A Flurry of Field Visits with Our Leaders

Maasai women's group in Longido.

Rebecca contributed her stories in the last entry from the past 2 weeks in Arusha. I was notably absent because, as she said, I was out of town during much of the previous week on visits to our partners in the field.

The visit from MCC leadership was a particularly significant event in the life of our program this year. Not only did we host the Area Representatives, Ken and Laura L. but also the International Program Director from Canada, Mark E came for a visit as well. It is not often we get senior leadership from Canada coming to visit our program. In expectation, we had been planning a series of field visits to partners to show a good cross-section of our program.

Our guests arrived the day before the weekend of the choir concert and harvest festival at church Rebecca wrote about in the last entry. The timing was good in terms of giving them a chance to see the choirs, but unfortunately, it meant that those of us who were going out to the field for several days had to leave on Saturday morning and would be gone for the harvest festival.

Our first and furthest destination was Dodoma, in central Tanzania. We have two partners there, a food security partner doing conservation agriculture and a school for the deaf that we support with various inputs to improve the success rates of students. Historically MCC has had other projects in the area as well, including several sand dams. There is also a Mennonite Church there that has partnered with MCC in the past. That said, there were plenty of things to do when we were there for a visit.

We left on Saturday morning, six of us, Sharon our country rep. Ken and Laura, Mark, Chrispin, our food security coordinator, and me, as health and education programs coordinator. We piled into the landrover, which is not very comfortable as the seats are hard and very vertical, there is no AC, and the engine tends to heat the floor of the car quite a bit. Fortunately, the roads down are all paved and quite good, so despite the discomfort mentioned, the 8-hour trip down was not too bad.

We arrived and checked into our hotel then began our official duties of our visit with dinner. We met two young men for dinner, Deus and Peter. They are currently living in Dodoma and had recently returned from MCC sponsored education opportunities. Peter had gone to the Africa Peacebuilding Institute (API) for a month last summer in South Africa. It is a very good opportunity to learn about techniques for conflict mediation and transformation, and consistent with Mennonite theological values of being a historical peace church. He seemed very excited about what he had learned and had even recently submitted a proposal to do peacebuilding in the context of church leadership.

Deus is someone I had met before, in the summer of 2018 just before we left for our vacation. He and another young woman stayed at our house in TZ as a cultural experience as they prepared for a year abroad in the US as part of MCCs IVEP program. It was nice to meet him then and I remember being very curious about what he thought of living in a host family and working in the US for a year. It was good to get feedback. It had been quite an awesome experience, and he had worked at an environmental center at Goshen College. He did confide that coming back was a challenge. He really experienced quite a bit of reverse culture shock and some unrealistic expectations from friends and family that he would be bringing many expensive gifts with him. (He was not paid while he was there.) He seemed to enjoy sharing with us as we enjoyed hearing about his adventures.

After dinner, we returned to the hotel, The Johannic (a new level of service in Jesus' name according to the sign on the front). The room was not bad, and we have stayed here before. Despite the fact that Dodoma is on the savannah it is not too hot because of the wind. Sleeping was not bad at all.

We woke up early Sunday, our program, set by the Mennonite church we were visiting that day was to begin with a service from about 8:30 to 1:00. It sounded long, but we were guests and showed up dutifully at 8:30. As we expected, we were pretty much the first people there, but by 9 am we were joined by 15 to 20 others and the choir, nearly outnumbering the congregation began their songs. The service was not unlike other Swahili services I had attended there were periods of singing, sermons, a Bible study, the culmination interestingly was the offering. I don't know if this was planned for our visit but they did an elaborate hard-sell multiple offering event aimed at building a new church in a neighboring ward. They were trying to raise about $1000 from about 30 people in the congregation, so I imagine they were hoping we might contribute substantially toward it. The whole thing is culturally quite jarring for those of us from the 'right hand should not know what the left hand is doing' kind of anonymous offering giving. Several made load pledges of large some and we were encouraged to do the same. They may have been disappointed that we were not so inclined to do so on our first visit.

After church we had a meeting with the new diocese general secretary and his team. Deus and Peter were there as well as they will be helping with some of the church programs, especially in peacebuilding and development. We had a cordial meeting and talked about past and possible future partnership with MCC on projects. We left for lunch about 2 pm.

That was not the only agenda for the day. MCC had supported some sand dam projects with the church in the past, and there was interest by the ADs and Mark, to see the extent to which they were still being used after 5 years. (Part of our focus on sustainability). Sand dams are low dams put in seasonal rivers that collect sand, so when the river is dry, they maintain a high water table. A shallow well can be dug to continue to access water in the dry season. They can be a land transforming water security intervention, but they are not a magic bullet and are not always successful.

Our visit was in the heat of the day and we drove a ways out of town to an area that is currently in the height of the dry season. It was hot but did eventually arrive at the sandy bed of a dry river where there were a series of 3 sand dams. We visited 2 of them and found quite a few wells where people were drawing water as well as at least one well-watered fruit and vegetable garden in the 'desert'. Generally, the dam seemed to be working well in terms of trapping sand. What was harder to assess was community engagement in maintaining shallow wells for all to use. It appeared more that people dug their own wells and were not working in coordination with each other.

We returned in the evening and had dinner in an Italian restaurant in town. We got a night's sleep then headed out the next day (Monday) to visit some other food and water security projects in the same area by a partner from the Anglican church.

DKT, our partner, has been doing very effective work promoting food and water security in the area. We spent most of the day in an area called Chamwino visiting a series of key-hole vegetable gardens, shallow wells, conservation agriculture and innovative storage facilities to keep seeds from spoiling so they can be sold at a time after harvest when the market rates are better. Chrispin was our leader through these visits and gave us background on the work. We ended up seeing 2 wells that were truly 'streams in the desert' (kind of a theme of our trip it seemed.) One of the wells was just opened the day before and there was quite a large crowd of dancing women to greet us. We also met a very animated lead farmer named Elizabeth, who proudly showed us the way they were gardening using water from the well, as well as her own keyhole gardens and those of her neighbors.

We stopped by a school that was also using a kitchen sack garden technique and students proudly showed us their sacks. One of my favorite sites was an underground seed storage space in someone's house. It was quite clever, a big rectangular hole like a grave lined with plastic, filled with seeds, then covered with sand. A mat is put on top then table and chairs like a dining room. The storage is deliberately difficult to access to make sure that it is not accessed at any time, but saved for a time it will be sold. (Also avoids people coming by to borrow food, or husband selling some for beer?)

We spent the whole day there and had lunch in the middle of nowhere under a not to shady beobob tree. I would describe the day as whole as very hot dry and sunny. But very interesting nonetheless.

Tuesday was our last day in Dodoma and we stopped by the Dodoma School for the Deaf in the morning. I have not been there for about a year and it was good to see the many ongoing improvements. They have been building a vocational school for kids who choose not to, or fail to continue to secondary school. They offer an array of skills including sewing, carpentry and I believe auto maintenance in the future. We were all happy to see the computer facilities, dorms, and fish pond in good repair. Kennedy the director gave us all a tour of the whole place as this was the first time Ken, Laura or Mark had been there.

We did not spend too much time as we had a long drive back. We got on the road before noon for 8 hours of driving. We stopped in the town of Babati for lunch and while we were there at an open air restaurant we looked in the distance and saw what looked to be a huge brown haze. We realized that a dust storm was appoaching with a lot of force. It was quite a shock, all of the plastic furniture was suddenly blown across the floor of the restaurant and we had to dive for cover behind a low wall. It was a mighty wind that lasted for about 45 minutes. I called Rebecca to tell her about it and she said it had hit Arusha about an hour earlier. It was quite a sight. I am posting a picture of what it looked like on the savannah, although our view was a bit more up close then this one.

We did get back to Arusha that evening and after dropping everyone off I got home pretty exhausted. We did have plans for some visits in Arusha as well though and went to the Step by Step Learning Center the next morning with Mark, Sharon and Laura. It was a great visit and always inspiring to see Margaret's work with these kids. It was also great to see Jessica at work. She is definitely a natural is very gentle and professional with the children. She will be a great asset to the teachers there with her skills as an occupational therapist. The place looked great and the income-generating projects are impressive. Goats, bees, fish, chickens, eggs, vegetables, and beads.

We used the afternoon for Mark to do a presentation of MCC strategic planning at the higher level and to see how ouf global priorities will shape our programs over the next 5 years. There willl be more focused on displaced people (refugees and IDPs) but also peacebuilding.

The next day was the last day of visits for our guests. We went to Longido and visited our partner TEMBO. They always offer a fascinating opportunity to see their work as it is in with Maasai in several rural communities. They do a lot training and sensitization around the danger of FGM and encourage families not to circumcize their daughters. We started with a discussion and meeting with community animators at their office/guesthouse, then, after lunch, we went out in the field and met a women's group. It was a fascinating opportunity to talk with these women directly. There were about 40 of them decked out in full Maasai fancy dress regalia with tons of beadwork around their necks
and hanging from there ears.

I asked them at one point how many children Maasai women wanted and they said 11 or more. They aske me how many kids I had and I said 2. They were quite surprised and asked why so few. I explained that children were expensive in my country and I could not afford to raise more than 2. Then they wanted to know how we avoided having too many. I talked about family planning and a husband and wife deciding together how many children to have. They thought it was all quite funny and wanted to know if there were any male contraceptives where I lived or was it all up to the women. I told there were condoms. They seemed to be having a great time discussing all of this. Before we left they showed us their beadwork they had for sale, and we were happy to buy some from them. It was a very interesting day.

We drove the 2 hours back to Arusha in the afternoon. Rebecca and I invited Ken, Laura, and Mark over to our house for dinner. I had intended to have some board games to play, but we were all pretty exhausted and I took them back to Sharon's where they were staying not long after dinner.

It was kind of a relief to have a normal day of work on Friday and I had a lot to catch up on. A paper I had submitted to a journal for publication came back from peer-review with a number of significant revisions requested in a short time frame. It was a busy day as was the entire following week.

We did have some social highlights in the past week. Small group meeting at our house, and this past Saturday we hosted another ultimate frisbee game. Sadly we had only played about 30 minutes when a torrential downpour ended the game. It was very muddy at our house afterwards with many guests coming by for cake and snacks. The small rainy season has come early this year.

The kids are out of school this week and I am out of town in Kenya for a CORE Group conference, but I will say more about that next time.

Typical house in Chamwino, the place we visited near Dodoma.