Closing, Closure, Christmas

An update is long overdue if I am going to get two entries in the month of December. I don’t know what has happened to life these days. It just seems that there is very little time to sit down and reflect on the recent past, much less write it down.

I am currently sitting in a restaurant at a hotel outside Nairobi. Our family is here for an East Africa MCC Representative gathering—something between a retreat and a team meeting. We have been here for two days. It is a stark contrast to Tanzania where we never wear a mask. Kenya is experiencing a COVID spike and mask requirements are extremely rigid. You can even be ticketed for driving in your car with another person while not wearing a mask. I am grateful for the policy because one of our group actually recently tested positive just prior to arriving here. The threat is real!

Crossing the border with valid COVID tests could be a story unto itself. Suffice it to say, trying to get a test in Arusha during the Christmas season that is ready on time for departure but not done too early was very tricky. We actually picked up our results only hours before we left. I was very happy to get four negative results back because Rebecca, Oren, and David, have been fighting a respiratory illness for the last 10 days, and it was worrying.

I will say less about what we are doing in Kenya and talk about the weeks leading up to our departure. It has been a very busy holiday season and a time of several ‘closure’ events around the official closing of our MCC Tanzania office.

The most memorable event of the past 3 weeks was definitely a Tanzania team retreat we did with our colleagues Chrispin and Lucia. As we approached the imminent closing of our office, Rebecca and I really wanted to have a last chance to spend some non-work time with our national staff and their families. With the decrease in tourism these days, it was not difficult to book a safari lodge. We booked one in the town of Mtu wa Mbu (means ‘mosquito river’) which is next to the entrance to Lake Manyara Game Park. This is a park Rebecca and I have been to once before. Not typical as game parks go in that it is along the side of a large lake and has a ‘rain forest’ appearance thanks to an underground aquafer that keeps a forest watered year-round. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see tree-climbing lions, who have adapted to this habitat.

We traveled in two cars. Chrispin drove Lucia and her family (husband Nicolas, and two girls, Esperanza and Novella) in the Landrover, our family drove our Harrier. We left in the afternoon and got to the hotel after dark. Chrispin was ahead of us and fortunately found the place first, because our family got lost in the town and had to be met at a gas station and led to the gate. (This is not uncommon because there are never road signs and most resorts are off on small dirt roads.)

We went to bed shortly after arrival since it was late, but did wake up to find the hotel charming in daylight. All of us had our own bungalows but met for meals in a common lodge/restaurant. There was also a small swimming pool that provided several hours of entertainment during the two days we were there.

The safari was the highlight though. Lucia and her kids had never been on safari in a game park. We rented a safari vehicle and spent the day driving around the park. I think it was especially fun for the girls who sat in the front seat next to the guide who gave them a lot of extra information about the flora and fauna we were seeing. He told us he had enjoyed seeing more Tanzanian tourists during the time of COVID because many could take advantage of lower fares to go on safari.

Although we did not see lions on the day we went on safari, that was about the only thing we did not see. One of the highlights of the Lake Manyara park is the astounding variety of birds. Rebecca, being a birder, was particularly enthralled. I was amazed that we saw at least 4 very different species of hornbill from the great hornbill that had a toucan like snout to the giant red-headed ground hornbill, big enough to devour small monitor lizards, as well as smaller varieties of these large beaked birds.

The big game included elephants, cape buffalo and giraffe, and every kind of antelope there is. We stopped for lunch by a hot spring and were amazed that boiling water could come straight out of the ground. Lake Manyara is very high this year because of last year’s rains so we could see many areas which had been flooded out and had to take several detours to keep from driving into the lake.

We spent most of the day in the park and returned in the early evening to spend at the pool. David has a great rapport with Lucia’s kids and they always enjoy playing together at team retreats.

We spent the last morning together with a devotional, singing, and prayer, (as it was a Sunday). We had a good time together and exchanged some gifts before heading down the road back to Arusha. It was a very meaningful time, and I felt the weight of finality as we remembered retreats in previous years—in Zanzibar the past two.

By this time we were fully into the Christmas season and there were a number of events around the holiday. We set up our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving as is our tradition. This is our fourth year of doing this in Tanzania so we have a way of decorating our house that we like. We are also big on Advent so we have an Advent wreath with calendars, an Advent calendar with chocolate, and a daily reading that we share each evening. We enjoyed setting up our tree together for the last time in Arusha.

One Saturday, we went to a Christmas fair at the school of our friends the Taylors. These Christmas fairs are a great place to pick up gifts for family, as they are loaded with boutiques. With COVID, this is the first year that we have no visitors arriving from the US to bring gifts from relatives. That usually makes Christmas quite extravagant. We all went with money and bought each other several gifts which meant we were able to make the Christmas tree look quite full once they were all wrapped. We could also buy gifts for the family in the US through Amazon, so exchanging gifts for the season was not entirely lost.

The fair ended with a pantomime play (in the British style) at the end of the evening. It was based on Aladdin and one of our friends, a teacher at the school named Ruth was in it. (She was the genie). It was quite funny. The only uncomfortable part was that it was indoors without masks or social distancing. Although we have not had COVID here in the past 4 months, it was definitely out of my comfort zone and I sat by a window.

The weekdays have been very busy with packing our office into boxes. This has involved going through many files and folders to decide what to keep and what to throw away. We hauled several boxes of records to our home, and I was able to read up on a number of archived items on the history of MCC in Tanzania. We have been here since the 1930s which makes our departure even sadder.

The fact that we have had to be closing our office has made home life difficult because our kids have been off school since the first week of December. Normally we can take some time off as well, but with the end so near we have needed to be at the office every day, all day—leaving them to their own devices (literally). Fortunately, they have been able to get together with friends from time to time.

The last day in the office was December 22^nd. We had made arrangements with the Tanzania Mennonite Church (KMT) to bring a truck to pick up all of our furniture and two vehicles (as our Constitution made them the beneficiaries of our assets in the event of dissolution.) They were able to clear the office and we signed over the vehicles in half a day. It was a surprisingly unemotional event, as we had been going the process of grieving for several months at this point. We did manage to get our lawyer to notarize all of the proper documents to make the dissolution legal. We still have some issues to resolve with the Revenue Authority (TRA) but we effectively closed on that day.

This was not a moment too soon for several holiday functions. Rebecca and I are active in our church and I preached the Sunday before, then me, Rebecca and David participated in a Christmas lessons and carols service at our church on the 23^rd. David, who can be quite fickle about participation, agreed to sing ‘Gabriel's Message’ with the choir humming in the background. It sounded great and you can see it on Rebecca’s Facebook page.

Other Christmas preparations included making Christmas cookies and cinnamon rolls for friends (a Sack family tradition). On Christmas eve we watched the Polar Express, which has been a family tradition the last few years since we usually do our Lessons and Carols on the 23^rd.

Christmas finally arrived. We had a very nice family Christmas morning with gift exchanges. We then headed off to church as Rebecca was leading music for the Christmas day service. I helped with singing as well, and Katie Taylor played flute. It was a very nice service.

The best gift of Christmas was a waffle iron for David. David loves to cook and make elaborate meals for himself and others. He also loves waffles, so there was a recipe included. Needless to say, we had waffles made by David on Christmas morning.

Last year we started a tradition of going to a resort in Usa River called River Trees for Christmas day dinner. We were joined by many friends from our small group including the Taylors and Ruth (the genie from the pantomime’s family). It was really fun, and the place had a Christmas dinner with real turkey and many activities for kids.

We had the day after Christmas for packing and picking up COVID test results, so it was a fairly undramatic day. We left the following morning in our Harrier and drove across the border to Kenya. The border crossing takes a lot more time with COVID checks. We got across and stopped at a mall in Nairobi on the way to the place where we were retreating. We picked up a few things and headed to the hotel. Driving after dark to a new place in Africa is always a challenge and one of my least favorite things, but we made it here safely. (Google maps is almost never right about the location or route.)

We will be here for about 5 days then drive back and finally get a short vacation in Zanzibar. More about that later.

Thanksgiving and Advent in the Midst of Change

It has been a while since the last entry and more news from the field is overdue. In truth, the delay is in no small part the result of a pang of guilt I feel about writing and posting photos of activities we are engaging in that appear to flaunt all wisdom and common sense around protecting oneself and others from COVID-19, especially in this tragically fraught time in the US where our families are. But to date, we have not had any significant spike in cases in Arusha, which has remained at zero for about 5 months now. We warily wait for a change, as neighboring Kenya is spiking again, but also enjoy the small reprieve we have experienced here to live a more or less ‘normal’ life here.

 Normal might be a bit of an exaggeration at MCC these days as we are entering the final two weeks of our office being open. The last days have been very full with extensive interactions with the government revenue authority as we prepare severance for our national staff, and make sure we are legally fulfilling all obligations related to dissolution. We are also going through many old files to decide what things need to archived and what should be jettisoned. It is a melancholic process as we discover many interesting tib-bits, old letters, documentation of crises, strategic plans dating back to the 1960s that have formed MCC’s history here. A bit going through the files of a recently deceased grandparent.

Rebecca and I continue to active in church life here, as I have said before. However, because we have not reopened the Sunday School at church, we usually spend our Sunday morning time in different places. I have continued to go over to the kids’ school to teach Sunday School to the boarders there who used to come to our church, while Rebecca has been active in Sunday worship as music leader, and often helping with logistics of making sure the zoom link is working for those who are still avoiding the resumed services in the sanctuary. As of this week, the kids’ school is out so boarders have returned home, so I will be able to join the Sunday services for the next month.

We had a number of big social events as we come into the ‘holiday season’ (at least in the North American conception of the season). For us the holiday season really begins in the week leading up to Thanksgiving as we prepare for the annual feast. This year we celebrated on Saturday actually, since the Thursday of Thanksgiving is obviously not a national holiday here and everyone was at work and school.

In the past several years, we have enjoyed hosting and especially inviting Tanzanian friends to share in this unique cultural event. This year, however, we decided to invite friends from our Bible study which includes an American couple (Vance and Beth Marie), the Taylors, an Australian family with their 4 kids, and Ellen’s family with 6 kids. Ellen is American, but her husband and kids are Tanzanian, so we still had the chance to share the experience with those who have not experienced it most of their lives.

Oren and David participated in preparations more than they ever have this year. All of us worked together on an apple rhubarb pie. I made the crust, Rebecca and David cut up the apple and rhubarb and Oren made the crumble topping. Oren also prepared the sweet potatoes while Rebecca prepared stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy and other side dishes. I roasted 4 large chickens in our enormous oven.

All the other guests brought other side dishes as well including pumpkin pie, biscuits, mashed potatoes, etc. All in all the food definitely had the taste of a traditional Thanksgiving. Although eating in the warm outdoors of our back porch was definitely different from the cold weather we would be used to in the US during this season.

 As school drew to a close we went to a number of school programs including a swim meet, as David does swim team as one of his extra curriculars. He has become quite fast but this year was moved into a higher age group as he began lower secondary this year. Consequently he did not do as well as he usually does in his events. Rebecca went and spent the afternoon there. It was also a chance to see friends again as two of the Taylor kids (from our Bible study) are on the swim team from a competing school, and Katie, their mom usually comes as well.

I have been playing golf with Mike Taylor several times in the past month. We alternate between going to Gymkhana and the more exotic Kiligolf course. The last time I was there, I wrote that my caddie almost stepped on a puff adder. This time some gardeners near the 17^th hole were gathered around a 15 foot python that had a huge lump in it-- almost certainly a 'dik-dik' it had consumed, (one of the antelope that run around the course).

 David has been involved in a number of musical events as well as he is taking voice lessons at school. There was an end of term recital in which he sung Puff the Magic Dragon as a solo. He has a very good voice so it sounded good. There were a number of other pieces, mainly on piano, featuring music from John Thompson’s Piano book 1. (Swans on the Lake was performed at least 4 times--for those who used that book when they were young.)

David’s voice teacher is also one of the music leaders at church and asked David to sing on Sunday to lead congregational singing. It was great to see him willing to do so and he did it well according to Rebecca who was there. This also led to David singing two solos at a Lessons and Carols Service at his school. The concept was definitely better than the execution for this event. St. Cons. is a multi-faith school and they have made efforts to recognize a number of religious holidays including a week of Diwali celebrations last month. The Christmas event was held outdoors in the evening and featured traditional lessons followed by a number of carols, more about Santa Claus than the baby Jesus. Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah was probably the most sacred song after David’s two selections: O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night. It was also quite long, but I do applaud the school for its effort to be inclusive of all faiths.

Life at home has been eventful as well, as we had an owl family, who have shown up every year about this time for the past 3 years, return once again. This year, however, one of the fledglings came out of its nest in a tree and ended up on our second-floor balcony outside our bedroom. We all enjoyed seeing him bobbing his head around as he stared through our glass door. Rebecca made some fun videos of him and posted them on Facebook. He hung out for about a week before disappearing. (I don’t think anything bad happened to him, but just eventually flew away.) Our cat took no interest, nor did the compound dogs. (Who continue to come to greet us every evening they are let out of the barn for their night sentry duty.)

Oren and David have also been making more effort to connect with friends. They had three friends over for a sleepover--Gavin, Harry, and Sammy stayed at our house a few weekends ago. We followed it up with an ultimate frisbee game the next day that was one of the most fiercely competitive I have played. There were far more kids than adults that day.  The next weekend all of us went to Oren's friend Harry's Birthday and spent time with the same group of friends again. It is great to see our kids making these close connections, even with the inevitable prospect of our departure in June. From my own experience as a third culture kid, these friendships can be maintained and continued for years into the future with reunions even decades later. 

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is also the day we traditionally set up Christmas decorations, so we got the tree out of storage and other decorations, set up lights, creche sets, hung ornaments, set up an advent wreath and our Advent devotional readings. We really appreciate Advent as a time or preparation and Rebecca and I usually fast during the week days until evening during this season. It is nice to use our lunchtime at work to take a walk together around the picturesque Gymkhana golf course just up the road from our office. 

We are also preparing for Christmas gift-giving and hope to go to some Christmas fairs that feature local arts and crafts this week. It will be a fairly sparse Christmas this year as no family is visiting from the US---A first since our arrival. (Rebecca’s parents have been here the past two Christmases). COVID has really changed the ability to travel this year as everyone knows.  

All in all the preparations carry a tinge of melancholia as we are aware this is our final Christmas in Arusha. Next year we will be celebrating in Addis Ababa (Mungo akipenda!—God willing! as we always qualify here in Tanzania) With the upheavals of the past year, it is good to take nothing for granted. 

Bonus Photos:

Mt. Meru with snow on it behind Gymkhana

Rebecca and David at Christmas concert