Kilimanjaro is not the only mountain we are climbing this month

This is a last-minute blog update. It is about 9pm and Rebecca and I are sitting in a hotel room in Moshi, a town at the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We have just been debriefed by our guide and we are going to have a last night of sleep in a bed before we begin a 7-day trek to the summit and back. (Lemosho route for those who have been before). We together (Rebecca in italics) want to give a quick preface before our next post which will talk about our trek. 

We are not hiking with the kids this time. We wanted to have a chance to do something as a couple and they are not huge fans of mountain climbing, so they are in boarding at St. Constantine's this week, which makes our plans for climbing less complicated (and cheaper!). In addition, Oren has the last of his O-level exams this Tuesday, so he needs to be there anyway. 

I arrived back in Arusha from Addis about 10 days ago. I was thrilled to be able to travel with my work and residence permits in tow, thanks to the Herculean efforts of our logistics officer Wondweson, who got them both just hours before I left. It will make re-entry to Addis much simpler. 

The last activity before I left was a farewell luncheon for our Food Security Program Manager Sisay. Sisay accepted a position with MCC Zambia and spent quite a lot of time with us in the last month orienting Mesfin, his replacement. We planned a meal with all staff and the cook Yeshi, with the help of an assistant, prepared a fabulous Ethiopian feast for him. There were at least 8 toppings for enjira, to serve about 12 people. Sisay brought his wife and everyone gave a speech, even Yeshi. We gave him some send-off gifts for Zambia, a leather jacket and bag, and had an enjoyable time together in the backyard with the whole MCCE team. I left a day later to return to Addis and will not be back before he leaves for Zambia.

I have become a virtual connoisseur of COVID tests having had over a dozen in the past 4 months due to all of our travel. It is standard practice to present a negative test upon departure on an international flight, and I got one 48 hours before leaving Addis. But this time, I had to have an additional rapid test upon arrival in Arusha (a new policy). Fortunately, all were negative and I was able to leave the airport with only about a 30-minute delay.

I arrived home to our compound potluck that happens once a fortnight on Thursday. It’s been more and more lively to gather with folks on our compound now that we are a group of at least 9 adults. That night, we sat around an outdoor fire and had some pretty interesting debates. It’s great to allow for very different opinions held by committed Christians, and great that we can still enjoy fellowship despite those differences.

It was great to be home and to feel like I had been missed. We have had some really nice family times and bonding with each kid. Despite still having a lot of work, I made time for engaging each of them, in basketball, frisbee, and dodge ball on the trampoline. There were also several family board games.

Our friends from small group, the Taylor's were also part of a number of reunion activities. Mike and I play golf together and it was great to go out for 9 holes at Kili-golf while Rebecca and Katie took a walk around the course. (Taking a month off did not improve my game.)

The Taylors have also agreed to adopt our cat, Tramp. We realize it is a big commitment for anyone to do that. And we are incredibly relieved that he will have a loving home to go to. I had hoped that maybe we could spirit him off to the USA to live with my parents. But it is incredibly difficult to import a cat into another country (Ethiopia)…and then to export and import him in to the US in just a few days? Also, my dad felt there were practical reasons not to bring him there. I do think it will be much better for him if he doesn’t have to endure a transatlantic journey in the hateful cat carrier. But I already miss him viscerally. Adopting Tramp in September 2019 was a symbol for me of putting down roots in Tanzania, making a four-year commitment. It’s still sad to me, to feel that commitment cut short. And he’s been a great cat, affectionate and interesting and his own boss

We also had friends over last Saturday for an excellent ultimate frisbee game. Four teachers at the Joshua School on our compound have been joining regularly, they are young and athletic and have taken the game up a notch in terms of really competitive aggressive play. Rebecca and I were quite sore on Sunday. 

It would be good here to backtrack a bit on activities that happened in Tanzania in my absence: Rebecca provides some details below:

The kids started a one-week break at the end of May, but it wasn’t a great time to do any kind of special outings since Paul was still in Addis. And I still had a fair bit of work to keep up with. Nevertheless, we had a couple of interesting afternoons with friends.

Our housekeeper’s youngest son turned 6 that week. We have a tradition we’ve built up, where I bake a cake and bring it over for each child’s birthday. In turn, Nay makes a nice simple Swahili meal to share. This was to be the last birthday party we could attend so we made a point to get there with both kids. David is always keen to help decorate the cake and this time we decided that there was no reason not to have a blue chocolate cake. It was actually a very nice afternoon. Nay also invited our new American neighbors to come with their boys. Most of the time, our younger kids were all running around the village with Nay’s kids, checking on chickens and rabbits and exploring houses under construction or something! Oren preferred to stay at the house and talk with the adults, but I’m glad he came.

On another few days, David’s friend Sammy came to spend time with us. We played a bunch of board games and the kids jumped on the trampoline a lot. I guess they also were working on vegetable eye patches at one point. On another day, Oren’s longest-term school friend Abraham came over so they could study geography together. They still had to take an exam that week, regardless of holidays, since it was in the international schedule. The studying was so relaxing that Tramp decided to make himself at home on Abraham’s lap.

We have been trying to squeeze in as many 'good-bye' dinners with friends as we can, as many want to have a chance to wish us well. Sadly we are rapidly running out of time, and our days are not vacations. The job continues to be very demanding and we struggle to make time for social activities. Sunday lunch tends to be our best option. 

On Sunday after church last week, we met up with the family of Eric Mbelle, a friend from church, and our dentist.  We’ve sung in the choir together, served on worship committee and evangelism committee, but we haven’t had time until now to sit and visit with all of them. They lived as expats themselves in Malawi for a few years, and it was nice to compare notes about living outside one’s home country.

In the last week leading up to our Kili departure, we were scrambling to think ahead and make sure we had completed as much work as possible, and making preparations for being off-grid for the next week. We also had quite a few online meetings, focused on planning ahead for our programming next year in Ethiopia. And there is still quite a lot of work to prepare for this month. The day after we return from Kilimanjaro, I will be helping to facilitate worship for an online retreat of Christian leaders from the East African region. I’ve been part of the worship team for the GLI Institute 5 times in the past 8 years —but always in person. This pandemic is forcing us to think outside the box and imagine how worship or theological reflection can still be meaningful when we are not together in the flesh. I had to do a lot of hard work on that yesterday. Meanwhile, Paul took David and the neighbor Brian with his sons to go fishing at Lake Duluti. Maybe for the last time. The boys had a blast together and Paul had a good chance to visit with their dad on a beautiful afternoon.

Another big personal milestone came this morning. Since January 2020 I have been part of a team of three, teaching the confirmation class at our church. We had to take a 6-month break while our church was closed last year, but we started up again last October. It has been a truly meaningful and inspiring experience to meet with these young people and seek to encourage and guide their faith. Today, they made their confirmation. I had the joy of leading the service, while another of our teachers preached. The choir sang for the first time since Christmas. And yes, we all kept our masks on throughout, but it was a very joyful service. Many kids had large groups of relatives present to encourage them. There was even a large guest choir from the home village of one kid—they sang for us outside in the courtyard as we received communion. It was beautiful!

Our final hurdle of today was dropping our kids off at the boarding house at school. It’s hard to say how they are feeling—I’m sure they will be fine, but they would of course rather stay home with us. Still, I am growing in the conviction that we need to ask our kids to do hard things sometimes. These are the kinds of mildly difficult experiences that help kids develop resilience little by little so that they can cope with bigger stresses and anxieties later in life. Our friend Vance even preached about that today. A tree in a vacuum might have all the nutrients it needs to grow tall, but at a certain height, it will just topple over—because it has never experienced wind. A younger tree, buffeted by the wind, develops strong roots so that when it grows taller and faces stronger winds, it can bend without breaking. That is our prayer for our kids as we take them into all kinds of winds of change this year. That’s our prayer for ourselves too: that suffering would build perseverance, perseverance would build character, and character would nurture Hope, which does not disappoint

I titled this blog, cheekily, noting that Kilimanjaro is not the only mountain we are climbing this month. The truth is, the daunting task of completely packing up and emptying our house is ahead of us on our return to Arusha. We have to finish that before July 1, as that is our departure date for Addis. Prayers are appreciated.