Preparations and Departure

Dulles arrival and meeting Papa Dave and Gramma Jean

Last Friday evening, we bid farewell to Jonathan’s family after a fun and satisfying time of Tanzania vacation, showing them around some of our favorite spots. We had one quiet evening in between, family movie night and sleeping in, before we needed to turn around and dive into a final week of work and preparation for our own departure.

Nai (center), with her younger sister and her son Ezra

But first, there were a few social events to attend to. We now have a tradition of bringing a birthday cake for each of the birthdays of our housekeeper’s children. We had missed 7-year old Leah’s birthday while we were in Zanzibar. So, on Saturday morning, I made a cake for her and David helped me decorate it. Then, the kids and I drove over to her place to go spend some time with Nai’s family. They are so incredibly kind and hospitable when we go. We enjoyed some spiced chai and freshly roasted corn, right out of their field. Then we had rice and sauce made with little tiny salted fish (ndaga). 

David really enjoyed running around outside in their farm with Nai’s kids and their neighbor friends. Apparently, they ran to see a relative, who gave them 500 shillings (about 20 cents), and they each came back with a tiny frozen sleeve of juice. 

Oren was a bit more at a loose end, but he sat inside with the adults as we talked about life, farming, school, etc. Finally, we got to the birthday cake and Leah was so pleased to blow out candles and share the sugary cake with jellybean decorations. Paul bowed out of this visit, as he needed to concentrate on preparing a sermon for the following day.

Leah, in pink, in front of her cake.

Later that afternoon, we picked up our good friend from Burundi days, JJ Ivaska. He was in town for some work meetings and it was a real pleasure to bring him back to our house for dinner. We had a lot to catch up on, now that his family is settled back in the US, he has a new job, and we’ve had a lot of changes in the past 5 years as well. We had shared a lot in our international bible study in Burundi, and it was a sweet time to just dive back in to sharing with him again. Here’s a repost of the photo from last weekend.

Rebecca, Paul and JJ

On Sunday morning, it was great to be back in our church, after missing a week. Paul preached a thoughtful sermon on the Good Samaritan. Since Sunday school is on break, he started out by inviting some of the kids in church to act out the Gospel reading as he read it. But his preaching was focused more on the adults, really pushing us to consider how Jesus placed a most unexpected and offensive person in the starring role of his story. Paul took time to explore what it is like to put ourselves into the place of each of the characters but concluded that the place we mostly belong is in the role of the man who was in need of mercy. The parable calls all of us as Christians to be people who show mercy, because we ourselves received mercy.

We rounded out our Sunday afternoon with a meeting of our bible study group here. Many of our members are currently traveling, but we were able to still gather with 6 people. Indeed, being part of the formation of that small group has been one of the highlights of our past year in Tanzania. There is nothing so precious as having a group where one can share and pray together.

In-country orientation for IVEP

And then, by 8 pm that evening, we were hosting again! This time, we welcomed two young men who will be participating in the International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP) with MCC. They are from Tanzania, selected from the Tanzanian Mennonite church through a rigorous interview process, and they will be serving for the next year in placements in Illinois and Virginia. As part of their preparation for this year of service, I asked them to come to Arusha for a few days of in-country orientation. And as I got to know them more this week, I realized how much they needed orientation. One of them has never left the country (and the other traveled briefly to neighboring Kenya). Neither has flown on a plane. They have spent very little time with people from cultures outside of Tanzania. In fact, one of them eventually confessed a lot of fear at the idea that he was going to stay in the home of Americans for 3 days, wondering if he would really be able to do that. I felt very affirmed then that it was a good idea to have them stay at our home, eat with our family, and observe American family culture, as well as to have all the formal orientation sessions we went through in the office. They will be staying with host families, and this 3 day stay with us was like a brief taste of a homestay. I think they felt much more confident in their ability to relate to Americans by the time they left on Wednesday morning.

We had so many interesting conversations over the course of the two full days they were with us. We did our best to stretch their taste buds, introducing them to spaghetti Bolognese, Mexican beef burritos, and even taking them out for a Chinese lunch. And the learning was two-way. As we spent time talking over meals, they helped us realize how novel it was for them to have mealtime conversation. We discovered that in Tanzanian culture, it’s exactly the opposite: it’s good manners to remain silent while you eat, and in fact, you are considered selfish if you are chattering away over a meal! WHY WASN’T I TOLD?!!? That explains a lot of the awkwardness I’ve often felt trying to make conversation when I’ve shared meals with more traditional Tanzanians. I thought that somehow, I just couldn’t figure out the right questions to spark a good conversation. Now I realize they must have thought that I was being rather annoying to distract them from their food!

Chinese lunch with Lucia and the 2 IVEPers

There are many other less tangible differences in culture that these young men needed to know about: the very different culture of the American church (including the issues that divide us—so foreign to Tanzanian Christians); differences in social relations in terms of less formality and hierarchy, and the possibility that men and women can be simply friends; differences in work culture, in terms of how readily we in America can ask questions and give direct feedback, but we need to be timely, not on the phone all the time, and take initiative when we don’t have direction. They were surprised to hear that there are virtually no internet cafes or good public transport – because almost everyone has her own device and car. This will be a challenge for them on their small stipends. They were even shocked to hear that you can drink water straight from the tap! I certainly couldn’t prepare them for everything, but they are open, friendly, engaging young men and I think they will be very successful in making friends and continuing the learning process as they arrive in the US next month.

Even as we finished the in-country orientation for them, one IVEP candidate returned home after his year of service. I had a chance to talk with him, and it sounds like it is quite a rough transition to come back home to a place where people really can’t relate to his experience and have unreasonably high expectations about his ability to now solve the economic problems of everyone in his network. Going abroad is an amazing opportunity for these young people, but there are also high emotional costs to broadening one’s worldview.

Birthday cake with bible study group

My birthday was on Wednesday, and I got to experience many, many hours of that day 😉, since I woke up with our visitors at 4:30 to get them into a taxi and head for the bus. And when you’re awake at 5 am, there’s no going back to sleep. So, it was a good moment to catch up on a bunch of other computer work. We also had an early morning conversation with our supervisor (currently in Canada), to make sure everything was in order before we left. It was a full workday after that. But we ended the day in a truly celebratory way. Our friends the Taylors very kindly invited us over for a delicious curry feast, including chicken, beef, vegetable, lentil and potato curries. It was amazing! Along with birthday cake. And some very good conversation with Mike and Katie. And a fun game of Colt Express. And our boys were super happy to have more time to spend with their age-mate friends. We polished off the evening by bringing home the Taylor boys to have one final sleepover at our house. And as I needed to be at home, sorting, packing and preparing on Thursday, it was great that Oren and David had friends to hang out with for much of the day.

Everyone was able to have an afternoon swim (evening in my case, since I still needed to do a few more hours of work before leaving for a month), to get the wiggles out and prepare for the long journey. Our suitcases were packed by 9 pm. And we even got a little rest before the alarm rang at 2:15 and we hopped in a taxi to the airport by 3 am. Let me tell you, it’s a quick trip to KIA at that hour! And now we are on board Turkish airlines and headed for Istanbul. God willing, we will arrive in Washington by 7:30 pm EDT, and maybe in bed by 11 pm. It’s going to be a long, long day! But we’re on our way to a month in the US, bringing closure to our second year in Tanzania. It's good to have this time to reset!

Mt. Kilimanjaro at our dawn departure