The End of March Madness

David at Parent Child Football Tournament at SCIS.

OK, I admit this post has nothing to do with college basketball, but I wanted to come up with a catchy title for the last blog of March. Generally we try to get 3 posts out per month (every 10 days or so). I had a bit more discipline in Burundi and wrote one just about every Sunday night. I am not sure what has changed, but maybe with older children we find ourselves very busy into late hours. Also the 5am wake up every weekday morning makes bedtime a lot earlier for all of us.

pizza line,
oven at back.

I am starting this on Saturday morning. David and Oren have just had a sleepover exchange with some Canadian friends from our small group with two boys the ages of our kids. David and Toby are over here and Oren and Zeke stayed the night at their house. We will meet up later in the day, probably for some fishing at lake Duluti. Our friends stay on another mission compound (Pamoja) about 30 minutes away from us, one of the features of their place is an actual outdoor brick pizza oven and pizza making station next to it. They have 'make your own pizza night' on Fridays and we are often invited. I have to say it is some of the best pizza I have had. Actually many local restaurants around here have such a pizza oven, and just last week Pizza Hut® has opened a restaurant in Arusha. We had to try it after choir practice last Wednesday to see how it was. It was fairly legit! Same crust and sauce, although there was no salad bar and the pizzas came with a side of fries (people love them here).

Looking back, I would say the past 10 days were marked by several significant events that I will summarize. The first was a field visit to our maternal and child health project in Ngorongoro. I have mentioned in past entries that we have been doing a study up there to better understand the psycho-social reasons women prefer home deliveries even when they can access a facility. It has been interesting as our findings reveal quite a bit about some cultural practices around delivery, some fairly harmless, others concerning. The most alarming one is to virtually starve the pregnant woman in her last trimester to insure a small baby (less complicated delivery). Low birthweight babies have far less chance of survival. Finding ways to change these practices and keep pregnancy safe is a challenge.

Looking into Ngorongoro crater

I had planned to go up with the project manager and a research assistant to complete interviews with nurse midwives at the three facilities in the ward where we are working. I left last Tuesday and drove the MCC landrover up to the town of Karatu and stayed the night outside the Ngorongoro conservation area. There is really no good place to stay in Ngorongoro except a Maasai boma, or one 5 star hotel that a few tourists can afford.

The next day, Bernadetha (research assistant) and I drove into the conservation area. I was not entirely comfortable with the landrover as it has a history of breaking down and we were going hours into the middle of nowhere on a very rough road. I detected concerning problems as soon as we entered the park, as we bounced down the road the battery light came on, then on one hard bump the fuel guage jumped from 3/4 to 1/4 of a tank. (We needed to go over 200kms) Fortunately it popped back up, but as we approached Irkeepusi sub-village to meet our project manager, smoke started pouring into the cab from between the seats where the gear box is. I stopped the car immediately. We got out and I looked underneath and it appeared that oil was leaking out of the gearbox and getting burned on the drive shaft.

Laangakwa to the rescue in his landrover.

It was not a great place to be stranded, about 50kms from the entrance gate. Some zebras grazing nearby stared at us with mild interest. Fortunately I did have cell phone reception and called the PM, Laangakwa and told him we had broken down several kms from the village. Fortunately he had an old landrover and drove up about 15 minutes to get us. By that time a small group of Maasai had gathered around to see what was happening. Fortunately they knew Swahili and I told them what had happened. Laangakwa is also Maasai and arrived and his landrover. He told us that if I could drive back about 5kms, there was a resort up a hill with a garage for safari vehicles. We did manage to limp back after the car cooled.

Interviewing a midwife at Bulati dispensary.

We left the car there with the fundi (technician). He said he could refill the gearbox and tighten the screws (I don't think they use gaskets here in TZ). And we should be able to get back to Arusha. While he was repairing, we continued our safari in Laangakwa's vehicle. We had to get to three health facilities. The first was another 40 kms away on very rough roads, very remote. We needed to collect data on birhs and ANC visits and Bernadetha needed to conduct a 30 minute interview at each place. We were hoping to finish and get back on the road to the town of Karatu before dark.

Research team and midwives at
Irkeepusi dispensary.

It was a long but successful trip as we did get to every clinic, and got very good information and good interviews. (I hope to have transcriptions in a week or so.) We returned in the late afternoon to get our car which had been fixed and washed! We paid $15 for the work and B. and I drove back to Karatu, without further incident. I was hoping to go on to Arusha that day as well, but it was getting dark and I stayed an extra night in Karatu and headed back to Arusha the next day.

I was a bit disappointed not to get back the night before because David was part of a Battle of the Bands event at his school and he was playing keyboard for Believer by Imagine Dragons. He had been practicing at home all week! I missed it but Rebecca and Oren did go and gave a good report.

It was actually good to be back in the office on Thursday after my adventure. Friday was a bit different as our boss Sharon was moving house and we all helped load a truck and get her settled in. It went quite well and her new house is really nice!

Winners of best kit.

The weekend was also very busy. We had a big event on Saturday that Rebecca was instumental in organizing. It was a parent child soccer tournament at the school organized by the parent's committee. It was probably one of the most ambitious things they had done and included multiple tournaments (10 minutes each, teams of 4--at least one adult on each). I was part of team with David and 2 other families. (we had 2 subs). We were called the Savannah Strikers and one of the mom's had made really cool chartruese shirts with a logo. The event was huge and well attended with many vendors and a raffle as well as other activities. We did not win the competition, but get a prize for best 'kit' (uniform).

No rest for the weary after we returned home because on Sunday I was preaching at our church. I had planned something special for the third Sunday of lent. I talked on the theme and preached on stories from Ruth and Naomi, and picking up your cross and following Jesus. But I mainly used Psalm 63 and began with a 'movement poem' in which I recited the psalm while I danced with a staff near the altar. I had wanted to do this as a spiritual discipline as part of Lent--spend some time meditating on the psalm with movement. But as you can see from above, it was very challenging to find rehearsal time with the business of the week. I squeezed it in during evenings and had some time Sunday morning before church as well. I am happy to say it went fantastically (from an execution point of view. ) I received many compliments afterward and felt very good about the sermon. (link to movement poem I did)

We finished off Sunday afternoon with a meetin of our small group. By Sunday night Rebecca and I sat amazed at the amount of work we had done in the course of 5 days. We have really been feeling more connected these past few months. It seems to take more than a year to really get connected to community, but we are finally arriving.

This past week was very (mercifully) quiet. Rebecca and I took Monday off for a time of reflection and had a nice time of walking and talking nnd reading at a coffee plantation resort.

 We went back to work on Tuesday. Everyone is out of the office on field visits or trainings but me and Rebecca this week. I had a lot to catch up on so I have appreciated the uniterruped work time. We are developing several new concepts for future projects and this was a week to get them down on paper.

One of the big concerns we have had is water. We are in the middle of the rainy season, which began last month with several spectacular showers, then stopped completely. It is dry as a bone around here. I admit I am glad I did not have to deal wiht mud in Ngorongoro, but now people's crops around here are failing. It is not all of TZ, but certainly in the north where we are. Please pray that the heavens would open.

Post Script: We just had a nice 3 hour drizzle this afternoon. First rain in over a month!

Finding joy in the fleeting days we are given

Nai, her mother, and Riziki: celebrating successful surgery

This week it’s Rebecca writing to give account for the past few weeks – time flies and there hasn’t been a lot of time for sitting down to reflect. But we have had some really good moments, worth giving thanks for or at least noting.

Weekend times with friends

Over the past two weekends, we have really begun to feel more as if we have a real community here. On one Friday, Oren’s school friend Abraham and his whole family joined us for the opening weekend of Captain Marvel. We’ve become fans of the MCU, and so it was very entertaining to enjoy another intelligent action movie. I can’t understand the bad press…

The following Saturday, we had a fairly quiet morning, catching up on a lot of life details. In the afternoon, we organized our second game of Ultimate Frisbee. We were joined by the Gingerich family and the Thompson family (who live on our base), along with a few children of teachers at the Joshua school. It was super fun once again, and not nearly so hot – especially after the heavens opened about an hour into our play time. I really wish I had gotten some photos of the level of mud that was involved! A few of the kids just kept playing, even in the rain. The rest of us chatted and got to know one another more until the rain let up. Then we found dry clothes for everyone, played board games, enjoyed a shared indoor picnic, and the kids watched a cartoon together, sprawled all over our living room floor.

And then Sunday! Right after church, our boys joined the Gingerich boys and their dad Eli for a special trip to the Snake Park… it was feeding day! We don’t have photos of that either, but apparently a good many chickens, chicks and hunks of goat (for the crocodiles, who don’t care about live food) joined the “circle of life.”

Meanwhile, Paul and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves, being without kids after church! But it was a perfect time to catch up with a lovely family we had gotten to know in our first year here and had moved to Kampala 9 months ago. We shared time in bible study and in Sunday school, so it was great to compare notes about being in different communities. And then, we headed off to our family bible study, where we rejoined our kids. They are so happy to be connecting well with friends in that group, just as we have been so happy to have adults to share and pray with. We really missed being in a family bible study in our first year here! We even had a nice Saturday afternoon at our pool with some of these friends this past week.

School and extracurriculars

David's class door decoration:
finished product

Last week was a big week for our kids at St. Constantine’s as they celebrated book week. The primary school decided to try a new way to reach out to parents: A Parent-child learn together morning. I joined David for his first two lessons of the morning. I was sad at first to sacrifice my usual early morning swim, but then happy to realize that I would be joining him for his PE lesson in the pool! It wasn’t nearly so much of a workout, but it was very fun to swim beside him and learn more about how they teach swimming at their school. (I must admit that I was only one of two parents who actually got in the water – the rest observed from the deck. So, the kids were pretty surprised to see a parent want to get wet with them!)

David and friends working on a tree branch

Then I followed David’s class to his English lesson. They were working on designing a door decoration to celebrate book week. One of their class books was “the Twits” by Roald Dahl. The students divided into groups of 2 or 3, each working on a specific part of a tableau to present the story. We as parents were encouraged to join in, offer ideas, and interact with the kids. It was a fun lesson to be part of. Following the lesson, Parents were invited to have tea and chat with one another. I was also busy trying to get the work out about another big event coming up…(see below).

On Friday, students were invited to dress up as their favorite book character. David really wanted to be Greg Heffley, the protagonist of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. Since he’s a line-drawn character, it took us a lot of collective thinking to understand how to pull it off. But finally, David had the idea of making a book cover and sticking his head through the place where the line-drawn Greg would normally be. It was very fun to make it together – though it all came together at the last minute! (because we had a last-minute farewell for a woman on our home compound. She’s leaving to give birth in Europe, and the adoption paperwork for her two kids here finally came through in time for her to take off. Being part of community is great in so many ways! Also takes some time!)

David as Greg Heffley

So, the other big-time commitment right now is the school event I’m helping to organize. I joined the Parents’ Association of the school back in June, to get to know more parents and a wider group of non-missionaries in Arusha. Now we’re planning an Active Family Day, featuring a 4 on 4 football tournament. The idea is for parents and students to play on a football team together against other teams in the student's age group. We really want to encourage parents to have fun with their kids, meet other parents at school, just be on campus, be supportive of their kids' education (not just paying the fees and leaving education to the teachers). 

Beyond the football (organized by our Parent-teacher representative, who happens to be the Primary sports teacher), we've got lots of other things going on, and it's been so fun to work with a smaller group of parents to plan the various aspects (and get to know these other parents better). An Indian-Tanzanian businesswoman and a Dutch NGO worker have teamed up and collected 29 raffle prizes from local businesses. 

A Tanzanian woman from Moshi (who grew up in Botswana and did her masters in peace studies in Oregon) is organizing 12 different food, drink and activity vendors. A Dutch stone sculptor who has lived here 20 years (our vice chair) is pitching in giving advice and arranging the whole set up, as the only veteran member of the Parents' Association. I'm trying to keep all the balls in the air and keep everything moving with the school, getting help from prefects, etc. So many details! We’ll learn and it will be even better next year, but regardless, I think it's a good effort and it will be a fun day. And we will be VERY tired at 7 pm on March 23!!!

Dust you are…and to dust you shall return.

And there were a few more somber events in the past two weeks to remember as well. A young woman at our church (Peace Corps volunteer) lost her step-father suddenly just before Ash Wednesday. She is returning to the US for good in April, so she couldn’t travel to attend the funeral. So, she hosted a small, personal memorial service for him in the front yard of family friends. We gathered with just a few plastic chairs, a table with some photos, and about 20 friends and colleagues. The evening was clear and breezy and golden. We sang Swahili hymns together and read scripture and heard preaching in Swahili about how we each have a time, and when our time comes, we just need to accept it. The service was really done with love, but also very much in line with the beginning of Lent with Ash Wednesday: we are dust and to dust we shall return. All we can do is marvel at each day we are given and marvel that God reached out to touch us, dust that we are. 

Memorial service

We were also deeply touched with a sense of our mortality on Sunday morning after church, when we learned of the Ethiopian Airlines crash. That is a flight that any of us working in Africa could have been on, because it is the best, most wide-reaching airline on the continent, with a great safety record. All of us use Ethiopian, and we feared (with reason) that we might hear that colleagues or friends were on that flight. We were spared that kind of news as the days unfolded, but many around us have lost people they’ve known and worked with.

And finally, another more positive note on mortality. Our housekeeper Nai has a younger sister Riziki, 14, who was born with a strange birthmark – a mass of blood vessels close to the surface right at her waist. For years, they went to different doctors and paid good money for advice, but no one could figure out what this was or what to do about it. Since she started secondary school, Riziki has had to walk 10 km to school one-way, and this birth mark became incredibly troublesome, rubbed raw with her uniform and heavy back pack, and constantly bleeding. Back last year, our good pediatrician recommended that she see a visiting plastic surgeon when he came on a whirlwind visit to Arusha. And finally, at the beginning of March, Riziki was able to be seen, have surgery to remove the mass, and then was accepted for recovery at a special children’s home for post-operative rehabilitation, Plaster House.

Riziki and Nai at Plaster House

Nai accompanied her little sister throughout the process of the first consult, ultra sound, and then surgery and recovery. She recounted to me later the miraculous things she had seen among other patients: children with cleft palates, people with no noses, people whose chins were attached to their shoulders – and within days, those same peoples’ faces, and lives were restored. Nai could not stop talking about how incredible it was to have a specialist come, to whom none of these problems were unusual or difficult to deal with. He just calmly looked, made notes, made a plan and fixed them.

I also had the chance to visit Riziki at plaster house a week after surgery and she looked well and happy. She had lessons during the day, made friends with other teenage patients, and was really enjoying the clean environment, good food and good care. Nai and her mother met me there, and I was so grateful for the time with all three women to celebrate a hopefully life-changing medical success with Riziki.

What you don't know...

by seguaro314 (Imgur).

"Unknown unknowns" the idiom coined by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a press briefing during the invasion of Afghanistan, continues to find relevance in my life. Its latest application came during a camping trip near Lake Manyara.

David had received some black light flashlights for his birthday, because we were told by someone last year that if you shine them around at night, you can see certain creatures like chameleons and scorpions because they have some kind of iridescent substance in their skin. David is a nature lover and likes to find creatures of all kinds. We had tried the light on chameleons we had caught and put in a tree a few months ago. The results were middling, and the lights were put away for several months, but remembered and packed when we decided to go camping.

In retrospect, looking for scorpions at night might have been better tried for the first time before we were on a camping trip and staying in a tent. Long story short---it is true! Scorpions, black as coal and completely invisible to normal flashlights glow like flourescent Christmas lights under a black light. But what was really creepy, is that they come out at night and were everywhere!! On rocks, on the grass around our campsite, near the entrance of our tent! And with my super bright headlamp, I could not see them. From that moment on, the late night walk across the lawn, to and from the bathroom, became much more scary, and I wore a thick soled pair of shoes rather than flip-flips! I am still weighing whether it better to know the invisible hazard out there or be blissfully ignorant. After all, none of us have ever been stung before, even in flip-flops. So the only added value seems to be stress.

Backing up a bit, the reason we were on a camping trip last weekend was to round off the one week mid-term break the kids had the week before. The kids being out of school while Rebecca and I still need to work is always a bit of a challenge as we don't have great support systems in place when we both need be in the office. Rebecca is off on Tuesday and Thursday so those are covered. We could leave them at home on other days as they are old enough to fend for themselves, but generally lack the initiative to do much more than watch screens all day. (In fairness, there are not really kids their age around the compound to do things with.)

Rebecca stayed with them most of the week while I worked, and they did have some good play dates with other kids who were out of school. But on Friday we took a vacation day, in order to have a long weekend, to get away as a family.

Several friends of ours told us about a relatively new camp (Migombani) up the escarpment from the town of Mto wa Mbu (Mosquito River--an unfortunate name for a charming town) on the way to Karatu. We left in the MCC landrover on Friday midmorning (thanks to Rebecca's packing the night before) and got there after lunch. We turned off the road at Mto wa Mbu and drove up a surprisingly steep road/path for several kilometers about 1000 feet up the escarpment and seeming to go nowhere but into deep brush for quite a ways. Then quite unexpectedly we came to a gate that led to a lovely campsite, with a flat lush expanse of short green grass, dotted with tents and small boma shaped buildings with bathrooms, showers and a multi-user kitchen, and a small bar and restaurant under a gigantic beobob tree in the center of the camp, and a number of picnic tables and chairs shaded under large umbrellas. At the front lip of the camp site was a fairly large cashew shaped infinity pool (that means the water is full to the brim and overflowing) that overlooked the rift valley and lake Manyara below. It was a commanding view!

our tent next to camp tent

We had rented one of the permanent luxury tents, which was also set to overlook the camp and rift valley, and we brought an old MCC tent we found in our container. It seemed promising, an 8 man Coleman that was really gigantic. We set it up next to the luxury tent. Some of the fiber glass poles were kind of cracked and duct taped, but when we set the whole thing up it took on the right shape and the poles, when extended seemed to provide the necessary double-arch support to keep it up. We also battoned it down with tent pegs just to be sure.

The first afternoon and evening we set up camp, went swimming, and made dinner. We had bought a cool stove that attached on top of a squat gas cyclinder. It cooked our burgers very effectively. It was a pleasant evening until the sun went down, then quite suddenly a 50 km gusty wind started blowing up from the valley. It blew all night and I was worried that our Coleman tent might collapse, it was leaning back more than any of the other tents set up by others around the camp.

Despite the strong gusts we had a nice evening and that is when we went out and explored the grounds with the blacklight and discovered the scorpions. We went to bed fairly early, and the next morning David came in our tent to tell us that their tent had indeed collapsed during the night under the force of the wind. Sure enough, I came out of the tent and found the poles had bent at the weak points and it was lying over. Oren was still inside fast asleep, but the tent was pretty much lying on top of him. Fortunately it was a dry wind and there was no rain. We set the tent back up. In the morning the wind was still strong but blowing in the opposite direction.

Yellow-billed storks

We had an activity planned for Saturday--a day in the Lake Manyara game park. We have a friend from church who is a park ranger-- Godliving Shoo, also a great birder. We knew he was in training at the park and also worked for a tourist company in the area. He got the day off and we picked him up at the gate of the park. We drove our landrover but it was great to have a guide, especially going into a park for the first time. Lake Manyara park is not like the Serengetti, much of it is in a deciduous forest fed by an aquafer, so there are not expansive areas of Savannah where you can see for miles. Much of the driving is in the trees. Manyara is a great place to see birds, but there is wildlife as well.

Marshall Eagle

We spent about eight hours driving around the park and saw a number of environments from forest to savannah, to marsh land and a long stretch alongside the lake where we saw many water fowl including flamingos. One of the really surprising things we saw in a tree where some other cars were parked was a lioness! We thought they were looking at a bird somewhere up high when we stopped then realized a huge lion was right in front of us on one of the lower branches. Lions do not normally climb trees but they have adapted in this habitat, to help them see prey. (There was some evidence that this is not normal behavior because the lioness slipped and literally almost fell out of tree onto a car, but managed to recover herself clumsily.) Their paws really look too big to be comfortable standing on a narrow branch. We saw many other animals including elephants, giraffes, many antelope, zebra, baboons, blue monkeys, cape buffalo, and I could not even list all the birds, but Veros eagle owl, and the marshall eagle were among my favorites. We also saw a batteleur eagle there which is quite rare. It was all good except for a bit of problem with tsetse flies which did sometimes get into the landrover. We were wearing long pants and socks but we did have to swat from time to time.

We returned back to camp exhausted but very satisfied and enjoyed a cool swim as the sun set. We made dinner and noted that the wind had picked up again. I did not think we could secure the tent sufficiently for another night of wind so we brought the kds' sleeping bags and air mattresses into our tent, which had plenty of space on the floor. (We had a raised king size bed!) It was good because that night we had gale force winds and a torrential down pour. Our tent was under three rooves and stayed completely dry, but when I looked at our Coleman the next morning it was completely collapsed and had about 3 inches of water collected inside. The kids would have been flooded.

We did not rush out the next morning, we had a leisurely breakfast and then began to pack up as things began to dry. We had to roll up the tent wet and planned to dry it out on our clothes line. After a morning dip in the pool, we headed back to Arusha. Despite the rain that night it had been a very nice trip and hope to return to the camp again sometime in the near future. It was not too expensive and very nice. We stopped for dinner at Aim mall and had masala dosas! (for any fans of South Indian food, Aroma is a great place to get them located there.)

Giraffe by the road on drive home

It was good to get back into the normal routine this past week with the kids back in school. Rainy season is now upon us and we have had heavy rain most nights. It is still hot in the day, and the pool water is still refreshing but cool in the morning.

 A final highlight was Ash Wednesday. We had a service at church right after choir practice, so we treated the congregation to a prelude we had worked on the past week. John Stainer's "For God So Loved the World" from his Crucixion Oratorio. We nailed it in my opinion! The Ash Wednesday service was very nice and Rebecca preached and did the imposition of ashes at the end. The kids were very good considering they went right from school to hanging out at church for choir practice then staying for a service that ended about 7:45 pm. We went to Khans barbeque on the street after the service with a family from small group who have kids who are very good friends of David and Oren. (they will be returning to Canada in April which will be sad for our kids.)

Enough said for this week. Here a few more photos from the trip:

A Family Cycle of Safaris

David returns from his week away camping.

An interesting cycle was completed this week. David went away for a week beginning this past Monday and returned on Friday. It was a school camping trip for his class as part of developing 'round square' values. I believe they were working on Adventure and Service. They camped on the west side of Mt. Kilimanjaro in a game park of sorts. David came back with mixed reviews. The cycle, that was completed was somewhat accidental, but beginning about 2 months ago, every member of our family has left and gone away alone for a week, then we have had a week of togetherness, followed by another excursion by one family member. It began in January with Rebecca going to the Great Lakes Inititiative in Uganda for a week (GLI). Then after a week together, Oren went to Kenya for camping and white water rafting in Savage Wilderness camp. After a week together, I went to Western Tanzania (Mwanza, Musoma, Mugumu, etc.) and got the flu, but returned after a week. After the final week together, David was off to West Kilimanjaro.

There almost seemed to be a kind of spiritual dimension to us leaving the fold one-by-one. I think Rebecca felt her experience was the most rewarding in terms of what she was doing, and Oren did enjoy the numerous activities and friends at his camp. (They also stayed in cabins, not tents.) David camped in a tent and generally felt that teachers and leaders were quite bossy (not surprising given that they were in charge of a group of hyperactive 4th graders). Also camping in a tent meant that he got rolled over frequently by tent mates who slept diagonally across mattresses by the end of the night. He definitely seemed very happy and grateful to be back. We enjoyed an outing at Gymkhana where he bought several chocolate bars as a reward for his perseverence.

I, as mentioned in the last entry had the roughest time since I was very sick during the trip. I have continued to have a slow recovery to full strength and am almost, but not quite back to how I felt the week before I left.

The past two weeks of work have been interesting but labor intensive in a somewhat tedious way, as I have been coding the transcipts of many interviews and focus group discussions to learn more about decisions and preferences around delivery of Maasai women, traditional birth attendants, and their husbands. There are some fascinating discoveries that could effect our project. One significant find is that most of the women end up delivering at home, not because of a preference to do so, but because of sudden onset of labor and concern that they will deliver on the way to the clinic. When asked if they had agency to give birth where they wanted, women confirmed that they could make the decision but added that God ultimately decided because labor came on before their due date.

Other questions led to other discoveries. I was not expecting to find that men expressed a desire on average for less children than women. Most women answered the question about the number of childre desired by saying 'as many as possible'. Men overwhelmingly answered in economic terms based on the number of cows they had. The average for men was 3 and no more than 4. They also felt responsible to make sure there were 3 to 4 years between children through abstinence, withdrawal, condom use, or 'the standard days method'. They generally did not want their wives to be in charge of fertility regulation because of fear of infidelity. (The men are nomadic in certain seasons and away from home for several months at a time.)

There is a lot more to say, and hopefully it will be written up in an article by the end of April. The problem right now is that text based qualitative analysis is slow, methodical work and I have trouble doing it for more than 4 hours in a day without going crazy.

There were some highlights in the past two weeks for Rebecca and I. One of them was an early celebration of my Birthday. I took last Thursday off and Rebecca and I dropped the kids at the bus, then went swimming, followed by brunch at a resort hotel called River Trees. It was very nice and we spent an hour walking around there before heading over to Lake Duluti for another leisurely walk. We finished off at Coffee Lodge before surprising the kids by picking them up after school. It was a very relaxing day and a good opportunity for Rebecca and I to reflect on the question of what the 'manna' is that God is giving us during our time in Tanzania. (We realize it can be easy in a cross-cultural situation to kvetch about small problems and miss the work that God is doing in our lives.)

Over the weekend we hosted a movie night at our house for neighbor kids in our compound and watched the new Wreck It Ralph movie. It was fun to have two other families over to enjoy our mini projector which really makes our living room feel like a movie theater.

The following week, David went on his camping trip, and oddly, everyone working in the MCC office was either travelling for work or on vacation, so Rebecca and I were there alone. (I was completely alone on Tuesday and Thursday.) Because of the research project mentioned above it was not an altogether bad situation to have the uninterrupted time. We did go out on Monday evening for my Birhday with Oren to an Ethiopian restaurant. (Something David does not enjoy.)

Wednesday Rebecca and I had a very interesing field visit to our partner Step by Step Learning Center. Here is Rebecca's report on the visit:

This past week, Paul and I were able to share a very positive and encouraging work experience. I had scheduled a visit to the Step by Step Learning Center, an MCC partner offering appropriate education to a small group of special needs students. I wanted to talk with them about future volunteers, and the possibility of recruiting an older adult volunteer Special Education specialist to come help mentor their teaching team. Paul, as the education coordinator, wanted to pay them a visit as well to hear about their new developments.

We arrived toward the end of circle time, which is a wonderful beginning to the school day for these students, offering routine and affirmation. They sing songs, answer questions about the date, the weather, and so on. And then, they have a session of very simple reflexology. All of the teachers make their way around the circle of 15 students, giving individual attention and love to each child as they gently massage and warm up fingers and hands. As they do these hand massages, they also sing together, recognizing each child:

                             “This is how Hans oils his hands,

Oils his hands, Oils his hands

This is how Hans oils his hands

Early in the morning”

The children love it. Even children on the autism spectrum, who are wary of stimulus, welcome this positive touch. Some children struggle with very tight muscles or twisted hands, and the massage helps them to make more progress during the school day. It is incredibly special to be part of this time.

After the children went to have their morning tea, the head of the school, Margaret Kenyi, took us on a tour of the school grounds. With a small grant from a local donor, she has been able to fence most of the sizeable school grounds. Donations of rolls of chain-link from local hardware wholesalers have taken the project even farther. This fence is important to protect students who might wander, as well as the growing herd of goats. It was incredibly gratifying to see how MCC’s seed money for small animal husbandry has expanded. Four years ago, a grant from our organization provided for 2 goats and a handful of chickens. Now there are 22 goats and 70 chickens, as well as two ponds for fish-farming.

Another Scandinavian donor raised money to build a new 2 bedroom staff house, next door to the original 1 bedroom house. Margaret asked if we could come and pray for the new occupants of each house, and she recounted these stories.  For a number of years, a faithful caretaker guard had been living in that little house. Last year, tragedy struck his family: his wife died of an illness, and their young daughter was then taken to live in the village with her grandmother and cousins. Meanwhile, the school has one student, Bryson, with severe cerebral palsy, but a lot of intellectual capacity. Bryson’s father took off soon after his was born, so he was raised by his mother, who was scorned and ostracized because she had given birth to an atypical child. Her life was hard, and she struggled to make ends meet, but in the end, took to drink and died almost two years ago. Bryson’s young half-brother, just 20 years old, took over his care. They lived together in a tiny place in an urban slum. It was an incredible effort to carry Bryson to meet the school bus every morning, and then meet him mid-afternoon to bring him home. Bryson’s brother Simon couldn’t work a regular job and Margaret could see that the situation was unsustainable. So, Simon has now been hired as a deputy caretaker for the school, to help with all the livestock.

In the past week, the head caretaker moved into the new house, with space for his daughter when she comes to visit. And Bryson and his brother (and the brother’s own wife and child) moved into the original little house. It was amazing to meet all these people, and to see how, out of broken and tragic family situations, a new little community is being formed on the school grounds. It was just a small taste of new creation, of God revealing the ways that he can heal and restore. It also pointed out for me the ways that you can’t help a single person with special needs here, without recognizing the problems of the whole system and working on a holistic solution.

After praying for each home and its new occupants, we went back to the school and sat with the team of teachers. It was very good to talk with all of them together about the different options for inviting volunteers through MCC and to get their opinions on what would be most helpful to them. The teachers have few resources and are trying to do a lot with the experiences and informal training they have gained over the years, with oversight from Margaret (who does have a special education degree). An older volunteer with training and experience would be a real blessing. We left the visit very glad to have spent time with one of our partners and the people they are serving.

That is all for now. The kids have half-term break this week so they are home all week. We are planning a camping trip of our own next week. Hopefully the rain will hold off where we are going, but there is not doubt that the rainy season is upon us. It is a pleasant change from the hot weather we have been having. But I do remember last year, the mud, mold, and cold became quite a trial. Hopefully it won't be quite as wet as last year.

Bonus Photo: Oren, David, and some of their friends from our small group.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Lunch stop Tarime. Mishkaki na chipsi.

Sometimes. in looking back at the activities and challenges of the recent past, it is daunting to even know where to begin and what to cover in a single blog.

Eight days ago, last Sunday morning, Sharon- our country rep., Chrispin our agriculture coordinator, and me got on a flight to the town of Mwanza in Western Tanzania. It was the first stop in what was to be a whirlwind tour of the 5 diocese of the Mennonite Church in the Lake region of Tanzania. We had 5 stops on our itenerary over 7 days-- remote towns, in the Serengeti and Mara region-- The route went from Mwanza to Mugumu to Tarime to Shirati to Musoma and then back to Mwanza for a final meeting before catching a flight back to Arusha.

Mugumu Bishop looking pious.

The purpose of this odyssey was a goodwill tour of sorts for MCC to visit the Mennonite bishops and remind them of what we do and how we do it. MCC is an anabaptist peace and development NGO with strategic priorities in Tanzania focused on food security (through teaching low tillage agriculture), health, (particularly preventive and maternal and child health, and people with disabilities), education (focused on teacher professional development, and child protection) and peacebuilding. We work with partners that are doing projects in these areas. They do not have to be Mennonite, or churches, but since we are a Mennonite organization we try to show goodwill to the Tanzania Mennonite Church (KMT) and partner with them when there is an appropriate opportunity.

Often it is a challenge because the church has an older missionary based model of foreign aid where they present a list of needs (roof for a school, or church building, borehole, vehicle) and the mission would decide which one to pay for with little oversight or accountability. It is hard for them to move into a grant based model involving proposal writing, approval, then reporting on outcomes, and close tracking of a budget.

By visiting each diocese Sharon hoped to reinforce their understanding of our process, and have them meet the strategic area coordinators.

Sharon exiting plane at Mwanza.

We did not get off to a great start when Chrispin arrived at the airport sniffing and feeling bad, saying he had 'the flu'. The flu can be a catch all term for any respiratory virus involving coughing and sniffing here, and while I felt sorry for him, I hoped it would pass me by or would not be too severe. I have had the flu shot every year for decades including this year and had not actually had the flu since I was in my 20s.

The Precision air flight to Mwanza was uneventful and short, about 1.5 hours in the Bombadier turboprop. We were met by a driver with a nice white Landcruiser (ac broken), who was to be our chauffer for the trip. I was grateful for this as doing our travel by bus would have been intolerable. The first town we drove to was Mugumu, about 5 hours north and east into the Serengeti above the park of the same name. Like everything here, it had the look of a parched, dusty, southwestern (US) town. We were taken to the only hotel there, the Giraffe Hotel.

Metal vendor enroute. 

We were to spend the night, a full day, and the next night in Mugumu to visit the Bishop as well as a Mennonite hospital and nursing school. We had dinner, and went to bed. The next morning we went to the Diocese office and met the Bishop. I noticed Chrispin was looking pretty bad that morning. He did not join us for the afternoon session at the hospital and nursing school.

I found the latter one of the more interesting places as the director of the college Magiri, has a long history with MCC. To see the challenges they have to stay certified amidst incredible shortages of just about everything is daunting. We toured the facilities and saw ways in which they made do with make-shift mock clinical rooms equipped with donated dolls for doing various types of exams.

Magiri (right) showing the whole library.

The computer room had 40 desktops, but no internet. The $850 annual budget for broadband for the campus is currently out of reach. The library had a few dozen books, no texts, and resources on pharaceuticals that dated back to 1980 (nearly before ARVs!) There were nonetheless, students dillengenly working and learning. (Note to Jean-- no Hinari). Magiri, a medical officer has been working for many decades in this milieu, making improvements where he can, through fund raising, gifts, and some support from KMT and the ministry of health. He is looking tired though, and talks with some fondness about retirement.

That evening, after a long day of discussions on how they might meet some of these challenges, we went back to the hotel. I laid down for a few minutes before dinner and woke up hours later feeling physically deflated, and a chill coming on. It felt like the beginning of a very bad virus. That night the first round of fever started. It broke for a bit the next morning and when I went out to get some fruit and juice for breakfast, Sharon said it had started for her as well. We managed to work in a short visit to girls safe house that morning who were interested in a partnership, then headed to Tarime, about 3 hours north, near the Kenya border.

We got a hotel there, although we had some trouble finding one with rooms. Tarime is more bustling more than Mugumu which seemed more like a sleepy stagecoach town in the old west. Tarime was more like the 'big city' nearby.

By the time we got into the hotel I was dead sick and spent the rest of the day and night in bed feeling like 'Don Juan' on a peyote-induced vision quest in a Carlos Castaneda novel (some might know the reference). The fact that I was in unfamiliar surroundings is what seemed to make it feel so surreal. The splitting headache kept me grounded in reality though.

I was aware, during that time, that I was at least 2 days from Arusha (absent a $10,000 airlift) and we were still very early in a long week of traveling and meetings.

At my worst, about to go into Shirat hospital.

The fever broke in the morning and I was able to participate in the morning meeting with the Bishop and his staff. We spent a half day with them, then loaded back into the car and drove to Shirati, which actually sits on Lake Victoria. We got a particularly uncomfortable hotel which had no fans or AC, (and no working toilet in my room.) By that point I had not eaten for 24 hours so it was OK as a place to be unconsious. The night brought so much of a head ache that I asked Sharon if there was a hospital I could go to in Shirati. I said that with some trepidation here as there is always some risk that the treatment will be worse than the disease around here.

I talked to Rebecca when I could. Fortunately I had cell service. She told me that while I was sick in the Lake region, she was dealing with David who had developed strepped throat and had to miss school. This is really hard when you are single parenting. He was miserable with very high fever as well. This began to feel like a divine tribulation at that point.

Sharon told me about the Mennonite referral hospital in Shirati and said it should be quite good. Although entering into it that morning and seeing long lines of people standing, sitting, and waiting outside various clinic doors, was disheartening. I could not imagine I could live through sitting in a yellowing wall hallway for half the day to see a doctor. Because we were guests, however, a doctor did come to see me and got me a blood test which revealed that I did indeed have some kind of infection--possibly atypical pneumonia. He started me on an antibiotic and gave me some relieving cough meds. They did provide some relief.

Squat pot and water bucket for you know what. 

I missed the visit with the bishop that day because I was in the hospital. I caught up with Sharon and Chrispin in the afternoon and we proceeded on to Musoma, about 2 hours heading back down south along the lake. We stayed the night there at a nice hotel on the lake side. I still had no appetite and went without a meal for a third day. I did sleep a bit better as the intense headaches I was getting with the fevers at night had subsided. One other complication were the occasional bouts of diarrhea at inconvenient times. Often the squat pot was the only available option during our field visits.

General Secretary and KMT staff members.

The next day we had a long series of meetings in Musoma at the diocese office with the bishop and his staff, then the office of the General Secretary, and finally at the office of another partner (One World). I was pretty much shot by lunch time, which was an exhausting experience in itself at a very crowded local cafeteria. We finished up around 3:30 pm and made the 4 hour drive back to Mwanza from which we would fly back to Arusha.

We stayed in a hotel there I had stayed in before which was nice, the obsequious service not withstanding. (At breakfast as I made my way to the buffet table, the overly helpful waitress quickly prepared me a massive plate of spaghetti, white sweet potatoes, 2 crepes, a hard boiled, egg, water melon and a bowl of chicken soup before I could refuse.) I almost wretched to look at the plate and went another morning with nothing more than a glass of juice.

Best hotel name.

Our flight was at 1pm and we planned a 2 hour meeting with the Mwanza diocese before going to the airport. Not surprisingly it took every minute and we were afraid we might not make it to the airport. I think the Bishop felt slighted that we did not stay to share some food they had brought, but unfortunately planes don't fly on the more flexible 'Africa time' schedule.

All three of us had been experiencing a similar course of the disease and by this stage the fever was mostly gone but the weakness, fatigue, and hacking cough was still there. We sounded pretty bad on the flight back.

a lighter moment with General Secretary and staff.

It was good to finally get back to Arusha late Saturday afternoon and catch up with the family. David had missed 4 days of school but had returned Friday and seemed much better. We watched a movie on Saturday night and went to church Sunday morning followed by the annual general meeting. We had our small group after that and it was nice to debrief with them as well.

It was a rough trip and reflecting back I felt a bit like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Being away from family and sick with fever, there are things that seemed to be stripped away. The state you come back in is not the state you left in. I have felt fairly calm and quiet, I think I had felt more agitated and impatient before I left. It helps to think that God used the time of my separation and delirium to do some healing work mentally, and to appreciate the good health I often take for granted.

Came home to find David and Oren playing
Axis and Allies.

Pre-Script:

One activity that happened last Saturday, the day before my departure, is worth logging. Rebecca and I organized an ultimate frisbee game on our compound. We invited people on the compound as well friends from small group and some other people we know. We had about 14 people show up including our whole family, 2 New Zealand families from the compound, Joerg and his kids from our small group, and another father son duo, and 2 Tanzanian teachers from the base. There were quite a few decent players and we had a great set of games. (We could only play 20 minutes at a time because it was sweltering hot that day!) We hope to try to keep this up at least once per month.

A week without Oren and a Glimpse of Young Einstein

Eagle owls have returned to roost in the tree above our trampoline.

I realize the problem with passing through a place and season for the second time, you begin to lose your sense of wonder. More precisely, it is harder to sit down every week or so to write an account of our life events in Tanzania, now that it is not so novel to us. We have completed the busyness of the holidays, Rebecca has returned from her trip to Uganda (the second time in as many years), all family has left, the kids are back in school and they are well into their second term, as we are with MCC in Tanzania.

January and February here are the hottest months of the year, which is saying a lot for Arusha, which generally is cool and even cold during the winter (southern hemisphere June-Aug). In the heat of the day it can get up to 90, although its flat high plateau landscape means that it is cold at night and in the morning when we are heading to school a light jacket is comfortable. This is the short dry season in between the two rainy seasons, one ended in December, the other is expected in mid-February. It will strart to get quite cold after that.

Rebecca and I continue to observe the same routine we began over a year ago. I get up about 5am and make coffee, breakfast and prepare snacks for the kids for school. Rebecca comes down before 6 and prepares some lunch for us to take to work. We make sure the kids are up at 6 and they are now able to get all of their uniform pieces on (as long as the parts are all in their rooms). Oren is given a reprieve from wearing a tie between December and February because it is warm. They eat breakfast while I load up the car with everything for the day. We leave the house by about 6:40 and drop the kids off at our office by 7am where they meet the school shuttle and have another 45 minute ride to school. Rebecca and I head to the pool at Gymkhana. Even in the warm season the air is quite chilly and usually overcast at that hour and the first plunge in the water seems quite uninviting. Fortunately the water temp. is not cooler than the air. We spend about an hour swimming and changing for work and are at the office by 8:30 am.

The kids get dropped off at our office at 4:30 pm from school. (which ends at 3:30) We all get home around 5:15 pm. On M, W, F, we come to a fairly clean house as our housekeeper Nai works on those days. We often take a walk around the base at sunset then make dinner, while the kids do homework, then clean the kitchen and it is time for bed.

Rebecca has observed that we are out of the house about 11 of our waking hours during the day. I wish we had more daylight hours at the house, but travel takes time around here. Fortunately Rebecca has Tuesday and Thursday off so she can be at home some of the time.

I have been working quite a bit on a qualitative study of one of our projects this past month. We are trying to understand the factors that affect maasai women's preference to deliver at home rather than at a health facility. We have a research team that finished data collection (in depth interviews and focus groups with women, traditional birth attendants (TBAs), men, and nurse midwives at clinics) in December and I just received translations of all the transcripts last week. Now I begin the long process of coding and data analysis. My co-principle investigator is a Maasai professor who is currently in the UK finishing his doctorate. He is from the ward where the study was located and will be a great asset in understanding some of the cultural nuance.

I am not that far into reading interviews at this point, but did hit on one intriguing detail about practices around home delivery in the ward. If a woman is having difficulty in labor, the TBA will bring a baby cow into the boma (house) for the woman to look at. Seeing the baby cow apparently provides some motivation for the woman to deliver. (More when the analysis is done.)

Of course our purpose in doing this research is to find ways to improve our community health project to encourage women to go to facilities for their births where there are skilled attendants who can respond to basic obstetric emergencies. (although I don't think we can ask a facility bring a cow into the delivery room.) I am looking forward to really digging in this week.

One big event this week was the absence of Oren. St. Constantine's is a 'round square' school which means they have a number of values that are taught outside the normal curriculum, it includes things like service, courage and adventure (like Boy Scouts). As part of this experience, each class goes on an activities week which differs every year. Some of the offerings are quite exotic, like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or skiing in the Swiss Alps. Oren's class went to Kenya last week to an adventure camp called Savaga Wilderness. It included activities like white water kayaking, rock climbing, archery, ziplines, standing paddle boards, and other water related activities.

He honestly was not too excited about going and there were some complications in preparing him since he had to cross an international border which meant his residence permit and visa had to be in order in his passport. The trip the year before was a lot of camping, hiking, and service activities and he was worried that it would be more work and discomfort than fun. He did get on the bus last Monday morning though and headed off. We would hear from them via email from the school head master from time to time so knew they were still alive :-). He got back on Saturday afternoon. He looked worn out and a bit shabby, but he gave a good report about the things they did and it sounded like he had some good connections with friends (who could share his 13 yo sense of humor.)

David will be going on a trip in February. (We were disappointed that both kids were not gone at the same time, but c'est la vie.) He did have a school event this week though. His class put on a skit about 'inquisitiveness' (a round square value) at a school assembly. David was kind of the star and the skit was a 'who am I' riddle to figure out who he was. (He played Albert Einstein as a boy.) His whole class had parts and David did very well, seemed comfortable, and made good use of my round spectacles to look a bit Einstein-y. The attendees in the assembly solved the riddle fairly quickly after watching the skit. I was happy to be able to attend because I had brought him to school from a dental appointment and was able to stay around and watch.

Oren missed a bit of excitement around the base where we live. A new family from NZ has moved to our compound with 3 girls and a boy. They are younger than Oren, but hopefully become friends with David over time. (They did not start out too well, with David and one of the girl's getting into a fight with sticks during a welcome to Tanzania pot luck gathering.) But they have a year to get be better aquainted and are likely to see each other quite a bit on the base.

The other exciting event on the home front has been getting our underground water tank cleaned out. We get water from different sources depending on the season. When it rains, it is primarily run off from our roof. Other times it comes from a well on the base. It is collected in what seems to be at least a 10,000 gallon tank under our back porch. Over the past 3 months we started to notice that our water was getting browner. We suspected that the tank was getting dirt in it and this was confirmed. When we found our water filter could not filter out the color completely we asked the landlord to get it cleaned out. There are some photos of the water David was bathing in the week before they cleaned the tank. It took about 2 days, and they removed a lot of sludge, but I am happy to say the water is back to normal.

The other center of activities, church, has been going well. I was happy to lead music worship with Rebecca this week as there was no Sunday school this Sunday. We bought a djembe the day before so I was able to accompany on some of the songs we sang.  Teaching Sunday school has been going well generally this term, although the size of the Sunday school group continues to grow and we are really beyond our physical capacity with about 80 kids. We start together for children's church and then break into 3 groups. But we exceed the space we have in every classroom. No solution for the time being but prayer. The kids seem to really like to come.

It is time to get ready for the start of another week. I am travelling in the first week of Feb. and may not be back on this blog before that is done.