Beach Week and back to Advent in the Dark

David with giant tortoise.

Paul wrote the last blog while hanging out on the beach in Zanzibar. It seems appropriate to follow up by letting you know more about our team retreat there. In fact, I’m going to let Oren take over here. He wrote about the experience for his grandparents and was willing to let this be his debut in blog writing. So, without any edits or alterations, here are the impressions of our 14-year old son:

“The trip to Zanzibar was a truly fantastical experience. The climate was not too extreme and standing on the sandy ground overlooking the ocean is always an unforgettable sight. The place where we were staying was called Promised Land Lodge, it had very nice drinks and food but their beach was very rocky and not the best. It was still wonderful nonetheless.

The trip getting there, however, was not as enjoyable. We had to wake up very early in the morning, around four, to be taken by a taxi to the airport and to fly away at daybreak. I think I may have subconsciously developed a light phobia of flying in airplanes. Once we landed in Zanzibar we were met by our tour bus and were driven down to the Zanzibar harbor where we got into a small boat and were maneuvered the waves across to Prison Island, it earned that name because it was meant to be a quarantine. While on the island we saw the astonishingly large Giant Land Tortoises, they are an incredibly endangered species, only existing in Zanzibar and Galapagos.

Following the tortoises, we waded back to our craft to begin snorkeling. Jumping into the water again was very refreshing, the view of the water from beneath the surface was infinitely different from the view from above the surface. The coral reef was breathtaking, many different types of coral, fish, and many other things of astonishing colors and shapes. We were out for around an hour and a half before everyone returned to the boat.

We then returned to the main Zanzibar island and back onto our tour bus to be taken on a long drive to the lodge. At the lodge, we slept in bandas, thatched houses, which were very comfortable and had indoor bathrooms. They had a beach bar which served delicious watermelon juice and had very comfortable hammock seats. The place was constructed on a small cliff overlooking the Indian Ocean. There was a warm pool where I frequently swam, and a volleyball pitch where most of the people on our team retreat came together to play a non-competitive game of volleyball. The meals consisted of things such as chicken leg, grilled calamari, and fried octopus. The cliff that lodge was built on was covered in sand, giving the feeling of constantly being on a proper beach.

The most phenomenal part of the retreat was swimming in the open ocean with a pod of dolphins. It was so incredibly magnificent, they were not uncomfortable around humans at all, they just right past you on their way. The closest I managed to get to one was about one and a half meters, I was gaining on it and would have been able to touch it if it had not chosen to dive at that moment. In conclusion, it was an incredible trip.

Thank you for reading, --Oren.”

I do want to add a few observations myself. Our MCC team includes 6 adults and 4 kids. We invited Alang, a volunteer from Laos serving in Kenya, to come and join us. In addition, we invited a couple to help us with some spiritual reflections on loneliness and community. In the end, our group included 3 Canadians, 1 French woman, 4 Tanzanians, 1 Laotian and 4 Americans. As far as team bonding, I felt like we got a lot further during this retreat than we had before. It was awesome that David had spent time with Lucia’s daughters at Thanksgiving because they consider each other friends now after the retreat and played really well. The three of them were old enough this time to entertain themselves doing crafts and painting during the times of spiritual reflection. I was really happy that Oren decided to join the adults during those times and seemed to really appreciate Tim, our speaker, and the way he presented on the problem of loneliness.

We had some amazing times of snorkeling, as Oren already described above. I found myself full of wonder at two things simultaneously: the undersea world we were able to explore, and the capability of my children to handle snorkeling skillfully in the open ocean. It was especially remarkable to watch each of them just tumble off our boat into the ocean and swim hard chasing after dolphins, without even needing to surface to adjust a snorkel or a mask. We were in and out of the water at least 8 times – pretty exhausting! – but they kept up with it as well as any of the adults. And David is incredibly good at diving while snorkeling; in fact, I’ve been learning from him and growing in the courage to do that, not simply stay on the surface.

During the weekends on either end of the team retreat, we enjoyed some really lovely Advent times. Sharon, our MCC Representative, invited us all (including Jessica and Alang) to an Advent evening before the trip. We shared special foods as well as stories. We were all transfixed by some of the amazing stories Angelika told about her work with Maasai girls. And then we had some really good singing, including sight-reading a whole lot of new Christmas carols together.

On Friday after we returned from retreat, Jessica took Alang on a whirlwind tour of Arusha. Meanwhile, our boys welcomed their friends Harry and Sammy for a sleepover. Each set of boys mixed up and baked a batch of Christmas cookies – sugar cookies and ginger snaps. They played a bunch of long games. In the evening, we had a full house, with Jessica and Alang staying the night again. We introduced everyone to the stereotypical 60’s American Christmas gone awry in the movie “A Christmas Story.” After all the fun hosting, it was indeed a welcome change to have a quiet house by Saturday night.

This past week has offered its own challenges. The structural challenge is this: the kids are out of school, but we are not out of work! It is indeed a hardship for everyone concerned that the kids are not just on holiday, but also expected to do quite a lot of work. Oren has 3 major art pieces to work on, as well as math, geography and chemistry assignments. David has to write 5 different essays, along with several math worksheets. We have tried a lot of different approaches this week…bringing them to Gymkhana in the morning to exercise with us and then do homework and a golf lesson. Homework was not getting done. Leaving them at home in the morning to do work. Homework was also not really getting done. Finally, on Friday, we brought them to our office to plug away at homework under our watchful eyes while we also kept plugging away at reports and emails. Somewhat more successful.

The other challenge we faced was completely unexpected. After choir practice on Wednesday, we went out to dinner with Jessica at a favorite pizza restaurant near our office. We had a nice dinner with good conversation, and were just getting up to leave when Jessica said, “Where’s my bag?” She had been very careful not to leave her backpack containing her computer and 2 phones in the car but had brought it into the restaurant to keep it safe. (I must admit that we were not so vigilant and left our bags in the car). It had been sitting beside her the whole night, right at her feet, leaning up against a column.

The restaurant manager took the issue very seriously and allowed me to search the staff quarters and all around the edge of the restaurant, in case someone had slipped off with it and tried to hide it. But he assured me that there were CCTV cameras and that we would be able to find out what had happened. It took some time to figure out how to get the CCTV system to playback, and clearly a trip to the police station would be included in our evening. So I arranged for our trusted cab driver to come and get the kids and take them home. Meanwhile, a technician isolated a particular camera and was able playback the chilling 2 minutes in question: a young man entered the restaurant from the back and walked around the edge of the large group of foreigners gathered there that night, clearly casing the joint. He took the table next to ours and was joined by another young man. They sat there for just a minute, without ordering anything. And then, while all five of us were still seated at our table, somehow, unnoticed, one of them reached over, grabbed Jessica’s backpack, passed it under the table to his buddy, and then they got up and left. It was a completely professional job—it’s hard to see it happening on the camera, even when you know they’ve just done it.

If you want to see the CCTV video, click on this link. See if you can spot the moment of the crime!

We copied the footage and headed for the “Diplomatic and Tourism Police.” There was only one guy on duty and he couldn’t even find the form for us to fill in to file a police report. There was no way he was going to leave and do an investigation at the restaurant. We returned in the morning and made the report to a lady. We had heard that these police would be very professional, with the capacity to even speak multiple foreign languages. We discovered that this prediction was overly optimistic and I was glad that I had sufficient Swahili to explain the case to the woman officer because English wasn’t making sense to her. We remain skeptical that the police will pursue these thieves, even though there is good evidence available, and these guys are likely to be repeating the crime as often as possible. On the good side, Jessica emerged with a police report that allowed her to block her old sim cards and apply for new ones. She got a new phone and did a lot of work to protect her identify after the theft of her computer. It’s a very hard hit for her, especially during the holidays.

All that to say, it’s a reminder that we live in a dark world, involving poverty, crime, anger, frustration, incompetence and loss. We are still in need of a Savior, and thanks be to God, we celebrate the birth of the light next week. But we need more light. Even so, Lord Jesus, come.