Field Visits (Bahir Dar and Debre Markos) and School Options

 Facebook once again blocked our blog entry on the Ethiopia blog so I am posting a link https://pamosleyet.blogspot.com/2021/05/new-blog-site.html 

Savoring the last few weeks of normal

Gloriosa rothschildiana
among weeds

In the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a lot of walks – mostly in the evening. Partially, I am working to make sure I am ready to hike for multiple hours in a day, and I want my hiking boots to feel great on my feet. Partially, I just want to savor the place where we have been living. 

Since I came back from dry Ethiopia at the end of April, the lush greens of Arusha have been intoxicating. Strong heavy rains have been soaking the earth since the end of March and have only just let up now. 

Oren on a walk, with tall maize

The maize seems super tall and strong this year. Fascinating lilies seem to pop up out of the weeds. Evening walks down the quiet main road include a soundtrack of Bongo Flava music floating over the small shops at Korona fading off to the bleating of goats crossing into another pasture and the jingle of cowbells and then silence at the end of the road. 

The clouds have been full and rapturous at sunset just about every night. Even the donkey droppings on the sidewalks seem just a bit charming. Every little side errand down a dirt track in Arusha makes me give thanks that this town is still just an overgrown village, and every cluster of homes has room for its own little local duka and restaurant. 

River through our compound
with Mt. Meru 

 Paul and I had about 6 days together here in Arusha, between the time when I got back from Addis, and when he flew off again. Most of that time was spent uneventfully, just trying to make sure we completed our reporting for MCC. At least we were able to take an hour here or there for a walk together. And it was nice to be able to do some hours of work together at Gymkhana. 

Over the past few weeks, Oren has been deep into taking his IGCSE (O-Level) exams. In fact, it’s a process that takes about 7 weeks from start to finish. He has been taking 9 subjects and every subject includes 2 – 4 “papers” or sit-down exams, each of which can be up to 2 hours long. The schedule includes intricate timing, to prevent international cheating. For example, Oren’s literature exam yesterday had to finish slightly after 4 pm in East Africa, so that by the time they left the exam hall yesterday, students in West Africa and Europe (2 hours behind) would already be safely in their exam halls and out of reach of any text messages about the exam contents. 

Oren's final independent work

It’s very old fashioned in some ways – they just have pens and maybe a math kit. Nothing is online. And they all sit in one big hall, guarded by proctors. If you’ve seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when he’s doing his OWL’s, you get the idea. Just no quills. His graded art project was sent at the end of April, with a portfolio of studies that he has been pursuing for the past 18 months in the effort to create a final piece. 

He also had some time to prepare for a set art “paper” following the theme “On the shelf.” For his exam, he had 8 in-school hours to complete the final work on this piece in a supervised setting. This past week was his third very intensive week of exams, with 7 – 9 exam papers over the course of each week. He’s just about done now, which is good because we didn’t want to plan too much activity while he needed a lot of time to study. 

"On a shelf" by Oren Mosley

In contrast, David’s social life has really improved over the past month. We have neighbors with kids again! Their two boys are younger than David, but really enjoy doing a lot of the same outdoor exploration as he does. They ride bikes and jump on the trampoline together and play hide and seek in a pretty wide ranging area, and get the guard dogs all worked up in the evenings with their howling. It’s been pretty great to see David be able to play and enjoy himself actively outdoors, without being his only playmate and instigator. 

In addition, our housekeeper’s 3 kids have come to play a few times in the past weeks. They all love the trampoline, but 6 kids are a few too many at one time so I have to send them off to play hide and seek as well. Whoops, now they are all back on the trampoline! Time to break out the badminton rackets! 

As far as events go, I was glad to be back in Arusha for David’s final swim gala of the year. The schools are being somewhat careful about sporting events that bring schools together, and so our school has only been interacting with the school the Taylor kids go to. It was nice to see our friends racing and talk with their mom. The competition was much stiffer for David this time, as he’s competing against kids who are thirteen. Sadly, I had to also be on a Zoom training conference for a few hours of the swim gala, but it is possible to attend things like this on my phone. 

Friends playing at Kili Golf Clubhouse

 We have had a few really lovely times out with the Taylor family – at one of our favorite local BBQ chicken restaurants after church one time, and then at a somewhat remote, picturesque golf course last weekend. We are very thankful for these good friends, for good conversation with them, and for the fellowship all our kids enjoy. 

We’ve also been able to keep meeting as a Bible study group, and even while he’s in Ethiopia, Paul has been able to join us on Zoom. See the photo of him relaxing in his lawn chair at our most recent bible study. 

Paul @ bible study

Ladies looking for birds in the forest

It’s also time to start the farewells. I’ve been part of a women’s bible study group since 2017, and they very thoughtfully planned a day out for all of us at a local lodge on the slopes of Mt. Meru. It is 100 years old, an historic German “castle” from pre-WWI colonial days, with a small pond, lovely gardens and even horses to ride. I invited a bird guide friend from church, Godliving, to spend a few hours with us in the morning, spotting whatever birds we could find in the forest there. 

jacanas on the pond

Even the non-birders among us decided to walk along and see what they could spot. And then after a swim, we enjoyed good conversation over a delicious healthy lunch in our own private tent overlooking the pond. We finished off with a light-hearted game of croquet. 

Only in Arusha do you find
dining rooms like this!

It was a very relaxing and meaningful day to remember and mark the time we’ve spent together over these years, even with all the comings and goings. 

Croquet!

Lena, Rebecca & Jodi

The one difficult aspect of the past few weeks involved some bad news about next year’s school situation. Master Oogway would say, “Oh, Shifu. There is just news. There is no good or bad.” So here it is, and you decide: Oren was accepted into the 11th grade at Bingham Academy, but David did not get a place. (“That IS bad news…”) There was too much competition for spots at his grade level and so he is on a waiting list (albeit short) for a place in a class of 18 or so students. 

morning glory and heavy clouds

We had been told that there was really only one school that was a good option for our kids, in terms of quality, location and cost. So, we had not looked any further. But when we got that news, we started a flurry of investigations, checking with every possible contact we could think of in Addis. In fact, there are some other good quality schools – it’s a big city – but all the other options would involve 4 hours of driving per day across rush hour traffic to the other side of town or else cost far more than we could in good conscience pay for the 7th grade. (I mean literally, you could go to college for a year for less money than this one school charges!) The only other viable option is homeschooling, which is also not really viable for us. Both of us have full-time roles to play in the MCC work in Ethiopia. It’s really difficult to imagine how we will give David the time and energy he would need for a decent year of homeschooling, without also losing our minds and much sleep, trying to keep up with the demands of our job. Never mind self-care. And we are also worried about David finding friends, without being in a school class. It will no doubt also take a lot of time for me to arrange social outlets and activities for him. 

David fed that cricket
to the spider...

But we don’t see any other decent option right now, and so we just pray that David might get into the school soon, and that this home school period will be ask short as possible. And maybe there is some reason why we need to deal with this unexpected spanner in the works. We are trying to be open to that possibility. But it’s hard to have a whole new project—figuring out how to educate David—set in our laps in the midst of all the other work of transition. 

On the other hand, it has been good that Paul is there in Addis, to visit alternative schools and meet with a few people in the home school community to get ideas about how to do it. Paul will fly back on Thursday, giving us a final month all together in Arusha. We need to really start putting our farewell activities on the calendar.

18th hole at Kiligolf is on an island

Actually, we do have a significant voluntary challenge planned for early June. It’s been a long year for Paul and I, with lots of time of separation and all the faults and frustrations of trying to talk over WhatsApp. We thought it would be very nice to have time to switch off our email and phones and take a very long walk together, to get our heads and hearts in the same place as we leave Tanzania and start a new chapter in life. And so we’ve planned for a seven-day walk together, up and down the slopes of the mountain that has crowned our clearest days. And if we manage to summit Kilimanjaro (the mountain in question), then all the better. The kids will spend that week in boarding. 

They grumble a little but understand we need the time as a couple. 

That’s probably all the news that is worth printing right now.

Here are a few bonus photos of Oren's art work, starting with the preparation of "on a shelf" and then the preparation of his final work which is untitled 

Openness

For some reason, we aren't allowed to publish our Ethiopia blog directly on Facebook. If you mistakenly reported it as abusive, we kindly ask that you recall that report. Otherwise, you can find the new Ethiopia blog on this link. https://pamosleyet.blogspot.com/2021/04/openness.html

Daybreak view after the storm

View into the rift

 Far too much time has passed between blog entries, purely because it has been a very eventful time. And at present, I am writing from our highly atmospheric, candle-lit living room in Addis Ababa, enjoying a long power outage and the novelty of my first night of solitude in a very long time. Paul is back in Arusha with the boys. So, as the parent without kids to put to bed, let me see if I can catch up on 3 busy weeks.

On March 17, Tanzania experienced the death of a sitting president for the first time in its history, with quite a sudden announcement of his illness and passing. Ironically, this happened exactly one year after the first case of coronavirus was identified in Tanzania. Many people were taken completely by surprise, and the country rightfully went into a two-week period of mourning.

On the personal level, Paul was finally able to return from Ethiopia a few days later. As we worked and had meetings at Gymkhana, our favorite home office away from home, we were able to watch many of the somber proceedings on national TV. The body of the late president was escorted through many regions of the country over the course of a week. All along the way, the roads were lined with people waving branches to greet his entourage. Many ran out into the road ahead of the hearse to lay down a piece of cloth for the vehicle to drive over (as a souvenir?) – much the way that people greeted Jesus as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. 

Bible study in the tropics

Some of them, in their fervor to see the president pass, seemed to put their own lives at risk, and sadly 50 people were killed in Dar in a stampede to watch the procession pass by. The funeral was held on a Friday afternoon. Masses of people government officials and foreign dignitaries crowded into tents to honor Magufuli, mostly unmasked. It was an eerie sight, as people maintained complete silence in his honor for at least an hour.

The new president (the former vice president officially takes office within 24 hours) is breaking new ground as the first woman president in East Africa, and she will serve out the remainder of Magufuli’s term – four and a half years. President Samia Suluhu Hassan is a Zanzibari Muslim Tanzanian, with long experience in the government, and she is proceeding humbly but decisively as a new leader. It’s been a traumatic change for the nation, but overall, people are hopeful about their new leader and her direction for the country. And there is no way a woman would have been elected anytime soon – and yet she seems really good for Tanzania. Many people are saying, “kazi ya Mungu: the work of God,” with bewilderment and wonder.

The confirmation class I have been teaching

On the personal level, the official mourning and burial days fell on the Monday and Friday of the final week of our kids’ school term. David was scheduled to perform in the school musical “Matilda” that week, but a light-hearted bit of theatre was not in keeping with the mood of the country. The play is postponed until mid-April, along with quite a few other end-of-term events. On a more mundane level, Paul and I also had much less child-less time for MCC work that week, so we had to squeeze in working around engaging our kids. Paul especially has been under a lot of pressure for work in this period at the end of one fiscal year and the beginning of another.

On the good side, our kids got a three-day sleepover with their best friends here: their parents needed childcare assistance for a special 40^th birthday safari, and we were very happy to oblige. And so, we enjoyed all kinds of fun activities at home with four boys: A few board games, swimming, movie night, forcing each set of boys to cook dinner 😉 for the rest of us. And then there was the gingerbread house adventure. We have a family tradition of creating a gingerbread structure every Christmas. But this past December, the kids and I were quite sick right before Christmas, along with finally closing our office on Dec 22, and then right after Christmas we traveled for work, came home and were going non-stop with the handover of the TZ program. We were hoping for a gingerbread white house on January 21, but still ran out of time to do it. Then Paul left for Ethiopia and we needed to wait for him to come back. 

So, we ended up creating a Holy Week gingerbread house. Paul is very good at creating gingerbread constructions and gluing them with molten sugar. And then we let the kids loose with a bunch of fun candy. I think it must have been the most intricately decorated ginger creation ever! We also tried to host ultimate frisbee that Saturday, but sadly got rained out after a half-hour. On Sunday, after church, we took all the boys for grilled meat at a local outdoor restaurant and also had a chance to catch up with our friend Vance. It was a very full weekend, and though the boys had a lot of time together, no one seemed to get tired of each other!

The following day, we headed out for our own family “safari.” After a couple of hours of crucial work, we drove our own car a couple of hours west to Karatu, the town just outside of the Ngorongoro crater. It’s so fascinating to approach the abrupt ascent into the crater highlands, formed by a wall of the great rift valley. And suddenly the weather is much cooler up in the rolling green hills of rich farmland. 

Karatu landscape

We stayed at a fantastic property that was offering a very low rate to encourage local tourism, as the lodge tries to stay afloat without hardly any foreign tourists. Ngorongoro Farm House Lodge actually includes a large working vegetable and fruit farm, well-arranged and edged with beautiful flowers. All that fresh produce lands on your plate at every meal in the form of fresh salads, make-your-own veg stirfry, and well-stewed eggplant dishes. 

The kids' room!

The rooms are spacious and beautiful, and we shared a bungalow with 2 interconnecting rooms and big veranda. The property is enormous, big enough that a walk around the perimeter took more than an hour, in the quiet fresh air. And David especially enjoyed having time in the pool, playing with us, as well as a couple of schoolmates who turned up as well. (It’s a popular place in Arusha!) Oren was reluctant to go on this getaway, concerned that he wouldn’t have enough time to focus on his exam preparation. In between fun activities, he also took time to work on practice tests and revision.

Our big adventure was to finally spend the money and take a day trip into the Ngorongoro Crater—we had been delaying because it costs so much in park fees, as part of the preservation of the area. But we needed to go before we leave Tanzania. We had a really amicable and knowledgeable driver/guide who picked us up at our hotel, dealt with the formalities and helped us enjoy spotting so many animals. It’s definitely rainy season and we were nervous about getting stuck in the mud, but the gravel roads are well maintained. 

No seatbelts on safari!

The weather cleared a bit and we had gorgeous views of the landscape going down into the crater. At the same time, the low clouds and passing showers also kept things cool, which meant the animals stayed out in the open in the middle of the day, and photos were better. I hadn’t realized that there is a soda lake down in the crater (makes sense!) with so many different kinds of wading birds, and so I learned about a few new ones. We spotted huge numbers of herd animals, with a pair of rhino’s way out in the distance. The highlight for me was coming upon a serval cat on the edge of the road. She was crouched, tensing, and then leaped high into the grass, hovering and pouncing down upon her prey. She bounced up and down quite a few times before she emerged victorious from the grass with a very fat bush rat in her mouth. She even let us watch her play with the rodent for a while, lose it and catch it again, before she headed down the road to enjoy her meal. Paul has all the best photos with his great camera and maybe he will add some...

We were on our way to the lunch spot and saw a few lions hidden in the tall grass, sleeping. One lioness was almost invisible, except that a pair of golden jackals were pacing around near her, yipping, trying to get her to wake up and hunt so they could enjoy the leftovers!  Our guide suggested that we have our own lunch and then return. And sure enough, four lionesses emerged right on time, lying in plain sight just a few meters from us. And then three large cubs tumbled out of the grass behind them, playing, nursing, getting groomed. It was delightful to watch all the interactions of that group for quite some time. We had great views of hippos basking, flamingos flocking, Kori bustards hunting crickets, and a pair of crowned cranes shepherding their babies away from our vehicle. At our lunch site, we needed to defend our sandwiches from a black kite who had learned how to swoop down and steal food from your hand. It was quite a fascinating day of being with wildlife. One of my favorite moments was five minutes of watching a herd of zebras and just enjoying the complete silence except for the sound of their grass-munching. We saw very few other vehicles down in the crater – one benefit of tourism in the time of very low tourism.

Lunch in the garden

We stayed an extra day at the Farmhouse so that we could actually walk around, enjoy the grounds and pool and just experience the ambiance throughout a whole day. Paul had lots of emails to attend to and Oren was studying, but David and I made the most of the time we had!

We returned home on Thursday of Holy Week, in time to have a family supper and remember Jesus’ last supper and foot washing. Although our church has been meeting for worship, we are avoiding sacraments which require a lot of close contact. A large gathering for all the touching of foot washing and communion is out of the question. But our church has been encouraging people to celebrate these occasions with worship at home. 

The next morning, I helped lead music for our church Good Friday service. I’m so glad that I can still be part of facilitating worship in this season—it makes it even much more meaningful for me. Yes, we wear masks the entire time we lead singing, and expect the congregation to also sing with masks, and it’s a little harder to breathe, but still very much worth it.

We have some new neighbors on our compound – a family from North Carolina with 3 kids. David has really been enjoying playing with their two boys, who are younger than him, but appreciate all his crazy outdoor antics. Good Friday evening we gathered with them and the founders of our compound to christen a new firepit in the guest campsite. It was very well designed with bench seats built in around it and we enjoyed roasting our sausages, sharing salads and having good conversation while the kids messed around with the dogs in the dark.

Other Saturday activities included making and delivering a birthday cake for our housekeepers’ daughter, and coloring eggs. That was particularly interesting this year as we tried out a new technique batik eggs, using wax to set one color before dipping the eggs in another color.

Easter morning included an actual egg hunt for the kids (indoor since it was pouring rain!), before I left to go help another lady with Easter music. And actually we had lots and lots of people coming to the church – attendance has been more sparse lately as lots of local people prefer not to wear masks in church and can go elsewhere, while older foreigners are staying away. It was very joyful to end the service with self-serve communion outdoors in a big circle and sing the promise that He will raise us up.

Celebrating communion

On Monday, we did another frantic morning of work before heading off on another adventure: three days of camping with good friends. We retraced our steps back to the edge of the Crater highlands, to a gorgeous campsite perched halfway up the steep hill. We have camped at Migombani before in the rainy season and really enjoyed it, but we learned from experience how important it is to rent one of their sturdy, furnished safari tents, so that cloths and books and stuff don’t get wet! This turned out to be excellent foresight…

The kids had time for a good long swim together with their friends, and we created a great dinner together with our friends. The stars were shining clear and bright as we sat around a firepit for several hours, talking. It was such a good time for adult conversation since all our kids mix and play well together and took themselves off to different spots to play games. 

What a pool!

And finally, we all dispersed to our various tents for the night, with Paul and I in the pukka, high-class tent with an actual bed in it. But when a huge storm rolled in at about 2 am, there was no sleeping through it, no matter how comfy the bed! The thunder was tremendous, rolling off of the rocky hillside above us and the winds were incredible. The older boys next to us got some water in their tent but seemed to be dealing with it. The younger boys never made a peep, so we assumed they were ok…until David showed up at our tent door at 5 am, shivering and completely soaked! I guess it wasn’t that cold, and the 12-year-olds just kept trying to roll over and ignore the fact that their sleeping bags were soaked. But at a certain point, it was too much. Ah well, there was room in our bed for David to warm up. 

And soon after dawn, the clouds lifted, and the sun came out hot and intense. Which was good, because actually everyone but us was dealing with wet bedding by morning, but it was all dry again by lunchtime. There’s nothing like a little adversity to make a camping trip extra memorable.

We had time all day for long swims, reading, card games, lots of email catch up (Paul), math tests (Oren) and some much-needed naps after the storm-induced vigil of the night before. In the late afternoon, Oren and I went for a hike up the mountain above our campsite. It was a very steep and rocky path but well worth the effort to get a great view and some good exercise. We returned in time to share in cooking dinner and enjoying more good conversations around the campfire. And thankfully no big storms hit on our second night.

clean up crew

Back in Arusha, we had tons of work to do to catch up on being away for so many days of the kids’ school holidays. It’s really great to enjoy some of our last excursions in Tanzania, but there is definitely a price to pay with the full inbox. Up until now, most of that burden has been on Paul, as the one more familiar with our Ethiopia program and partners. Hopefully, I will be more up to speed on those questions soon.

Meanwhile, there were many home-focused tasks to do before I left for Ethiopia. One of the most strenuous ones involved taking our cat to the vet for de-worming and getting a microchip inserted into his shoulder in case we need to have him travel. The violence and anger the cat expressed was epic on this particular occasion, including the sight of him dangling by his claws from one hand of the vet assistant, while his other hand was valiantly trying to plunge the syringe with the microchip. I told them to use a towel and gloves. Really, I warned them! But instead, we had deep scratches and flying fur, and a long 40 minutes of trying to coax a very stressed and traumatized Tramp out from under the hideout to which he had fled after the successful microchip insertion. Other errands were not so worthy of stories. But the fate of our cat remains undecided at this point. I really love him and love his company, but I don’t think he will be happy in Addis, in a household with dogs that come into the house and sleep on the couch.

A big crew turned out for frisbee on Saturday

And on Sunday, right after church, I left the rest of my family behind to come spend two and a half weeks in Addis for work. Flying alone is pretty easy. But ironically, no one at the airport could believe that my final destination was Addis. Apparently only tourists are flying these days, in and out of western countries. People kept asking, no, where are you flying to after Addis? It seems that very few people are doing routine work travel between African countries. I’ve never had that experience before. I brought along our djembe drum as a carry on, just to get it to our new home. That was a bit of an issue as well. Guitars are fine as carry ons. Not drums. People kept inspecting it, trying to play it and test it through the basket cover we’d put on to protect the drumhead, and it took an extra visit from a security supervisor to affirm I could take it. And then it wouldn’t even fit anywhere in the cabin, so I need to check the thing anyhow at the end of the day. Well, it survived the trip, and so did I. Our very gracious and resourceful logistics officer Wondwesen met me at the airport at 8 pm and drove me to our new home (I was suggesting that I could get a taxi on a Sunday night, but then Paul pointed out that I don’t even know where I live, and I can’t speak Amharic to give anyone directions, even if I knew!)

So, here I am and there will be lots and lots of work to do in these few short days. But I’m glad to be here and to really push forward to get my head in the game and my heart in a forward-looking direction as well.

 Bonus photos:

Gingerbread designs

The finished product

Farm house flower and vegetable gardens under banana trees

Our egg collection

Dawn after the rain

My hiking buddy

Paul on vacation (with computer)

no good at selfies. Oh well. we were sweaty from hiking anyway!

David the fish

many card games in the bar while camping