The End of March Madness

David at Parent Child Football Tournament at SCIS.

OK, I admit this post has nothing to do with college basketball, but I wanted to come up with a catchy title for the last blog of March. Generally we try to get 3 posts out per month (every 10 days or so). I had a bit more discipline in Burundi and wrote one just about every Sunday night. I am not sure what has changed, but maybe with older children we find ourselves very busy into late hours. Also the 5am wake up every weekday morning makes bedtime a lot earlier for all of us.

pizza line,
oven at back.

I am starting this on Saturday morning. David and Oren have just had a sleepover exchange with some Canadian friends from our small group with two boys the ages of our kids. David and Toby are over here and Oren and Zeke stayed the night at their house. We will meet up later in the day, probably for some fishing at lake Duluti. Our friends stay on another mission compound (Pamoja) about 30 minutes away from us, one of the features of their place is an actual outdoor brick pizza oven and pizza making station next to it. They have 'make your own pizza night' on Fridays and we are often invited. I have to say it is some of the best pizza I have had. Actually many local restaurants around here have such a pizza oven, and just last week Pizza Hut® has opened a restaurant in Arusha. We had to try it after choir practice last Wednesday to see how it was. It was fairly legit! Same crust and sauce, although there was no salad bar and the pizzas came with a side of fries (people love them here).

Looking back, I would say the past 10 days were marked by several significant events that I will summarize. The first was a field visit to our maternal and child health project in Ngorongoro. I have mentioned in past entries that we have been doing a study up there to better understand the psycho-social reasons women prefer home deliveries even when they can access a facility. It has been interesting as our findings reveal quite a bit about some cultural practices around delivery, some fairly harmless, others concerning. The most alarming one is to virtually starve the pregnant woman in her last trimester to insure a small baby (less complicated delivery). Low birthweight babies have far less chance of survival. Finding ways to change these practices and keep pregnancy safe is a challenge.

Looking into Ngorongoro crater

I had planned to go up with the project manager and a research assistant to complete interviews with nurse midwives at the three facilities in the ward where we are working. I left last Tuesday and drove the MCC landrover up to the town of Karatu and stayed the night outside the Ngorongoro conservation area. There is really no good place to stay in Ngorongoro except a Maasai boma, or one 5 star hotel that a few tourists can afford.

The next day, Bernadetha (research assistant) and I drove into the conservation area. I was not entirely comfortable with the landrover as it has a history of breaking down and we were going hours into the middle of nowhere on a very rough road. I detected concerning problems as soon as we entered the park, as we bounced down the road the battery light came on, then on one hard bump the fuel guage jumped from 3/4 to 1/4 of a tank. (We needed to go over 200kms) Fortunately it popped back up, but as we approached Irkeepusi sub-village to meet our project manager, smoke started pouring into the cab from between the seats where the gear box is. I stopped the car immediately. We got out and I looked underneath and it appeared that oil was leaking out of the gearbox and getting burned on the drive shaft.

Laangakwa to the rescue in his landrover.

It was not a great place to be stranded, about 50kms from the entrance gate. Some zebras grazing nearby stared at us with mild interest. Fortunately I did have cell phone reception and called the PM, Laangakwa and told him we had broken down several kms from the village. Fortunately he had an old landrover and drove up about 15 minutes to get us. By that time a small group of Maasai had gathered around to see what was happening. Fortunately they knew Swahili and I told them what had happened. Laangakwa is also Maasai and arrived and his landrover. He told us that if I could drive back about 5kms, there was a resort up a hill with a garage for safari vehicles. We did manage to limp back after the car cooled.

Interviewing a midwife at Bulati dispensary.

We left the car there with the fundi (technician). He said he could refill the gearbox and tighten the screws (I don't think they use gaskets here in TZ). And we should be able to get back to Arusha. While he was repairing, we continued our safari in Laangakwa's vehicle. We had to get to three health facilities. The first was another 40 kms away on very rough roads, very remote. We needed to collect data on birhs and ANC visits and Bernadetha needed to conduct a 30 minute interview at each place. We were hoping to finish and get back on the road to the town of Karatu before dark.

Research team and midwives at
Irkeepusi dispensary.

It was a long but successful trip as we did get to every clinic, and got very good information and good interviews. (I hope to have transcriptions in a week or so.) We returned in the late afternoon to get our car which had been fixed and washed! We paid $15 for the work and B. and I drove back to Karatu, without further incident. I was hoping to go on to Arusha that day as well, but it was getting dark and I stayed an extra night in Karatu and headed back to Arusha the next day.

I was a bit disappointed not to get back the night before because David was part of a Battle of the Bands event at his school and he was playing keyboard for Believer by Imagine Dragons. He had been practicing at home all week! I missed it but Rebecca and Oren did go and gave a good report.

It was actually good to be back in the office on Thursday after my adventure. Friday was a bit different as our boss Sharon was moving house and we all helped load a truck and get her settled in. It went quite well and her new house is really nice!

Winners of best kit.

The weekend was also very busy. We had a big event on Saturday that Rebecca was instumental in organizing. It was a parent child soccer tournament at the school organized by the parent's committee. It was probably one of the most ambitious things they had done and included multiple tournaments (10 minutes each, teams of 4--at least one adult on each). I was part of team with David and 2 other families. (we had 2 subs). We were called the Savannah Strikers and one of the mom's had made really cool chartruese shirts with a logo. The event was huge and well attended with many vendors and a raffle as well as other activities. We did not win the competition, but get a prize for best 'kit' (uniform).

No rest for the weary after we returned home because on Sunday I was preaching at our church. I had planned something special for the third Sunday of lent. I talked on the theme and preached on stories from Ruth and Naomi, and picking up your cross and following Jesus. But I mainly used Psalm 63 and began with a 'movement poem' in which I recited the psalm while I danced with a staff near the altar. I had wanted to do this as a spiritual discipline as part of Lent--spend some time meditating on the psalm with movement. But as you can see from above, it was very challenging to find rehearsal time with the business of the week. I squeezed it in during evenings and had some time Sunday morning before church as well. I am happy to say it went fantastically (from an execution point of view. ) I received many compliments afterward and felt very good about the sermon. (link to movement poem I did)

We finished off Sunday afternoon with a meetin of our small group. By Sunday night Rebecca and I sat amazed at the amount of work we had done in the course of 5 days. We have really been feeling more connected these past few months. It seems to take more than a year to really get connected to community, but we are finally arriving.

This past week was very (mercifully) quiet. Rebecca and I took Monday off for a time of reflection and had a nice time of walking and talking nnd reading at a coffee plantation resort.

 We went back to work on Tuesday. Everyone is out of the office on field visits or trainings but me and Rebecca this week. I had a lot to catch up on so I have appreciated the uniterruped work time. We are developing several new concepts for future projects and this was a week to get them down on paper.

One of the big concerns we have had is water. We are in the middle of the rainy season, which began last month with several spectacular showers, then stopped completely. It is dry as a bone around here. I admit I am glad I did not have to deal wiht mud in Ngorongoro, but now people's crops around here are failing. It is not all of TZ, but certainly in the north where we are. Please pray that the heavens would open.

Post Script: We just had a nice 3 hour drizzle this afternoon. First rain in over a month!

Finding joy in the fleeting days we are given

Nai, her mother, and Riziki: celebrating successful surgery

This week it’s Rebecca writing to give account for the past few weeks – time flies and there hasn’t been a lot of time for sitting down to reflect. But we have had some really good moments, worth giving thanks for or at least noting.

Weekend times with friends

Over the past two weekends, we have really begun to feel more as if we have a real community here. On one Friday, Oren’s school friend Abraham and his whole family joined us for the opening weekend of Captain Marvel. We’ve become fans of the MCU, and so it was very entertaining to enjoy another intelligent action movie. I can’t understand the bad press…

The following Saturday, we had a fairly quiet morning, catching up on a lot of life details. In the afternoon, we organized our second game of Ultimate Frisbee. We were joined by the Gingerich family and the Thompson family (who live on our base), along with a few children of teachers at the Joshua school. It was super fun once again, and not nearly so hot – especially after the heavens opened about an hour into our play time. I really wish I had gotten some photos of the level of mud that was involved! A few of the kids just kept playing, even in the rain. The rest of us chatted and got to know one another more until the rain let up. Then we found dry clothes for everyone, played board games, enjoyed a shared indoor picnic, and the kids watched a cartoon together, sprawled all over our living room floor.

And then Sunday! Right after church, our boys joined the Gingerich boys and their dad Eli for a special trip to the Snake Park… it was feeding day! We don’t have photos of that either, but apparently a good many chickens, chicks and hunks of goat (for the crocodiles, who don’t care about live food) joined the “circle of life.”

Meanwhile, Paul and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves, being without kids after church! But it was a perfect time to catch up with a lovely family we had gotten to know in our first year here and had moved to Kampala 9 months ago. We shared time in bible study and in Sunday school, so it was great to compare notes about being in different communities. And then, we headed off to our family bible study, where we rejoined our kids. They are so happy to be connecting well with friends in that group, just as we have been so happy to have adults to share and pray with. We really missed being in a family bible study in our first year here! We even had a nice Saturday afternoon at our pool with some of these friends this past week.

School and extracurriculars

David's class door decoration:
finished product

Last week was a big week for our kids at St. Constantine’s as they celebrated book week. The primary school decided to try a new way to reach out to parents: A Parent-child learn together morning. I joined David for his first two lessons of the morning. I was sad at first to sacrifice my usual early morning swim, but then happy to realize that I would be joining him for his PE lesson in the pool! It wasn’t nearly so much of a workout, but it was very fun to swim beside him and learn more about how they teach swimming at their school. (I must admit that I was only one of two parents who actually got in the water – the rest observed from the deck. So, the kids were pretty surprised to see a parent want to get wet with them!)

David and friends working on a tree branch

Then I followed David’s class to his English lesson. They were working on designing a door decoration to celebrate book week. One of their class books was “the Twits” by Roald Dahl. The students divided into groups of 2 or 3, each working on a specific part of a tableau to present the story. We as parents were encouraged to join in, offer ideas, and interact with the kids. It was a fun lesson to be part of. Following the lesson, Parents were invited to have tea and chat with one another. I was also busy trying to get the work out about another big event coming up…(see below).

On Friday, students were invited to dress up as their favorite book character. David really wanted to be Greg Heffley, the protagonist of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. Since he’s a line-drawn character, it took us a lot of collective thinking to understand how to pull it off. But finally, David had the idea of making a book cover and sticking his head through the place where the line-drawn Greg would normally be. It was very fun to make it together – though it all came together at the last minute! (because we had a last-minute farewell for a woman on our home compound. She’s leaving to give birth in Europe, and the adoption paperwork for her two kids here finally came through in time for her to take off. Being part of community is great in so many ways! Also takes some time!)

David as Greg Heffley

So, the other big-time commitment right now is the school event I’m helping to organize. I joined the Parents’ Association of the school back in June, to get to know more parents and a wider group of non-missionaries in Arusha. Now we’re planning an Active Family Day, featuring a 4 on 4 football tournament. The idea is for parents and students to play on a football team together against other teams in the student's age group. We really want to encourage parents to have fun with their kids, meet other parents at school, just be on campus, be supportive of their kids' education (not just paying the fees and leaving education to the teachers). 

Beyond the football (organized by our Parent-teacher representative, who happens to be the Primary sports teacher), we've got lots of other things going on, and it's been so fun to work with a smaller group of parents to plan the various aspects (and get to know these other parents better). An Indian-Tanzanian businesswoman and a Dutch NGO worker have teamed up and collected 29 raffle prizes from local businesses. 

A Tanzanian woman from Moshi (who grew up in Botswana and did her masters in peace studies in Oregon) is organizing 12 different food, drink and activity vendors. A Dutch stone sculptor who has lived here 20 years (our vice chair) is pitching in giving advice and arranging the whole set up, as the only veteran member of the Parents' Association. I'm trying to keep all the balls in the air and keep everything moving with the school, getting help from prefects, etc. So many details! We’ll learn and it will be even better next year, but regardless, I think it's a good effort and it will be a fun day. And we will be VERY tired at 7 pm on March 23!!!

Dust you are…and to dust you shall return.

And there were a few more somber events in the past two weeks to remember as well. A young woman at our church (Peace Corps volunteer) lost her step-father suddenly just before Ash Wednesday. She is returning to the US for good in April, so she couldn’t travel to attend the funeral. So, she hosted a small, personal memorial service for him in the front yard of family friends. We gathered with just a few plastic chairs, a table with some photos, and about 20 friends and colleagues. The evening was clear and breezy and golden. We sang Swahili hymns together and read scripture and heard preaching in Swahili about how we each have a time, and when our time comes, we just need to accept it. The service was really done with love, but also very much in line with the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday: we are dust and to dust we shall return. All we can do is marvel at each day we are given and marvel that God reached out to touch us, dust that we are. 

Memorial service

We were also deeply touched with a sense of our mortality on Sunday morning after church, when we learned of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. That is a flight that any of us working in Africa could have been on, because it is the best, most wide-reaching airline on the continent, with a great safety record. All of us use Ethiopian, and we feared (with reason) that we might hear that colleagues or friends were on that flight. We were spared that kind of news as the days unfolded, but many around us have lost people they’ve known and worked with.

And finally, another more positive note on mortality. Our housekeeper Nai has a younger sister Riziki, 14, who was born with a strange birthmark – a mass of blood vessels close to the surface right at her waist. For years, they went to different doctors and paid good money for advice, but no one could figure out what this was or what to do about it. Since she started secondary school, Riziki has had to walk 10 km to school one-way, and this birth mark became incredibly troublesome, rubbed raw with her uniform and heavy back pack, and constantly bleeding. Back last year, our good pediatrician recommended that she see a visiting plastic surgeon when he came on a whirlwind visit to Arusha. And finally, at the beginning of March, Riziki was able to be seen, have surgery to remove the mass, and then was accepted for recovery at a special children’s home for post-operative rehabilitation, Plaster House.

Riziki and Nai at Plaster House

Nai accompanied her little sister throughout the process of the first consult, ultra sound, and then surgery and recovery. She recounted to me later the miraculous things she had seen among other patients: children with cleft palates, people with no noses, people whose chins were attached to their shoulders – and within days, those same peoples’ faces, and lives were restored. Nai could not stop talking about how incredible it was to have a specialist come, to whom none of these problems were unusual or difficult to deal with. He just calmly looked, made notes, made a plan and fixed them.

I also had the chance to visit Riziki at plaster house a week after surgery and she looked well and happy. She had lessons during the day, made friends with other teenage patients, and was really enjoying the clean environment, good food and good care. Nai and her mother met me there, and I was so grateful for the time with all three women to celebrate a hopefully life-changing medical success with Riziki.

What you don't know...

by seguaro314 (Imgur).

"Unknown unknowns" the idiom coined by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a press briefing during the invasion of Afghanistan, continues to find relevance in my life. Its latest application came during a camping trip near Lake Manyara.

David had received some black light flashlights for his birthday, because we were told by someone last year that if you shine them around at night, you can see certain creatures like chameleons and scorpions because they have some kind of iridescent substance in their skin. David is a nature lover and likes to find creatures of all kinds. We had tried the light on chameleons we had caught and put in a tree a few months ago. The results were middling, and the lights were put away for several months, but remembered and packed when we decided to go camping.

In retrospect, looking for scorpions at night might have been better tried for the first time before we were on a camping trip and staying in a tent. Long story short---it is true! Scorpions, black as coal and completely invisible to normal flashlights glow like flourescent Christmas lights under a black light. But what was really creepy, is that they come out at night and were everywhere!! On rocks, on the grass around our campsite, near the entrance of our tent! And with my super bright headlamp, I could not see them. From that moment on, the late night walk across the lawn, to and from the bathroom, became much more scary, and I wore a thick soled pair of shoes rather than flip-flips! I am still weighing whether it better to know the invisible hazard out there or be blissfully ignorant. After all, none of us have ever been stung before, even in flip-flops. So the only added value seems to be stress.

Backing up a bit, the reason we were on a camping trip last weekend was to round off the one week mid-term break the kids had the week before. The kids being out of school while Rebecca and I still need to work is always a bit of a challenge as we don't have great support systems in place when we both need be in the office. Rebecca is off on Tuesday and Thursday so those are covered. We could leave them at home on other days as they are old enough to fend for themselves, but generally lack the initiative to do much more than watch screens all day. (In fairness, there are not really kids their age around the compound to do things with.)

Rebecca stayed with them most of the week while I worked, and they did have some good play dates with other kids who were out of school. But on Friday we took a vacation day, in order to have a long weekend, to get away as a family.

Several friends of ours told us about a relatively new camp (Migombani) up the escarpment from the town of Mto wa Mbu (Mosquito River--an unfortunate name for a charming town) on the way to Karatu. We left in the MCC landrover on Friday midmorning (thanks to Rebecca's packing the night before) and got there after lunch. We turned off the road at Mto wa Mbu and drove up a surprisingly steep road/path for several kilometers about 1000 feet up the escarpment and seeming to go nowhere but into deep brush for quite a ways. Then quite unexpectedly we came to a gate that led to a lovely campsite, with a flat lush expanse of short green grass, dotted with tents and small boma shaped buildings with bathrooms, showers and a multi-user kitchen, and a small bar and restaurant under a gigantic beobob tree in the center of the camp, and a number of picnic tables and chairs shaded under large umbrellas. At the front lip of the camp site was a fairly large cashew shaped infinity pool (that means the water is full to the brim and overflowing) that overlooked the rift valley and lake Manyara below. It was a commanding view!

our tent next to camp tent

We had rented one of the permanent luxury tents, which was also set to overlook the camp and rift valley, and we brought an old MCC tent we found in our container. It seemed promising, an 8 man Coleman that was really gigantic. We set it up next to the luxury tent. Some of the fiber glass poles were kind of cracked and duct taped, but when we set the whole thing up it took on the right shape and the poles, when extended seemed to provide the necessary double-arch support to keep it up. We also battoned it down with tent pegs just to be sure.

The first afternoon and evening we set up camp, went swimming, and made dinner. We had bought a cool stove that attached on top of a squat gas cyclinder. It cooked our burgers very effectively. It was a pleasant evening until the sun went down, then quite suddenly a 50 km gusty wind started blowing up from the valley. It blew all night and I was worried that our Coleman tent might collapse, it was leaning back more than any of the other tents set up by others around the camp.

Despite the strong gusts we had a nice evening and that is when we went out and explored the grounds with the blacklight and discovered the scorpions. We went to bed fairly early, and the next morning David came in our tent to tell us that their tent had indeed collapsed during the night under the force of the wind. Sure enough, I came out of the tent and found the poles had bent at the weak points and it was lying over. Oren was still inside fast asleep, but the tent was pretty much lying on top of him. Fortunately it was a dry wind and there was no rain. We set the tent back up. In the morning the wind was still strong but blowing in the opposite direction.

Yellow-billed storks

We had an activity planned for Saturday--a day in the Lake Manyara game park. We have a friend from church who is a park ranger-- Godliving Shoo, also a great birder. We knew he was in training at the park and also worked for a tourist company in the area. He got the day off and we picked him up at the gate of the park. We drove our landrover but it was great to have a guide, especially going into a park for the first time. Lake Manyara park is not like the Serengetti, much of it is in a deciduous forest fed by an aquafer, so there are not expansive areas of Savannah where you can see for miles. Much of the driving is in the trees. Manyara is a great place to see birds, but there is wildlife as well.

Marshall Eagle

We spent about eight hours driving around the park and saw a number of environments from forest to savannah, to marsh land and a long stretch alongside the lake where we saw many water fowl including flamingos. One of the really surprising things we saw in a tree where some other cars were parked was a lioness! We thought they were looking at a bird somewhere up high when we stopped then realized a huge lion was right in front of us on one of the lower branches. Lions do not normally climb trees but they have adapted in this habitat, to help them see prey. (There was some evidence that this is not normal behavior because the lioness slipped and literally almost fell out of tree onto a car, but managed to recover herself clumsily.) Their paws really look too big to be comfortable standing on a narrow branch. We saw many other animals including elephants, giraffes, many antelope, zebra, baboons, blue monkeys, cape buffalo, and I could not even list all the birds, but Veros eagle owl, and the marshall eagle were among my favorites. We also saw a batteleur eagle there which is quite rare. It was all good except for a bit of problem with tsetse flies which did sometimes get into the landrover. We were wearing long pants and socks but we did have to swat from time to time.

We returned back to camp exhausted but very satisfied and enjoyed a cool swim as the sun set. We made dinner and noted that the wind had picked up again. I did not think we could secure the tent sufficiently for another night of wind so we brought the kds' sleeping bags and air mattresses into our tent, which had plenty of space on the floor. (We had a raised king size bed!) It was good because that night we had gale force winds and a torrential down pour. Our tent was under three rooves and stayed completely dry, but when I looked at our Coleman the next morning it was completely collapsed and had about 3 inches of water collected inside. The kids would have been flooded.

We did not rush out the next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast and then began to pack up as things began to dry. We had to roll up the tent wet and planned to dry it out on our clothes line. After a morning dip in the pool, we headed back to Arusha. Despite the rain that night it had been a very nice trip and hope to return to the camp again sometime in the near future. It was not too expensive and very nice. We stopped for dinner at Aim mall and had masala dosas! (for any fans of South Indian food, Aroma is a great place to get them located there.)

Giraffe by the road on drive home

It was good to get back into the normal routine this past week with the kids back in school. Rainy season is now upon us and we have had heavy rain most nights. It is still hot in the day, and the pool water is still refreshing but cool in the morning.

 A final highlight was Ash Wednesday. We had a service at church right after choir practice, so we treated the congregation to a prelude we had worked on the past week. John Stainer's "For God So Loved the World" from his Crucixion Oratorio. We nailed it in my opinion! The Ash Wednesday service was very nice and Rebecca preached and did the imposition of ashes at the end. The kids were very good considering they went right from school to hanging out at church for choir practice then staying for a service that ended about 7:45 pm. We went to Khans barbeque on the street after the service with a family from small group who have kids who are very good friends of David and Oren. (they will be returning to Canada in April which will be sad for our kids.)

Enough said for this week. Here a few more photos from the trip: