Zanzibar in the Season of Bougainvilleas

If the Christmas season is to be remembered for anything in Tanzania, it would have to be the bougainvilleas. As we pass through the calendar year a second time here, I am beginning to get used to the topsy-turvy seasons of the southern hemisphere. The October spring crowned with blooming jacarandas along nearly every street, gives way to mid-summer December with flame trees and teeming vines of bougainvillea cascading down trees and the sides of buildings. The tropical colors are a far cry from the austere evergreens with red holly berry accents of winter in North America. It does not feel like Christmas, but it does feel like a tropical paradise.

Our bed made at the hotel every day.

And what better way to enjoy a tropical paradise than to visit Tanzania's  storied island of Zanzibar! This is only the second time our family has been there, and the last time was when we were working in Burundi (in 2012). It is quite a magical place with a Swahili mystique that feels a bit like a setting for Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The occasion to go to Zanzibar last week was for an MCC team retreat. I guess working for a mission organization located in a beautiful settting puts these kinds of 'perks' within reach. The participants in our team retreat included our family, Sharon our country rep., Lucia our finance officer and her two daughters, Chrispin, our ag. coordinator and his daughter, as well as Ken and Laura, the two East Africa area directors. Twelve of us in all. Rebecca had been one of the main organizers of the retreat including logistics, and made arrangements for us to fly to Zanzibar and stay at the Samaki Lodge and Spa.

We left Monday evening and took a small Air Tanzania Bombadier to Stonetown in Zanzibar, about an hour flight from Arusha. We arrived around 10pm, well after dark but it still took a tremendous amount of arguing with David to convince him that he could not head out to the beach to look for crabs. He finally went to bed that night but was up before 6am the next morning. I did go out with him and it was quite glorious to walk out on the fine coral white sand of Zanzibar beaches! He found many shells the first morning and would have stayed out all day if I would not have coerced him in to have breakfast.

Meals were all provided by the hotel and each meal was a huge spread covering many tables in the restaurant. The staff was obsequiosly friendly, and I noticed that most of the tourists there were Italian and Russian. Almost no one but the staff spoke English.

After breakfast the first day, we had a team gathering and did some ice breakers including a game that was kind of like Pictionary, only one person has a drawing and without identifying it, has to try to get another person to draw it. The game took on interesting dimensions as we tried to find ways to describe a shape in a cross-cultural setting. We also did some reflecting on what Chistmas means to us and chose secret santas. (The rule was NO money could be spent. You had to find or make something by the last day of the retreat.)

We spent the rest of the day relaxing. While the beach is nice, Samaki lodge also has two enormous swimming pools, both of which are beautiful and very pleasant to swim in. David and I went in the ocean part of the time in low tide and walked out about a kilometer to find tide pools. We saw many cool fish including, clowns, blue damsels, a puffer fish, some eels, and starfish. The most common creature by far were sea urchins. We had to wear shoes at all times to avoid stepping on them and getting stung. When we got back, he, Oren, and Lucia's girls, Novella and Esperanza, spent most of the late afternoon playing in the pool. Dinner was fabulous as well featuring Italian and Swahili food. There was entertainment afterwards although I was pretty tired and went to bed.

The next morning David was up early again to catch crabs. We had a plan to do a field visit and sightseeing in Stonetown. There is a Mennonite couple who work for EMM, Peter and Christy, whose office is in Stonetown. We visited them, saw the work he is doing as faculty in an Interfaith Peacebuilding Institute. It is quite impressive, and Christian and Muslim students study peacebuilding together. Their office is in a 6 floor walk-up that looks like a Dr. Suess house. It overlooks Stonetown, but seems a bit precarious considering how narrow the upper stairways are.

We had lunch in Stonetown then headed to a protected forest area where we were able to see the indigienous and very rare Red Colobus monkey. We had a guided tour through the forest by a very funny guide who told us we might be lucky enough to see a python...or if we were even luckier we wouldn't as they are very dangerous. He also took us through a very cool mangrove forest with a boardwalk running through it. We saw many indigenous species in there and had an informative tour about how mangrove forests prevent flooding and reduce erosion.

We got home in the evening, quite exhausted. But David was up bright and early again on Thursday morning for more crabbing. For a team event we did a scavenger hunt. After lunch, our family did a more extensive snorkeling expedition during low tide after walking out more than a kilometer. We saw quite a few interesting fish although the beach where we were was not particularly close to any big pieces of coral or deep tide pools. We played in the pool in the afternoon and did watercolors. In the evening we had our final team gathering on the roof of the hotel, where everyone exchanged gifts. Lucia had made me a picture, and I had made Laura a watercolor of a wall covered with bougainvillea which were ubiquitous around the hotel. David, the prime collector of beautiful shells gave one to Novella. It was a very satisfying, creative end to our retreat.

We did not have to leave too early on Friday, but by noon that day we headed to Stonetown. Our trip home was more complicated than our trip to Zanzibar. To save money we decided to fly back out of Dar Es Salaam. This entailed taking a ferry from Stonetown to Dar where we would catch our flight.

The ferry was quite an adventure, but much more modern than I expected. it was one of those giant catamaran style hover craft. It was surprisingly fast and smooth and we saw some beautiful views of Stonetown from the water. We got to Dar 2 hours later. The taxi ride to the airport though took nearly as long as the traffic was horrific. Nonetheless we got to the aiport and on our plane without a hitch. We got back to Arusha about 7pm and back to our house around 9pm, tired but exhilerated from the trip.

No rest for the weary though as Rebecca had a worship committee meeting the next morning, then her mom "Grandma Jean" arrived on Saturday evening. Actually she did not get in until nearly midnight, but the kids insisted on staying up and waiting for her.

Sunday was an unusual day at church as we did not really have a regular service. It was the 10th anniversary of the hospital where the church is located and there was a big ceremony with much pomp and circumstance and a service in the middle of it for religious and political leaders. Our choir sung two songs in it. The whole event went on for over 7 hours but we left after about 4. After church in the afternoon we participated in some Christmas carols for people who were sick at various wards in Mt. Meru hospital. It felt like something good to do although hard to see people suffering so much in such non-private settings. They seemed to appreciate the carols and prayers.

That about ends it except to say the kids are not in school and David found 2 baby hedgehogs at Gymkhana that seemed abandonned. He brought them home and now we are all taking turns feeding them with an eyedropper 6 times per day.

O come, Emmanuel

Lighting the first candle of Advent

Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, o Israel.

Last Sunday, we had just finished celebrating the first Sunday of Advent, and were dismissing Sunday school, when one of my fellow church elders came to share some unthinkable news: The wife of one of our church members had suddenly passed away on Friday. He had been in church but was so overcome with grief that he couldn’t share the news directly in the service. His wife Julie had been one of our team of Sunday school teachers, teaching our youngest kids. Their own son is just 7 years old. She had seemed only mildly ill and had driven herself to a clinic where she collapsed and died. She is exactly my age, and it’s hard not think of what it would be like for my family here and elsewhere, if something like this happened in our family. The tragedy of this family and our involvement framed and colored all the past week for us, as we waited for Julie’s family members to arrive from Denmark and make decisions about what to do next.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here,
until the Son of God appear…

Mennonite Church of Arusha

In the midst of waiting to hear from Julie’s family, we also had projects that were coming to fruition after several months of waiting. Paul had received ethical clearance to proceed with a research grant in the Ngorongoro crater. Our MCC partner there works to encourage women to have healthy pregnancies and to go to the clinics for check-ups and delivery. However, very few women choose to deliver in clinics. The research is to find out more about the barriers or obstacles to facility-assisted birth, the beliefs about birth practices and also experiences that may discourage women from going to the clinic. He was busy preparing the process and questionnaires on Monday and then left to meet the research team in Karatu on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Role-playing a mediation meeting

Meanwhile, the local Mennonite church started a week of training on peace-building and conflict resolution. I had been working with the leadership team to support their planning over the past two months, and now they really wanted me to be present to witness what was happening. They had invited 100 pastors and church leaders from 8 congregations of their diocese. People came from all different cultural backgrounds, including people local to Arusha, some from a Maasai church plant, and others who were transplants from the faraway Mara region. I was able to spend several hours with them on Monday afternoon, hearing fellow MCCer William Kiptoo from Kenya lay the groundwork for talking about peacebuilding in the church. I remain very grateful for the opportunity to interact more directly with our partners in peacebuilding at this stage of my assignment.

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by Thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.

On Tuesday, I was able to have half of my Sabbath. But this past week was also the final week of the term for our kids, and they had a number of special events going on a school. I was especially eager to go and support David and his house, “Athens,” at the upper primary sports day. Parents were invited to come and wear house colors, giving their houses extra points for each parent who showed up. David had sadly twisted his ankle again in a sack race, earlier that morning, so he had to have substitutes run his races for him. But it was still fun to hang out with him and his classmates. I saw several of his friends win races, and it was nice to be there to affirm them, especially the kids we see and play with all the time at Gymkhana.

Final relay of sports day

After school, I got both kids and Gymkhana is exactly where we headed, to hang out together for an hour. But then I needed to go and pick up William Kiptoo, the peace trainer, with his wife. We as MCC wanted to do something personal and host him for at least a dinner, but it turned out I was the only team-member available to do it. Even Paul was gone! It is definitely a bit of a challenge to enjoy good adult conversation, while keep the kids happy, and so I decided just to offer the Kiptoo’s Chinese food at Gymkhana so the kids  could be safe doing their own thing. I did really value the time to talk more with William and hear about his background and experiences in peace in this region and in Asia. Nevertheless, it was a night of mediating many different needs and doing a B- job of hosting at best.

Even as I was running around picking up and dropping off, I ran into another school mother who had heard of Julie’s death, was trying to comfort her child (who had been in Julie’s Sunday school class), and was also trying to process her own recent grief of losing her father to poor medical care in Tanzania. And that evening, I also had heard from Julie’s family: they wanted me to give the funeral and invited me to come meet them in the morning.

A story of trauma and healing

I was so grateful for our Sunday school coordinator, Anne, who is from Norway, could easily speak to Julie’s family in their heart language, and who was serving as the key contact person for our church. She and I spent three hours with the family Wednesday morning, hearing more about Julie from them, and trying to help them process their grief. We also were able to plan a service that would honor Danish traditions, to be held in our church. Julie’s husband is Tanzanian, from the Kilimanjaro area. And so we also needed to work well together to figure out the best way to meet the needs and expectations of his clan around grieving her death and doing the burial. It was a cross-cultural situation, with many potential pitfalls, but I really thank God we were able to manage to work out a way to honor both the Danish and Tanzanian families.

After meeting with the grieving, it was time to go back to the Mennonite church to observe more peace training. And then I needed to go back to our office to plan some of the remaining details of our team retreat in Zanzibar (starting today). The contrast of activities was almost too much to absorb. It was honestly a relief to head to choir practice and just spend several hours singing pieces about the hope and comfort of the Advent of our Lord.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heav'nly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.

Thursday and Friday brought more visits to the Mennonite church peace training, planning worship music for our church Sunday service (which as it happens I was scheduled to lead, on top of everything else), and also writing a sermon to give comfort to Julie’s family. Although I have served as a pastor at various times over the past 15 years, I have only ever given two funerals, and those only for older people who had lived full lives, and who I had not known well. It was a special challenge to think of how to give comfort to a family who are not themselves believers, but also to really speak the truth of the good news that Julie had trusted in Jesus, and that she is safe with him, in spite of the tragedy for those left behind. It was incredibly poignant to be planning this sermon in the season of Advent, God coming among us, when some of those grieving may have been feeling abandoned by God.

The family had asked that I preach on Psalm 23, for which I was grateful. It was interesting that though they aren’t practicing Christians, some aspects of the faith are still deeply engrained and give comfort. Even as we had a private family viewing just before the funeral, more than one Danish visitor and friend of Julie’s asked if they could please just kneel and pray the Lord’s prayer in Danish. There is still an urge to call out to our Father at moments like this of sudden death.

The family shared so beautifully about Julie. Many, many school friends and teachers came to support her son and the family. Our church family also came to surround and support the funeral with music, including special Danish hymns, and their presence and prayers. It was a real relief to people to be able that she had died of natural causes, due to an undiagnosed condition. And as hard as the situation is, especially in knowing how best to support and care for the husband and son, it was a service which I think allowed people to really honor Julie. Here are a few thoughts on what it meant to me to think about God with us, Emmanuel, in light of Julie’s death. Perhaps it might also be a comfort to others who are walking through this Advent season in times of loss and sorrow.

There is nothing solid we can cling to in this life. Nothing except the hand of the Good Shepherd who leads us. We remember his character, his wisdom in leading us on paths that will give us what we need – even when it isn’t what we want. More than anything else, he promises that as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. With us.

And we who call Jesus Lord, know that Jesus himself is the Good Shepherd. He is not a distant sovereign king, ordering things from afar. He came among us, Emmanuel, God with us.  Jesus came and lived, knowing hunger and disappointment. Jesus experienced the pressures of family who didn’t understand him. He was accused by lawyers who wanted to trap him and get him in trouble with the law. Jesus walked through the valley of the death-shadow himself. He buried Joseph, the father who raised him. He experienced the sudden murder of his cousin, John. He endured the death of a close friend, Lazarus, and wept at his grave. He was betrayed, abandoned, tortured and crucified.

Our Emmanuel, Jesus, God with us, said to us himself in John’s gospel, “I am the good Shepherd.  My Sheep know my voice. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” …

The final promise of Psalm 23 is this: “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever and ever.” …

In fact, goodness and mercy, the unfailing love of God, do not simply follow us passively. God’s love pursues us intently. God’s unfailing love chases us down. God’s mercy and love will not give up until they bring us into the Lord’s house. In the moment that Julie was falling, the unfailing love of God was still pursuing her, catching her as she fell, carrying her to be forever with her Good Shepherd in the house prepared for her with the Father.

Epilogue.

After all was done with the funeral, and the cortege had driven away to the traditional Tanzanian burial in Kilimanjaro, I also attended the peace training graduation on Saturday. Another moment of cognitive dissonance. It can be a challenging call to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. It was a real relief to come to the church early on Sunday morning, and be alone in the sanctuary for a bit, privately having some time to worship and grieve before the other musicians joined me to lead music for Second Advent.

Getting ready for MCC team time

And now we’re packed and ready to head to Zanzibar with our team on our annual team retreat. I might wish for a week of normalcy, but it seems that it is now time to head to the beach, and make the most of savoring family and team time, and the life and the days that we are given. Green pastures and still waters are not an entitlement but a gift of the Good Shepherd, and this week has been a reminder to never forget that. I’ll close with the text of one song we sang yesterday:

You've come, To bring peace, To be love
To be nearer to us

You've come, To bring life
To be light , To shine brighter in us
You've come To be hope To this world For Your honor and name

You've come, To take sin, To bear shame
And to conquer the grave

Oh Emmanuel, God with us

Our Deliverer, You are Savior
In Your presence we find our strength

Over everything, Our redemption
God with us, You are God with us

Songwriters: Jason Ingram / Leslie Jordan

God With Us lyrics © Capitol Christian Music Group

Stuffing it in for the Holiday Season

Kids playing 'Mafia' in the dark with friends.

Thirty days has September, April, June, and November... and because of that I missed by deadline to get a third blog entry in before the end of the month. But it was for good reason. I spent most of the day yesterday, riding home on a bus from Nairobi, then had a short turn around time (enough for a swim) before heading off to a very fun social event. It was a birthday party for Oren's friend Harry that included dinner for parents as well. Most of the invitees were part of our small group. It was quite amazing to see a group of 12 kids, like cousins, running around the house after dark playing 'Mafia', a kind of tag where certain members are killers, but known to the others. What I appreciated were my own childhood experiences of playing "Kick the can" after dark with a group of friends. This kind of gathering of a large group of friends the ages of our kids had been missing our entire first year and I can appreciate now just how missed that was and how important it if for their well-being to have a group of friends to play with. The true antidote to compulsive screen watching (or complaining about not having enough).

But I am getting ahead of myself. The past 10 days have been truly packed with events as we have officially entered the holiday season (at least as defined by our culture).

American Thanksgiving is a good place to start. It is of course not a holiday in Tanzania, and many of our expat friends are actually Canadian, or Scandanavian, so there are not a large number of people celebrating. Nonetheless we did receive two invitations to celebrate the day. One was from the Jaccobsens, a couple who has been here many years and has a famously large annual Thanksgiving gathering at their house. We went last year and saw nearly everyone we knew in the expat. community. This year however, we were also invited to a smaller celebration at our compound, the Joshua Foundation, which is primarily populated by New Zealanders, but there are a smattering of Americans as well. They usually do a small Thanksgiving celebration, and we decided to join them thus year as well. It was a very nice evening, a large potluck, featuring a number of roast chickens instead of turkey, but did have other 'fixins' including stuffing and cranberry sauce made of craisins that was very convincing. We had a time of eating, then sharing about Thanksgiving. I told the group the 'legend' of Thanksgiving we grow up with in the US, about the pilgrims getting helped by the Indians in the first year of their arrival. What is interesting is to see how this resonates with the group in a certain way. Many of them have spent their lives as 'religious pioneers' in a land and culture not their own, and probably identify with the pilgrims in a way most of us do not. It was a very pleasant and meaningful evening.

The days that followed seemed to be so packed with events that it hard to keep track. As we near the end of the school term, the kids have end of term events that they have been preparing. David was part of a large piano recital on Friday that Rebecca attended (I had to work). He played "Swans on the Lake" from John Thompson's piano book 1 for those of you who took piano lessons from a certain era might remember. Rebecca said he did well, and he certainly liked to play almost non-stop at the house the week before. That evening we also had a social event with our small group. We went to one of the families' compounds where they have a brick pizza oven and made personal pizzas. It was also a chance for about 9 kids to get together and play. They really enjoyed having time together in a large group and played a number of board games after dinner. It was like a church retreat.

Saturday was even more full with Rebecca back at the kids school, this time in her role on the parent's committee at a welcoming event for new parents and students. She got back in time for us to go right back out to our church where we were hosting a second folk dance. We had done one last year at it was very appreciated by about tow dozen people, mainly young adult Tanzanians. We were planning to start at 4 but found that a wedding in the sanctuary was running overtime, so we did not get going until about 4:30. We had a smaller group this year, but a fairly large number of children. We did a number of dances, but chose more of the simple line dances that could be done by a large group of children. They really liked Pata Pata, a South African dance, and Cotton Eyed Joe. We ended with the Virginia Reel which was fun for everyone, although extremely challenging for those who had trouble knowing where to go once they were spun off from their partner. It was a fun afternoon and we ended with refreshments.

After the dance, as if we had not packed enough in the day, we headed over to Aim Mall and watched "The Crimes of Grinderwald" the latest installment in the Harry Potter series. I really liked the first movie (Magical Beasts) but was less convinced by the second. In it, they are definitely building to a certain climax in a sequel so this leaves you hanging like "The Empire Strikes Back". What concerns me, though, is that there was a twist at the end that seems to inconsistent with the Harry Potter canon in the original stories, regarding the identity of a certain person. (I won't say more to give away any spoilers.) Nonetheless, we came home after a very full day and relaxed.

Sunday we were off again to a day of activities starting with church where Rebecca was one of the musicians. We also had a visit from a long time friend from Burundi, Duncan B., who works for DFID and was in Arusha for a conference. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, he knew we were here and made arrangements to meet us on Sunday for church and lunch. It was great to catch up with him as we knew he and his wife from Burundi--in fact they met there. We had a good catch up on his family as well as mutual friends.

Sunday afternoon we came home and set up our Christmas tree and decorated it and the house. Although our artifical tree puchased here has a bit the character of a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, it was nice to decorate it and to put on the many things that have been collected over the years. (We did bring our Christmas stuff here from the US. It is nice to make the livingroom feel a bit more Chrismassy, and we have been playing Christmas carols, The Nutcracker, Handel's Messiah, and Charlie Brown Christmas music around the house to get in the holiday spirit (oh, also the chipmunks Christmas album!) This helps a bit as the weather remains in stark contrast to our cultural expectations. Warm and cozy does not sound appealing as the days continue to heat up and we approach mid summer. But the rituals we engage in through advent, the songs we are doing in the choir and way we transform our home help give the right feeling to the season. We are also very much looking forward to the arrival of Grandma Jean first, then Papa Dave next, who will spend Chrismas with us. (In preparation for them, we did some Christmas shopping on Amazon so they can bring out the booty which will be sent to their house:-)

The business of the week of Thanksgiving was partly due to the fact that that week was bookended by my being out of town--the week before in Kigali, and the week following in Nairobi. I had written about the excitement of the family planning conference in Kigali, and the trip to Nairobi, although on a much smaller scale, was also very satisfying in terms of my work.

I was going for a conference involving all MCC partners in Africa who are doing maternal and child health projects using a 'care-group model'. This is a kind of approach to improving health outcomes for mothers and childrens through the formation of 'peer learning' women's groups who are trained through an 'expert mother' (called a care group volunteer) who has been trained by a skilled health promoter. It is a kind of cascading training which relies on the community to educate itself and has been shown to be a very effective way to change behavior toward better health practices around hygiene, pre-natal care, skilled delivery, exclusive breastfeeding, handwashing, water purification, etc.

There are 4 countries implementing these projects in MCC under the same grant. They are taking place in Burkina Faso, Somaliland, Kenya and Tanzania. As leader of the Tanzania group, I brought 3 of the staff of our local Maasai partner NDI to Kenya. It was interesting traveling with them by shuttle bus, I think 2 of them had never been outside of Tanzania and certainy never to a city with building as tall as Nairobi. We did not get off to a great start as they missed the morning shuttle to Nairobi, but fortunately there was one in the afternoon that we all got. (Nairobi is about 5 hours away from us by bus--with a border crossing.)

We arrived about 9pm and got our rooms at the Amani Guesthouse (formerly the Mennonite Guesthouse*) where the conference was being held. The next morning we met together and heard from the other partners about their projects. It was quite a study in contrasts to hear about the contexts of our different programs. Somaliland was probably the most extreme as villages are so remote in the desert that women would need to travel several hundred kilometers to find a facility to access antenatal care. Kenya, by contast, was implementing the model in a Nairobi slum that was so packed it was nearly impossible to find a meeting space for a caregroup to convene. Burkina Faso and Tanzania sounded a bit more similar in terms of distance from facilities and the rural pastoralists who were the participants, but each project had unique challenges and opportunities. I think it was very meaningful for the partners to meet each other and hear about each other's projects. I was glad to have some ability to speak both french and kiswahili as language was a bit of a barrier, especially for the Gustave who came from Burkina Faso and spoke no English.

On day two we had an expert on caregroups from Rwanda come and talk to us about the model and how to maximize its benefits. She provided us with a lot detail about the proper functining of a caregroup on a technical level, and we had plenty of time to work through problems in breakout groups and talk abou the particular challenges in our context.

On day three we went on a fascinating field visit to the Kenya partner project in the Madali slum, outside of Nairobi. It was clear why there was a need for this project in this area. Six people could be seen living in a space the size of a walk-in closet. Women were forced to cook, wash clothes, and dishes in narrow muddy alley ways where open sewage was running 6 inches from their makeshift kitchen. Keeping children healthy would have been an extraordinary challenge. We were split into groups and were able to watch health promoters doing a lesson to their care group volunteers (these ae the expert mothers who will take the lesson to their own groups.) I watched one on exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, and I was very impressed how impassioned and clear the promoter was and how she engaged the mothers in understanding the principles as well as giving coaching on the proper way to breastfeed. After that, we went in groups of 2-3 to differnt homes of participating neighborhood women who talked about how they had changed behavior in the last year including attending ante-natal care, treating water to clean it, washing hands, and exclusive breastfeeding. They were very happy to get useful information and said they noticed their children were healthier. It was a moving experience when came back and debriefed. (No pictures because we were told that taking them was a security risk as people did not like to be photoed and could lead to violent confrontation.)

We returned to the guesthouse and had a final session on project monitoring and getting all of our indicators aligned as we were using different ways of calculating the some of them. It was beneficial to get clarity on that as well.

We left Nairobi early on Friday morning and got back to Arusha in the afternoon without incident. I had a chance for a brief swim, which was where this entry began. We will finish the evening with a Christmas party at the home of Sharon our country rep.

The holiday season is busy, but the biggest contrast from last year are the connections we are building to a new community that we are forming and being formed by. Last year we felt a bit disconnected at this time. We remain grateful for having too much to do as it means we have succeeded in builing a new community who we support and who are supporting us in doing life here.

Back of guesthouse with tree swing.

* Note about the Mennonite Guest House. It was a bit melancholic to visit this place without the family as there are so many memories, like ghosts that haunt the grounds, from my past. This was a frequent stop off to and from home leaves, and the place we spent our first night with 3 year old Oren in Africa on the way to our assignment in Burundi. It was nice to see it again, but missed them even more while I was there during free moments. Here is a picture of the tree swing they used to love. I did go on it myself during free moments. Another contributer to my slightly sad mood was the book I brought along with me to read: V.S. Naipaul's 'Geurillas'. It was quite a dark and psychologically desolate read set in Trinidad in the 1970s. I can't recommend it although it is considered one of his powerful works. (A bit like reading Faulkner set in the 20th century.)