Back to Ngorongoro for a Day

Tradition midwife listening to a training on supplemental feeding. 

Time seems to fly when you are busy and the early part of the school year and only a month back from a summer break still requires much catching-up on a daily basis. Honestly, though, being busy with work and social events is better than the alternative. In our third year here we have definitely find ways to fill our time with things we believe in and enjoy as well. The past two weeks give evidence to that.

I have actually begun writing this on a Saturday morning and I am trying to get it done before we have a large group of friends come over for an afternoon/evening of board games. Board games are definitely a favorite activity of Mennonites (as some of you may know) but also of many other missionaries here on our compound. Jessica is still with us as she completes here orientation and began work at Step by Step Learning Center for children with severe mental disabilities, where she will serve for a year as an Occupational Therapist. We continue to enjoy having her at our home where she regularly shares in the cooking and has an impressive repertoire of French provencial cuisine. We anticipate moving her into the home of her host family this Tuesday.

Long dusty roads, very remote.

Backing up about 2 weeks: I had scheduled a field visit to our maternal and child health project in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It is the first out-of-town trip I have taken since our return. I try to get to every partner several times a year for a field visit, some are more convenient than others. The trip to Ngorongoro involves a 3 hour drive to the town of Karatu, where I usually stay the night before proceding on to the conservation area and the villages where we are doing our work (an additional 2 hours). As it turned out, Sharon, our Country Rep. decided to join me on the trip and suggested bringing Jessica to let her see some of our other projects and partners.

Getting data from Irkeepusi disp.

The three of us left on a Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Karatu Tuesday evening. We checked into a local hotel which had a surprisingly good rate given the number of very high-end tourist hotels in this town that is at the gate of the conservation area. We had dinner at local restaurant and turned in early. We drove to the conservation area entrance, paid our fees and proceeded onto the very rough 1.5 hour drive to Nainokanoka village, our first stop. As a newcomer, Jessica was very keen on seeing animals, and the days did not disappoint eventhough our route did not go directly into the crater where most of the game are. On the way out of Arusha we saw an elephant wandering in the savanah not far from the main road. We also saw the families of baboons on the way up the escarpment to Karatu. There was a large family of love birds on the roof of the hotel as well.

Kirambu showing teaching materials.

On our drive into the conservation area, we started in thick fog and when we looked into the Ngorongoro crater from the lip at 8am, it was like a bowl of thick white soup. No hope of seeing the bottom. It cleared within in an hour though and we saw a number of zebra, ostriches, a secretary bird, jackal, and impala in the savanah where the Maasai villages are where we went to visit the clinics.

We arrived in Irkeepusi village about 9 am, and met Laangakwa, director of NDI our local partner. We followed him in his Landrover to the furthest village (Bulati) which is about 30 kilometers from Irkeepusi. The road is so bad that we used two vehicles in the anticipation that one was likely to breakdown. Although it is not rainy season, the ground is so dry on the road that there were some deep ditches of fine dust that we had to use four-wheel drive to pass through.

Sharon, Jessica, Laangakwa and nurses at Irkeepusi.

The purpose of visiting the three clinics in the ward where we are working is to collect data on facility deliveries and ante-natal care to see if our project is having an impact in getting women to use the clinics for delivery. We have generally seem an upward trend which seems to have leveled off at about 30% (from 2%). It is always good to talk to the nurse midwives about their challenges and needs. One of the clinics, for instance, had a stock-out of supplements for women during pregnancy (ferous folate). We also visited the local market which was just opening in Bulati before returning back to Nainokanoka village.

Nainokanoka village has a 2nd tier health center and we were able to meet the ward medical officer there and talk to him about work in improving MCH in the ward. He is a big proponent of us building a maternity waiting house near the clinic to eliminate the need for women to travel when they start labor. I wish we had funds to do that, but not at this time.

We also were able to visit a 'care group' meeting in session. This was a training session for traditional birth attendants who are bringing health messages to women in the ward. Currently they are working on promoting proper infant and young child feeding (IYCF). The current protocol is to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months then introduce a variety of supplemental foods after 6 months. The 25 TBAs in the small room greeted us warmly and held up their training materials-- cards with clear pictures of women breastfeeding, and different food groups. (Most women and TBAs cannot read, so the cards are helpful when they disseminate the lessons to households.)

Exclusive breastfeeding and giving babies a variety of foods is not a common practice among the community here. We asked the TBAs why women were resistent to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months and they said the biggest problem is that their husbands do not want to give them time to do so after one month. They expect their wives to go back to work and leave the baby with others. The TBAs were very keen on us supporting a training for men to sensitize them to the importance of giving their wives time to breastfeed.

After leaving the care group meeting, we proceded back to the first village 'Irkeepusi' and got the facility birth data from the last clinic. By that time it was 3:30 in the afternoon and we headed back to the main gate, and then continued on back to Arusha. We arrived on Tuesday evening, fairly exhausted from the long drive the second day.

The rest of the week was fairly busy for me at work. I have been part of a grant writing team for a Govt. of Canada grant and spent several days working on a logic model and log frame for a multi-country project. I don't know if MCC will ultimately be successful, but it will represent a large effort by a number of people in the US, Canada, and various MCC programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

The weekend was fairly tightly schedules as well, Rebecca had a committee meeting at church in the morning, then we were invited to the wedding of a Tanzanian friend (a consultant we work with sometimes), at our church. I joined Rebecca at the church for the noon wedding, forgetting that a start time of noon really means that is the time you should start getting your nice clothes on before leaving the house. The ceremony itself began over an hour later. Bernadetha is Maasai, although she works in the Arusha and does not wear traditional garb herself. She and her husband were in a white wedding dress and tuxedo. But many of her relatives and 'grandmothers' from the village arrived in a bus and were decked out in full Maasai regalia. It was interesting to the mix of cultures. We were the only wazungu at the wedding but we were happy to support Bernadetha in her new life. (They are planning to come to our church as well as her husband is a member.)

Sunday I was teaching Sunday School again, and had two groups. Rebecca was leading music in the church and she put together a great worship team, Neil another former MCCer on mandolin, Alessando on drums, Rebecca played piano and guitar, and Jessica played the flute. It sounded great and I was sorry that I missed most of it as I was teaching Sunday School.

The past week has been fairly busy as well at work. We were approved to move forward on continuation and expansion of two of our projects which was nice, although we have to write full proposals for them. We are still having to do work on our residence permits. It is a bit vexing because we have our work permits, but Tanzania seperates the two processes so you can theoretically be approved by the labor dept. to work in the country and be rejected or delayed by the immigration dept to live here. The residence permit is now an online process, which should be more efficient but creates a challenge in communication when trying to find out what is delaying one's approval process. Unlike going in to the local office, sending an email does not result in any response. Rebecca was approved several weeks ago, but I am in still in limbo. Jessica is also having to provide other documentation and re-apply for a different class of permit in order to complete her process. I think it will all work out in the end, but it does create stress especially for me as I approach the end of validity of my previous permit and will cease to be able to remain in the country legally.

We continue to rehearse on Wednesday nights for choir and I am looking forward to our concert next Friday. That is the only regular variation in the week. While rehearsing this past week, I was able to deliver a new piece of playground equipment for our young Sunday school kids. A metal safari car which we put in place with the help of some of the stronger choir members.

 This past Thursday, however, Rebecca and I took a personal day for some reflection. It was nice to do some things in Arusha without the kids. We went and had breakfast a brand new hotel the Gran Melia, by far the most opulent hotel I have seen in Arusha, or anywhere else for that matter. A description cannot do it justice, but it is vast and even the grounds feel like one has entered into an isolated paradise enclave though it is right in the middle of Arusha. My favorite part was the pool which resembles a small lake over 50 meters wide, although not a rectangle. One long edge pours over into another even larger pool which pours into other terraced pools going down stream to a small river. It had the look of a watery paradise in a very dry town. From the edge of the infinity one looks up a  cascading amphitheater of a terraced tea plantation. Created and landscaped just to be a view from the pool and hotel room balcanies on that side. We overpaid for breakfast and spent a couple hours enjoying the grounds before returning home.

Poolside at Gran Melia

We were actually preparing for an interview that evening as we are in the 3rd year of our contract here and need to figure out what we will be doing next, either here or elsewhere next August. No decisions or hints yet, but we are trusting God that the right opportunity will be coming.

Generally we have settled comfortably back into our normal routine here and it is good to see the kids in school. They enjoy playing with friends, especially the Taylor boys who are their age mates. They were at a playground together last Saturday and share many common interests (especially around Minecraft.)

We are gearing up for a visit from MCC leadership. Our area directors and International Programs director will be visiting us beginning Thursday. I expect to being a lot of traveling over the next 2 weeks, and will give a full report in the next installment.

Karibu Jessica

Yesterday, Today, and Forever flowers in bloom in Arusha.

Oren had an odd nightmare last week. He  dreamed he was walking around the quiet suburban neighborhood where we own a home in Maryland. He was strolling down the road with two of his Indian schoolmates from Arusha when he heard the sound of loud machine gun shots coming from behind them. He turned to see a man driving a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted on it. An active shooter. The man started shooting at Oren and his friends, who dove for cover behind a hill. Later he learned that the shooter frequently drove through the neighborhood and had killed others.  Occasionally, the shooter showed up at the funerals of his victims and shot more people. The people in the neighborhood seemed to feel powerless to do anything about it; they just put up with it, and ran for cover when the shooter came around.

As allegorical as that is to the situation with second ammendment rights in the US, what really struck me about the dream was the sense of how much our home country once again feels like a foreign, and forboding place. Somehow, Oren has already internalized the sense of unease that many of his age-mates feel going to school back in the US, and he has shared that he's really happy to be attending school in a much safer situation. We are entering year 3 of our time in Tanzania, and while this could be our last year, we do hope to extend our term. I had the sense that we were 'coming back home' this year, different than the year before when we were 'returning to Tanzania'. The US seems further and stranger. Most of what we hear from home is in the form of extraordinary events, like mass shootings.

But it is good to feel like we are returning to something familiar, and even comforting. We do have a burgeoning community of our own here, built around our job, our homestead, and our church. It was good to be back in each of these settings.

We returned nearly 3 weeks ago now, and jumped right back into work. It is the season of reporting and I had progress reports from 7 partners sitting in my inbox when I arrived. This is not entirely unpleasant; it is interesting to see the update on progress although it does mean a couple of labor-intensive weeks to get them into our MCC database.

Morning, day 1.

Rebecca also had work to catch up on, and the fact that the kids did not get into school until our second week back made it a challenge. We were very happy after the first weekend to see them off to school on Monday morning and to enter back into a long absent familiar routine. Although the familiar routine still begins at 5am for me and involves us all leaving the house at 6:40am and driving to the office to meet the bus for a 7am pickup. Rebecca and I have continued our morning swim and did use our wetsuits on the first week back. But I was surprised to find the weather has already begun to warm up and after a few days we abandoned the wet suits and are once again swimming in our normal suits.

It was good to see the kids coming home the first day feeling really good about their classes. David has a new 'form tutor' (like a homeroom/primary teacher), whom he seems to like and who seems to be committed to make writers out of the kids in her class, based on the amount of writing they get for homework. Oren is preparing for O levels and is taking English Lit, Chem, Math, French, Computer Science, History, Geography, and Art. Even his art class is very rigorous, with an extensive text book which includes techniques in hand created art, as well as how to use computer programs for all the adobe graphics programs (Photoshop, Illustrator). Both are doing swimming as a 'club' activity.

The big event at work happened on the Wednesday after we returned. It was the arrival of our new YAMEN volunteer Jessica, an occupational therapist who will spend the year with us,working with Step by Step Learning Center, a facility for severely mentally disabled children. YAMEN is like the SALT program I have written about in the past. The main difference is that YAMEN volunteers do not come from the US or Canada. They can come from anywhere in the world, and usually they come from an Anabaptist church. Jessica is a Mennonite from France. She arrived last Wednesday afternoon from an MCC orientation in Rwanda. Rebecca and I picked her up from the airport.

Since then, Rebecca has been occupied with in-country orientation, processing residence permits, getting her set up with language study, etc. Jeassic has also been getting to know the MCC team and we have had several social events including a team meeting that included sharing food from our respective countries, and celebrating the birthday of Chrispin, our Ag. coordinator. This has given us occasion to take Jessica out for some local cuisine. She had her first taste of 'ugali' last week as well.

Our current team, Sharon, Jessica, Lucia, Rebecca, Paul, Chrispin.

Starting this past week, Jessica has been staying with us at our house, as she will not be able to move in with her host family before Sept 10th.

Jessica showing the Tian she made. 

We have enjoyed having Jessica at our house. Although she speaks English we have mainly been communicating in French thanks to our Rwanda/Burundi years. It is fun to practice using that language again. She is also a very good cook and has treated us to several delecacies of French provincial cuisine. (She is from Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France.)

We have also been busy with a number of church activities. In preparation for the beginning of Sunday School (for which I am the coordinator), Rebecca and I did a half-day training last Saturday. We invited the previous year's as well as new teachers to participate and make sure we were all on board on how to teach the curriculum. It seemed to go very well and we had 4 new teachers --  what we needed to have enough this year. We began registration two Sundays ago and then began teaching last week. We had about 60 kids join us (in 3 levels). That is a good number, but from last year's experience I expect we could grow to 80.

We have been trying to do some improvements on the grounds as well. Our family brought back some new swings for the swingset, and we are ordering a new piece of playground equipment and more sand for the sandbox in the near future.

Choir also began 2 weeks ago, so we are going to practice on Wednesday nights. Jessica is joining us for choir practice. We have a concert at the end of September for our Harvest Festival weekend. We are doing some very nice pieces including a John Rutter setting of "For the Beauty of the Earth."

Getting back together with our small group has also been very gratifying. David and Oren were thrilled to see their Australian friends Harry and Sammy, as we were glad to see their parents as well who work at an Anglican Bible training college. We have about 4 families who seem to be coming consistently and over a dozen kids who seem to be able to play together nicely.

This weekend Rebecca and I hosted an ultimate frisbee game followed by a potluck and game night at our house for members of our small group and other families in our compound here. We had about 24 turn up for frisbee and had a great tournament with 3 teams rotating in and out. It was our best attended game to date. The potluck and gamenight that followed were really fun as well. We taught many games including 7 Wonders and One Night Werewolf. Jessica is also an avid gamer (being a Mennonite:-) She brought us a game as a gift called Pikomino, which has been enjoyed by adults as well as kids.

That is the news to date. This week I will be traveling up to Ngorongoro to visit our maternal and child health project with Sharon our Country Rep. More about that later.