. I did enjoy the chance to get to know one or two parents as they picked up and dropped off kids – it’s not easy to meet other parents at my kids’ school since they go by bus.

The last child left around 5, which wasn’t too bad, considering that I’d scheduled the party from 2 – 4 on the invitation (I have learned about how to talk about timing in this context). And then it was time to clean up. While the damage to our floors was limited, it was still substantial. Paul and I sort of wandered around hopelessly from this pile of trash to the next, trying to sort it out, for almost 30 minutes. And then we realized that the only hope lay in taking a quick shopping trip together for essential cleaning supplies: a squeegee to wet mop the mess off the tile floors and out the door. And maybe a little something else to help cheer us up through the toil. We finally finished floors, dishes and dinner around 8 and were very happy to collapse on the sofas and enjoy our postponed family movie night, a reprise of Thor: Ragnarok.

Sunday was no day to slack either. I was leading music, and it was a family service, so the Sunday school kids were singing. I really enjoy making music with the youth adults at our church, and this past week we had a lot of fun. I was finally brave enough to play the piano and handed off my guitar to another young woman for about half the songs. The were wonderful as they sang a very fun calypso song (“Righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost”) and then the beautiful prayer song from Godspell: “Day by day.” I love the song, I love to see the kids doing movement in worship, and I loved how the congregation sang along-- those who still remember the 70’s! 

And the sermon was given in such a warm and winsome way by our pediatrician, a doctor from our hometown of Baltimore. He gathered all the kids around him and was so open to all their questions about his old and new frying pans and how that related as an object lesson, to the old and new forms of priesthood, made perfect in Jesus. It was such a warm, wonderful Sunday together. Both Paul and I also ended up napping for two hours when we got home – the effects of the birthday marathon were still working their way out.

Meeting Teachers

Monday – it was David’s actual 10^th birthday, and lucky for him, there was no school! Instead, it was a day for parents to visit the school with their kids and have one-on-one meetings with teachers. Staff of an American school would lose their minds over this situation – no Signup Genius appointments are made. Instead, you just show up outside the door of the teacher you want to visit, and probably wait in line behind 2 or three other families. But, this is appropriate technology. No one would show up on time for appointments, even if you planned them. So it works! Another good thing about the Cambridge system is that the student goes in to talk with the teacher together with the parent. It’s the kid’s education anyway, right? And part of the point is making sure THEY hear where they are doing well and where they need to improve. The school even provides two tea breaks and lunch for parents, which makes it possible to keep going for hours of conversation.

I really love these days. It is such a wonderful and unique opportunity to get to know, at least a little bit, the real human beings who are helping to shape my children’s minds and hearts. I think it is worth to it spend the entire day doing this, and my kids don’t seem to complain. In fact, they really were happy to have me meet teacher after teacher, who gave witness to the fact that, by the grace of God, we seemed to have raised children who are sensible, good students, who ask good questions and don’t seem to get in trouble. They could both expend a little more effort to express themselves fully, but they are on the right track. I am so incredibly grateful to hear this from teachers, and I also really want my kids to understand how to appreciate the teaching they are getting here.

We spent two morning hours meeting David’s teachers. We shared lunch with Oren’s best friend and his family. And then after lunch, Oren led me around to meet every single one of his 10 subject teachers. In retrospect, I was so moved by the warmth his science teacher showed towards Oren, urging him to study hard, get it straight, stick with his group of “smart kids in science.” He’s kind of a hippie looking guy from South Africa, but I noted a tatoo on his arm that I hadn’t seen before of a cross within the continent of Africa; I think I also sensed a whiff of the fragrance of Christ in that room. Oren excels in math, and his Math teacher really appreciates him, but was urging him to submit to the seemingly pointless task of showing his work. She even went on to say, “Who knows, maybe God brought you here to this place to show you how to have the discipline to do what you don’t really want to do because it’s part of our system. Maybe later in life you will need to have this skill, who knows?” I wasn’t anticipating a sermon from a teacher, but I’m glad to be in an environment where it is natural to express what is in one’s heart to a student, even if that involves religion. Not all the teachers are brilliant, but some of them are really wonderful human beings and moment after moment I really felt joy in sharing this time with my children and getting to know their teachers.

We finished off the evening by celebrating David’s birthday as a family, in the way he requested: an early pizza dinner at George’s. It was a quiet Monday evening in the restaurant and we had such a good time together as a family, giving David a present from each of us (a ball from Oren, a big exercise ball from me, and two UV lights from Paul, for hunting for scorpions and chameleons at night). We told the kids stories of funny things they did as kids, or of times they got sick and we worried. We laughed a lot. The boys played. We enjoyed each others’ company. For those of you who have known us for a while, you know we have struggled with sibling rivalry for years, and it has really taken it’s toll on our family morale. Looking back on last evening, I am just filled with joy and gratitude. Because it’s not the only time it’s happened that we have enjoyed one another; it’s happening more and more; it’s almost becoming the norm. I think this is maybe one of the greatest gifts of coming here, not having many (or any friends) to distract us from each other for months on end. We’ve had our lonely times, but we are better as a family. Thanks be to God.

A literary note:

I don’t think we’ve said much about our current family audiobook: the Once and Future King, by T.H. White. I’ve never read the entire thing, and parts of it are quite a slog, and thankfully we are almost finished -- though the chapters on Wild Geese qre quite uplifting at the end. But we felt it was important to educate our kids about the Arthurian legends. Beyond the legends are moments of breath-taking political philosophy. To those who need some perspective on the current toxic political climate in the USA, I commend to you the final chapter of Book 4, “The Candle in the Wind,” and Arthur’s final despairing consideration of his life’s work.