On the decision to abide

Mt. Meru on my Sabbath walk on Tuesday

It's Rebecca at the keyboard again this week...

We had a normal week! Everyone was at home and at work and school. We joined the rest of the world in having a spate of head colds. We lived through it all. So, what in the world is there to blog about?

Well, there was a small, but significant event that happened on Thursday evening at 5:30 pm, after we got home from work. I walked through the rain along the stone paths to meet with our landlord and begin the process of drawing up a new 1-year lease for our house.

It’s true: from the beginning of our time in Arusha, this has been an open question for us. Should we stay in the house that was found for us, after the 6-month lease runs out? Initially, we felt very, very far away from work and school and friends. Driving at night was hard and scary. But as time goes on, we have realized that Arusha is a sprawling community and almost everyone lives far away from something. I know we mentioned our new school bus arrangement, which eliminated the need for me to be driving in rush hour traffic for 1.5 – 2 hours every afternoon. That one change opened the possibility of staying in Njiro.

the startling white trunk of an acacia at dawn

Yes, from here, our mornings need to start early (5:15 am) to get the kids out the door by 6:40 and meet the bus by 7 am. But that also means we then have time to exercise before work. Also, our compound is very accessible by public transport with almost no walk, and no complicated directions for new visitors: Just drive down Njiro road until the tarmac ends and you're at our house! This is no small deal, we’ve discovered, as we have had to struggle to find friends who live in beautiful compounds tucked away off some dirt road that was the third turn after the mango tree after driving around the deep quarry on the left – and we even have a car! And the kids really, really don’t want to deal with another big change. I can appreciate that. Sometimes it’s good to find contentment with what you have, rather than constantly struggling to find the perfect arrangement somewhere else (knowing full well that there will be hidden problems wherever you go).

We love the compound here. It’s very peaceful and green, with so many trees and birds. And yet, there’s also good, healthy activity going on all the time. Guys are working on school furniture in the carpentry shop at the top of the compound. Joshua school teachers and their families live in staff housing on the bottom of the compound, just above the vegetable gardens and pigs and big compost pile.  Students play football (soccer) and volleyball in the field in between. 

finding fruit in the banana garden

And then the Joshua Foundation team members live in all kinds of interesting houses around us, and are often out and about and ready for a short or long conversation. We have both community and privacy. We’ve set up the trampoline and a new paddleball game from a departed friend. We can take walks. The kids can explore.

For example, over the weekend, David discovered a mango tree completely enveloped by a passionfruit vine: somehow, both can co-exist in an apparently healthy way. The mango tree is heavy with fruit that will be ripe in perhaps a month. But the passionfruit vine is busy dropping its fruit right and left this week. On their first visit, both David and his neighbor friend Josiah each returned home with a full shopping bag of passionfruit. David has revisited the tree at least 5 times since then, coming back with more round yellow fruits each time. And as a bonus, we have our own passion vine growing on the trees above our yard, too. It only drops 3 or 4 fruits a day, as opposed to 40, but still, the thrill is in the hunting and finding. 

And we all have been enjoying lovely tropical fruit salads of mango and banana and apple with the juice and seeds scooped out of the passion fruits as a garnish over the other fruits. Fruit salad alone made a good meal last night.

Really, we made the decision to stay in this house sort of by default – a growing sense of peace – probably back in November. But it’s interesting to notice a subtle change now the decision is official.

• For a long time, I’ve held off doing any gardening (subconsciously resisting the urge to put down roots?) But this week I put some new seeds in new pots.

Arugula (planted by my gardening mom in January to get me started)

• The Joshua Foundation team has a Sunday afternoon time of worship. We’ve been meaning to participate at some point, but we finally were able to attend for the first time this past Sunday. It’s a small, intimate gathering with Vineyard style worship and prayer and some teaching. Though we are not on the team, we are welcome, if not completely in our element. We were grateful to receive prayer and share some scripture and to see how we might come to know our neighbors better.

• David played very well with neighbor Josiah almost the whole afternoon on Saturday (they’ve had rough moments in the past, but are learning to co-exist).

• I’ve been meaning to invite Josiah’s family over for dinner for ages and we finally managed to get it together this evening after work. We really enjoyed talking with both Simon and Joanna, while their toddler kids ate and played around us. It was really fascinating to talk with Simon, a team pastor, about the complexities of being part of his Ugandan land-owning family system, amongst many other things.

• And finally, David found his old hedgehog again this morning, before we left for school. These moments seem like little signs that things are relaxing and settling.

hedgehog compan

I recall that when we left Burundi and spent a week in mission debriefing, we were taught that in moments of big transition (like moving countries) a family tends to contract. There just isn’t the capacity to really cope with relating to too many people and new things. One’s bandwidth is limited, in terms of physical and emotional energy. I’ve felt the need and desire to connect with more people, but I also have not felt the capacity to go out too far, and I have just kept repeating to myself, “Patience.” Now, there really has been a shift of sorts and I’m glad for it. There is the capacity to expand the circle again. Even while my nose was running, and eyes were streaming from the head cold, I really felt a great deal of contentment all week.

pre-dawn class bus

There were a few interesting events on this normal week, which I’ll just throw in. On Sunday morning, we left the house at 5:30 am to take Oren to school to start his “Activities Week” class camping trip in the Usambara mountains. They will be staying in tents, doing day-hikes and doing some service in the local community. Oren was anxious about going – he has some bad memories of tough things he had to do with the boy scouts I guess. So, we are praying that he will be open to the good aspects of this trip. David also has a shorter, 2-night camp out with his class from Wednesday to Friday. It’s not easy for the kids to be away from home, but we hope that they will come to see these as precious memories and experiences, the kinds of field trips you could never do in public school in the US.

After dropping off Oren, we came home and got ready for church, where Paul preached a sermon. Sadly, I was not able to listen, since I was teaching Sunday school yesterday. I know that he explored the episode in John 9, where Jesus heals a man born blind. It’s an amazing story, in which the gospel has a transformative effect on one man’s life—and you’d think everyone would be happy about it. Instead, we find that the gospel badly disrupts everyone else – the neighbors, the parents, the religious leaders – and people feel threatened and undone. No one likes this transformation. But that’s what the gospel does. Personal salvation, if it’s genuine, will disrupt all the other cultural norms and structures, and the saved, healed person may end up with more enemies than before.

One other sweet and serendipitous gift was given to me on Thursday. The woman who hosted our bible study will be moving to a new house within Arusha shortly, and packing is always a stressful process. I really didn’t have anything to do that afternoon, since I now work 3 days a week, and so it was easy to stay and be her packing cheerleader. Along the way, she treated me to lunch at her dining table, together with her cook and her gardener. We ate delicious pumpkin greens, cooked with peanut butter, and had some good conversation in Swahili. All three are delightful people and the conversation was very interesting. I realized that I can’t say or understand everything, but I can manage a fair bit, and it’s times of practice like that which are helping my language ability grow and open, like a bud that is getting ready to bloom.

passionfruit over the mango