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.)