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| Colobus monkey in Arusha National Park. |
We are at the end of Holy Week and I find myself with some time
this Saturday morning to put down some thoughts and a record of the past 10
days or so. We have been quite busy the past two days as Rebecca led the Maundy
Thursday evening service, which included foot washing. Our church has been good
about observing all of the 'High Holy' days of this week. The foot washing was
a reflective service and Rebecca did a good meditation on the meaning of Jesus'
symbolic act. In his last hours, this is what he chose to do as the full
display of his power. She emphasized the importance of receiving foot washing
before washing another's feet, as we don't earn it by doing good works. The
participants took turns first being washed, then washing the next person. It
went very well although there were many who participated and it took quite a
while. The choir, which we are part of, also sung a song about Gethsemane at
the end.
Good Friday was also a service
in which we participated with Rebecca leading music. Our choir sung two songs
and I was involved in the readings during the Tenebrae. I was very happy to see
both of our kids sitting patiently and attentively through all of these
services and even singing during the hymns.
Holy week and the week
following pose a particular challenge for Rebecca and I, as the children have a
very long spring break--almost 3 weeks. We, however, do not have time off work,
except for official holidays like Good Friday and Easter Monday. Arranging
activities for them and meetings with friends is challenging for this many days
and Rebecca has needed to work from home on several days this past week. In
Tanzania we are not immune from the kids’ default to screens during any
unscheduled moments. So, time with friends is better and we also had the kids take 2 golf lessons last week.
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| David and best friend Tobi feed cows in the stable on base. |
We have had a lot of good
family activities though, especially in light of the fact that the Canadian
family in our small group will be leaving Tanzania in a few days. This is
particularly sad for David as he considers Toby, his age mate, to be a really close friend. He is very sad about Toby's imminent departure. We have, however
had several really good times together with our small group in different
settings beginning last Saturday with an ultimate frisbee game and movie
night.
Rebecca and I have committed
ourselves to host an ultimate frisbee game and movie night at our home at least
once per month. Our family of four already makes a critical mass as Oren and
David have both become quite proficient at the game. There is another family
from New Zealand on our base who also have a 4 person team (with daughters
rather than sons). Our Canadian friends and a German rugby player from our
small group joined us this past week, as well as two Tanzanian kids from the neighborhood. We had
a fiercly competitive game and then enjoyed a pot luck and fellowship while the
kids watched a movie.
The next day, Palm Sunday, Rebecca led music and I helped lead the kids in a very palmy processional. Palm trees are ubiquitous here, even on the church grounds and we had whole
branches not just fronds! They also sang a song before being dismissed to
Sunday School. After church we had a late afternoon/evening gathering of our
small group and had an official good bye time together for our Canadian
friends. There are 3 families in our small groups with kids of the same age.
They are almost like cousins, with Oren hanging out with his age mates Zeke and
Harry, and David going off with Toby and Sammy. There are three girls who are
good friends as well.
The adults had a good time
together and I got some photos of us together. It will be hard to let the
Gingerich's go as they will not be easily replaceable here. The reality is, in
this kind of life, we tend to develop close relationships quickly, and let them
go often, especially between April and July when many leave. By August, we can
get a bevy of newcomers (as this is the time of transition time in the academic
year).
I went back to work for most of
this past week, since Friday was the only holiday. It was actually a very busy week becaues we have a reporting period in the middle of April. (End of MCC fiscal year)
and I had 8 reports coming in from partners that needed to be reviewed and
entered into our database. It can be exciting as I collect and analyze data
on project impact and several projects, especially our maternal and child health project
in Ngorongoro, are showing significant impact. But it is a lot of work to get
through all of the reports and respond. I also had the opportunity to visit a
maternity hospital in Arusha that is working to be a model of excellent
practice and respectful maternity care. (Maternity Africa). It was very
interesting to see their facilities which were in stark contrast to the
delivery rooms in the resource poor dispensaries in Ngorongoro. I am hoping
there might be some opportunity in the future to have some nurse midwives from
our project region come and train there.
While I worked this week, Rebecca worked two days twice, and was also very busy. Still, she had two days to do some activities with the kids, including a safari day at nearby Arusha National Park. She'll relate some details here:
Tuesday was the highlight of enjoying Tanzania in this season. At about 9 am, we met most of the folks from our small group at the gate of Arusha National Park. I can't believe we've never actually visited here before, since it's less than an hour from our house. But still, all tourist experiences remain fairly expensive, even for residents of Tanzania. And coming in as a private party of 6 adults and 10 kids, it took quite a while to complete the registration and payment. But soon we were off, driving on a long dirt track, closer and closer up the slopes of Mt. Meru. Oren was in an uncommonly bouyant mood from the time we left the house, and was incredibly happy to be on this adventure together.
We left our vehicles at a Ranger station in the middle of the park and picked up an armed ranger to guide us on a two hour walk into the bush. It was good to have some (false?) sense of security as we crossed a river into an open meadow and right into the middle of a herd of cape buffalo. They may look like docile cows, out grazing in a pasture, but they are actually the most deadly animal to humans on safari. There was a bull on either side of us, and each seemed to be gazing fixedly at our party, from only 20 meters away. We crossed between them and continued on to an area where we saw 4 giraffes foraging on some acacia trees at the edge of the forest. It was pretty amazing to just stop and watch them for a while. The far point of our hike was a narrow ravine down into which a high, narrow waterfall poured into streams flowing in different directions. It was shady and about 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding environment: a perfect place to have a snack and for the kids to play in the water a bit. We continued out again on a loop trail that brought us past a few monkeys and back around to the Cape buffalo once more before we returned to the ranger station.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch there, while the kids scrambled up and down a scale model of Mt Meru, and then bid farewell to Joerg and his son. The rest of us continued in a vehicle caravan to drive around the park for a while. I got to chauffeur Oren and his two age-mates, and it was a delightful experience to overhear the kinds of conversations they have with one another. They are very imaginative and funny! The first leg of our drive took us up a very steep section of very rocky road into the forest around the base of Mt. Meru. I won't lie -- it was pretty tough driving, and I had to really work to get the hang of driving the Ford pickup and doing hill balancing with a tricky hand break. But, the forest was incredibly beautiful, filled with huge trees, each branch loaded with parasitic ferns and epiphytes. Next time we do a walking safari, I vow to myself to do the longer loop and walk up through this forest to our destination: a massive strangler fig -- well actually two that have joined and formed an arch. It was pretty cool to drive under the gap and then take photos there. On our way down, we spotted a black and white colobus monkey, quite a huge simian. It too was spectacular as it scrambled down in front of us, took a flying leap across the road above us, grabbed a branch -- which then snapped off! And it landed near the forest floor, shaken and running fast. Oren saw a few more colobus farther off in the forest as we continued to drive.
Next we drove through more savannah and spotted quite a few antelopes and a family of giraffes with at least 3 babies. We arrived at a series of lakes and drove around and in between at least 5 different little bodies of water. Most of them were lined with countless numbers of flamingos. It was so wonderful to see lines of flamingos flying past, and even some flamingos upside down, head in the water, legs flailing, as they fished for something. The landscape of ANP is actually quite stunning, in and of itself, with so much diversity of elevation, nothing like the uniformity of some of the savannah parks. The teenagers in my car were giddy and ridiculous, the air was clear and exhilerating. It was such an incredible day, with a deep feeling of happiness and gratitude for the time to spend in this place and with these friends.
That evening, we had another sleepover exchange -- Oren went home with Zeke's family and Toby came home with us. In the morning, the two boys got up and spent lots of time visiting the 5 cows in the barn, owned by our site manager. It was great to see all the things they thought of to do together. I took them for an afternoon swim and then we traded our kids back once more.
As Paul has already said, we have been quite involved in the services at our church over this past weekend. It was a lot of work -- very fulfilling work -- and it raised a lot of questions from our older son, who asked, "Why do you always commit to so many things?" At the same time, he was asking, "What does it take to be a really good human being? None of us can be perfect, right?" We had a good discussion, pointing out that being who you are called to be, and who God made you to be, is the main thing we can do to be good human beings. But that might also feel like a lot of work at times. And in a parallel set of conversations, Paul and I considered Pharell William's song "Happy." (it's worth a look on YouTube). He and the entire cast of his music video are just so outrageously happy! We had to recognize how hard it is to be happy (in that carefree kind of way) when you are someone who takes responsibility. It's a conundrum. But I do conclude that an intentional day of Sabbath rest -- fasting from responsibility and work, deciding not to accomplish anything -- is the only real way that responsible people can experience that carefree joy. And so I thank God for the Tuesday we had at Arusha National Park, and the joy of being out and fully alive.
