Christmas and New Year's Festivities and a Trip to the Coast

Letting two weeks go by without a blog entry over holidays was probably a mistake. So much has happened in the past two weeks that it is hard to keep track. Fortunately there is an ample photo record. It is a sad irony that when there is more going on, there is less time to write, and that has certainly been the case since the holiday season began.

In my last entry around mid-December we had just returned from a team retreat in Zanzibar. By the time we returned the Christmas season began moving into high gear beginning on the 21st with an evening of lessons and carols at our church. Our choir, of which Rebecca and I are a part, has been rehearsing for quite a while for this and we had 4 special songs to share during the evening. The event was on a Friday of the week we returned and it was a fitting end to a very busy week of reviewing quarterly reports from all of our partners and getting them into our database. Despite the flurry of productivity, the office seemed relatively quiet as Chrispin was on vacation and others were in and out. 

The Lessons and Carols service went very well, and I thought we sounded great! There were many parts to the service including Sunday school children singing Away in a Manger, many favorite Christmas hymns, a brass quartet, harp solo, and a soloist singing Rejoice O Daughter of Zion from Handel's Messiah. Grandma Jean and the kids came and endured arriving an hour and a half early and watched patiently. Oren seems to be developing a real sense of ritual about certain traditions. Although it was a few days early, it stood in for our Christmas Eve service since there was not going to be one on the 24th. 

We did go to church on the 22nd though as it was a Sunday and Rebecca was preaching. She did a fabulous bit of theologically correct performance art by portraying the Blessed Mother looking back on her life and remembering her betrothal to Joseph and visitation by the Angel Gabriel. I could not do it justice by description but it had a big effect on the congregation, especially because she did not begin by saying what she was doing. It started out sounding like she was talking about herself. One poignant turn of phrase was when she remembered fretting about getting older and still living at home-- 18 and not yet married! "I was no beauty!" (she confided to the congregation.) I asked her about that statement and she told me that the idea of Mary not being beautiful was like T.H. White's portrayal of Sir Lancelot as having a hideous face in The Once and Future King which we had listened to a month earlier. Also it paralleled Isaiah 53's description of Jesus who "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."  I think Oren even liked it. 

Christmas Eve was eventful nonetheless as we waited for midnight clatter of our taxi driver bringing Papa Dave from the airport, arriving on the KLM evening flight. We watched the Polar Express, the last and favorite of our Christmas movies as we waited. He arrived on cue laden heavily with gifts in two enormous suitcases from many family members back home. (We late into the wee hours of the morning to get them wrapped and under the tree.)

Christmas morning came early for the kids despite the late eveing waiting. They were up around 6, and I told them they had to wait to get the grandparents up until at least 7 before opening Christmas gifts. I finally let them open a set of legos to help them pass the time. 

We had our traditional Christmas cinnamon rolls (made by Jean several days before) for breakfast, then began the daunting project of opening our many gifts. (Having 2 sides of the family sending gifts from the US meant there were quite a few. )

The kids were thrilled to get a number of legos and STEM type craft projects along with many new family games and books. (A real group effort to come up with things that would compete with screens.) They both got deeply into building lego technics sets by mid morning. 

Rebecca led the adults in preparations for our Christmas dinner to which we had invited our friends the Taylors, and a new German family who is joining our small group as well. Rebecca had prepared a ham, as well as several side dishes. 

The kids and I had worked the day before on what was to be the coup de gras, a gingerbread train--steam engine, coal car, and box car. We have a tradition of a gingerbread construction each year, usually a castle or church, but this year we were more ambitious. Rebecca and I looked up good reciptes for construction gingerbread (without leavening). I added my own touch (extra treacle) to make it actually taste good. We also looked up recipes for eggless royal icing (since one of the guests was alergic) we did find a good substitute that used corn syrup in place of egg and it worked well. 

before decorating

The design and construction went well enough. Our convection oven made baking fast and allowed for multiple layers of trays to be cooked at once. I used the molten sugar for epoxy to put it together, and in the early stages it looked good. We covered it with icing on the boiler and roofs of the cars to look like snow. We used chocolate chips for coal. (the boiler for the engine was actually a chocolate muffin mix baked in a can to make it round. We added candy and decorations and for about an hour it looked great. But, the integrity of the gingerbread with all the weight on the wheels and the humidity of Arusha during this season began to slowly melt it. By the time it was served the next day it had pretty much collapsed. A bit disappointing but we did have some pictures before it fell apart. Since it was falling apart it made people more bold in destroying it to eat it. The taste was excellent!

Our guests arrived mid-afternoon bearing many other side dishes including a Christmas cake (fruit cake) and an icecream cake made out of Christmas cake which was delicious. (The Taylors are Australian and these were traditions down under.) The kids had a great time playing together. Adults visited and we had a very nice Christmas dinner.

The party seemed to continue the next day when we all got together as a small group at Pamoja, a compound where one of the family's live. This was a lot of fun and included a staggeringly large collection of kids the ages of both David and Oren. It was great to see Oren hanging out with 6 other young teenage boys. The event was a potluck and we brought many left overs. Dave and Jean had a good time as well finding common ground with a number of the parents and grandparents gathered there-- all with extensive cross-cultural experience.

After the festivities of Christmas and Boxing Day, we found we had one free day in Arusha before we were to leave on vacation on the coast. So we booked a tee time at Gymkhana and Dave Sack, the kids, Rebecca and I played 9 holes of golf. It was really quite amusing. We had 3 caddies between us and had to rent everything. But the cost was under $100 for all of us and rental of clubs. David Sack had the most experience and it showed whenever he drove the ball in a straight line off th tee. David Mosley was probably second best with regard to consistency. I could hit the ball quite far, but usually missed 2-3 times and when I did hit it was not unusual for my ball to land in the middle of a neighboring fairway (or even 2 away.) The caddies were very helpful with coaching. I am hoping we have more opportunities to do this in the coming year. 

The zenith of our Christmas break was to be our trip to Pangani beach on the East coast of Tanzania. We had gone last year with Dave and Jean and were looking forward to a return trip. In order to make the 9 hour drive a bit more bearable we rented a van in hopes it would be cooler than the MCC Landrover. Sadly the airconditioner on the rental van as well as the sliding door was not working so we were pretty hot going down. We did listen to Artemis Fowl on the trip which was good though-(highly reccommend for kids).

We got to Peponi Beach Resort in the late afternoon where we spent 5 days and nights relaxing on swinging beds by the beach, swimming in the ocean and pool, snorkeling, doing water colors, reading, and enjoying delicious seafood meals every night. New Year's eve was not too exciting for us but the hotel did have a lovely banquet with many tasty dishes. I am including a selection of photos below to catch the atmosphere, and will leave it at that for now.

We are back in Arusha again and Rebecca is preparing for her trip to Uganda for the Great Lakes Initiative where she is leading music. She will be gone for a week and I will be home with kids. Fortunately Grandma Jean will stay for the week as well, so it should be manageable. More news later.

PHOTO highlights from Peponi beach. (more can be seen at: Pangani photos)

Zanzibar in the Season of Bougainvilleas

If the Christmas season is to be remembered for anything in Tanzania, it would have to be the bougainvilleas. As we pass through the calendar year a second time here, I am beginning to get used to the topsy-turvy seasons of the southern hemisphere. The October spring crowned with blooming jacarandas along nearly every street, gives way to mid-summer December with flame trees and teeming vines of bougainvillea cascading down trees and the sides of buildings. The tropical colors are a far cry from the austere evergreens with red holly berry accents of winter in North America. It does not feel like Christmas, but it does feel like a tropical paradise.

Our bed made at the hotel every day.

And what better way to enjoy a tropical paradise than to visit Tanzania's  storied island of Zanzibar! This is only the second time our family has been there, and the last time was when we were working in Burundi (in 2012). It is quite a magical place with a Swahili mystique that feels a bit like a setting for Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The occasion to go to Zanzibar last week was for an MCC team retreat. I guess working for a mission organization located in a beautiful settting puts these kinds of 'perks' within reach. The participants in our team retreat included our family, Sharon our country rep., Lucia our finance officer and her two daughters, Chrispin, our ag. coordinator and his daughter, as well as Ken and Laura, the two East Africa area directors. Twelve of us in all. Rebecca had been one of the main organizers of the retreat including logistics, and made arrangements for us to fly to Zanzibar and stay at the Samaki Lodge and Spa.

We left Monday evening and took a small Air Tanzania Bombadier to Stonetown in Zanzibar, about an hour flight from Arusha. We arrived around 10pm, well after dark but it still took a tremendous amount of arguing with David to convince him that he could not head out to the beach to look for crabs. He finally went to bed that night but was up before 6am the next morning. I did go out with him and it was quite glorious to walk out on the fine coral white sand of Zanzibar beaches! He found many shells the first morning and would have stayed out all day if I would not have coerced him in to have breakfast.

Meals were all provided by the hotel and each meal was a huge spread covering many tables in the restaurant. The staff was obsequiosly friendly, and I noticed that most of the tourists there were Italian and Russian. Almost no one but the staff spoke English.

After breakfast the first day, we had a team gathering and did some ice breakers including a game that was kind of like Pictionary, only one person has a drawing and without identifying it, has to try to get another person to draw it. The game took on interesting dimensions as we tried to find ways to describe a shape in a cross-cultural setting. We also did some reflecting on what Chistmas means to us and chose secret santas. (The rule was NO money could be spent. You had to find or make something by the last day of the retreat.)

We spent the rest of the day relaxing. While the beach is nice, Samaki lodge also has two enormous swimming pools, both of which are beautiful and very pleasant to swim in. David and I went in the ocean part of the time in low tide and walked out about a kilometer to find tide pools. We saw many cool fish including, clowns, blue damsels, a puffer fish, some eels, and starfish. The most common creature by far were sea urchins. We had to wear shoes at all times to avoid stepping on them and getting stung. When we got back, he, Oren, and Lucia's girls, Novella and Esperanza, spent most of the late afternoon playing in the pool. Dinner was fabulous as well featuring Italian and Swahili food. There was entertainment afterwards although I was pretty tired and went to bed.

The next morning David was up early again to catch crabs. We had a plan to do a field visit and sightseeing in Stonetown. There is a Mennonite couple who work for EMM, Peter and Christy, whose office is in Stonetown. We visited them, saw the work he is doing as faculty in an Interfaith Peacebuilding Institute. It is quite impressive, and Christian and Muslim students study peacebuilding together. Their office is in a 6 floor walk-up that looks like a Dr. Suess house. It overlooks Stonetown, but seems a bit precarious considering how narrow the upper stairways are.

We had lunch in Stonetown then headed to a protected forest area where we were able to see the indigienous and very rare Red Colobus monkey. We had a guided tour through the forest by a very funny guide who told us we might be lucky enough to see a python...or if we were even luckier we wouldn't as they are very dangerous. He also took us through a very cool mangrove forest with a boardwalk running through it. We saw many indigenous species in there and had an informative tour about how mangrove forests prevent flooding and reduce erosion.

We got home in the evening, quite exhausted. But David was up bright and early again on Thursday morning for more crabbing. For a team event we did a scavenger hunt. After lunch, our family did a more extensive snorkeling expedition during low tide after walking out more than a kilometer. We saw quite a few interesting fish although the beach where we were was not particularly close to any big pieces of coral or deep tide pools. We played in the pool in the afternoon and did watercolors. In the evening we had our final team gathering on the roof of the hotel, where everyone exchanged gifts. Lucia had made me a picture, and I had made Laura a watercolor of a wall covered with bougainvillea which were ubiquitous around the hotel. David, the prime collector of beautiful shells gave one to Novella. It was a very satisfying, creative end to our retreat.

We did not have to leave too early on Friday, but by noon that day we headed to Stonetown. Our trip home was more complicated than our trip to Zanzibar. To save money we decided to fly back out of Dar Es Salaam. This entailed taking a ferry from Stonetown to Dar where we would catch our flight.

The ferry was quite an adventure, but much more modern than I expected. it was one of those giant catamaran style hover craft. It was surprisingly fast and smooth and we saw some beautiful views of Stonetown from the water. We got to Dar 2 hours later. The taxi ride to the airport though took nearly as long as the traffic was horrific. Nonetheless we got to the aiport and on our plane without a hitch. We got back to Arusha about 7pm and back to our house around 9pm, tired but exhilerated from the trip.

No rest for the weary though as Rebecca had a worship committee meeting the next morning, then her mom "Grandma Jean" arrived on Saturday evening. Actually she did not get in until nearly midnight, but the kids insisted on staying up and waiting for her.

Sunday was an unusual day at church as we did not really have a regular service. It was the 10th anniversary of the hospital where the church is located and there was a big ceremony with much pomp and circumstance and a service in the middle of it for religious and political leaders. Our choir sung two songs in it. The whole event went on for over 7 hours but we left after about 4. After church in the afternoon we participated in some Christmas carols for people who were sick at various wards in Mt. Meru hospital. It felt like something good to do although hard to see people suffering so much in such non-private settings. They seemed to appreciate the carols and prayers.

That about ends it except to say the kids are not in school and David found 2 baby hedgehogs at Gymkhana that seemed abandonned. He brought them home and now we are all taking turns feeding them with an eyedropper 6 times per day.

O come, Emmanuel

Lighting the first candle of Advent

Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel

shall come to thee, o Israel.

Last Sunday, we had just finished celebrating the first Sunday of Advent, and were dismissing Sunday school, when one of my fellow church elders came to share some unthinkable news: The wife of one of our church members had suddenly passed away on Friday. He had been in church but was so overcome with grief that he couldn’t share the news directly in the service. His wife Julie had been one of our team of Sunday school teachers, teaching our youngest kids. Their own son is just 7 years old. She had seemed only mildly ill and had driven herself to a clinic where she collapsed and died. She is exactly my age, and it’s hard not think of what it would be like for my family here and elsewhere, if something like this happened in our family. The tragedy of this family and our involvement framed and colored all the past week for us, as we waited for Julie’s family members to arrive from Denmark and make decisions about what to do next.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here,
until the Son of God appear…

Mennonite Church of Arusha

In the midst of waiting to hear from Julie’s family, we also had projects that were coming to fruition after several months of waiting. Paul had received ethical clearance to proceed with a research grant in the Ngorongoro crater. Our MCC partner there works to encourage women to have healthy pregnancies and to go to the clinics for check-ups and delivery. However, very few women choose to deliver in clinics. The research is to find out more about the barriers or obstacles to facility-assisted birth, the beliefs about birth practices and also experiences that may discourage women from going to the clinic. He was busy preparing the process and questionnaires on Monday and then left to meet the research team in Karatu on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Role-playing a mediation meeting

Meanwhile, the local Mennonite church started a week of training on peace-building and conflict resolution. I had been working with the leadership team to support their planning over the past two months, and now they really wanted me to be present to witness what was happening. They had invited 100 pastors and church leaders from 8 congregations of their diocese. People came from all different cultural backgrounds, including people local to Arusha, some from a Maasai church plant, and others who were transplants from the faraway Mara region. I was able to spend several hours with them on Monday afternoon, hearing fellow MCCer William Kiptoo from Kenya lay the groundwork for talking about peacebuilding in the church. I remain very grateful for the opportunity to interact more directly with our partners in peacebuilding at this stage of my assignment.

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by Thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.

On Tuesday, I was able to have half of my Sabbath. But this past week was also the final week of the term for our kids, and they had a number of special events going on a school. I was especially eager to go and support David and his house, “Athens,” at the upper primary sports day. Parents were invited to come and wear house colors, giving their houses extra points for each parent who showed up. David had sadly twisted his ankle again in a sack race, earlier that morning, so he had to have substitutes run his races for him. But it was still fun to hang out with him and his classmates. I saw several of his friends win races, and it was nice to be there to affirm them, especially the kids we see and play with all the time at Gymkhana.

Final relay of sports day

After school, I got both kids and Gymkhana is exactly where we headed, to hang out together for an hour. But then I needed to go and pick up William Kiptoo, the peace trainer, with his wife. We as MCC wanted to do something personal and host him for at least a dinner, but it turned out I was the only team-member available to do it. Even Paul was gone! It is definitely a bit of a challenge to enjoy good adult conversation, while keep the kids happy, and so I decided just to offer the Kiptoo’s Chinese food at Gymkhana so the kids  could be safe doing their own thing. I did really value the time to talk more with William and hear about his background and experiences in peace in this region and in Asia. Nevertheless, it was a night of mediating many different needs and doing a B- job of hosting at best.

Even as I was running around picking up and dropping off, I ran into another school mother who had heard of Julie’s death, was trying to comfort her child (who had been in Julie’s Sunday school class), and was also trying to process her own recent grief of losing her father to poor medical care in Tanzania. And that evening, I also had heard from Julie’s family: they wanted me to give the funeral and invited me to come meet them in the morning.

A story of trauma and healing

I was so grateful for our Sunday school coordinator, Anne, who is from Norway, could easily speak to Julie’s family in their heart language, and who was serving as the key contact person for our church. She and I spent three hours with the family Wednesday morning, hearing more about Julie from them, and trying to help them process their grief. We also were able to plan a service that would honor Danish traditions, to be held in our church. Julie’s husband is Tanzanian, from the Kilimanjaro area. And so we also needed to work well together to figure out the best way to meet the needs and expectations of his clan around grieving her death and doing the burial. It was a cross-cultural situation, with many potential pitfalls, but I really thank God we were able to manage to work out a way to honor both the Danish and Tanzanian families.

After meeting with the grieving, it was time to go back to the Mennonite church to observe more peace training. And then I needed to go back to our office to plan some of the remaining details of our team retreat in Zanzibar (starting today). The contrast of activities was almost too much to absorb. It was honestly a relief to head to choir practice and just spend several hours singing pieces about the hope and comfort of the Advent of our Lord.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heav'nly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.

Thursday and Friday brought more visits to the Mennonite church peace training, planning worship music for our church Sunday service (which as it happens I was scheduled to lead, on top of everything else), and also writing a sermon to give comfort to Julie’s family. Although I have served as a pastor at various times over the past 15 years, I have only ever given two funerals, and those only for older people who had lived full lives, and who I had not known well. It was a special challenge to think of how to give comfort to a family who are not themselves believers, but also to really speak the truth of the good news that Julie had trusted in Jesus, and that she is safe with him, in spite of the tragedy for those left behind. It was incredibly poignant to be planning this sermon in the season of Advent, God coming among us, when some of those grieving may have been feeling abandoned by God.

The family had asked that I preach on Psalm 23, for which I was grateful. It was interesting that though they aren’t practicing Christians, some aspects of the faith are still deeply engrained and give comfort. Even as we had a private family viewing just before the funeral, more than one Danish visitor and friend of Julie’s asked if they could please just kneel and pray the Lord’s prayer in Danish. There is still an urge to call out to our Father at moments like this of sudden death.

The family shared so beautifully about Julie. Many, many school friends and teachers came to support her son and the family. Our church family also came to surround and support the funeral with music, including special Danish hymns, and their presence and prayers. It was a real relief to people to be able that she had died of natural causes, due to an undiagnosed condition. And as hard as the situation is, especially in knowing how best to support and care for the husband and son, it was a service which I think allowed people to really honor Julie. Here are a few thoughts on what it meant to me to think about God with us, Emmanuel, in light of Julie’s death. Perhaps it might also be a comfort to others who are walking through this Advent season in times of loss and sorrow.

There is nothing solid we can cling to in this life. Nothing except the hand of the Good Shepherd who leads us. We remember his character, his wisdom in leading us on paths that will give us what we need – even when it isn’t what we want. More than anything else, he promises that as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. With us.

And we who call Jesus Lord, know that Jesus himself is the Good Shepherd. He is not a distant sovereign king, ordering things from afar. He came among us, Emmanuel, God with us.  Jesus came and lived, knowing hunger and disappointment. Jesus experienced the pressures of family who didn’t understand him. He was accused by lawyers who wanted to trap him and get him in trouble with the law. Jesus walked through the valley of the death-shadow himself. He buried Joseph, the father who raised him. He experienced the sudden murder of his cousin, John. He endured the death of a close friend, Lazarus, and wept at his grave. He was betrayed, abandoned, tortured and crucified.

Our Emmanuel, Jesus, God with us, said to us himself in John’s gospel, “I am the good Shepherd.  My Sheep know my voice. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” …

The final promise of Psalm 23 is this: “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever and ever.” …

In fact, goodness and mercy, the unfailing love of God, do not simply follow us passively. God’s love pursues us intently. God’s unfailing love chases us down. God’s mercy and love will not give up until they bring us into the Lord’s house. In the moment that Julie was falling, the unfailing love of God was still pursuing her, catching her as she fell, carrying her to be forever with her Good Shepherd in the house prepared for her with the Father.

Epilogue.

After all was done with the funeral, and the cortege had driven away to the traditional Tanzanian burial in Kilimanjaro, I also attended the peace training graduation on Saturday. Another moment of cognitive dissonance. It can be a challenging call to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. It was a real relief to come to the church early on Sunday morning, and be alone in the sanctuary for a bit, privately having some time to worship and grieve before the other musicians joined me to lead music for Second Advent.

Getting ready for MCC team time

And now we’re packed and ready to head to Zanzibar with our team on our annual team retreat. I might wish for a week of normalcy, but it seems that it is now time to head to the beach, and make the most of savoring family and team time, and the life and the days that we are given. Green pastures and still waters are not an entitlement but a gift of the Good Shepherd, and this week has been a reminder to never forget that. I’ll close with the text of one song we sang yesterday:

You've come, To bring peace, To be love
To be nearer to us

You've come, To bring life
To be light , To shine brighter in us
You've come To be hope To this world For Your honor and name

You've come, To take sin, To bear shame
And to conquer the grave

Oh Emmanuel, God with us

Our Deliverer, You are Savior
In Your presence we find our strength

Over everything, Our redemption
God with us, You are God with us

Songwriters: Jason Ingram / Leslie Jordan

God With Us lyrics © Capitol Christian Music Group

Stuffing it in for the Holiday Season

Kids playing 'Mafia' in the dark with friends.

Thirty days has September, April, June, and November... and because of that I missed by deadline to get a third blog entry in before the end of the month. But it was for good reason. I spent most of the day yesterday, riding home on a bus from Nairobi, then had a short turn around time (enough for a swim) before heading off to a very fun social event. It was a birthday party for Oren's friend Harry that included dinner for parents as well. Most of the invitees were part of our small group. It was quite amazing to see a group of 12 kids, like cousins, running around the house after dark playing 'Mafia', a kind of tag where certain members are killers, but known to the others. What I appreciated were my own childhood experiences of playing "Kick the can" after dark with a group of friends. This kind of gathering of a large group of friends the ages of our kids had been missing our entire first year and I can appreciate now just how missed that was and how important it if for their well-being to have a group of friends to play with. The true antidote to compulsive screen watching (or complaining about not having enough).

But I am getting ahead of myself. The past 10 days have been truly packed with events as we have officially entered the holiday season (at least as defined by our culture).

American Thanksgiving is a good place to start. It is of course not a holiday in Tanzania, and many of our expat friends are actually Canadian, or Scandanavian, so there are not a large number of people celebrating. Nonetheless we did receive two invitations to celebrate the day. One was from the Jaccobsens, a couple who has been here many years and has a famously large annual Thanksgiving gathering at their house. We went last year and saw nearly everyone we knew in the expat. community. This year however, we were also invited to a smaller celebration at our compound, the Joshua Foundation, which is primarily populated by New Zealanders, but there are a smattering of Americans as well. They usually do a small Thanksgiving celebration, and we decided to join them thus year as well. It was a very nice evening, a large potluck, featuring a number of roast chickens instead of turkey, but did have other 'fixins' including stuffing and cranberry sauce made of craisins that was very convincing. We had a time of eating, then sharing about Thanksgiving. I told the group the 'legend' of Thanksgiving we grow up with in the US, about the pilgrims getting helped by the Indians in the first year of their arrival. What is interesting is to see how this resonates with the group in a certain way. Many of them have spent their lives as 'religious pioneers' in a land and culture not their own, and probably identify with the pilgrims in a way most of us do not. It was a very pleasant and meaningful evening.

The days that followed seemed to be so packed with events that it hard to keep track. As we near the end of the school term, the kids have end of term events that they have been preparing. David was part of a large piano recital on Friday that Rebecca attended (I had to work). He played "Swans on the Lake" from John Thompson's piano book 1 for those of you who took piano lessons from a certain era might remember. Rebecca said he did well, and he certainly liked to play almost non-stop at the house the week before. That evening we also had a social event with our small group. We went to one of the families' compounds where they have a brick pizza oven and made personal pizzas. It was also a chance for about 9 kids to get together and play. They really enjoyed having time together in a large group and played a number of board games after dinner. It was like a church retreat.

Saturday was even more full with Rebecca back at the kids school, this time in her role on the parent's committee at a welcoming event for new parents and students. She got back in time for us to go right back out to our church where we were hosting a second folk dance. We had done one last year at it was very appreciated by about tow dozen people, mainly young adult Tanzanians. We were planning to start at 4 but found that a wedding in the sanctuary was running overtime, so we did not get going until about 4:30. We had a smaller group this year, but a fairly large number of children. We did a number of dances, but chose more of the simple line dances that could be done by a large group of children. They really liked Pata Pata, a South African dance, and Cotton Eyed Joe. We ended with the Virginia Reel which was fun for everyone, although extremely challenging for those who had trouble knowing where to go once they were spun off from their partner. It was a fun afternoon and we ended with refreshments.

After the dance, as if we had not packed enough in the day, we headed over to Aim Mall and watched "The Crimes of Grinderwald" the latest installment in the Harry Potter series. I really liked the first movie (Magical Beasts) but was less convinced by the second. In it, they are definitely building to a certain climax in a sequel so this leaves you hanging like "The Empire Strikes Back". What concerns me, though, is that there was a twist at the end that seems to inconsistent with the Harry Potter canon in the original stories, regarding the identity of a certain person. (I won't say more to give away any spoilers.) Nonetheless, we came home after a very full day and relaxed.

Sunday we were off again to a day of activities starting with church where Rebecca was one of the musicians. We also had a visit from a long time friend from Burundi, Duncan B., who works for DFID and was in Arusha for a conference. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, he knew we were here and made arrangements to meet us on Sunday for church and lunch. It was great to catch up with him as we knew he and his wife from Burundi--in fact they met there. We had a good catch up on his family as well as mutual friends.

Sunday afternoon we came home and set up our Christmas tree and decorated it and the house. Although our artifical tree puchased here has a bit the character of a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, it was nice to decorate it and to put on the many things that have been collected over the years. (We did bring our Christmas stuff here from the US. It is nice to make the livingroom feel a bit more Chrismassy, and we have been playing Christmas carols, The Nutcracker, Handel's Messiah, and Charlie Brown Christmas music around the house to get in the holiday spirit (oh, also the chipmunks Christmas album!) This helps a bit as the weather remains in stark contrast to our cultural expectations. Warm and cozy does not sound appealing as the days continue to heat up and we approach mid summer. But the rituals we engage in through advent, the songs we are doing in the choir and way we transform our home help give the right feeling to the season. We are also very much looking forward to the arrival of Grandma Jean first, then Papa Dave next, who will spend Chrismas with us. (In preparation for them, we did some Christmas shopping on Amazon so they can bring out the booty which will be sent to their house:-)

The business of the week of Thanksgiving was partly due to the fact that that week was bookended by my being out of town--the week before in Kigali, and the week following in Nairobi. I had written about the excitement of the family planning conference in Kigali, and the trip to Nairobi, although on a much smaller scale, was also very satisfying in terms of my work.

I was going for a conference involving all MCC partners in Africa who are doing maternal and child health projects using a 'care-group model'. This is a kind of approach to improving health outcomes for mothers and childrens through the formation of 'peer learning' women's groups who are trained through an 'expert mother' (called a care group volunteer) who has been trained by a skilled health promoter. It is a kind of cascading training which relies on the community to educate itself and has been shown to be a very effective way to change behavior toward better health practices around hygiene, pre-natal care, skilled delivery, exclusive breastfeeding, handwashing, water purification, etc.

There are 4 countries implementing these projects in MCC under the same grant. They are taking place in Burkina Faso, Somaliland, Kenya and Tanzania. As leader of the Tanzania group, I brought 3 of the staff of our local Maasai partner NDI to Kenya. It was interesting traveling with them by shuttle bus, I think 2 of them had never been outside of Tanzania and certainy never to a city with building as tall as Nairobi. We did not get off to a great start as they missed the morning shuttle to Nairobi, but fortunately there was one in the afternoon that we all got. (Nairobi is about 5 hours away from us by bus--with a border crossing.)

We arrived about 9pm and got our rooms at the Amani Guesthouse (formerly the Mennonite Guesthouse*) where the conference was being held. The next morning we met together and heard from the other partners about their projects. It was quite a study in contrasts to hear about the contexts of our different programs. Somaliland was probably the most extreme as villages are so remote in the desert that women would need to travel several hundred kilometers to find a facility to access antenatal care. Kenya, by contast, was implementing the model in a Nairobi slum that was so packed it was nearly impossible to find a meeting space for a caregroup to convene. Burkina Faso and Tanzania sounded a bit more similar in terms of distance from facilities and the rural pastoralists who were the participants, but each project had unique challenges and opportunities. I think it was very meaningful for the partners to meet each other and hear about each other's projects. I was glad to have some ability to speak both french and kiswahili as language was a bit of a barrier, especially for the Gustave who came from Burkina Faso and spoke no English.

On day two we had an expert on caregroups from Rwanda come and talk to us about the model and how to maximize its benefits. She provided us with a lot detail about the proper functining of a caregroup on a technical level, and we had plenty of time to work through problems in breakout groups and talk abou the particular challenges in our context.

On day three we went on a fascinating field visit to the Kenya partner project in the Madali slum, outside of Nairobi. It was clear why there was a need for this project in this area. Six people could be seen living in a space the size of a walk-in closet. Women were forced to cook, wash clothes, and dishes in narrow muddy alley ways where open sewage was running 6 inches from their makeshift kitchen. Keeping children healthy would have been an extraordinary challenge. We were split into groups and were able to watch health promoters doing a lesson to their care group volunteers (these ae the expert mothers who will take the lesson to their own groups.) I watched one on exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, and I was very impressed how impassioned and clear the promoter was and how she engaged the mothers in understanding the principles as well as giving coaching on the proper way to breastfeed. After that, we went in groups of 2-3 to differnt homes of participating neighborhood women who talked about how they had changed behavior in the last year including attending ante-natal care, treating water to clean it, washing hands, and exclusive breastfeeding. They were very happy to get useful information and said they noticed their children were healthier. It was a moving experience when came back and debriefed. (No pictures because we were told that taking them was a security risk as people did not like to be photoed and could lead to violent confrontation.)

We returned to the guesthouse and had a final session on project monitoring and getting all of our indicators aligned as we were using different ways of calculating the some of them. It was beneficial to get clarity on that as well.

We left Nairobi early on Friday morning and got back to Arusha in the afternoon without incident. I had a chance for a brief swim, which was where this entry began. We will finish the evening with a Christmas party at the home of Sharon our country rep.

The holiday season is busy, but the biggest contrast from last year are the connections we are building to a new community that we are forming and being formed by. Last year we felt a bit disconnected at this time. We remain grateful for having too much to do as it means we have succeeded in builing a new community who we support and who are supporting us in doing life here.

Back of guesthouse with tree swing.

* Note about the Mennonite Guest House. It was a bit melancholic to visit this place without the family as there are so many memories, like ghosts that haunt the grounds, from my past. This was a frequent stop off to and from home leaves, and the place we spent our first night with 3 year old Oren in Africa on the way to our assignment in Burundi. It was nice to see it again, but missed them even more while I was there during free moments. Here is a picture of the tree swing they used to love. I did go on it myself during free moments. Another contributer to my slightly sad mood was the book I brought along with me to read: V.S. Naipaul's 'Geurillas'. It was quite a dark and psychologically desolate read set in Trinidad in the 1970s. I can't recommend it although it is considered one of his powerful works. (A bit like reading Faulkner set in the 20th century.)

A visit to Kigali #ICFP2018

Kigali Convention Center by night. 

Time flies when you are busy it seems. I am happy to have a day off this week. The nice thing about Tanzania is that we celebrate all Christian and Muslim holidays, so there are a fair number of public holidays to enjoy. I am currently at a mall where David is playing in a kind of Kids Zone, and Oren is visiting a friend. Rebecca is having a sabbath away from all of us for at least part of the day. She really needs it as I was away all last week and she had to do the morning routine with the kids from Monday through Friday. It is a real challenge as it requires a 5am wake-up when we are together to be ready to drive them to the bus by 6:35.

I felt bad for leaving for that reason, but I was excited about going to Kigali (Rwanda) for the bi-annual International Conference on Family Planning sponsored by the Gates Institute. I have been interested in finding ways of integrating some family planning programs into some of our existing projects. Tanzania still has a very high fertility rate and has missed Millenial Development Goals targets on reducing maternal and infant mortality. Knowledge and access to contraception is a very cost-effective way to reduce these sad statistics. MCC is not a large player in the global health sphere, but in many places we have a reputation, as a faith based NGO of engaging church leaders. I was hoping to get more information about successful programs which engage faith leaders as advocates for family planning in their communities, especially since the church is a highly influential institution in our context here and in Sub-Saharan African generally.

I left town on a Sunday afternoon. I had booked a ticket on Rwanda Air and was very happy to see there was a direct 1 hour 20 minute flight to Kigali. (The next shortest was 9 hours on Kenya Air because it stopped in Nairobi). The flight was very full, and I realized, when talking to my seat mate, that many were heading to the conference. The importance of the conference in Kigali was evident as soon as we arrived. The airport was full of posters and there was even a tent outside the terminal for check in to the conference as well as shuttle buses to various hotels.

I had made arrangements to stay with Matt G., a friend and former MCCer that we worked with when we were Country Reps for MCC Rwanda Burundi. I was happy to see him waiting at the gate, and after buying a sim card, we went to his house and had a chance to catch up that evening. He was not going to be in town the rest of the week, but said I could still stay at his house as his staff, wife, and son were all there. It was great to see them all, as well as his 2 dogs who I remembered from our time together in MCC. He drove me to the convention center the next morning.

My father who is also a person of note in the global health world, was also at the conference and had arrived in Kigali a day early to be one of the keynote speakers at the young adult pre-conference. He had said I might be able to stay with him at the hotel connected to the convention center, and as it turned out, that was not a problem to share his room. I was certainly pleased with this development as it meant I was right next to the convention center where the conference was, and the Radisson Blue hotel is probably one of the nicest hotels in Kigali.

Entering the convention center area was not a minor process. Security was extremely tight and I had to go through a thorough security check and get a conference ID that I had to wear at all times. Once inside the facility, it was not difficult to get around, and the hotel was inside the secure perimeter. As I saw the personalities that were invited, including many heads of ministries and state, I understood the need for the level of securty that was there. In addition, there were about 4000 people in attendance.

The opening ceremony was so huge that I had to sit in one of the overflow halls which was also full. I think it would be hard to describe the amount of enthusiasm I witnessed for the notion of contraceptive choice. But those in attendance were strong advocates for the right to access to contraception. Within the whole, though there were a number of divergent views on what access means, from a purely rights-based approach, to other more participatory and culturally sensitive implementation philosophies.

The tracks one could choose from included, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy, best practices, procurement and supply chain, men's engagement, faith and family planning, youth and adolescent rights, community development, health system strengthening, and several others I can't remember at the moment. I was personally interested in workshops and discussions that focused on men's engagement and faith leader engagement. I was happy to see that there were many opportunities to hear form organizations that had implemented programs using these strategies and was inspired by what I heard.

My interest in engaging men was particularly keen as a result of spending time in the field in our maternal and child health project in TZ and talking to health professionals there about contraception availability. They said they were and that women preferred injectables for birth spacing because it could easily be concealed from their husbands who did not necessarily approve of limiting family size. I was sad to hear that men were not well informed about the health reasons for spacing, and was concerned about women having to take the risk of concealing this.

There were also many very exciting plenary sessions and special events. I enjoyed a session in which the first ladies of Rwanda, Haiti, and the Princess of Jordan discusses FP advocacy in their countries. I also enjoyed evenings of entertainment including a stunning young Sri Lankan rapper, who produced pro-FP music based on telling stories (through rap) of girls who had been harmed by lack of access. (Actually that is not a good desciption-- think of Madonna's Papa Don't Preach.) I wish I could understand the words, but she was amazing. There were other entertainers. One morning plenary was a real-life recreation of the 'Vagina Monologues' which you may be familiar with. It is a series of stories told by women about their life experiences around adolescence, menstruation, pregnancy, FGM, etc. It was extremely powerful and the youth who performed it were very talented. It was funny, tragic, though provoking all at once.

It was good to be there with my dad, and although we had to share a king size bed. (There were no rooms left in hotels anywhere in Kigali, much less the Radisson). I loved being able to take a morning swim, in a really beautiful pool. We also had a chance to go to the breakfast buffet that had over 100 different dishes to choose from. I was reminded how good Rwandan food and the amazing fusion of African and French culture.

It was good to listen to French again, as many of the speakers were from French Africa. Headphones offered simoultaneous translation of everything, but I really did not need it.

I had the chance to do a little visiting outside the conference, but not as much sight seeing as I might have liked given my past in Kigali. The city looks beautiful and remains pristinely clean. I did get a burrito at one of my favorite haunts Mezze Fresh, which has better Tex-Mex than anywhere in the US. I also went over to the new mall to meet  former colleague, Richard who I hired as a program assistant when I worked with MCC here. It was very nice to catch up with him.

One of the visiting highlights was Thursday night, when I went over to the current Country Reps'. house, Scott and Anne-Marie. They had replaced us when we left and were now in their fifth year. It was good to see them, and to see how their kids had grown. I had dinner with them and the new Area Directors for the Central West Africa region. It was a really great time together to catch up on the evolution of the program here. I am very pleased to see how much the program had grown and changed since our departure.

Rebecca's interjection: While Paul was away, I had the task of keeping the home front going without him. I am normally a pretty high functioning person, but that's after 7 am. So, the early morning wake up, make breakfast, get uniforms together, load the car, get out the door by 6:40 -- it was a challenge. Fortunately, our road is open again, with the construction having left us a nice new circle to drive through, so I didn't have to take the extra long detour to meet the bus. We had a pretty quiet week (a few fraternal fights and tantrums notwithstanding), coming home, doing homework, going to bed. The highlight of my week was having more time to talk with Oren one-on-one, mostly at dinner. He is growing and maturing so much and somehow, by a miracle, still willing to talk to his mom at age 13, nay, even asking me about things! Topics included gerrymandering and the 2020 census, the end times and symbolism in Revelation, the current state of politics in Tanzania, and what it means to be a conscientious objector. He covered it all: theology, politics, ethics, philosophy. I'm grateful. And meanwhile, I had a number of quiet and productive days in the office, getting more involved in developing the peace-building side of our program in Tanzania. I'll give the mic back to Paul.

My dad and I left Friday morning. He planned to visit us for 2 days on his way out of Africa, and we were on the same flight back to Arusha. It was short and sweet. We also enjoyed taking the new road home from the airport. The kids were thrilled to see grandpa and he had many gifts for them (and us.) There were some late birthday presents for David, a new computer for Oren, and and upgraded camera for me. There were also other beloved items such as Cheerios, and Nestles Chocolate chips.

We watched a movie together Friday then had an outing to the Cultural Heritage Center on Saturday, and a stop by Gymkhana. On Sunday we all went to church together. I had a very hard morning as I was subbing for Oren's confirmation class and had a huge Sunday school group after that. It all went off well though and we had a good lunch with one of my dad's former students/colleagues who lives here, and then our small group met at our house in the afternoon.

My dad left on Sunday evening by cab. It was a very interesting week, and I am glad to have something a little lower key this week, as I will be going away again the week after that.

Bonus Photo: Rebecca and I taken with my new camera.