From Mathematics to Linguistics...

Supermarket stress!

2012-02-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

So, here in the Netherlands pretty much everyone speaks great English - fantastic for me who knows almost zilch. My courses are taught in English - also fab, since I barely know enough about linguistics in English, let alone a second language. So, I probably don't need to bother with learning Dutch then? (Here I'm ignoring my inner linguist who is cringing with shame at the idea of not 'bothering' to learn the language of the country I'm living in!)
Here enter-eth the problem that while everyone may speak English, very little Dutch produce has labels written in English.
My first encounter with this issue happened when, hunting for cumin and tumeric (like anyone normal might do!), I stood for a good five minutes in front of the spice shelf trying to determine by colour and shape whether I held cumin seeds and tumeric. 'Curcuma' I read on the little bottle of yellow powder (after cleverly having discounting the yellow 'kerrie poeder' since it sounded suspiciously like 'curry powder'). Apart from sounding like 'cucumber', which didn't help, I had no clues from the name so I decided to risk it. Next, I held a bottle of cumin-lookalike seeds labelled 'anijs'. Hmm, too suspiciously like 'anise' to make a tasty curry. After bewildering two poor supermarket assistants with my demands for cumin, I cut my losses and settled for just turmeric.
Now, one would think that said first experience might make one more sensible next time and look up terminology in a dictionary beforehand, but noooo, apparently not! My next indecision, thankfully only lasting a few minutes, was this time over whether the muesli I wanted to buy contained nuts. I was pretty clued up that 'noot' and 'noten' meant 'nut' and 'nuts' respectively, but beyond that I was just reduced to scanning the ingredients and guessing! I guess I'll find out tomorrow morning whether some nuts go by names in Dutch that don't include 'noot' in the title (not unlikely given that 'almonds' aren't obviously nuts by the name).
My conclusion therefore, is that I'll probably have a good food-related vocabulary by the time I return, even if I do indeed fail to learn any more Dutch.

Settling in...

2012-02-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

Snow. That has been my first impression! Arriving on the continent via the channel tunnel on Friday afternoon, it took my parents and I an extra three hours or so to get to Leiden, all due to the mad weather that had suddenly hit Europe. Since then it hasn't snowed again, but the temperatures have remained colder than I've ever experienced. I've even been wearing a woolly hat to stay warm (for those who know me, that is a great concession to the cold, almost unheard of in regular winter temperatures!)

The canals are beautiful at the moment, almost all are under a thick layer of ice, safe enough to walk and skate on. The Dutch around me are all getting very excited about the prospect of holding the Elfstedentocht, or 11 cities tour; 200km of speed or leisure skating around the rivers, canals and lakes in Friesland. I believe the decision about it taking place will happen later today, a choice dependent on the safety of the route since the ice must be 15cm thick all along it. The last tour was held in 1997, so it's a very exciting time for those interested!

Other than that, life goes on as normal around here, except in the little world of Hazel that is. Once again I have been plunged into a new culture, and the inevitable feeling is one of complete ignorance as I try to navigate around a new city, new language, new university system and even a new currency. My Dutch, it has to be said, is at best basic, and while most people speak excellent English, I don't think I'll ever stop being embarrassed when someone talks to me in Dutch and I have to admit that I have no idea what they just said!

Having said that, I have started to learn my way around Leiden. I'll even try cycling round it soon (I've been putting it off while the snow has been bad) which will go some way to helping me feel more Dutch! The walk to the university takes around 35 minutes, which isn't bad, but in these cold temperatures that is about 20 minutes longer than I'd like to be spending outside. The cycle paths are more or less free of snow now, so at least I won't drift off-course by mistake!

I'll end there with a couple of pictures. For those interested who have my address, do find me on earth-scout.com street view, then you'll get an idea of what the place looks like (minus snow!)

Catching up

2012-02-08T06:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is my first post for two years, so how about I just explain how I got from Tanzania to Leiden before I start regaling you all with stories of Leiden.

When I returned to the UK in December 2009, I decided that after two years of having fun with linguistics in Tanzania that I'd quite like to carry on! Knowing that Wycliffe requires its missionaries to have church support, I spent the next two years involved with my wonderful church (The Crowded House) in Sheffield, gaining their support and preparing for the next step. That next step is what has brought me to the Netherlands. Having received adequate but minimal training in linguistics before I set out to Tanzania the first time, I figured that if I was to return, I'd have to gain a greater understanding of linguistics first. Leiden University has a one year Masters programme in African Linguistics, a perfect course for someone wanting specific training in that area, but doesn't want to take three years about it! I applied last year, and this Monday I began the course.

Cultural differences video link

2009-11-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

The following is a link to a video clip of an interview where a Tanzanian explains his first impressions of Canada. He had been invited to visit Canada when one of my colleagues went on furlough, and had been experiencing life as Canadians are used to living. His surprise at things that we take perfectly for granted made me think about just how much I take for granted. The clip is called 'Mwasembe highlights'

http://vimeo.com/6945700

Cultural differences

2009-10-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me the other day that although I write a lot about my impressions and experiences here in Tanzania, I rarely say much about Tanzanians’ impressions of our lives and cultures, or how I understand their views based on questions that have been asked. Here are a few comments and questions that I have heard to give you some insight into the misperceptions/Tanzanian cultural perceptions of life in the West.

Question 1: I have heard that you (Westerners) have a form of marriage where both parties agree to be married for a time of about 3 years and then are free to leave each other with no legal implications for either party. Is this true?
Notes: I think this might have arisen from someone hearing about pre-nuptial agreements being made. Two people separately asked us about this on the same day during a village visit, so it seems to be a widespread idea that this is what we do!

Question 2: I hear that you do not look after your elderly people like we do, but send them away to be looked after by other people rather than letting them live in your house. Is this true?
Notes: While this was essentially true, they do appear to look unfavourably on the way that we send our parents off to nursing homes and retirement homes rather than looking after them ourselves. While I know the reasons from my cultures perspective for sending elderly people to nursing homes (and having worked in one myself), explaining these reasons to someone from a culture where elderly people are highly respected, I felt my reasons were rather feeble in his eyes! (no offense to anyone with parents/grandparents in nursing homes c:)

Comment/observation 1: I want to live in England/America because everyone there has a good job, and a good salary.
Notes: The grass is always greener on the other side!

Comment/observation 2: there isn’t any crime in America (made to an American friend of mine)

Question 3: Why do you people pretend to come over here doing the work of God when you are only doing it in order to exploit us?
Notes: When I asked further about this, he told me that he was referring to people who come over and pretend to be helping the community and instead are only interested in the gold or precious stones that can be mined in the country and the good work in the community is just a front. I don't know whether he knew any missionaries who did this, but he was convinced that all missionaries have ulterior motives! I was quick to assure him that I didn't have time or energy for a gold mine on the side, even if that was what I came for, and it certainly wasn't!

Question 4: What do you eat in Canada/England if you don’t eat chapattis or ugali?
Notes: The person asking couldn’t believe that we don’t have ugali in England or Canada since it is such a staple food here. People often don’t feel fully satisfied unless they have a meal of ugali once a day.

Here are a few other things that people don’t believe/understand when they hear us talk about our own countries:

That we don’t all keep animals/ farm our own food.
That a couple might not want to have children.
That a woman can reach age 27 and not have a husband or children.
That we keep dogs as pets.
That there aren’t tribes in England, and that English is the mother-tongue of (almost) all the people in our country (obviously excluding non-native Brits c:)

Zinza Genesis dedication

2009-09-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we made another trip, this time to Mwanza where we stayed for two nights in order to attend the dedication of the book of Genesis which was recently printed in the Zinza language. Getting up early on Saturday morning, we left the Catholic guest house at half past six, and made our way to the ferry terminal. Arriving through the gates, we waited for our turn as we saw the smaller ferry being loaded up. Sadly, the buses seemed to take precedence over our small vehicle, so we had to wait until 8am for the larger ferry to arrive, but eventually we were able to reverse our vehicle onto the cramped ferry before the cracks between vehicles were filled with people (I kid you not, that ferry was packed!) and we set off. Arriving on the other side, we drove onwards along a dirt road to the village of Nyakaliro where the dedication ceremony was being held.

Mwanza ferry

Arriving at the storage barn that was filled with hundreds of seats, we were ushered up to the front where we were seated as honoured guests despite our protestations! Honoured or not, we were rather deaf by the end of the ceremony, having been seated very close to the speakers which belted out music and whatever was said/sung into the mic.

AIC choir

The service started a little late, which was good since we had not been able to arrive for the official start time, but still people were arriving up to an hour into the ceremony. It began with introductions of all the official guests; translators, missionaries, pastors and board members involved with the translation, some of them giving speeches of various lengths, then proceded on with a song from the AIC (Africa Inland Church) choir from the AIC church in Nyakaliro. After this, we were treated to a show of Zinza traditional dancing accompanied by drums and the ululation of many watching women. This was a great experience for me, as I have many times bemoaned the lack of times I have seen traditional African culture displayed in dance or music.

Following this, the AIC choir sang another song and then some of the boxes of Genesis books were danced in up to the front where the mgeni rasmi (honoured guest) cut the ribbon with great ceremony and pulled out a couple of books to stand with them while photos were taken. Many of these books were then gifted to those who had been a part of the translation process in various forms, which took quite a while!

Not much was said or done after that, and the ceremony closed quite efficiently without the need for long drawn out speeches which made me happy! By this time, it was about half past 1, and having had breakfast at 7am I was rather hungry and thirsty (I had stupidly forgotten my water bottle). We were treated to a pilau and meat lunch in traditional Tanzanian style, before we eventually piled back into our cars in order to catch the ferry back.

So, that was my first (and possibly last) experience of a dedication! I thoroughly enjoyed it (despite the thirst) thanks to the good planning that kept speeches to a minimum (Tanzanians are not known for being able to keep speeches or ceremonies short, the last one I went to being a good example, having gone on for 5 hours) and thus meant that the ceremony itself ran smoothly. The dances were a real treat also, and despite my protestations at being placed at the front, it did make for some good unobstructed photography!

Rondo Retreat Centre

2009-09-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last week saw my friends and I taking a trip into Kenya for a visit to the Kakamega rainforest. This rainforest (not a tropical one) is located about an hour North of Kisumu, which itself is about 5 hours from Musoma, allowing for the border crossing. The forest itself houses many types of birds and monkeys, including the red tailed monkey, colobus, and blue monkey.

We arrived around mid-afternoon on Saturday, and after a confusion where we thought we might not have actually booked ourselves in for the right dates, we were shown to some very cute rooms set in the main house of the Rondo retreat centre. The centre had a selection of variously sized cottages attached to it, but the main house was a great place for us to stay, allowing us to arrive at the dining room from our bedrooms without even venturing outside! The house itself was very comfortable and neatly kept, in fact we had to remove our shoes before entering, a good policy when the rainforest has a tendency to make shoes muddy.
We arrived in good time for afternoon tea at half past four, something we were happy to learn was a permanent fixture each day, with coffee/tea and cake being brought to wherever you happened to be sitting in the main lounge/verandah. The meals in general were a delight (although three days of 3 full course meals and tea each afternoon meant I wasn’t hungry for most of the meals!), a definite thumbs up!

Afternoon tea

The gardens were really beautifully kept up, looking like they had originally been carved out of the rainforest, which pressed up against the centre on 3 sides, providing plenty of short 10 minute walks, and a few longer 2-4 hour walks. On Monday, we took a guide and went on one of these walks, strolling towards some rapids, and back through groves of guava trees, all-in-all a 3 hour walk. We got to see all three types of monkey on this walk, but birds were more scarce, the best viewing times for viewing them being at dawn and dusk.

On the walk through the forest

On Sunday there was a short service in the quaint little chapel at the edge of the forest in one corner of the gardens, attended mostly by the staff, though it seemed that there were almost as many guests, the whole congregation perhaps totalling 25.

Rondo chapel

The rest of the time we spent lounging around on the comfy sofas, or playing chicken with the rain as we played cards outside until the minute when it started pouring down on us. It was really nice to sit by the fire, and feel cold in the evenings, and be able to snuggle up in bed, something that I haven’t been able to do since I moved to sunny Musoma!

Playing chicken with the rain playing dutch blitz

On the way back, we paid our respects to the Nakumatt in Kisumu (Nakumatt is a chain of big department stores in Kenya, heaven for us shopaholics stuck in small towns where choice of products is almost non-existant!), though were disappointed that the fridges were all turned off, so there was no cheese available. All together it was a successful weekend!

(www.rondoretreat.com)

Proposal

2009-09-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I walked home from the office, a distance that takes only about 12 minutes. On the way however, I received my second marriage proposal since I have walked that route (which has only been about twenty times in total), as usual, from a complete stranger. This guy was walking in front of me at first, but I overtook him, so he realised I was there and began to follow me no matter how fast I walked (and I walk fast compared to most Tanzanians). Here is the gist of how the conversation went (rough translation of the Swahili as I remember it c:):

Deo: Good evening.
Hazel: Good evening.
Deo: Are you walking home?
Hazel: Yes. (walks a bit faster)
Deo: Where do you live?
Hazel: Nyasho (I vaguely wave in the direction of my house. Nyasho is a very large area which we were already walking in, so saying 'Nyasho' didn't really answer his question)
Deo: Are you married?
Hazel: Why do you want to know? (knowing why he is asking and where he will go with the conversation as soon as I say 'no')
Deo: It is just a question, I would like to know.
Hazel: So your first question to me is not 'what is your name?' but 'are you married?'?!
Deo: And your name is...?
Hazel: Hazel
Deo: My name is Deo. I work as a guard in Makoko. Are you married? Yes, or not yet?
Hazel: Not yet. (really want to lie at this point)
Deo: I want you, I have no wife yet. I have a good job.
Hazel: (stalling in order to not have to answer the question) you work in Makoko? Where are you going now then? Do you live in Nyasho?
Deo: Yes. What do you say?
Hazel: About what? (I know very well what he is asking, just playing dumb c:)
Deo: About what I said?
Hazel: I don't understand (drawing this out as looong as possible before I have to answer)
Deo: what do you think about being lovers?
Hazel: No.
Deo: You are refusing? You don't want to marry me? Why?
Hazel: Because I won't be around in Tanzania for much longer (trying for the diplomatic answer).
Deo: Ok, bye. (Having reached his turnoff, he goes off down his road and leaves me to carry on home)

I wonder what they would do if we actually did say yes to their proposals? Do they really expect us to leap at the chance to accept a complete stranger, who obviously wants to marry a white woman (I mean, he didn't even ask my name at first!)? The mind boggles in trying to understand. I guess they figure that it is worth a try, and they don't lose anything by being rejected. *sigh* The struggles of being single on the mission field!

Bank card saga

2009-09-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

If I ever thought dealing with banks was tricky when I lived in England, my perspective has changed somewhat now!

The saga of the bank card all began a long time ago as family and I embarked on our mountain adventure on Kili. Clever me thought that putting precious bank card in special hidden pocket of Father's daypack would keep it safe. Clever me was correct, but also forgot about said card at the end of the trek, and so it ended back in England, still very safe in aforementioned hidden pocket.

I obviously was paying great attention to my bank card, because I still didn't realise that it was absent all the way during conference, until I was about to go shopping in Nairobi (and intending to buy a lot of stuff, plus pay for car repairs, i.e. need lots of money). Sadly, it was a week too late by then!

Much more on the ball, my parents posted my card back to me as soon as they realised that they had it. This was about a week before I returned to Tanzania from Kenya (having racked up a stack of IOUs), and since post usually takes a week or two to arrive, I wasn't unduly worried.

Weeks passed.

About 4 weeks later, I gave up, and sent my poor long-suffering mother into Nationwide to ask them to cancel the card. They duly phoned me up from England, asked me information to prove my identity (all of which was known by mother, being such things as date of birth etc, so they could have just asked her and saved the phone bill!) and card was happily cancelled. New card was ordered, but this time I was rather more cunning, and asked for it to be hand-carried back to Tanzania by a friend who was returning a week later. Card arrived safely.

Happy Hazel then went to the bank in Musoma to get money out for the large number of things that she now owed money for, and was very very happy to hear the whirring of the ATM announce that the card was working as it should be.

Two days later, horrendous electricity bill forced Hazel to return to bank (though this time a different one in town) and get more money (the limit is 400,000Tsh and the bill was over that). Bank machine ate card = Hazel wept in despair (bank was closed at the time, having opening hours that as always, only make sense to the bank and not to ordinary working people who cannot get there during normal working hours).

Saturday arrived and I took myself back to the bank, armed with proof of identity and little slip of paper which proved my card had been rudely eaten. Card was returned, and I pranced off on other errands. Money was once again required (for 3 months rent this time) and fearing the Barclays experience, I ran first to the other 2 banks in the town, only to be rejected. So, back to Barclays I went, and sure enough, my card was eaten once more, though somewhat more speedily returned by the long-suffering employees of Barclays, Musoma.

Here endeth the saga of the bank card (or so I hope!).

What happens at church

2009-08-25T01:20:00.001-07:00

I was daydreaming in church the other day (quite easy to do when you have to translate everything in order to understand it, much easier not to listen!) and realised that I have never shared what a church service is really like on this blog before. This is a little snippet of our Sunday services each week at Nyabange Mennonite church.

Church begins officially with Sunday school (for all ages) at 9.30am. This is taken by Mch. Waynse, our pastor, and runs for half an hour, or until he has finished making his points/answering questions. We don't go to this, but usually turn up at 10am, almost always the first people to arrive for the service, and wait for it to begin. The church does have a bell (or sorts, for someone who used to bellring in a proper belltower, I wouldn't call it a very good bell) and rings it to call people to the service. Without fail, there are always people arriving even up to an hour into the service, and space becomes tight quite quickly. For some reason, maybe because people have their favourite benches, people don't go to the logical place to sit, where there is space, but always try to squash others along the row so that they can sit down. The African concept of personal space being different from the English concept means that I often feel rather intruded upon, especially when kids come to sit next to me. No matter how much space there is between me and the next person, a kid will almost always come and sit down next to one of us. When there is a big gap, this means that the kid plonks herself down right next to me, and my neighbour has plenty of space instead. Said kid will then spend the rest of the service alternately fiddling with any jewelery I am wearing, prodding various parts of me, or just gazing at my obviously weird and intensely fascinating face.

But back to the service. Again, without fail, the service begins with at least 2 hymns from the 'tenzi za rohoni' hymnbook. This is a book of Swahili-ized English hymns. Someone gets up at the front to lead the hymns and away we go, following at whatever speed and pitch that person decides we should sing at that week. After this comes a short time of prayer for the service, the first reading (often a Psalm where we join in on every second verse), then often some more tenzi, or a contribution from the choir. Usually we say the "Imani ya mitume" at this time (Apostles Creed), which I have yet to learn by heart, and still have to read from the front of the tenzi book.

Choir songs basically involve us sitting down and watching 15-20 choir members perform any number of their repertoir of songs, which have no doubt been practised again and again during the week. They are very fond of using the keyboard (not actually play it, but use it to provide a beat) and generally will have quite a lot of bass going while they sing. We are always very happy when the power goes out, as their voices are truly lovely, and much better without the 'backing music'. Their dancing is generally very coordinated, and they have a variety of moves which would probably never even occur to us in the West as being something you could put to a worship song. There are two members singing into the microphones and the rest provide the backing.

After the choir sing, someone will get up to do the notices. These always include introductions, and the congregation will be invited to introduce themselves if they are new, or visiting, or have just been away for a time. Usually there are at least 2 people who introduce themselves. Then there is another song from the choir, and the second reading.

My favourite part is usually what follows next, when someone is called upon to lead a 'pambio', a lively song where the congregation respond after each line from the leader, generally with the same response (which means that I have usually got the hang of what they are saying after a few times). Often there are two of these, then we are led into a prayer for the speaker before he comes to preach.

Sermons can be anything from 10 minutes to over an hour long, and it really depends on many factors as to how much I listen to them. Church for us is not in any way a time of learning or connecting with God, doing that in Swahili is very difficult for us, so we generally do it at home after the service. Church for us is connecting with the community, and supporting the church in what ways we can. This means that I am not too worried if I don't understand the sermon, as I know I will listen to an English one later, but I do try even so. Factors that make listening difficult are the clarity of the speaker's Swahili, how loud they speak, how fast, and how many words they use that I don't know. If I listen, then realise that what they are preaching is inaccurate, then I often switch off as well.

After the sermon we have the offering. This involves each side of the church standing up and processing to the front where there is a basket for each side of the church. The choir sings a few songs while this is going on, and after giving someone prays for the offering. The biggest difference in offerings here is that sometimes someone will give an offering of produce, or even livestock, and then it will be auctioned off with the proceeds going into the offering. This is always amusing, as people offer varying amounts for the random collection that is given through this method. We have seen auctioned off such things as peanuts (a whole bag), corn, eggs (I have even bought some of those during church!), okra, a spinach-like vegetable, and even a duck!

After the service finishes, the choir continues to sing as we all process out after the pastor, service leader and preacher and shake hands with each other. This is done by shaking hands with everyone in a line, then joining the line at the end. Generally it is expected that you greet each person briefly as you do this, but that doesn't always happen with so many people to greet! When everyone is out of the church, we are dismissed with a blessing and all say the grace "neema ya Bwana wetu Yesu Kristo, na upendo wa Mungu Baba, na ushirika wa Roho Mtakatifu, ukae nasi sote sasa na hata milele." (May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ...)

After this is a time of greeting people, and being invited to lunch (inevitably every week we get invited somewhere) before we escape back to our car (usually with some passengers wanting a ride to Bweri or town) and go home for lunch. The service takes anything from 1 1/2 hours to the more usual 2 1/2, and even sometimes 3 hours.

My new lesson about my relationship with God

2009-08-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Again, despite my dislike of the financial requests that I constantly get from friends and 'friends' here in Tanzania, God has brought something to my attention about my relationship with Him through my experiences with them.

Before, I was saying that I realised I needed to spend more time in relationship with God, rather than going to Him for requests only. This time however, I learnt about gratitude after those requests are granted.

Last week, a friend came (having given us notice that he was travelling to Musoma from his village) in order to receive financial assistance from us for his daughter's nursing studies. He had told us the total amount, and we had said that we could help a bit, but could by no means could provide all of the required amount. He said that was fine. The day arrived, and so did he, to collect the money from us. During the conversation that followed, after he had seen how much we had given him (not a particularly small contribution but still only 1/8th of the total) he made a passing comment about how much still remained, and how hard it would be to collect it all. Having gotten used to reading indirect comments such as this, I was rather offended that, while he was outwardly grateful, he expected me to have given more. Reflecting on this later, God brought it to my attention that all of us are so very good at doing that very same thing with Him. We receive good gifts from His hand, and yet we grumble about what we haven't been given, about the '7/8ths' remaining instead of being grateful for what He has given us. In this case too, it is not that God can't afford to give all of it to us (like I couldn't afford to give all my friend was asking for), but that He gives us often just what we need (although often quite a bit more) even if that does not match up to what we think we need. I wonder what else God has to teach me about prayer, gratitude and His gifts through my experience with Tanzanians!

Greetings

2009-08-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

I never really thought about greetings much before I came to Tanzania, and it became such a big part of my social interactions. Here in Tanzania, you are expected to greet everyone with some form of greeting, and often more than one. This always makes it interesting when a crowd of children all want to greet us, as a simple blanket greeting for all of them isn't enough, they all insist on greeting us individually. So, for 3 children, we would each get 'shikamoo' (respectful greeting to an older person), and each have to reply 'marahaba' (reply to 'shikamoo') for every 'shikamoo' then follow it up by greeting them in turn. Thus, it would sound something like this, "shikamoo", "marahaba, hujambo?" "sijambo" x6!

I can get used to greeting people like this in Swahili, but I find it very bizarre when people insist on greeting me in English. I never thought I could be over-greeted! Every morning, I cycle past kids who like to greet me in English. I am always going too fast to hear if each child says "good morning, madam!" once each, or if they continue saying it until they can't see me anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter. I wish I could teach them that one "good morning" is enough, as I'm sure they think I am rude for only replying once. It justs seems so unnatural to me to say "good morning" to every child rather than doing one "good morning" for them all!

I take a certain delight in correcting the kids as well when they use English. I have often cycled home in the evening to choruses of "good morning madam!" and even the occasional "good morning sir/teacher/class!" I find it quite fun to reply "good evening" to them, and watch them run away in fits of giggles. Still, it is the best way for them to learn!

Swine Flu

2009-08-16T23:29:00.000-07:00

I know this was weeeeeeks ago, but here is the little tale of our swine flu experience in Tanzania.
After conference, we returned to work as usual, arriving home on Monday and back at the office on Tuesday. During that week, I was working closely with one of my teams on sorting out the database of words for that language. At the end of the week, I spent almost a full day at Nyabange, attending the graduation ceremony of some of my friends from the college. As with many Tanzanian functions, this involved a long talk, lots of singing and dancing, and very crowded seating arrangements. That evening, we had arranged for a 'surprise' birthday party for one of our colleagues, so had invited quite a few people over to our house. The lucky ones that came then got to experience the unexpected!

Earlier that week, we had heard that one of our colleagues from the Dar es Salaam office had been diagnosed with swine flu, so naturally we were all a bit cautious with those who were sniffling here in Musoma (having just come back from the conference where this lady must have originally caught it). I myself had had an ordinary cold on leaving Kenya, but wasn't at all worried it was anything but a normal cold. The Tanzanian health service had other ideas, and when they heard from another potential swine flu family here in Musoma that some people at our house had been ill, they all came in force to interrogate us. When I say in force, I mean that there were about 6 of them who arrived in a van with some slogan about AIDs on the side. They came into our back yard, but refused to go any further, and insisted on wearing face masks while they interviewed us from a safe distance. All of us (including the party guests) were required to go outside and be interviewed, and then we were strictly ordered to not leave our house for the weekend!

They came back on Saturday night to do some actual tests, shoving swabs in our mouths and taking our temperature while asking many of the same questions from the night before. This time there were definitely 6 people there, all with the white masks on. Some of them seemed rather useless for the task, but maybe they felt there was safety in numbers! Again, they refused to actually enter the house, and left with a stern warning for us not to go anywhere until we had the all clear.

On Sunday, we had to cancel our usual trip to church, even though Rachel was supposed to have been speaking then, and hang around the house. Normally we have no problem being in our house, but it always seems different when someone tells you to stay, the natural urge to rebel surfaces and you want to go anywhere as long at it out of the house! As it turns out, we were both negative for swine flu (big surprise), but I was impressed by the speed of response from the department of health here in TZ. It was all rather ironic though, having spent all of Friday potentially infecting friends and family at Nyabange college, to be told to stay in our houses after that. It also led to a lot of confusion among some of the Tanzanians who had heard that we had been tested and quarantined. After a while of being asked if we were better, we gave up trying to explain that we hadn't been sick, only quarantined, and told people that we were fully recovered thanks! I don't know what the neighbours thought though, seeing a vehicle coming twice to our house with AIDs written all across the sides, and doctors coming in with face masks!

Kilimanjaro - descent

2009-08-01T12:50:00.001-07:00

View of Kibo peak from about 1 hour down the Marangu route

After lunch, we were allowed a quick snooze of about 2 hours at Kibo huts before we packed up our tents and set off down to the next camp. My poor toes refused to go back into the boots, so I tortured my feet in different places by borrowing my sister’s trainers. That made walking much more pleasant, and despite my tiredness, I found I had enough energy to walk the 3 hours down the Marangu route to the next set of huts. Once there, having joined up with John and Bernice, we ate dinner and quickly went to bed, all feeling pretty exhausted.

Our final camp on the mountain

The final day was spent walking through some beautiful scenery. Once again, we walked through the rainforest region of the mountain, but this time it was for longer, as the side we were walking down got more rain than the North side that we had walked up. My poor feet had been crammed back into the walking boots at the guides’ insistence that we wear proper footwear, but after our lunch break, I gave in and changed back to the trainers, which my Mum had been carrying with her for exactly that reason (thanks Mum!). This made the final stretch after lunch a lot more manageable, though my knee joints were complaining about all the downward flopping I was doing (I was flopping more than walking by this point!), something they had never done on the way up the mountain! I actually preferred the upward climb for that very reason.

The rainforest region we walked through on the way back down

We arrived at our final destination, Marangu gate, sometime that afternoon. Each of us who had made it to the top (my Dad, two sisters and I) received our certificates, we doled out the tips to the porters and guides and then happily clambered into the Tanzania Journeys bus which had been sent to pick us up. So ended our Kilimanjaro experience, and quite an experience it was!

Our faithful and hardworking guides: Arold, Rashid, Didas and Amud

Kilimanjaro trek - final ascent

2009-08-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

On the day after our rest day, we were feeling much better for the most part, and set off across The Saddle in order to reach the camp at the base of Kibo peak. On the way, we came across the remains of a small plane which had apparently crashed a few months previously while carrying some tourists on an aerial viewing of Kilimanjaro, killing all except the pilot. The Saddle itself was rather boring, being rather desert-like in appearance, and having very few interesting features except the two peaks at either side. At this point we had stopped wearing t-shirts only during the day, and had obeyed the guides by donning our woolly hats, as the wind was rather chilly. On our way across The Saddle, the couple who had come with my family had to turn back and go down in order for poor Bernice to recover from altitude sickness. Her husband John joined her, even though he was well enough to go on, so we carried on with just us five Grays and my sister’s friend Beth.

Trekking across The Saddle

Arriving finally at Kibo huts, situated at the bottom of the final trail up to the peak, we all felt rather weak and wobbly, the altitude making us rather more pathetic as we went about the rigmarole of signing in and finding our camp. There were a multitude of tents set up when we got there, but they must have belonged to people climbing to the summit on the day we arrived, as they were gone by late afternoon. Kibo huts, as the name suggests, was the first campsite we had stayed at which had huts for climbers to sleep in. Since we were doing the Rongai route, which had no huts for the main part of it (only when we joined up with other major routes such as Kibo), we had tents every night. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of coming to a place like Kibo huts is that despite the more permanent structures where the toilets were situated, the frequency of use by so many people meant they were rather more dirty.

After a meal and a pep talk from our guides, we all settled down for as much rest as we could before we woke for the summit climb. Every day, either after the evening meal, or breakfast, we were able to top up our water bottles from the water boiled by the cooking crew for our use. This meant the water was warm when we got it, but if we received it the night before, the low temperatures meant that it was pretty cold by morning, and much less unpleasant to drink. Going up the final climb to the summit however, required us to take hot water in our flasks when we set off, plus whatever we could take in a thermos, as water froze easily due to the low temperatures.

Despite planning to set off before midnight, we got going at around midnight, the last stretch to the peak had begun! We were all really bundled up with layers and looked very round and squidgy as a result, it made walking a bit weird. When I set off that night, I had on 3 layers on my legs, three pairs of socks, 4 top layers, a fleece, a duvet jacket and a waterproof mac, plus gloves with inner liners, a neck-warmer and a woolly hat! We weren’t the first to set off that night, we were able to see headtorches bobbing along a few hundred metres above us, but we were not the last either. We set off polepole, and steadily climbed. As usual, I had my ten minutes of pounding heart before settling into the rhythm, but I was surprised when at the first rest stop (after handing off my backpack to one of the guides) I almost completely blacked out. The guides were quick to act as always, and divested me of my waterproof mac and outer gloves, which cooled me down sufficiently to regain my vision. I think a combination of altitude effects and overheating had made me almost faint! Thankfully, I was able to go on after only a little pause, and found it much more pleasant without the outer gloves (I could move my fingers for one thing), though I had to keep my hands in my pockets most of the time. I also found that I began to feel nauseous if I had anything at my throat, so soon the neckwarmer came off, and my duvet jacket rarely stayed zipped up to my chin for long.

On we trudged, taking little breaks every so often, probably about every half hour. Occasionally we would pass some poor victims of altitude sickness, either having a nosebleed, vomiting or being carried back down by guides, but we continued. We made it to the Hans Meyer Cave when my mum decided to not go any further, as she was feeling more nauseous the further she climbed, so we bid her farewell and set off again. At this point, Beth was also not with our party, though at that time we didn’t know if she was further behind with the guide Amud, or if she had given up. By this point, Didas had also left us, as he was feeling ill from something not altitude related. So we were left with Rashid, our head-guide, and one of the porters who had come with us to help out.

The last stretch up to Gilman’s point seems rather a blur in my mind to be honest. We stopped every so often for a water break, and I tried not to look up at the lights bobbing ahead of us which had still not reached the top. Each time I looked and saw them, I got discouraged, as it reminded me how far I still had to go. Still, I had it easier than my Dad, whose shoes had little grip on the shale we were zig-zagging up, and so he climbed 2 steps for every 3 he made as the shale went sliding beneath him. The porter, who had taken the rear position in our little line, managed to sing (not very well) the whole way up, which was slightly irritating for us who were taking about 20-30 steps a minute and were still feeling exhausted.

Sunrise from Gilman's point

Finally we made it to Gilman’s point, arriving just as the sun was rising off to our right. After a brief break where we switched off our head-torches and took a few quick pictures (we were afraid our cameras would seize up with the cold if we left them out. I actually carried mine inside my coat next to my body so it wouldn’t freeze), we carried on the final stretch to the peak. By this time, we were not going steeply up as that part had ended at Gilman’s, but it was really slow going nevertheless, as we all felt lethargic. I tried eating a piece of flapjack during this part of the climb, as I knew I had eaten nothing for a long time, and thought it would help my energy, but sadly even flapjack made me sick unless I took only a miniscule bite every five minutes or so. We kept meeting climbers on their way back from the peak who would encourage us with “you’re almost there, just round the corner!” only to find that their idea of just around the corner was not consistent with ours, every bend revealed another stretch to go up, or down along the ridge before we finally reached the peak. Finally, at 8.10am, we made it to Uhuru peak! We were one of the last groups to arrive there, and definitely the last group to leave the peak (might as well stay for at least 15 minutes since we spent 5 days getting there!). We queued up behind other climbers for our picture to be taken at the summit sign, and gazed around us at the beauty of the scenery around. Off to the right of the enormous glacier (it looked tiny from the base of the peak) we could see Mt Meru poking up through the clouds, and further round than that we could see across the crater that we had been climbing round to reach the highest point.

All of us at Uhuru peak

Going back down was a lot faster than coming up, naturally. I didn’t particularly like the downward part after Gilman’s point however, as my poor toes got jammed into the front of my boots at almost every step. The guides went down quickly, scree-running for long stretches then sitting down to wait for us to catch up before setting off once again down the face of the mountain. I was definitely the slowest going down, and arrived in camp last with the guide who had stayed behind with me, but only after we had been met, about half an hour from the bottom, by porters with a flask of fresh juice for us. Bliss!

Kilimanjaro trek - ascent part 1

2009-08-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the loooong silence on the blog front. I think my computer is upset with me for leaving it behind when I went on holiday, so it has been giving me problems.

Well, the first thing to do an update on is the Kilimanjaro climb. Yes, we did indeedy manage to climb up to the roof of Africa! But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I flew out to meet my parents, arriving in Moshi, the town closest to Kilimanjaro itself, and near to Kilimanjaro International Airport, about 4 hours before they did. I did look into the option of catching the bus there, but with the addition of the park fees I would have had to pay for travelling through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, it actually worked out to be only a little more expensive to fly! Anyway, so after a year and a half, I saw my family again. It was slightly odd, as it didn’t feel like it had been that long, and everyone was much the same as they were before – sometimes I forget that even if I have changed quite a bit in the time I have been out here, it doesn’t mean that everyone else has too!

After spending a day in Moshi recovering from the flight (well, I don’t think I needed much recovering after a flight of about 1 hour, but my poor family had had a much longer journey!) we finally set off on Friday 26th for the Rongai gate on the North side of the mountain, close to the Kenyan border. Joining us on the trip was an English couple who were about the same age as my parents, John and Bernice. They had had the stress of a delayed bag which had all their climbing gear in it, and which had arrived only 10 minutes before we left for the mountain!
After arriving and having a packed lunch, we set off. Walking up that first stretch seemed much the same as walking in English hills might, except for the black dust which poofed up at every step, and the good old African heat which made us all lovely and sweaty. We were constantly told to walk ‘polepole’ (slowly), even though we were very able to go a good deal faster. We were to hear a lot of ‘polepole’ in the next few days, and once we reached the higher altitudes we were happy to comply, but for the first day it was rather annoying to be forced to go so slowly!
We reached the first camp, simba camp, after about 3 or 4 hours of walking, and were happy to see that our porters had arrived well ahead of us and had set up tents for us. With all 24 or so of the porters, our camp was rather large and noisy, but our tents were set off to one side and we even had our own mess tent for our evening meal and breakfast. We were happy to hear that we would get bowls of wash water after each climb, and each morning too, we had picked up quite a bit of black dust from our walk up!

View from Simba Camp to Kibo peak

The chef and his assistant outdid themselves each day on our meals. We were constantly amazed at the things they manage to prepare for us on the trek, everything from fried chicken to toasted cheese sandwiches and omelettes every morning. They were very insistent on our drinking lots of water, and even sneaked water into our meals with soup every day (I couldn’t face soup for a while after!) and slightly watery porridge each morning. Water was taken from streams and purified by boiling, so there was plenty for us each day, plus hot drinks with every meal – we were spoiled! Sadly, as we got higher in altitude, our appetites seemed to collectively diminish, but they always tried to ply us with food and drink and were always very careful to make sure we told them about headaches/diarrhoea or any other symptom of altitude sickness we might have been experiencing.

After spending a night at simba camp, we set off bright and early at 8am the next day, walking up up up, first to a lunch stop, then to our next camp, about 7 or 8 hours of walking in total. We were, of course, required to go polepole, so I never seemed to feel any ache in my legs the next morning, despite the distances I was climbing. Each night we took it is turns to sleep in either the nice green tents, or the slightly narrower and older orange tents. This night it was the turn of Julia and I to sleep in the orange tent, so we had quite a cozy time of it that night. We soon learnt about the thieving birds that flew around the camp as one of them made off with our bar of soap from the entrance of our tent and ate it! Nights were getting colder as we went up, and I soon started to curse my stupidity in only bringing flip-flops as my spare shoes, flip-flops and socks are a rather uncomfortable mix.

Maybe I should say a little about the guides who were leading us on our trek. Each of them was very friendly, though Didas was definitely the joker of the bunch. We would never believe anything he said, as he was usually making it up, but his humour was very welcome and he was good fun to talk to. Also helping us as assistant guides were Arold and Amud (not sure of the spellings of any of these names!), and the leader and head guide was Rashid. Two of these guys had actually come from Zanzibar originally, moving to the Kilimanjaro region because there are no mountains on Zanzibar. They were all very well trained, even down to being diligent at picking up rubbish from the mountainside to throw away later, and all of them knew a lot about the wildlife of the region. One of the things that I remember most though, is the way that they told us refer to our toilet breaks. In order to make it less embarrassing talking about needing to go to the toilet while on the trek, we were instructed to say that we were going to ‘send a fax/email’. This was a really handy way to talk about such things, and it kept up amused for days after the trek too.

View across the clouds over Kenya

Snack break

On the following morning, we had another longish trek to the next campsite, at Mawenzi Tarn huts. This was a little detour from the direct route up to the summit, but took us to one of Kilimanjaro’s other peaks, Mawenzi peak, which was much more interesting to look at than Kibo peak. We were to spend a day at Mawenzi, acclimatising to the altitude by walking up another few hundred metres then coming back down to sleep again. It was quite a welcome break for some of our party, as they had begun to get headaches and/or diarrhoea, and most of us had lost our appetites. On the day we arrived at Mawenzi, we saw our first snow on the mountain, and we definitely noticed the cold each evening as the sun went down. We felt a bit pathetic every time we ventured out of our tents to go anywhere, as the altitude meant that we were puffing like steam engines after walking only about ten steps! It definitely took about ten minutes walking each morning to get into the rhythm of the walk, and to get my poor heart in gear to pound a little more energetically than usual.

Mawenzi Tarn huts campsite

Wake up call

2009-06-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

How would you feel if it seemed someone was friends with you for money? Here in Africa, friendships and money are very related, and that is often hard for us Westerners, trying to fit into the culture. Since teaching at the Bible school, I have had many very genuinely needy friends who often ask for money, but there is one person in particular who seems to always need help. I am not always sure of my responsibility in friendships here, where I expect to be asked for money, but not sure how often is 'normal', and am not always sure when to draw the line. I doubt any of my genuine friends mean to ask too much, but this one friend seems to ask me for money every time he sees me, or texts me (about once or twice a month). After a while of this being the case, I have got a bit frustrated; it makes me feel like an ATM! He said he was coming to see me on Friday, and I knew there was a financial motive for his coming, so I was naturally rather reluctant, and dreaded the moment when I would have to deal with it. "I would never behave like that to someone", I thought, "It just isn't fair!"

I tell you this, not to rant about this guy, but to help you stand in my shoes as I share this revelation with you: the truth is, I do treat someone like that. Someone who deserves so much more. Someone who, unlike me, never gets tired of meeting with such a demanding person, despite my endless requests while we are spending time together. This weekend, I was woken up to that truth, to the parallel between this man's requests of me, and my prayer life. What a slap in the face to realise that when I come before the Lord, and dump my wants/needs (or mostly other people's) at his feet, without really spending time with Him, I am treating Him just as I so dislike being treated. What a reminder, that first and foremost we should be in relationship with Him. What a priviledge it is that we have that opportunity, and what rudeness I have shown in coming only with demands! I hope that you can say your prayer life is better than mine was, but if not, I hope this little illustration has woken you up just as it did me. We have such an opportunity to know our Lord, why are we wasting it?

What a difference

2009-06-10T23:44:00.000-07:00

I have probably mentioned, countless times, how much I dislike being called "mzungu" when I am walking or cycling around Musoma. For quite a while now, my method of coping with this being yelled (most often than not) at me has just been to ignore the people who were yelling at me, unless they were actually greeting me as well, so saying "good morning, mzungu" rather than just "mzungu". I realised that this isn't a particularly great way of dealing with it, but I also found that if a kid was chanting "mzuuungu, mzuuungu, mzuuungu" (they actually have a rhythm when they chant this, crazy, eh?) then even greeting them in Swahili won't stop the chanting, so why bother? I find myself more receptive to the 'cute' kids, the ones who are so obviously delighted to see me each morning, and actually come and wave at me, but still it gets on my nerves.

So, what was the difference this morning? I asked God for grace. I asked that He would help me to be gracious to all the kids who were greeting me, and rather than immediately getting frustrated, that I would greet them politely back. Sure, it still bothers me, but I found that as I rode to work this morning, I found all of the greetings were 'cute', that the kids most of the time (there are a few who try to be annoying) were just very excited to see me, and all wanted to greet me. Before, I found it so easy to be irritated because someone is excited that a white person is riding by their house, when that is not a loving attitude at all. I have no right to squash their excitement, just because in my culture, mzungu isn't a very acceptable greeting, as in this culture it is nothing bad, and is often respectful. After all, they don't have any other way to address me, since they don't know my name, and no way of knowing that "mzungu" is offensive to me. It is true that I would still much rather be greeted by name, or even with 'dada' (sister), but I should remember to pray for grace each morning, at least so that I can show God's love by my attitude towards these kids. Up until now, my attitude has been very focused on preserving my sanity at others' expense, but I am reminded now, that everything is possible when we ask God for help, even coping with being called "mzungu"!

Zanzibar

2009-06-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last week was a fun week of holiday! I took the week off work to join my good friend Jennifer in Zanzibar for my first ever visit there. Travel to Zanzibar was pretty uneventful, but long. I was nervous about the fact that Mwanza airport has (in the past) changed a flight time from 1pm to 10am, so I was there in plenty of time for that possibility with the result that I had to amuse myself for 3 hours. Still, there was a nice walk around the end of the runway (I could have got onto the runway if I had wanted to, it is definitely not quite so strictly enclosed as ones I am used to!) and as long as I wasn’t too bothered by everyones bemused looks and questions (a white person walking, and only for the sake of walking, not to get anywhere?!?) I had a good walk.

Arriving in Dar, I met Jennifer outside, and we swapped to the old airport terminal which was now the main terminal for flights to and from Zanzibar. In truth, the runway connected both the terminals, and in fact on my way back to Mwanza from Dar, the plane taxied right past where the Zanzibar mini-plane had landed, and I could see it still there with all the doors open. So, we arrived at this cute little terminal, all wood-panelled and looking very old school, and were even more delighted to then be boarded onto a 12-seater plane! The flight to Zanzibar is a mere 20 minutes, so it wasn’t long before we were received by Ibrahim, the guy with whom I had arranged our transportation for the week.

Mbweni Ruins Hotel was the slightly upmarket hotel that we stayed in during our Stone Town part of the holiday, and it was definitely very fancy! It was a little distance from Stone Town itself, but ran a shuttle bus to and from every day. As a result of the distance, the hotel was peaceful, and even had its own beach and pier, with mangrove trees along the shore. On our first two mornings there we swam in the pool in the early morning, and it was a very pleasant way to wake up, despite the bugs that had died in the pool overnight. Breakfast was good too, so we were definitely spoilt!

We ventured into Stone Town on the first day, Sunday, and promptly took a very long route to reach the old slave market site, where we had our first tour. We took many a back route, and saw quite a bit of the old town (Zanzibar town is the new section and we didn’t go into that bit) and many of the fancy carved doors that Zanzibar is famous for.

During that first day, we also went to the House of Wonders, a museum which tells of the Swahili culture of the coast, about dhow-building (dhows are the traditional boats they still build around the region) and about Princess Salme, a lady famous for writing “Memoirs of a Princess” about life in the Sultan’s court. The tall building that housed the museum also gave a wonderful view of the town immediately surrounding the museum, the old fort, down to the waters edge and of the Forodhani gardens which were sadly closed for the low tourist season.

I found myself getting very irritated by the greetings of all the people who wanted to sell me items. “Jambo!” is what they would greet me with, and I never knew what the correct reply was, having learnt the “proper” Swahili greetings and not being used to this very touristy one! I found that people weren’t quite so friendly as they are in Musoma (maybe the residents of Stone Town are used to not greeting tourists), but also that there wasn’t so much staring at us white people – we are pretty common in Stone Town!

I ate a good selection of seafood while staying in Stone Town, though probably not as much as I could have tried. It was really great to be able to eat out and receive your order within half an hour, plus to choose from the wide variety available!

Monday saw us taking a trip a little way up North and into the area of the spice farms. Ibrahim took us to one, and we were quickly taken from there around the farm and shown all the wonderful spices that were being grown. Often we would be given a leaf, and would be asked if we could tell what the herb/spice was. I found my use of spices in cooking helpful here, but I still wasn’t able to name all of them. We were shown the vanilla plant too, and finally I realised just why vanilla pods are so expensive, the process of growing and harvesting them is very labour intensive! It is still cheaper than it is in England to buy the pods though, so I stocked up while there. During the tour, the boy who was helping by digging up roots like ginger etc kept making ‘jewelry’ from banana leaves, or cassava leaves. We ended up with a little basket on a string, a ring, a crown, a cassave leaf necklace and a frog necklace. At the end of the tour, a boy climbed a tall coconut tree and brought down 2 coconuts for us to drink and eat the meat of – very tasty and fresh! Then we went to a little shelter and he served us spice tea and various fruits – starfruit, grapefruit, mandarin, mango, a kind of custard fruit etc. A very tasty experience!

On Wednesday, we moved on from Stone Town to Kendwa Rocks, a beach hotel on the North of the island. It took a very short time to get up there, and we were very soon sitting on the beach trying to soak up some sun. Sadly, the weather was a bit cloudier up North, so we didn’t have too many sunbathing moments, but we still kept trying. On Thursday morning, we made a last minute decision to go snorkelling around the reef surrounding an island off the coast, and after about 10 minutes convincing the guy with my best Swahili, we paid 27,500Tsh (about $20) instead of the original asking price of $30. We set off in very grey clouds, and were slightly alarmed to see a tornado spout up in the clouds, but very grateful that it never decided to come to join the sea, since we were travelling straight for it! We saw dolphins from afar, and after some lashings of rain we arrived in the beautiful sunlight at the island where we snorkelled for about an hour. There were loads and loads of fish around, and so I was very happy with my first snorkelling experience! After everyone had finished, we went back to the mainland (we weren’t allowed to land on the island where we had been snorkelling since it was a conservation area) and were fed a very tasty rice and fish lunch. They had even cooked up a blowfish (we saw him on the boat as we travelled to the island, poor thing!) though I didn’t try any of that.

On our last full day on Zanzibar, we walked from Kendwa to Nungwi, a slightly bigger village to the North of the island which boasted a post office. Since the walk was along the beach and was dependent on the tides, we set off in good time to wade through the retreating tide and made sure we walked back before the tide came back in! I think we took a bit of a roundabout route to reach the village post office (a supermarket with a post box outside) but we made it, and were even able to go to the Mnarani natural aquarium for turtles before we trekked back. The turtles were very beautiful and gathered around as we fed them seaweed. The aquarium is doing great things to protect the turtles in the area, and we even got to meet some week-old hatchlings who were being kept safe until they were big enough to fend for themselves.

Then on Saturday morning, it was back in the taxi and back to the airport again as we travelled to Dar on the cute plane, and finally back to our separate destinations, Mwanza and England. I spent the night with a colleague in Mwanza, which was very pleasant and helped to break the journey up on the way back. This also gave me the opportunity to buy some more cheese in Mwanza before taking the bus to Musoma – opportunities for good New Zealand cheddar must never be passed up since it is difficult to get good cheese, if any, in Musoma!

So, it is back to work now, having had a refreshing break. I did enjoy my holiday, but it is good to be back!

Blog filler

2009-05-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Since I have not been doing very exciting things lately (discourse charting is not that thrilling an event to put on a blog), I thought I'd share a few things I like about the languages that I am working with, mostly fun words.

Zanaki: during the time I was working with texts, I noticed 2 words that made me smile, both of them borrowed from English and Zanakiized! Try saying them to yourself and see if you know what they mean, though one is pretty obvious - 'epasword' and 'rendorova'. If you are getting stuck with the second one, I should probably point out that 'r' and 'l' are pretty interchangeable in Zanaki, since they don't have 'l' but Swahili does, so they often get confused. I was amused by the first word, because it is so completely English, yet the writer has stuck a class prefix onto it, making it a class 9 word. Maybe that doesn't amuse most people, but I am being linguistically nerdy now!

Swahili: here are some fun words that are completely made up of vowels - 'aiue' and 'uoe'. The first means 'he (subjunctive) should kill it' and the second is 'you (subj) should marry'.
The next Swahili words that have the potential to confuse are kuoza and kuuza - the first has 2 meanings, 'to be rotten' and 'to (cause to) marry' as does the second 'to sell' and 'to cause to kill'. It is probably best not to confuse them!
And here are a few other fun words to leave you with - 'kipilefti' (say it as it is written) - a roundabout, 'lililolala' - it which slept (ok, the subject prefix is unlikely, but it makes a fun word!), and 'umuumamo' - you are biting him (there).

Well, I should have something more interesting to say next week, as I am off to Zanzibar tomorrow for a week :)

Photos of survey and the wedding

2009-05-07T00:17:00.000-07:00

Conducting a group interview in Kizaru

Doing vowel testing in Kibubwa

The view from Nyerere's house, Zanaki country :)

Eliud and his wife Jennipher

Dressed up in our wedding finery; Misha, Rachel, myself and Holly

Eliud's Wedding

2009-05-06T23:57:00.001-07:00

Straight from survey to wedding! On Saturday 2nd May, I had the priviledge of attending the wedding of my colleague Eliud in Mwanza. Rachel and I had ordered special dresses to be made for the occasion, but true to African timing, only got them about 20 minutes before we left on Saturday morning, so I didn't have a chance to try it on before the event.

All was well, though, as the dresses fit wonderfully, and we joined our other wazungu colleagues outside the church just before 3pm, the official start time for the wedding. Some of us went to see the groom and found him waiting in a room with the bride, best man and maid of honour (the best man is called 'besti' here, but I don't know the word for the lady's role as the bride's helper), a very unusual thing for us who are used to the Western tradition of keeping the bride and groom apart until the wedding! In the end, we proved that we had all forgotten about Tanzanian/African timing, and had to wait around for an hour until the wedding began at 4pm.

I was told later, that this was a very Western wedding compared to others that the person had attended, but there were a few differences that I noticed. One was the dancing. The bridesmaids task seemed to be to dance everywhere in front of the bride, or the bride and groom. Likewise, the congregation was dancing quite often, sometimes with people dancing up to the front to where the newlyweds were standing. The choir was pretty boisterous too, and one guy really got into the dance mood, even coming right up to the end of the row where I was sitting and dancing there.

Another difference was the was the bride walked into the church. She walked very slowly, and for most of the ceremony, until she walked down the aisle with Eliud at the end, she looked almost sad. I guess that this is a traditional attitude to have, perhaps sadness at leaving her family home, then happiness at joining a new home on her marriage.

Most of the differences were during the reception. This began some 2 hours after the wedding finished, and had its own timetable. First was the entry of the guests, then later the bridal party. They stopped at a ribbon tied between two posts and cut it together (like an opening ceremony for a building!) before walking through. After that, there were 'traditional' events, like the cutting of the cake, and more strange to me, the introduction of all the guests, beginning with the groom and his side of the family, and then on to the bride's side, each person/group standing and waving as they were announced. Another fun event was when we all danced up in front of the bride and groom with our drinks in one line and bumped bottles (we had sodas/water/light beer for drinks) with the people coming the other way. Embarrassingly enough, I hadn't realised that this was the aim of the line of people dancing up to the bride and groom, so I hadn't brought my drink! Oh dear...

The final event of interest was similar to the introductions as the bride and groom stood to receive the gifts from friends and family, each gift being presented in order from groom's side to bride's side. This was slightly embarrassing also, as our joint gift of a bed and mattress for the couple was still being made at the fundi's in Musoma, and wouldn't exactly be presentable on a table anyway... so really it looked like a bunch of us gave nothing, but never mind, at least the bride and groom know that isn't true!

There weren't any real speeches a far as I could tell, but since I left after the food was served at 11pm, there may have been something else. As I went to sleep (we stayed at the same hotel where the reception was held, not the brightest idea!) I could hear the party continuing, though I still don't know whether they did party til 6am as it said on the schedule, or not...

Survey

2009-05-06T23:50:00.001-07:00

So, the survey has finished! Apologies for the delay in posting this, but hopefully you will have two at once this time as I report back on survey and on Eliud’s wedding.

Survey began on Friday 24th April with a short journey out to the Zanaki villages. Zanaki-land is not far from Musoma really, at least in comparison to some of the other language areas, so we didn’t have to go too far for any of the locations which was a blessing to the survey budget in terms of fuel! So, we began on the first day by meeting with some leaders in the wards etc. The Zanaki area is divided up into 6 wards, each with its own ward leader, and then there is a leader over all of them (‘katibu wa tarafa’ in Swahili, something like ‘district secretary’ in English) to whom we also paid a visit. Setting up a survey in a village means that we have to go to 3 people essentially, the katibu wa tarafa, the mtendaji wa kata (ward leader) then the mtendaji wa kijiji (village leader). The Zanaki leaders were pretty official about their business, so at each office we received a letter of introduction to the next guy down, and so on. Thankfully, quite often we were doing two villages in a ward, so we only had to see the ward leader once for both of these villages. In the end, we saw the katibu, 5 ward leaders or someone able to represent them, and about 6 village leaders! Tracking down the leaders was sometimes a job, if they were called away from the office, or had an appointment or something. One of the leaders we chased all the way to a school where he had a meeting, only to find we had passed him on the way, and actually we ended up meeting him in another village.

During this village meeting we had 2 curious incidents. The first was an experience of village politics as we sat around waiting for the mtendaji to arrive. As far as I can gather, a woman had been travelling on a daladala (public transport) for a few days, and had not yet paid, so the ticket collector guy took her kitenge (rectangle of fabric usually worn by women as an extra wrapping around head/whole body/as a skirt) until she could pay up. When she came to pay and collect her kitenge, she found that the kitenge had been ripped, so we got to listen to the argument between her and the ticket collector, in front of the village leader, as to who should pay or not. Another incident happened when an old man came into the village leader’s office, and started to accuse one of the survey team members (who is from Austria) of being a South African colonist come to steal the wealth of hard-working Tanzanians! Thankfully the others in the office were on our side and sent him out of the office, telling him that he should be more respectful.

The next day, we went back to do the survey in one of the first villages we had set up. This was slightly delayed as we found that no-one had been collected to work with us, so we waited around while the ward leader helped collect people. During the waiting period we were approached by a drunk young man, who then proceded to offer that I become his wife as he followed us wherever we went. Eventually the village leader who was with us sent him away to make himself more presentable before he proposed marriage (he only had trousers on), and when he didn’t go she literally had to push him out of the door.

The work itself was variable. 4 of the 8 villages were what we called ‘primary locations’ which involved an extra wordlist 300 words long, and so this took about 4 hours. The other villages were ‘secondary locations’ and often only took 2 ½ to 3 hours. Some days we managed to fit 2 locations in, and other days we did just the one and spent the rest of the time tracking the villages leaders down in order to set up the locations. Our biggest problem with the work was often getting too few people, or sometimes too many of one sex. We wanted an even mix of men and women, young and old, but often we were only able to get men, and usually then only the older men too. Still, it worked out at most locations and the longest we had to wait was 1 ½ hours as people slowly collected in the village. One day, however, we were the ones making the village wait. This was Wednesday, a day when we had spent some time in the morning setting up locations, and since we ended up back near our accommodation, we stayed there for lunch. We decided to set out again quite early in order to have plenty of time, and were just driving out of Butiama when we had to slow down in order to let people clear out of the way as they got off a daladala into the road. We were looking to the right to have a look at the weekly market that had gathered on the field next to the road, when a daladala rammed right into us from behind. Thankfully our vehicle wasn’t too badly damaged, the spare wheel taking most of the impact and denting the daladala quite impressively, but the main problem was then that they were accusing us of causing the accident and demanding that we pay. Somebody went off to get the police, and we sat in the car for about an hour, waiting for the whole thing to be settled. We were very grateful that Shem was there with us (our Zanaki translator who was helping us with the survey) as he was our defendent in the case, and we were also grateful that the police officer happened to be one of the night guards at our accommodation and so knew our car and was probably slightly more likely to take our side. In the end, no-one had to pay, though details were exchanged, and the survey vehicle now just has another few dents with a history behind how they came to be there.

Speaking of our accommodation, that is another thing that was pretty exciting about survey. When we originally got to Butiama, we aimed to find something inexpensive, but with guards and preferably a wall, so we could park the car safely at night. The Muslim guest house would have been perfect, but didn’t have enough rooms, so we went on to another one which was having problems with water, and then to the final one which was the one we eventually stayed at. This happened to be the guest house belonging to the J K Nyerere ‘estate’ (he was the first President of Tanzania and beloved by all Tanzanians for bringing Tanzania to independence in 1964), so we had a great time on our day off on Sunday being toured around his home, and visiting his museum, compliments of the manager, Nyerere’s son!

Sunday was also interesting as I went to a Catholic Sunday service for the first time in my life. The priest guy was a Westerner, which surprised me, but everything else was pretty Tanzanian. The choir was definitely the best I have ever heard since coming here, but I can’t say that I particularly like the whole incense thing and the very rigid service structure, though the sermon was good.

This blog post is getting pretty long now so I’ll just wrap up with a comment about the vowel testing I was doing on survey. This was a test where I asked about 4 to 6 people in each location about 10 pairs of words, whether they could tell the difference in the pronunciation, or whether the difference only could be told when it was said in a certain context. This proved more difficult to explain than I expected, and I realised just how used to all the language jargon I have become, and how difficult it must be for someone, who has never thought about vowels before, to tell me if the sounds in the word okuzuba and okuzoba are really different, or if they can’t hear the difference. Trying to explain, again and again, that I didn’t want them to explain the difference in use (one means to weed, the other to tiptoe) but the difference in the sounds, very nearly drove me to distraction every time I did it, but at least I could practically feel my patience growing as I tried to be patient and explain it just one more time!

Things take time in Africa

2009-04-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

I love living in Africa, but there are many things that I have had to learn to do here that I wouldn't have at home, due to the lack of availability of items or just differences of living here etc. I thought I'd enlighten you all on some of the differences between living in England and living in Africa.

Washing up - at the moment our kettle is broken, so we heat water on the stove for washing up which takes quite a while. If we were motivated enough, we could install a heater for our kitchen sink, but it does not come fitted in African houses.

Clothes - handwashing everything takes a while, which is why we are so grateful to our househelp Mama Nick for doing it as part of her job 3 days a week. Unfortunately we still have to handwash our own underwear, but it would be unfair to give it to Mama Nick!

Preparing food - rice has to be picked through to remove stones, fruit and vegetables have to be washed thoroughly in purified water, meat never comes perfectly packaged so has to be dealt with (again, a job of Mama Nick's), any pasta apart from the packaged shell/tube shapes has to be made by hand (yay for our pasta machine, makes lasagne sheets so much easier!).

Bread products - I have only ever seen plain white bread being sold here in Musoma (not very tasty stuff) so everything else we want has to be made: bagels, cinnamon buns, tortillas, chapattis, muffins and crumpets are some of the items we have mastered since being here in our house.

Other random jobs - filling our water filters to make sure we have a constant supply of clean water needs to be done regularly, and cleaning it every few weeks is a priority. Keeping 2 buckets and our 100l storage tank full is a priority too, as we never know when the water will go off and we'll have to start using stored water (up to 2 days sometimes).

To be honest, we are very blessed, both in our househelp (Mama Nick is a very lovely woman and very good at her job, havin worked for Westerners before) and in our landlord who helps us with many things which go wrong with our house. Our house in itself is wonderful, but I wonder how weird it will be to go back to drinking water out of a tap, and buying anything you could ever want prepackaged from a supermarket!

Easter week

2009-04-14T03:58:00.000-07:00

The past week has been a great one! Due to the Easter public holidays, and a Tanzanian holiday (7th April), I only needed to take 2 days off in order to have a whole week to spend with my guests. Only Saturday 4th my friends Amy and Rachel and Jonathan Morgan travelled the long journey from Dodoma to Musoma. I believe Jonathan drove the whole way with very few stops, quite a feat when the journey takes 11 ½ hours! They arrived safely, and dropped Amy off with us, as she was to spend the week with us in our house. Since then, we have had some great times, playing football with other missionary friends, watching films and visiting other people’s houses. I’ll just mention a few of those events, since we have been pretty busy!

On Wednesday 8th, we cooked up loads of good food and had a bunch of people round to our house for my birthday party. It was a really fun evening, despite the effort it took to prepare, and I even got brownie cake with 24 candles in it!

On Saturday, we made a big trip to Lukuba Island for the day. Our party included 15 adults and 6 kids, so was pretty big, yet we managed to arrive on time, even if the boat driver didn’t. The island was as relaxing as the last time I went, and the resort had even bought 2 canoes and a kayak since I last went in December, so we had a chance to float around on Lake Victoria as well as sit and sunbathe beside it. We saw huge monitor lizards as we drifted around the rocks near the resort, and lots of cool birds, though I have no idea what they were. The crossing back to the mainland was a bit more choppy, but we all made it safe and sound, and bid each other goodbye for the evening before we saw each other again the next day.

Sunday, being Easter Sunday, was our day for a special service where we gathered together for brunch, then worshipped in English and read from the Word. I tried my hand at hot cross buns, and they turned out reasonably well except for the burnt bottoms due to the stupid gas oven. The worship was really great. We generally don’t get that much chance to worship in English together, especially since Missionary Fellowship hasn’t happened for 2 months now, and it was really awesome to get that chance. We even had a small informal communion service, which was also a real blessing to take part in. I don’t think I have had communion since going to a Tanzanian church here in Musoma. I know that it would have been good to participate in a Swahili service, especially to show support of our church, but in order to really meditate on Easter, and all it means to us, it was definitely necessary to do it in English. I can understand so much better now how important the mother-tongue is when learning about, or worshipping, God.

So, it is back to work, but I am very thankful for having a week to relax before the madness of survey begins!

Kilimanjaro trek

2009-04-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

Trevor, Ruth, Eleanor, Julia and Hazel Gray are climbing Kilimanjaro in June to raise funds for Wycliffe Bible Translators. Please sponsor the Grays on their climb. Kilimanjaro is over 19,000 feet high and we start at around 4,000 so you can either sponsor a total amount or at so much per 1,000 feet - multiples of £1 suggested. The criterion of success will be if at least one member of the party gets to the top and we will try and bring back a photo to prove it if there is somebody up there to take it! If you are interested, please email me for any further details: mad_fish@hotmail.com

Funeral

2009-03-25T03:48:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity last Sunday to attend a Tanzanian funeral. As always with such things, it all came about pretty fast. I was expecting to go to church with a friend, since Rachel was away, and then on Saturday afternoon I was told by one of the translators, whom I happened to pass, that Rachel’s mum had died and they were burying her tomorrow. Naturally my first confused thought was, “How do you know that Rachel’s mum has died and I don’t?” I was confused and thinking of course of my housemate Rachel. As it turned out, my friend Rukia, whose other name is Rachel, but who I am used to addressing as Rukia, was the one he was talking about. I quickly changed my plans for going to church, and planned to go to Nyamuswa for the funeral, along with Misha and Johnny, two of my colleagues.

Funerals in Tanzania are, by necessity, arranged very quickly after the person has died, and I was amazed by the immense effort it must have been to provided everything, as there had to be in excess of 150 people there, whether family or friends, come to pay their respects and support the family. I really had a full-on introduction to the African way of grieving too, as people wrung their hands, or generally flapped them around, and wailed loudly. Apparently it is normal to make such a noise, even if you are not crying (which confused me at first) in order to show your support of those who were grieving a loved one. Rukia, by contrast, was very quiet in her grief and since I am used to her being very cheerful, it was really moving to see her so upset. I didn’t know her mother at all, but for Rukia and Kitaboka’s sake (Kitaboka is Rukia’s niece, so was granddaughter to the marehemu – the deceased) I was close to tears at various points, seeing their usually cheerful faces full of grief. The fact that I could understand some of the words that were said (in Ikizu) made it more moving. "Yiiya" (mother) was quite a frequent cry, and it was definitely a testimony to the power of the mother tongue as I really felt their grief when they said that word, more so, I believe, than if they had said the Swahili "mama".

The time we attended the funeral stretched from about 11.30 to 4.30. We began with a long stretch of sitting quietly as we occasionally greeted people and said “pole” (the best Swahili word that fits for any situation where you sympathise with someone, from them having a long day at work to having been bereaved) while watching people pass us to view the marehemu, often wailing loudly. I was very grateful for the loud music playing which covered the sound, as my Englishness couldn’t quite cope with such public wailing. We declined going to see the body, since we didn’t really know her, and were there mainly to support Rukia and Kitaboka, and sat waiting for things to start. Rukia sat with us for a good part of that, and I was selfishly grateful for her support of us as we sat uncertain of what was to come next. The service started properly around 1pm with a Roman Catholic looking priest saying some words and doing some readings. We joined in as much as possible, but often didn’t know the right responses. After that the women filed past the coffin, and then the men, leading off to where she would be buried. The family were last, and we followed the coffin around the house to where they started to mix concrete to bury her properly. We joined the list of people laying flowers on her grave (after the family members had all passed) and although I felt slightly embarrassed by the special attention, I was glad to do it for the sake of the family if they wanted us to. After the burial was a short time of speeches, beginning with a small mention of the life of the lady, Koleta Manyori (1933-2009); how many children she had, when she got married, etc. Misha made a short speech on behalf of our office crew, and then after the speeches we ate. During this whole time, Johnny, Misha and I were all sat up at the “front” with the family, which was again quite embarrassing. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the type of celebrity treatment that wazungu often get at Tanzanian functions.

I all too often forget, since it is quite a frequent occurence that someone has lost someone in their extended family (they all have pretty big families too, so a death of a relative is that much more likely), that although they may seem to get on with life as though not much has happened, there is a lot of grief over the passing. It may seem harsh to imagine that they don’t grieve as much just because they might be more used to the idea of life ending suddenly, but it is an easy one to form until you really see someone’s grief at the actual funeral. In many ways the Tanzanians are very obviously emotional, but at other times you really have to be on the “inner circle” of friends to be shown their real feelings; not so very different from English people then J.

Photos

2009-03-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

Just apologising for the lack of photos on my blog. For some weird reason I can never upload them, but I will keep trying!

Buying pork

2009-03-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it took us about 8 months, but we have finally been to a butcher here in Musoma! We usually send our househelp to buy beef for us (and we come home to it beautifully cubed or ground and stored in 1kg bags in the freezer J) but pork is harder to buy as it is more expensive and less places sell it. In view of the general lack of knowledge of how to buy pork in Musoma, Danny offered to take us all to a good butcher that he knows, and then to show us how to butcher it properly and cook a pork vindaloo from scratch. This meant an early start (for Saturday), arriving at the butcher’s for 8am in order to get there in time to get a good pick of the meat available. Usually the inspector comes round this time as well, and inspects the innards for healthiness before the owners can legally sell them. Since he was late today, and we weren’t interested in the innards at all, we didn’t get to meet him or see him do his inspection, but maybe I will some other day. We arrived to find the pig already slaughtered (which was fine, since I had no wish to see it die) and its head sitting on top of the corrugated iron sheet covering the pen holding the live pigs. The guys were removing the hair from the unlucky pig, and we watched as they also removed all the innards and the trotters. We decided that we would buy the whole thing (110,000Tsh for a young pig, about 17k of meat/bone once skinned) and carted it off back to Danny’s house for carving up. A couple of hours later, we had learnt the basics of skinning and neatly butchering a pig, though of course I’m sure it isn’t as easy to do first time as Danny made it look! We had also watched him make the vindaloo paste from scratch, and after 6 hours of butchering and cooking we sat down to a wonderfully tender pork vindaloo.

ATR

2009-03-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

ATR is a confusing term for us African based linguists. When looking through a language database I have to remind myself that any references to ATR in a gloss is bound to stand for African Traditional Religion, rather than the linguistic term Advanced Tongue Root. I have been caught out by that a couple of times and it always makes me laugh, reading the gloss of a word and imagining an ATR priest with the ATR standing for Advanced Tongue Root... Oh dear, I think the linguistics is taking its toll on me, that probably wasn't funny to anyone but me!

Anyway, this blog post is not about linguistics but about African Traditional Religion. Last Sunday, I was invited to an evening celebration that was part of one of the classes that my friends Sara and Kitaboka (Diana) are attending at MTCEA. This began with them cooking for the occasion, including traditional African foods (some of them, like ugali, not much different from the normal everyday food they have, but some a bit more special). My friend Verena (who teaches English at MTCEA) and I watched them cook up chicken, goat, fish, ugali (in vast quantities!), and mboga (literally meaning a side dish to go with ugali, but including vegetables, in this case mchicha, a spinach-like veggie) and took pictures. Also being made were some dishes traditionally made by certain people groups. One of these was ufuta, which as far as I could tell was basically finely pounded sesame seeds which had then all stuck together with some unground sesame seeds, a little bit like peanut butter but with sesame instead. It was a really strong tasting dish, and not my favourite, but I think it took quite a bit of effort to make, even just the small amount they prepared, so I guess it is a dish for a special occasion. Ufuta is traditional for the Ikizu people, one of the groups I am working with in linguistics.

After watching the food prep, we moved to a semi-circle of chairs that had been set up in readiness, and prepared to watch the entertainment/education. The girls who came out were all dressed the same, with black cloth wrapped around them as dresses, and feathers in their hair. They all looked pretty traditional, if such a thing is possible, and I found it very odd seeing my always very elegant friend Kitaboka dressed up in this more traditional way because I have to say it really suited her!

The evening was composed of songs and dancing interspersed with explanations about ATR. Some of the explanations I understood, but for some I was a bit too focused on taking photographs to fully translate all the Swahili. I had heard quite a bit of it before, however it was interesting. The food was then served out to all of us watching, and to the men who were taking part all dressed up. Of course, the traditional manner of serving the mzee (old man/elder) was observed, and we got to watch what looked like 4 of the women bowing down to him as he began to eat the food they had prepared. It was all very bizarre really, especially considering the student playing the mzee was really not that old! He did do a good impression of being old though, very convincingly accepting respect from us youngsters, and comforting his bad back as he sat down slowly.

It was a fun evening, and though I can’t say I learnt a great deal about ATR during the session, I did have a good time with my friends, seeing the hard work they had put into all of this, and appreciating just how much African society seems to have changed since all of these traditions were kept up. No doubt they still are in some regions of Africa, or even Tanzania, but it was quite nice to be able to observe it from the comfort of a chair, with the knowledge that although the Tanzanian culture is different from mine, and I sometimes rail against my lack of understanding of it, it is definitely not as alien to me as the culture of traditional religions that was being put on display in front of me.

Folktales

2009-02-28T04:17:00.001-08:00

Well another workshop is over, and the write-ups are looming. This workshop was a lot better than the last one for me (since I knew more Swahili, and knew what to expect this time), and I had some fun moments with my Ikizu ladies. The best day was when I read one of the Ikizu folktales that was written during the workshop. This is roughly how it goes (in my own words):

A long time ago there was a man who married a woman. This woman had one daughter but then she died. After a while, the man married again, and had 2 more daughters. After some time, the new wife began to treat the first wife’s daughter like a slave. Now after a while, the king’s son wanted to marry, so he invited everyone to an event. The wife and her 2 daughters were very excited but they didn’t let the slave daughter go. Then, a little bird came to visit the slave girl and told her that she should go to the tomb of her mother. Off the girl went, and when she arrived, she found that she was dressed beautifully. She went to the dance, and the king’s son wanted to marry her. As she was leaving in a hurry, she dropped one of her shoes in the street. The king’s son ordered that she be found and went to every house on that street. Finally he came to her house, and insisted on seeing everyone who lived there. He found the girl, and took her to be his wife. (Thanks to Rukia Manyori for her telling of this Ikizu folktale)

I was very surprised to hear this almost perfect copy of a Cinderella story here in Africa! I was told that Rukia had heard it from her father, and that it was a very old story, but it makes me wonder where it did originate from. They were very surprised to hear that I knew the story, and aren’t aware that it may have come from outside of Tanzania. I wonder how many other stories have come over, and indeed where they truly did originate from.

Pikipiki

2009-02-15T01:39:00.000-08:00

I had another first experience yesterday. Here in Tanzania it is very normal to see hundreds of bikes travelling along the road, piled high with items that are being transported; charcoal, sweet potatoes, wood, vegetation of some variety, crates of soda etc. It is also very normal to see another Tanzanian on the back of a bike. This seems to be a way that some people earn a bit of extra money, offering rides to other Tanzanians for a small sum (often about 500Tsh for the equivalent of a 15 minute walk). In my view it must be a pretty uncomfortable way to travel, but often the place where they sit has been padded, so it is not too bad, you just have to learn to balance. Every time I walk anywhere in Nyasho, I get people offering to take me on their bike, and yesterday I had at least 5 people offering, one of them was very disbelieving that I actually wanted to walk! I wasn’t really ready to try out riding on the back of a bike for the first time along a busy road where no doubt everyone would be there to watch me if I fell off, and I was really quite happy to walk anyway. (I have even had people ask me to give them lifts when I am cycling, though I very much doubt they are ever serious!)

I carried on my merry way to the local mitumba (used clothing market) and spent quite a while trying to find something there. The mitumba in Musoma is permanently set up, though on Sundays there are extra stalls, making it pretty crazy and busy. This was my first time going on a Saturday, and it was blissfully peaceful in comparison! The mitumba itself is pretty much just rows of little stalls of wood with a roof to keep off any rain. Sometimes there is a wider space, an open area in between two rows, an other times there is just a small alleyway to walk between the stalls. The layout of the place never changes, and people have their own designated stalls, so it is pretty easy finding my favourite ‘shop’. This is a slightly more expensive place than the other stalls, but it seems to have a much better choice of less well-used clothes, with quite a decent choice of cotton items. The regular stalls in mitumba sell any type of clothing that you would imagine being sent overseas once people have finished with them back in the West. Some of the clothing is in better shape than others, and sometimes it seems to be a hopeless task to look through the piles of 500Tsh clothes – there is a reason they are so cheap! I have found some truly hideous items in these markets, but I have found some really nice stuff too, it really is hit and miss. Anyway, my ‘shop’ seems to get seconds, rather than used clothes, so often they will have really nice stuff, even though it is more pricey than other places. Yesterday, my search ended in buying a shirt that had originated in H&M, which I found quite amusing!

Anyway, I’ll get back to the point after my little mitumba tangent. On my way back from mitumba, I thought I would visit my bicycle fundi friends, since I have only ever been there when I have had bike issues and was feeling I should make the effort to see them without going there only for help. After a little while of sitting and chatting (along with the soda that invariably accompanies any visit to a Tanzanian) I asked where the nearest market was, so I could go and buy a pineapple and some mangoes. Little did I realise when Nala (one of the fundis who runs the bike stall along with his younger brother Peter) said he would accompany me rather than explain where it was, that he actually meant he would take me on the back of his friend’s pikipiki (motorbike)! This is also another way that Tanzanians travel, as well as on the back of bikes, though going by pikipiki is likely to be twice as expensive as going by bike. I have seen hundreds of women on the back of pikipikis, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how I was supposed to sit behind Nala. In the end I decided on straddling the bike over side-saddle, since I have never ridden anything side-saddle, and wasn’t sure what I would hold on to. This created the interesting problem of holding onto my mitumba purchase in one hand, along with the edge of my skirt, to prevent it from flying up and revealing too much, and holding onto the back of the pikipiki for balance with the other hand. Very quickly my one arm got quite tired from gripping for dear life (he really wasn’t going fast, but I didn’t feel quite safe having never done it before!) so I transferred the other to the back as well, though that then left me with the fun of tucking my skirt behind my knees in order to prevent the aforementioned revealing of too much leg. Oh dear! I actually quite enjoyed having this new experience, especially since I wouldn’t have chosen it if I had had any say in the matter, so would probably have never tried it otherwise. I did appreciate that it was someone I knew doing the driving, I think he realised I was pretty terrified and went slowly over the bumps and turns etc. I no doubt created quite a spectacle for the Tanzanians who saw me, I can imagine I looked pretty silly! My only annoyance with the whole experience was not having a camera with me to capture it!

Students at MTCEA

2009-01-29T05:01:00.000-08:00

I have often talked about my friends at the MTCEA (Mennonite Theological College of East Africa), but would now like to dedicate a blog post to them along with a little plea for anyone willing to help them.

The students at MTCEA range from around my age up to their mid-fifties, and are studying either on the 2 year Certificate course or the 3 year Diploma course. Many of the students are married, yet have to leave their spouses in order to come to study, living in dorms with others of their gender for the duration of the school year (3 terms, September to July). Most of them come from quite far away, often needing a day to travel to their home from the college. In Africa it is very normal for married couples to live separately in order to pursue education or work. It is not ideal, but it is an accepted way of life here.

Classes run 5 days a week, and each student has chores to maintain the college on top of that. They pay the school for room, board and tuition, though personal expenses are not included. The teachers are excellent people, very genuine Christians, but often very stretched in their workload. Their work is definitely a calling from God as they definitely do not receive a huge salary for their work, expecially not enough to support their children at decent schools (private school is the best, but very hard for the average Tanzanian to pay for when they often have 4 or more children). The college is a cheerful and inviting place, with many hard-working students. It is often a leap of faith for them to come to school, many of them come not knowing where the money for the school fees will come from, let alone how they will support their families back at home in their absence.

My friends at the college are always very happy to see me, and I them. The African love of hospitality is often displayed, and most of the time I do not have the time or energy to visit for as long as they would like, being set in my mzungu ways! As I have got to know them, many of them have shared with me the difficulties they face in going to school as they are doing, and have requested help. Unfortunately I can't help as many of them as I would like, since their needs are often for school fees either for themselves or for their children, and these are not cheap (it is 300,000Tsh per child for private school). Would you be willing to pray for them, or even to help support one of them? It would be much appreciated by all involved. I have a letter written by a student at the college for anyone who wants to know more about him and his situation. I do not wish to put it out in public on the internet, but I would be happy to send it to anyone who is interested in hearing from him so please let me know if you would like to read what he has said (translated from Swahili, don't worry!). My email address is mad_fish@hotmail.com.

Mungu akubariki = God bless you!

Wildlife and outdoor preachers

2009-01-23T23:10:00.000-08:00

I will try not to make this a post of complaints, but at the moment I am not in the best of moods, having been woken up on a Saturday by the loud music being played in the field opposite my house. This seems to have been a week long mission thing, apparently run by the Wasabato (Seventh Day Adventists?) with mzungu and Tanzanian preachers. It began last Sunday, disturbing our lovely day of rest (ironic that I could be so against something that is, hopefully, bringing the gospel to people) as the sound inside our house is as loud as it is outside, no joking. During the week it has been going until 6 or 7pm each day, and I am more than ready to relax when it ends, I am even willing for power cuts to occur since that gives us a bit of peace until they find the generator! Anyway they began early today, playing music while they set up, and we are not impressed! There doesn't seem to be a concept of noise pollution here in Tanzania. Most days there is a lot of noise outside, most of which I have gotten used to living here in town, but this guy might as well be preaching in my front room for the amount I am able to concentrate!

Anyway, the other half of the title is referring to the various wildlife that we have found in our house recently. For some reasons we have been finding cockroaches with disturbing frequency, not a pleasant experience when they are as long as my fingers and run seriously fast. One that I sprayed decided to zoom very fast from the bathroom and go and die under my bed - how rude! Still, I suppose I was rude first, being sprayed with "Doom" can't be a nice experience! The nicer side of the wildlife we have found was our little friend Sebastian. He was a very cute little frog who sat on our security door or on our padlock for a good few days last week. Rachel and I joked that if he was such a cute little frog then he would probably make quite a cute little prince if one of us gave him a kiss, but we never did find out... Sadly he has left us now, but we did enjoy his company for a time.

Cultural differences

2009-01-16T03:46:00.000-08:00

So, it seems to long have been a point of confusion for our Tanzanian friends, why do these wazungu need so much time to pumzika (rest/relax)? I have no doubt we often seem rude as we turn down invitations to people’s houses because we would rather go home and recover from whatever social function we have just attended. The thing is, we wazungu seem to have a much greater need for personal space than the Tanzanians, in fact it seems almost abnormal to them to prefer to be alone sometimes. Our major problem with this, quite apart from the unintentional offenses we cause, is that we are often surprised at our house by Tanzanian visitors. In our Western mindset, we think that someone would make an appointment, or let us know in advance, but in Tanzania it is quite normal to turn up on someone’s doorstep, and rude to turn someone away. Quite apart from the need to then entertain our visitor when we are in the mindset of speaking English, this presents us with the issue that we are not always properly dressed for visitors! Since we live in a hot country where decency for women is skirts past the knee, we often “dress down” at home, relaxing in trousers and shirts without sleeves or spaghetti straps. This makes it quite amusing when we have to scramble for a shirt to stick over the top in order to make ourselves decent. I think I have become a little more prudish because of the dress code here (rural and small town Tanzania at least) – when I was in Dar es Salaam and saw a few women dressed in short shorts in public, I was horrified! Likewise, I found it quite amusing, upon arrival Dar es Salaam’s Julius Nyerere International Airport, a place which looked tiny and not particularly special when I arrived from England, I could not stop being amazed at the escalators and baggage terminal! What will I be like in another year when I return to Heathrow Airport?

Happy New Year

2009-01-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

Despite the passing of Christmas with fun and celebrations, I still found it hard to believe that it was the end of another year, and my first whole year in Tanzania (ok, well that doesn't finish until Jan 20th, but close enough). Was it the lack of freezing cold temperatures? The complete absence of Christmas hype and shopping? Or maybe just what I don't want to realise - that as predicted by all my elders and betters for years, I am starting to understand that time goes faster as you grow up. Not that I have grown up, at least I like to think I haven't. Still, I guess I have been doing some pretty independent things for a 23 year old kid, maybe I should recap some of the adventures of New Year for you.

Christmas day came and went (as explained in an earlier post), and on the 28th we found that we had to arise at the unearthly hour of 5am in order to get to a bus from Dodoma to Iringa. Thankfully we had booked tickets in advance, and the journey was quite uneventful. Our bus seemed to be the slowest on the road though, and many another bus overtook us on the way, but to be honest I am quite happy if we go 'slow' (this being the speed limit of 80km/hr). I was especially pleased that we didn't break down, a very frequent occurence for the poor overworked buses. Anyway, we arrived in Iringa, having been kindly dropped off at the top of the campsite road, and picked up by the manager, Will. Our days in Iringa were quite uneventful; spent relaxing in the evenings, and during the day mooching around Iringa and lunching at Neema crafts. I sneakily decided to reduce my baggage upon leaving Iringa, and posted some belated Christmas presents and 2 very early birthday presents - a relief to my overburdened suitcase! It was good to be back in Iringa and see the familiar sights, while not having to learn Swahili! Rachel and I shared a tent (something I am VERY glad we didn't have to do for the 4 months living at the campsite) this time, and we hung out with Amy and her sister Marcy for most of the time.

Moving on, we saw Marcy off to take the bus to Dar, and we travelled down to Mbeya. This was our shortest journey yet (by bus) at only 5 hours, and we were happy to be at the front of the bus with a decent amount of leg stretching room. We were greeted at the bus station by Matt and Olly, and escorted to the Catholic guest house close to town where we were staying. It was a pretty bare sort of place, but quite adequate for our time there. Sadly I did seem to have some sort of allergic reaction to my rug, and sneezed quite often when in my room! Since we had travelled to Mbeya on the 31st, we had only a few hours before we were to party the New Year in, which we did at Katherine's house along with other good friends from training in England/the Mbeya team. It was a surprisingly English crew, with only 2 of the 8 of us Canadians and the rest English. We saw the New Year in with a wonderful pork roast with apple sauce, crumble, chocolate and, of course, games. We heard a few fireworks, but couldn't see any, though the most prominent sound we could hear after 12pm was a siren of some sort (deliberately rung for the New Year, not because of any crime situation or fire).

The following few days were spent with our Mbeya friends, one of them at Utengule coffee lodge (where I went for my Easter break from language school). We had a very lovely time there, despite the rain that fell every day and occasionally feeling cold (!), and were sad to leave on the 3rd, not least because we were leaving on a 12 hour bus journey (which stretched into about 14 hours on the bus in the end). Still, we arrived safely in Dar, and again safely in Musoma (we flew back again), having had a very good time with lots of friends over the break. It wasn't always particularly relaxing, with all the travelling, but the times when we weren't travelling made up for it all!

During my time on holiday, I realised that you can't take a holiday from life and cultural expectations. Much as I wanted to pretend I was 'letting my hair down' for a bit, I was still in Tanzania, and still subject to the many requests for money, and the need to think in Swahili. Ah well, it is probably just as well that I didn't have a 3 week break from it all, or it would be all the more alarming to go back to! I did realise though, that I didn't get called 'mzungu' as often anywhere else I travelled as I do when I go around Musoma - maybe one day I'll learn to find it a compliment as many Tanzanians have told me it is supposed to be (the kids are proud to have seen a mzungu, so I guess it is not meant to be annoying as I seem to often take it!).

So, it's back to work now for a while, let's hope the Christmas break will keep me fired up until my next holiday in May!

Christmas break photos

2008-12-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

On Mbudya Island, December 20th

Addis in Dar Ethiopian restaurant with Amy, Marcy and Arlene

Christmas dinner at the Morgans' in Dodoma

Christmas in Tanzania

2008-12-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, I have been very bad at keeping up to date on this blog! I thought I should update once more this year though, since soon I will be out of internet access for a week, and will forget everything that has happened that I want to write about.

Christmas holidays for Rachel and I started on Dec 15th, with my first trip to the Musoma airstrip! It was actually quite a fun experience, as we experienced the joys of airport security in a minor airport. I think they probably do a better job than bigger airports do, despite the lack of fancy equipment, mainly due to the fact that they check EVERY single thing in your carry-on bag - even asking me to turn on my computer. I think they were a little bemused by the packets of raisins and mixed peel I was taking to Dodoma (for Christmas cake), and to be honest I think it was more out of interest than thoroughness that they checked through everything since they didn't have very much to do otherwise. We then made our way through to the best departure lounge I have been in, full of comfy sofas in true Tanzanian style all facing the middle (more sociable I guess). Our plane flight was fine, and despite a quick stop in Mwanza, and a long taxi ride from the airport, we made it to our guest house without too much hassle.

The next few days in Dar, we spent hanging out at the mall, buying supplies of things we can't get in Musoma (a bread knife, and other such things), seeing Mama Mia at the cinema (I was very sad that the new James Bond had finished at the cinema before I got to Dar :C ), and lazing on the beach. We actually got to the beach 3 times during our Dar stay, twice on islands off the coast of Dar, and once staying the day at a posh hotel not far from our Dar office. We enjoyed being in a big city again, and were happy to meet up with friends while there. We finished off our time in Dar with a great evening out at an Ethiopian restaurant, the best food I have had out in Tanzania so far.

Then we moved onwards to Dodoma on the 23rd, and moved into the Morgans' house with 10 others. Thankfully the Morgans have a spare guest house with their house, so we all managed to have a bed even though it was hard getting us around one table to eat together! I decided that Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without bread sauce, so I made some, along with Christmas cake, and with Amy's sister's cooking (she was visiting from Canada, and is studying at a cooking school in Canada, so cooks amazing food) we had a great Christmas meal. Christmas gift giving was fun too, as we each unwrapped a gift then 'stole' them from each other :) I ended up with pineapple cordial and a pretty spare toilet roll holder for our bathroom.

So, for the past few days we have been relaxing here in Dodoma, and tomorrow we will leave for the next leg of our journey to Iringa starting at an unpleasant 5.30am! After that we will move on to Mbeya for New Year. Have a very happy New Year folks!

The long weekend

2008-12-09T00:22:00.000-08:00

I love Tanzanian public holidays, especially when they fall on consecutive days! This Monday and Tuesday, we have had days off for Eid-al-Hajj, and Tanzanian Independence and Republic Day respectively. Seeing as we have had so much time to relax, we made good use of it.

First, we planned rather badly, but managed to invite Mchungaji Waynse (our church pastor) on the same day as missionary fellowship, meaning we missed out on the last fellowship of the year. However, we did want to have the Mchungaji and his family over, so we carried on as planned, and cooked LOTS of food, Tanzanian style (quantity not taste – we made them mild chili and rice), for him, his wife and their 6 children. The kids are absolutely adorable, always coming to sit with us (or very often on us) and wriggle through the service. He has 1 older boy, and 5 girls, with the last 2 twins of about 3 or 4 years old. We had a good time, and were complimented on our “cooking like a Tanzanian” – lots of food with plenty to spare. My most amusing experience of the day was teaching the 5 girls how to use a mzungu toilet – not to climb on it and stand on the rim, but to sit on it. I had to hold the smaller ones on there so they wouldn’t fall into the bowl. I guess I take for granted that we know how to use a western toilet!

Monday was occupied in a much more relaxing fashion (much as we like having guests, it is pretty draining for us) as we went with Olly, Johnny and Holly to Lucuba Island, a small island about an hours boat ride from the Musoma shore of Lake Victoria. We had no idea when the water-taxi left, so we got there early, by 8am, in order not to miss it. We needn’t have worried, as the boat left at 9am, filling up only about 25 minutes beforehand. We started off in one boat, then had to climb from that one into the next one when the first was deemed not fit to travel in due to rising water in the bottom. During the ride we had a little boy staring at us for a good 40 minutes, and a Tanzanian lady making loud (not rude) comments about wazungu. We reached the island in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. The day was spent pretty lazily, with sunbathing and reading being the main activities. We might have swam in the lake, despite the bilharrzia threat if the water was not green, but we immersed ourselves in the half-full pool that the lodge had when we got too hot. Monkeys played around us for much of the day, and seemed very used to having to share their environment with tourists. By 4.45 we were on our way again, returning by the more comfortable lodge boat, but with definitely more tendency to “sea”-sickness as the boat rocked all over the place on small waves.

We reached home safely, and as we were working to fill up our spare water supply (a big tank/bucket) Rachel discovered a mini snake in our house. It was pretty easily dispatched, and we still don’t know exactly what it was, but it is still unnerving to not really know how it got in, or if there are more lurking in the walls somewhere.

The lengths we go to to pretend it is snowing

2008-12-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

Despite England's lack of predictable snowfall over Christmas, I do find I miss snow and the cold of Christmas time. Rachel and I found a solution, bizarre though it may be, of pretending it is snowing - did you know that if you drive through a cloud of lake flies at night with headlights on (always a good idea when driving at night anyway) at a decent speed they look like little flecks of falling snow? So, when we are feeling snow deprived, we could just turn up the air conditioning really high and drive to Makoko through the clouds of lake flies that come up from the lake in the evening - genius!

What month is it?

2008-11-29T04:55:00.000-08:00

I seem to be daily confusing myself when I think about the date – how DO you tell without a calendar exactly what month you are in when there is no difference in the weather except sometimes a little more rain? If I was surprised to be in November with Christmas music beginning to be heard from Rachel’s room, I am even more surprised to be almost in December, and the Christmas decorations already hung in the main room. Ok, we have an excuse for that, we decorated early while Rachel’s parents were here with us, and because we will leave our house in 2 weeks so want to enjoy it as much as possible! Still, as we prepare to go to an American Thanksgiving tonight with our colleagues and other missionaries in Musoma, it does feel a little strange.

So, I guess this update should bring momentous news of some kind, but apart from Rachel’s parents visiting there is little news since last time. Oh, I did manage to break my chair at work, but apart from that little has changed. Having Rachel’s parents with us was great fun though, despite the fact I was working as normal through their visit. They did all that Musoma has to offer (not much – Serengeti, a trip to Locuba Island on Lake Victoria and a trip to the village) and were quite content to read when they weren’t being entertained – very easy guests to look after! We even had a “barbeque” over a little jiko (coal stove) and ate burgers one night, yummmmm. The trip to the village was a little bit of a disaster in planning on my part, as we ended up doing the visits backwards and keeping one family waiting quite a long time... but it was good fun, and I finally had a chance to visit my language helper’s (Rukia’s) house in Nyamuswa after many months of promising to do so.

(Rachel and her parents at our burger feast meal, and our main room decorated for Christmas, complete with mini Christmas tree!)

Return of the blog

2008-11-17T03:04:00.001-08:00

What happened to the last month? It seems to have flown by and now I find myself seriously out of date with my blogging. Quite a few things have happened, not least of them being the Translation Workshop, which began on a public holiday, or sikukuu, and ended on one too. During this time I was continuing to teach, but on my own, as Rachel attended the workshop. Every time I went to the Bible College, the students were surprised to find Rachel not with me, despite my telling them that she was gone for 3 weeks. Their joy on her return was quite pleasing, although we were quite amused by their comment that “umepotea sana” – she had been very lost, as if she had gotten lost for 3 weeks and had now found her way back. I guess that is one of the things that we have not gained from our teaching experience, a better grasp on the way that real Swahili is spoken. Each lesson we stand up at the front and teach, gaining experience and confidence in speaking, yes, but not being corrected in our form of speech so no doubt no learning that there are better ways to say things than our bumbling version. Still, when all is said and done, the confidence was important for us, as teaching in workshops is pretty scary sometimes!

We also spent a fun Saturday with some of our Tanzanian friends, Beatrice, Diana, Sara and Grace, teaching them to cook “chakula cha kizungu” – Western food. This was great fun, though started a little later than planned, as Rachel went to the salon first to have her hair braided. She was a great source of amusement for the passing Tanzanians, a mzungu in a hair salon. I, back at home, was preparing the basics of the cooking, and just as the rapidly rising pizza dough tried to walk off the plate, our guests arrived. They were suitably confused by the idea of cheese, and were delighted to try our substitute pepperoni, lunch ham, as they constructed 4 monstrous pizzas with almost every topping imaginable. During the dinner they kept noting the time and the date, saying that it was at this time that they first ate chakula cha kizungu – it was really quite lovely to see their delight in something we take for granted! We finished off the meal with brownies that we directed them in making, and some chocolate ice cream Rachel had made. They were suitably introduced to the Western sweet tooth, and 2 of them found it too sweet for their liking. Still, they took the leftover food back to share with their fellow students. After the food and thank yous (a big part of Tanzanian guest/host culture) where everyone said their piece, and a song from the Mennonite songbook (tenzi za rohoni), Rachel and I taught them to line dance. It was quite fun watching them learning, as so often we feel like the two-left-feet westerners, unable to dance like a Tanzanian. This time, we were the experts :).

Since then, we have have a few more meals in peoples houses and enjoyed another missionary fellowship. Social life here is a little limiting, but to be honest we don’t always have the energy to keep up with all the offers of hospitality from the Tanzanians. I don’t know if they understand this, but for us going to someone’s house for a meal or even just a soda is pretty draining. Maybe we seem slightly rude and lazy, always needed the odd day/evening to relax and watch a film, but I don’t know if there is any other way to stay sane!

So, at the moment we have Rachel’s parents here for a 10 day visit, and then it will be a short time until our Christmas holiday, which will take us on a much needed break from the Musoma area. Much as I like living in Musoma, I find myself needing to get out every now and again!

African friends and money matters

2008-10-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a book that was recommended to me before I came out to Tanzania. Did I get around to reading it though? No, I didn’t, and I regret that now. How does one deal with situations where friends ask for financial help, or if that is easy enough to deal with, what about complete strangers?

Last week was a week of many people needing financial help, and while I wanted to help those with whom I had a relationship (it is not acceptable to ask a stranger for money, but since we are wazungu I guess the Tanzanians think it is worth a try), it still mounted up to a whopping figure, as most of these requests were for help with school fees.

Where does the Bible fit into all this? I know what it says in the Bible, that we should help those who ask us for help, but I do believe there is a certain amount of accountability involved, and randomly dishing out money won’t solve problems. But accountability seems to be more relevant a question over in the UK, where you never know if someone is truly begging for money for shelter, or perhaps for alcohol. Here in Africa it seems to be easier to judge people’s true need since so many people are in need, but with so many people asking I have had to say “no” often. I felt extremely cruel each time I have had to say “no” to someone, despite knowing that strangers don’t expect you to say yes. I do have a comfortable lifestyle compared to all my neighbours, but where should I draw the line in giving? I know a large part of my decision is based on selfishness; how I think I deserve to live and how much I feel I have to give away, but I wish I could hear God’s wisdom on this subject a little more clearly – do I ever have a right to say “no”? What about the situations where someone then becomes dependent on you, or starts to see you as their source of finance? As I look back on the times I have said “no”, I do feel bad, but is it ever possible to know whether the teenager telling you a sob story to gain your sympathy is actually telling the truth? At that point I was glad to hide behind the culture and claim I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know him, but then he changed tack and asked if we could get to know each other – is there anything more unwelcome than someone wanting to be your friend in order to “have a right to” asking for your money?

Having seen poverty of varying severity around me here in Tanzania, it does help me to have a little more perspective on events and in some ways have a looser grip on my own possessions. When my phone was stolen a week ago, I was irritated and upset, yes, but on reflection I suppose that it will help that person more than it ever will help me, whether they choose to sell it or use it. I can get another one without too much hassle, and while I am not condoning the theft, I do understand the need that drove it – would there be such a temptation if I was more generous with my belongings in the first place? Man is sinful, and we all inadvertantly contribute to leading each other into sinful choices. Now I need to reflect on how much I need to change about my own attitude. What a lesson!

Kijiji kabisa!

2008-10-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

This weekend was truly an eventful weekend for Rachel and I. We had agreed to go with our friend Sarah Lazaro to her home village once her exams had finished, so off we went on Saturday morning, picking up Sarah and her friend Beatrice on the way (Beatrice is also the eldest daughter of the partnership manager here at the office).

We drove out to the village in about 2 hours, mostly on the Mwanza road, only turning off about 20 minutes from the end, so it was mostly on paved roads. During the drive we had the pleasure of listening to Sarah and Beatrice practising 2 songs for the Sunday service; wow those girls can sing!

Arriving at the village, we were welcomed by many of Sarah’s family members (to be honest I never actually worked out who was who), her parents, sisters and many nephews and nieces. Her father has 10 living children and 36 grandchildren, so it was pretty busy at their home! This was a Sukuma village, and it was, as Sarah described, “kijiji kabisa” – as villagey as you can get. This meant that these were pretty poor people, but as a result it made their generosity so much more evident. When saying goodbye, Sarah’s mother told that she was nervous at the prospect of having us to stay, but nevertheless she had welcomed us so wonderfully. Upon our arrival she had given each of us a hug, and she was a truly adorable little lady, I often had the urge to hug her (I didn’t)! She went with us when we went to visit people, and even when we randomly went to climb a hill – that lady has a lot of energy, despite being quite elderly.

Our time at the village was interesting for many reasons, as per usual for visiting Tanzanians, there was quite a lot of sitting and resting (they are always very careful not to let us exert ourselves too much!), but we also got to go on a visit to some relative’s house and drink the obligatory soda that accompanies such a visit (I had been allowed not to drink chai due my taking antibiotics still, but sodas are not to be gotten out of!). We were exclaimed over as usual, and I was a little afraid of the lady of the house; she seemed to definitely be the mama of the rather large household. When we returned, it was dark and raining, so we had great fun trying to avoid the cracks in the mud roads, and make our way back without getting too wet. Upon arrival, we realised that the car doors had been left slightly open after the luggage removal, so it was necessary to check whether the battery was flat or not. God certainly was protecting our car that weekend, as the battery was fine, despite our problems with it before, and we had not had a puncture from driving around a place with many vicious thorns. I don’t know what we would have done if we had had a flat battery, as there was not another car for a few miles, and no phone reception to call someone!

I was very grateful to be able to wash my feet, eat dinner and go to bed that night, as in the village there is not much to do once the natural light has gone. Rachel and I were blessed with a room to ourselves (though I couldn’t help wondering who we had displaced), and we happily went to bed. In the morning, I was glad to see that I had not noticed or even thought about the bugs around my bed, as I wouldn’t have slept so soundly then!

Sunday was a little disturbed by the discovery that my phone was missing (which it still is), and we went on a little walk to find signal to try and phone Nyabange and see if it was there. In doing this we got to climb a little hill and see the beautiful surroundings – gorgeous! Later on, after a quick wash in the rather too public shower/toilet structure (a bit like a fenced in circular area with a gap for an entrance) we got eat the most bizarre chai that I have ever had in Tanzania – sweetened spaghetti (cooked in water with sugar maybe?) and chapattis.

We made our way to church that morning a little late (we had been waiting to hear singing before we hurried our preparations, but apparently they were waiting for us – oops!), and very grateful that we had been able to refuse the pastor’s offer that we preach. I didn’t think it was possible for us to be more conspicuous than we already were, but they managed to make us so as we sat on plastic chairs on one side of the church while the rest of the village sat on low stone walls on the other. I was really pleased to hear them mixing Swahili and Sukuma during the service, as we were told that since they have a Sukuma Bible now, they enjoy their language so much more – what an encouragement to us as we translate the Bible for other groups!

After the service, we were ushered home for our final meal, the meal in our honour, for which they had slaughtered a goat that morning. We even had the joys of meeting said goat, and were obliged to shake its leg in greeting. Hours later we were eating the poor beast, and very tasty he was too! We now have some goat in our freezer, as they insisted we take some home with us.

After goodbyes and thank yous were formally concluded, we set off back to Musoma in our now shiny car – the kids had spent a good few hours polishing it after it arrived dusty and then got rained on (rain here doesn’t seem to clean cars, rather it makes them even more streaky with dirt!). I was sad to leave Sarah’s mother, as she was a very cool little lady, but I have to admit that I am used to my own way of life and wouldn’t have lasted too long in the village if obliged to stay there for longer than the one night we did spend there. I guess it all depends on what you are used to, but it is humbling to realise your own dependence on things when you are forced to go without. I praise God for a flushing toilet in my house!

Sara and Beatrice:

Random musings

2008-10-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

So, it seems I have been called upon to start a cheesecake business here in Tanzania! I took one along to Missionary Fellowship (the gathering of ex-patriot missionaries here in the Mara region) and by the end had an order for someone's birthday :) Cool! People find it slightly weird that I have made such an effort to discover how to make cheesecake in a place where no cream cheese can be bought, but they have clearly underestimated my love of the dessert, and the lengths I will go to in order to make it from what is available here.

Likewise with pasta - am I so used to the food I have in Britain that I need to replicate them here? Probably, but for whatever reason, I have taken to making lasagne sheets and linguine, a task made much much easier by the purchase of my very own pasta maker thingy (you know, shove a lump of pasta through a press, turn the handle and out comes a nice thin sheet without the sweat of rolling it out). So, again people have wondered at my dedication to cooking, and whether I would like to sell them some pasta too. I guess I just enjoy the taste of home foods.

Having said that, I do enjoy the odd Tanzanian meal now and again. I found that when the meals at the office ceased to be, and a new arrangement was set up, that I really missed having beans with my rice. That wasn't something I expected I would miss, but I guess rice on its own is a bit dull. Having stated my fascination for making wazungu food from what is available here, I must say that it has really opened my eyes to the variety that is available in the West. I think how bored I would get with the same 3 meals each day, but variety is definitely a luxury I have realised, and I am grateful I even have the opportunity to branch out from rice/ugali.

Anyhow, moving on from food, it would seem that the rains have definitely come to Musoma. Not only that, but thunderstorms seem to accompany most of the evening rains, and sometimes the wind can get pretty violent. It is at times like this that I am glad to be inside, and even more glad that the rain cools the air down - I was actually cold last night! The thankfulness that Tanzanians bring to God with each time it rains brings it home to me how very different their attitude to weather is to mine - all I seem to see are the new holes in the roads, and the brown/blackouts that accompany a storm. I have a lot to learn about thankfulness!

Church

2008-09-23T10:42:00.001-07:00

So, Rachel and I have had varying amounts of success at going to church each week. Why? Because going to church here is possibly more draining than it is spiritually uplifting, mostly due to having to concentrate on Swahili for anything from 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours. We have tried a selection by now; the local Anglican (soon to receive a visit from their partner church in Wakefield, England), the local African Inland Church, Moravian, Mennonite, etc. Many of them are similar, and it is a tough call which we want to settle at.

Despite all appearances, we do actually want to go to church, it is just that we don't always feel up to it. Without fail though, Eliud (the office assistant) will ask us every Monday after a Sunday when we DON'T go anywhere - ulisali wapi jana? (where did you worship yesterday?) Without fail... On the few times we have actually gone somewhere, we take great joy in not looking sheepish, and claiming to have gone to such-and-such a church.

Yesterday was no exception, and I had finally got around to visiting a church I have wanted to visit for about a month now. While we were involved in the last workshop, many of the participants had a chance to deliver an encouraging thought for the day each morning, and Pastor Waynse gave such a thought-provoking one that I decided I needed to visit his church. Unfortunately, his church is not very close to us, so it is unlikely we will make it our "home church", but we had a great time nevertheless. Being located on the campus of the MTCEA where Rachel and I teach, we even knew some of the faces in the crowd of attendees, and were happy to make the acquaintance of the numerous children who tried to sit on us. I found that while this was very adorable, it did distract me from much of the sermon, and was not unlike having a little fidgety radiator sitting on your lap - I was rather dishevelled by the end of the service! We left with the promise that next time we came we would have the opportunity to preach (in fact Pastor Waynse was sad we hadn't told him in advance so he could invite us to preach that Sunday!), a promise that made me resolve to work on my polite refusals. I have nothing against being invited to preach, but I have a awful inability to say "no", that I often regret later. Thankfully, I managed to do just that when approached by the good Pastor today, and offered the opportunity to preach... this Sunday. I felt bad, after all he did need helping out as he had no-one to fill the slot, but preaching is one of the few things I am sure God did not make me for!

Anyway, it was possibly the first Sunday service I have truly enjoyed in Musoma, and I look forward to going back when Rachel preaches in 2 weeks time :) I'm sure she would appreciate your prayers.

Things I love about Tanzania/Africa

2008-09-15T01:03:00.000-07:00

The amazing ability that Africans have of being able to harmonise on the spot: I was sitting in chapel at MTCEA last Friday listening in wonder as beautiful African voices praised God. I know God rejoices in being praised by those of all musical ability, but I certainly found it easier to connect with the beauty of those voices than I do with my own!
The greetings: so often they drive me round the bend, but in my better moments I do truly appreciate the friendliness of those around me, their joy in being greeted in their own language, and their amazing hospitality.
Chapattis: ok, not originally Tanzanian, but a great import from India!
Househelp: our househelp, Mama Nick, is possibly the greatest blessing here in Tanzania! Not only do we get the amazing opportunity to provide someone with much needed employment, but we never have to go to the butcher ourselves. To be honest, I don't even know which butcher she goes to...
Tailors: I love being able to go to the tailor's and get a dress made exactly/ pretty close to my specifications in awesome African fabric - now I just need to not gain weight so I can still wear them all...
The sun: a rather obvious choice for any who know me, but great nonetheless, especially with British summers as they are now.

And so many more things...

Teaching at Mennonite Theological College of East Africa

2008-09-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

This teaching saga will definitely be a memorable experience for me. Hopefully it will also be useful for the students (sometimes I wonder about that, since this was set up to improve our Swahili, yet I wonder if the students will get as good teaching out of it because of our bad attempts to explain). All 8 of the students I taught yesterday seemed very nice, if slightly varied in enthusiasm. One poor guy was obviously drifting off to sleep, but then it was the last session before lunch, he had just had an hour previous to my lecture, and it was hot in the classroom. Still it is a little discouraging!

I have to get used to the African way of classroom interaction. It seems as though I was proposing something quite radical when I told them I needed them to discuss stuff, and that I wouldn't write much on the board for them to copy down. I hope this is a good change for them, but even as I encourage them to discuss with each other, I inwardly groan as that increases the likelihood that they speak fast and I won't understand them! Ah well, it is a learning process for me too.

So, my dread of Wednesday and Friday is growing, but hopefully so is my Swahili ability! I look forward to one point though, when I get to tell my students that in my culture it is not acceptable to have "mzungu" (white person) yelled at you, so that is why we don't like it when it is done here. I think that might be an interesting revelation for them!

The Bicycle Saga

2008-08-27T23:29:00.001-07:00

I thought that it would be a great idea to buy a bicycle in Musoma. You know; exercise and saving money on petrol all at once. As a result, I had a look around Musoma for a suitable bicycle, and came upon many old and unsuitable bikes, so figured that I would do better having a look in Mwanza when Rachel and I went the following week. (This was during our first week or so in Musoma) I was very happy when I managed to find a new bike in Mwanza, from the same shop as our gas oven was from, and rather a pretty bike too. Getting it home was an issue, as our small Rav4 was already full of oven, so I decided to buy it in pieces in the box.

Arriving back in Musoma I gave Eliud, the office assistant, the task of acquiring a fundi (a word applied to technical people of all varieties, bicycle techniciany people to carpenters) to put my beautiful bike together, and I duly went off on my homestay for 5 days. Arriving back, my bike was still in a box, and remained so for another week while the fundi was acquired.

Fundi came and went, and I prepared to ride my bike home one day, and found that the brakes were not working, and the tyres were flat. I once again handed the job over to Eliud, and he fixed the back tyre, buying a new tube, and sorted out the brakes.

Just before conference, I looked forward to riding my fixed bike, yet was wise enough to plan ahead this time around, and inspected the bike first (before getting into my cycling gear in preparation to ride home). This revealed a sad lack of air in the tyres, and I found myself in the problematic position of having no pump. Thinking that other people with bikes would have pumps, I wasn’t too worried, but for some mysterious reason no-one had a working pump. “No worries” i thought, “I’ll look for a pump in Nakumatt” (the huge department store in Nairobi), so I happily went off to conference.

Conference came and went, and we returned to Musoma via two Nakumatts which both revealed a sad lack of bicycle pumps or even puncture repait kits. I would have thought, in a place where bikes are the main form of transport, there would be pumps. I guess that was probably the reason they were all sold out. So I returned, pumpless, to my flat bicycle tyres.

Revealing this problem to my parents brought the lovely result of a light-weight pump and puncture repair kit in the post, so once again I got excited about being able to ride my bike. This time, the front tube was burst past the point of even my fancy puncture repair kit’s help. I resignedly gave the bike into Eliud’s care again for fixing.

Finally, the following week, I rode my bike home! Here, I thought, was the beginning of my independence from the car. I proved to, again, have too much optimism and three days after riding it to and from the workshop, the pedal broke off. From buying the bike to now, after the pedal has finally been fixed and the bike is rideable, it has been 2 ½ months. Life does indeed happen slower in Africa. Still, it has been a good learning experience; don’t buy a bike without first checking how long it has sat in the shop for! Eliud spoke truly when he said that the bike is, “Nzuri kwa macho tu” (beautiful for the eyes only). Still, I have my bike up and running now, I can only hope it will last longer than last time.

Another amusing part of having the bicycle is the amount of stares I get as a white female riding a bike. I spend most of the journey to and from the office telling myself that they would stare just as much whether I wore the helmet or not (to make myself feel better for being the only bicyclist with a helmet on) and trying to ignore the giggles and calls of, “Mzungu, Mzungu!” (White person). I have tried telling the kids that, “My name is not Mzungu” but my cries fall on deaf ears. Still, there comes a point where I have to ignore them all, or I would spend the whole journey completely self-conscious. Some Mzungu have taken to saying “Mwafrica” back at them ( “African”), but i think this just amuses them and doesn’t stop them yelling, “Mzungu” at us. Sigh.

The Aftermath

2008-08-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

It looks like a bomb has hit my desk! I have plenty to be getting on with, but I am very glad that I am this end of the workshop than the other. I did enjoy some parts of it, but I felt really out of my depth most of the time plus permanently tired, despite normal hours of sleep. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the participants, as they all have their own little quirks and special talents. These especially surfaced during the closing ceremony last Friday, as we heard songs sung in peoples' Mother Tongue, and applauded everyone "graduating" from the workshop. The participants were always inviting me to eat lunch/chai with them, but the busyness of being Mwalimu (Teacher) Hazel were too much, and often I found myself discussing linguistics for the duration of most break-times. We were supposed to be addressed as Mwalimu, but mostly I got "madam" or Kʉnzera (my new Ikizu name). I was a little nervous at the beginning that being so young, and female, I would have issues being a teacher and getting the right amount of respect as such. I needn't have worried, despite the lack of my "Mwalimu" title, they seemed to respect the decisions that had been made about their language once I explained the reasons. I have learnt sooo much about Ikizu as a result, in fact my knowledge of Zanaki is dragging significantly behind now!

There were definitely some moments where I couldn't tell whether I was more frustrated or the participants, but they bore with me the whole time and we got some good work done. I have to say, it is a little intimidating being let loose on a real language, especially with such short training, but I know God is with me the whole way, and I am so grateful for that! I was so grateful too for the many emails of encouragement that I received after sending out my panicked prayer request about it all. Prayer and communication are so important in such situations.

My most annoying technical difficulty came at the very beginning of the workshop when my free trial of Keyman keyboard ran out. For the uninitiated, let me explain. This software allows me to type ;i and get out the fancy barred i that Ikizu uses, and similarly with ;u/barred u. This wasn't too much of a pain, but meant that I was doing a lot of copying and pasting when I wanted to enter data into the computer!

So, data needs entering, and evaluations filled in on each participant. The best bit about being so busy for the last 3 weeks is that we get a day off this week. Woohooo! I have chosen Tuesday, so I can be at home for when the painter comes to continue sandpapering our house in prep for painting next week. Speaking of which, I wonder if the shop has the paint we ordered yet....?

Warsha, aka. workshop

2008-08-11T06:58:00.000-07:00

So, finally I managed to struggle through one week, and then another one starts! How rude is that. The workshop has been full of ups and downs really, and plenty of stressed moments and inadequate Swahili. The best moment this week (ok, only monday, maybe I should say best moment during the warsha so far) has been watching 8 guys helping Jeana make brownies (in preparation for a very fun descriptive exercise later - taste, smell etc), each one very excited to be beating blueband and sugar etc. Bless!

So, what have I been doing during this workshop? I have basically been taking 5 mother-tongue speakers and teaching them all we have found out about how to write their language...in Swahili. Just let me say this, to give you the picture of each day's struggle - I am not a teacher, I don't speak Swahili very fluently, and I have had only about 5 weeks to look at the language I am teaching. Hmmm, God is definitely strong in our weaknesses! Each participant is very lovely and says I am doing well, but in a culture where you often say what the other person wants to hear, I am not sure this is the best reflection of my abilities!

So, at the end of this time, we hope to have selected some of our participants to be translators later - things are indeed moving on! We have the unenviable task of picking 3 of the 5 to come to the next workshop, and then it will get serious when we hire them in February. Right now, I don't want to think of the next workshop, but focus on this one!

Back to work

2008-07-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

How is it nearly August? I keep asking myself this often, with no intelligent response. I guess time flies when you are having fun :)

So, having returned from conference, the next excitement is the Writer's Awareness workshop starting next week, which we are busy preparing for all this week. The scary thing about these workshops is that I will be teaching about 10 well educated Tanzanians about what we have found out about their languages... in Swahili! I have just about gotten halfway through the list of linguistic vocabulary to learn, but there are still the mini-lectures to translate. Urg, I don't think I could be more terrified, but as I am continually reminded, this just gives God more opportunity to take over, cos I know there is no way I can do this by myself. I would appreciate prayer though.

Otherwise, our house continues to become more house-like. We have finally arranged for our househelp to come 2 1/2 days a week, and we are looking forward to having less to do around the house as she helps us. Even simple things like chopping vegetables take so much longer here in Africa, and I often find myself spending the whole evening cleaning, cooking and tidying up without the opportunity to do something relaxing before it is time for bed. Mama Nick, our househelp (they call mums after the name of their first born child here), is a lovely lady, and we are very happy to be able to offer her work as her previous employers are leaving this week.

So, life is beginning to settle into a proper routine now that we can finally get started on the work in earnest, and hopefully we won't have to do too much long distance travelling for a long time! The next goal is surviving the workshop, then getting our house painted. I think that is enough planning for now, I can't understand how it is almost August, so planning for September is even weirder!

Pictures from Turtle Bay, Kenya

2008-07-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Conference

2008-07-21T23:28:00.001-07:00

Well despite all the dire warnings to the contrary, the drive to Nairobi, and onwards to Turtle Bay the day after, were fine. We made Olly drive the crazy bits with traffic coming every which way in Nairobi and Mombasa, but otherwise we shared the driving pretty equally, and had a good time. The first day started a little later than planned, and we arrived at the border just a little after everyone else, but managed to make up time and leave somewhere in the middle of the convoy of vehicles. Thankfully the border crossing took only 1 ½ hours and we had no problems, just the usual paperwork. So now I was in Kenya – to be honest it didn’t feel any different from Tanzania! Driving on we got to see some of the scenery of the Rift Valley, and climbing the escarpment up to the top of the Rift Valley Wall was something else – it’s a shame I was driving at the time, or I might have been able to appreciate it a bit more!

The Mennonite guest house in Nairobi was a lovely little place, and had great food – we were sad that leaving 5.30am meant missing breakfast, but it was a necessary evil and we made good time going on to Mombasa. Driving out of Nairobi was absolutely manic, and at one point we found ourselves sandwiched between 2 trucks trying to get back onto the one lane going out of Nairobi – the trucks won, we don’t argue with big vehicles like that!

So, finally after getting a bit misdirected in Mombasa (we only had a guide books inaccurate map to guide us through) we arrived at Turtle Bay Beach Club, Watamu at around 3pm! I have to say I don’t think I have ever stayed anywhere this nice before, and probably won’t in future (except for next year’s conference) as it is a little expensive, but is the only hotel that gives us a good deal and can cater for our needs as a conference with many young kids. Just how many young kids quickly became apparent as we saw the list of attendees – about 56 kids and 87 adults (a good number of whom are singles without kids!) The great, and very unhealthy thing about this place is that all food is included in the price of the hotel, and food/drinks are available all day, so while lounging by the pool you can order a drink and not have to move a muscle!

We did do quite a bit of work though – the conference had to deal with quite a lot of business, and I had to wrap my mind around bylaws and electing members to the committee, which is a completely new thing to me. First of all though, we had a team from Knock Presbyterian church in Belfast come and minister to us with worship and talks for a few days. Oh the difference of worshipping in a language I understand and hearing sermons in English! All the while I was feeling sorry for those who still had to translate, the many German speaking members, and a few others. Being in Kenya was great for my confidence in Swahili though, since Tanzanian Swahili is more formal and "proper", all the Kenyans thought I spoke great Swahili! Sadly, I have returned to mediocre Swahili now I am back in Tanzania.

Other times were pretty fun too, with the beach only seconds away, and the pool a great place to play water polo. I discovered a great enjoyment of this sport as the women took on each other in the annual singles vs marrieds polo match. Up until that year, the score was an even 2 wins each, but this year the singles took the lead and happily we won 8 to 4. It was very amusing hearing the husbands cheering (we had a husband for a ref, and he was biased) as we got into some great tackles – sadly I wasn’t able to watch them cheering, as without my glasses, I was unable to see the other end of the pool very well! I played defence for that reason, and really enjoyed myself despite my inability to see the other goal.

In the evenings there was always some kind of music going on during, or after, dinner, and a disco that played on late into the night.I was rather sad that I was unable to stay for the first night, as the Maasai were the entertainment that night, yet I was really tired. We had great fun celebrating 3 birthdays during the week, as the staff (once notified) came out with an assortment of kitchen equipment and proceeded to play it as a musical instrument while singing their favourite “habari gani?” song.

We were able to stay for one extra day after the conference finished on Thursday, and were very sad when the sky was murky (the weather, while warm was not always sunny and well-behaved) but became happier as 11am brought the sun out for most of the rest of the day.

Travelling back on Saturday started a little late, as we waited for everyone to arrive and pack into the car, but we were able to follow another family through Mombasa, so thankfully didn’t get lost this time, though the traffic later slowed to a crawl taking away the time we had saved. It was a pretty smooth journey in most places, with the usual awful traffic around Nairobi, and interesting driving over partially repaired roads. At one point we managed a double overtake as we decided that the slow lorry overtaking another even slower lorry was just too much to wait for when there was ample space to go around both.

We spent a day in Nairobi, stocking up on supplies and enjoying some fast food (although it felt more restaurant-like as we still had waiters, even though it was fast food in every other sense). We even got to see “Prince Caspian” at the cinema! That was really enjoyable, as was spending time in a Western style mall – it is amazing how fancy it seems to me, having been away for so long! We also had a safe journey back on Monday, arriving earlier than we had expected (we had had to wait to check out of the guest house, which meant leaving at 7.10 instead of earlier) mainly due to the speed of crossing the border – much easier than going the other way across! Thankfully we were able to fit everything into the car again, I am sure that vehicle has some tardis-type properties. So now we are back in Musoma, and attempting to get back into the flow of work, though that won’t really happen until my boss gets back. It’s nice to be connected to the internet again :)

Visitors, roosters and forgiveness

2008-07-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

Once again, the time has come to update y’all on events in Musoma. Since returning from the village, Rachel and I have been getting up to date on the language information that has been sorted since the project started – quite a task! Misha (Michelle really, but shortened for ease of pronunciation for the Tanzanians) was the linguist in charge of the languages I am taking over, and she has done a lot of work, so I am in the process of trying to understand all the write-ups, and see how to continue. At the office I have also been trying to get my bicycle (bought during our shopping-trip to Mwanza) roadworthy, which is harder than it seems as the fundi didn’t do the job of putting it together properly the first time. Apart from the reading work, I have also been helping with sorting items in the container (full of belongings bought off the missionaries who left it all when they went back to the States and whose house is now our office) for the sale, picking out a few items to buy that would be suitable for our house and sorting the rest into boxes by price.

Our first weekend after the village trip, we had every intention of going to church, but after a full week of busyness, we were too exhausted to then try to cope with a (potentially) 3 hour service in Swahili! Thankfully that day was a restful day for us, so we were able to regain energy which would be very necessary for the following week!

Monday was when our Canadian visitors were supposed to arrive, but as with many Musoma airport flights, theirs was cancelled, and they had to arrive the next day by bus from Mwanza. That morning we had a special chai break, saying farewell to those leaving on furlough after conference, and praying for them. After this and the office meeting, Rachel went to pick up our visitors, and I briefly greeted them before they went home to crash and get over jet-lag. On Wednesday they came to help out at the office, and that was the day that I became fully overwhelmed as Misha went through the language data with me for a whole morning. Thankfully, women’s Bible study took up the afternoon, so I could digest all that I had learnt before we continued going over her notes. Bible study is at the moment on 2 Samuel, and since we haven’t got the study guide it is a little confusing, but it is a good time of fellowship and great to be able to pray for one another.

Thursday was our big village trip day, when we took our visitors (Michelle, Judy and Steph) to the village where we had spent 5 days recently. We had tried to say we would arrive by 11 or 12, but the pastor wouldn’t have that so we agreed to coming for chai break. I think our friends were a little overwhelmed by the amount of chapattis that we were given (with mandazi, boiled egg and chai) but they struggled bravely through, not to offend. We spent much of the time in the village walking around showing the girls the village, and trying to be their translators when they wanted to ask questions and answer ones put to them. We were treated to goat for lunch (it seems to be a great thing to offer visitors, though I was left wondering if it was one of the goats we had seen so often in their yard!), and again we struggled through, still full from before! After some time of spending time with them we decided it was time to leave again, and stunning us with their generosity, they proceeded to catch their rooster as a gift for us! Slightly unsure what to do, we put the poor bird in the back of our car, and after giving them our gift we started back to Musoma. Birds don’t go well in cars, by the way, ours decided to relieve itself (probably in fright) over the boot of the car, which was fragrant later. We were very grateful to our neighbour’s son who helped us by slaughtering the rooster for us, and for our househelp who stayed longer to help us clean and cut up the bird. We have found our neighbours (our landlord and his family) to be very helpful and generous to us at every turn, which really helps us to feel welcome here.

Friday was another day of trying to get to grips with Ikizu and Zanaki, and I was very happy in the evening to have the opportunity to go out for a meal (not many places to go in Musoma, but the Acacia Hotel was recommended as the best) as Rachel’s friends treated us to a meal. Never have pepper steak and chapatti been so welcome! Not that I don’t like my own cooking, but there really is something nice about food prepared for you – it seems to taste better! We made the mistake of leaving the house quite late (my fault, I was attempting to make cheesecake) so we ended up eating our food after a 1 ½ hour wait (worth it!) at about 8.50. Afterwards we drove over to the boys’ new house (they had moved in that day after a missionary family moved out) and said a brief hello.

Saturday was the day of the big container sale at the office, and we were all supposed to arrive in time to set up before the start at 9.00. We managed to get there only 25 minutes late, and help out a bit in the set-up before the pandemonium began. Have you ever tried to explain what various electrical items are when you have no idea yourself? Try it in Swahili, and you will get an idea of how exhausting this was! Also trying to explain that most of the electrical items take 110V rather than the 220/240V that is here in Tanzania (the missionaries had their house wired for American electrical items, they also had everything useful and useless under the sun), that was a challenge! The Tanzanians from the office, Pius and Eliud were hilarious salesmen, and we had good fun watching them trying to sell some of the more bizarre items. We also had a bure area (bure=free) which was where all the completely useless stuff went for anyone to pick up as they wanted. The kids were excited when they found the tights/nylons, and we all watched in amusement as they pulled them up over their shorts and pranced around in them. I’m glad someone found a use for them! Anyhow, the sale finished around 12pm, and cleanup took a relatively short time thankfully, so we were able to go off to the market to stock up for our housewarming party later that evening.

The housewarming was planned for 6pm, and we arrived back around 2pm with nothing prepared, and most of us in need of a nap. Nap duly taken, we began to prepare, and needless to say were behind schedule when people began to arrive. Thankfully we had some snacks out, and people were happy to amuse themselves as we finished the pizzas (we could only cook 2 at a time in our oven, and we had some nervous moments transferring completed uncooked pizzas from where they were prepared to the oven racks – we did lose some toppings but not too many). Everyone turned up (literally, I think there were 9 children and 16 adults plus us 5 hosts!), and thankfully the food turned out well – a big success when it all could have gone very pear-shaped. Some of the people stayed longer, but most left with their kids early on, and we found ourselves playing a couple of games before clearing up and even getting to bed by 10pm – parties here don’t seem to run very late.

On Sunday we had decided to try out our first Musoma church! We had settled on the Moravian church, mostly for timing (it started at 10am) and closeness to our house, and managed to arrive in good time for the service to start at 10.20. To be honest I wasn’t that excited about the service, I would describe it to be more formal Anglican than I expected, although knowing nothing about Moravian churches doesn’t give me much to go by. There were maybe 25-30 people there, and at least 10 of us were visitors (we had to do the introductions as usual), and the choir was made up of 3 rather unenthusiastic ladies. Still, the sermon seemed to be pretty Biblical, from what I could make out (the microphone echoed badly and made it hard to hear the words, plus the church next door was really loud) which is a good thing. Thankfully we had warned our guests about the potential of multiple offerings beforehand, as this church decided to have 3 this Sunday. All in all, I think I will tick that church off my list of potentials, and not come back, but they were very welcoming and friendly, just not my style.

The afternoon was very relaxing, and we got to rest after the previous mad days; very welcome! Monday was also a day off, as Tanzanians celebrated Sabasaba (peasant’s day), and we took a packed lunch to the Epheta centre (run by the Catholics, a retreat/conference centre on Lake Victoria’s shores) where we ate, played Phase 10, and walked along the beach listening to the peace and quiet. Sadly we couldn’t swim in the Lake, due to the bilharzia, but many Tanzanian kids were not so inhibited, and took advantage of the day off school to have fun - a welcome sight.

On Tuesday we farewelled our guests as we put them on a bus to Mwanza, then returned to the Epheta centre again, this time for work. Tuesday was the day for the Forgiveness seminar which we were all supposed to attend, and we enjoyed a full morning of talks on Forgiveness by some visiting speakers (they are part of an organisation which ministers to missionaries on the field), before an early end to the day at 2.45pm. My next task was to cut Olly’s hair at his house, so we moved ourselves there (a 5 minutes drive, very close) and ended up staying until 8.20pm after they invited us to stay for food. I don’t think my job doing Olly’s hair was too badly done, but I did manage to cut myself a grand total of 3 times in my efforts not to cut Olly – oops!

So, now we are spending one last morning at the office before preparing to leave early tomorrow to go to Kenya.

The steep learning curve

2008-07-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

Ploughing through linguistic jargon is not my idea of easy - I looked up at least 10 terms today to try to understand the orthography drafts I have been reading for Kiikizu and Kizanaki. It's sad that it took me a whole day to read 22 pages, but it is slow going, trying to understand at the same time! Still, it is fun to be at the office, pretending to be a grown-up - I even have my very own desk in the linguistics office!

Otherwise, life is flying by quite fast, day follows day and I find I have never accomplished all that I want to do; sowing sheets into nice looking curtains, baking, decorating the house... the list is endless. I have finally managed to get a decent bicycle though, which makes me happy, I can now cycle to the office and Rachel can be independent of me (or is it me of her? Not sure about that). Basically this is my way of being cheap and not paying huge amounts for petrol/gas. hehe.

So, the living situation is going well for the most part. There have been moments of complete miscommunication, mostly due to my accent (having lived in America, I can understand Canadian reasonably well) and the differences in vocab, such as aubergine or courgette (ok, stolen from French). We have got our house pretty nice so far, and have just to paint it on the inside and hang new curtains for it to really feel more homey.

So, Musoma is a warm place. Seriously nice at times, but not so much when you have got home from 8 hours at the office and have to have the second shower of the day (we have yet to get the shower heating fixed, so the shower is in permanent cold state). Still, can't complain, as it beats the freezing mornings and nights in Iringa! I am very happy to be in control of my diet again, and Rachel and I are loving having smoothies and fruit salads galore. Not that it is all healthy though, we both like to bake...

So far we have met quite a few of the other missionaries in Musoma at missionary fellowship (once a month) which was held last Saturday, but have still to get them all sorted in my mind. I am almost there with the children of all my co-workers though. Well, one more month and a lot of my co-workers will be on furlough anyway (argh, the thought of being responsible for 2 languages is not a happy one!), and we will have been to Kenya and back for conference. Happy travelling times again. Until then we have 3 Canadian visitors to look after, having arrived after a loooong time travelling. I hope they aren't too culture-shocked!

Pictures from Bisarye

2008-06-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

Rachel and our family

Me "helping" Rhoda

Having fun with corn

Pulling up beans

Mchungaji Wambura's church

Bisarye village stay

2008-06-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

So, I am back from the village and I survived! Sorry, but this post will be loooong.

We set off on the first morning after prayer at the office. Nyamshoro, who works at the office sometimes, was there to meet us and to get us to the villages. We ended up having to chase the daladala to one of its stops where we boarded and squished in as well as possible (daladalas are usually about 8 or 9 seater car/van which they then proceed to squeeze as many as 17 people into). We had quite a bit of luggage for 5 days as apparently it is culturally appropriate to take bedsheets when you stay at someone’s house, and we had also brought mosquito nets for each of us (which we then left as a gift) and our usual luggage of towel and clothes etc. Nyamshoro was from the first village Bisarye (Zanaki) and from the family that Rachel and I were to stay with, but he accompanied the boys on to their family’s village of Nyamuswa (Ikizu) and returned later. We arrived after a reasonably long drive (50km, mostly on good road) which had taken us through the town of Butiama whose claim to fame is that President Nyerere was from there (he was the president through the independence and he also made Swahili the official language).

We arrived to find the Mchungaji (Pastor) Yohanna Wambura there to meet us with his daughter Rhoda. We arrived at the house to find Mama there to greet us with her daughter-in-law Mama Kirango and her son Kirango (they call the mother after the name of their eldest child).

They had a total of 4 proper buildings in a circle around a palm-like tree and patch of grass; two of the buildings were about the same size, and from what I could tell, were used (1) for sleeping the boys of the family and (the other) for housing the goats and chickens at night. There were the two other buildings, which were a small cooking hut, and the ‘main’ house, which was really 4 rooms in an L-shape; one where we slept with Rhoda and her sister, and the others where we ate food and received visitors, where they stored cotton, and where the mchungaji and his wife slept. There was a small choo (toilet) building with no roof, which was actually quite nice for a drop toilet. Also, there was an even more open plan bafu (wash place), which had no roof either, and the door consisted of a kanga (not the animal, the piece of cloth that they like to wrap around themselves) which sometimes liked to fall down if not secured properly. ‘Showering’ consisted of a bucket bath, with Rachel and I sharing the bucket of water. Sleeping was interesting, as Rachel and I had our own beds, but Rhoda and someone else (at first mama Kirango and Kirango, later Rhoda’s sister Wambura) shared the third bed.

Members of the family, as far as I could tell, were:
Mchungaji Wambura and wife, Naomi. eldest son lives in Dar, another son lives in Mwanza, another daughter lives nearby in Bunda, and the other married son is Kirango’s father, and lives down the road. Then there is Nyamshoro, Rhoda, Wambura and another son, Emmanuel. The fact that the 3rd daughter is called Wambura really confused me, since as far as I could tell, that was their surname too! Then when we were swapping phone numbers, Rhoda and Emmanuel entered their last name as Lucas! Confusing. Anyway, there also seemed to be 2 other guys living with them, who weren’t their kids, though I don’t really know why they were there. Kirango and his mum were around a lot, and the neighbour’s child seemed to wander in and out as he pleased.

Anyway, for the first day, we were told to relax, and to settle in for the most part. We took a trip to the village chairman to announce our presence in the village and sign the visitor’s book. Then we made a stop at Kirango’s father’s shop too, which boasted a television, which was eagerly being watched by many sat round on chairs outside the shop. We sat down too, and were treated to a soda then proceeded to watch the music videos and random Swahili film for quite a while. In the late-afternoon/evening, we went to the village church (not actually mchungaji’s church, but the church of the mchungaji that the boys were staying with, in Nyamuswa, 4km away!) for choir practise. I was asked to close in prayer at the end, so I rather nervously did in Swahili, though they seemed happy with what I said. During the day, the mchungaji had said something vague about us giving a devotion at some point in the village (or so we understood), so we frantically tried to patch something together that we could talk about for about 20 minutes without a Swahili Bible and in our faltering Swahili. We actually never did give this talk, which we were quite content with!

The meal system at their house consisted of chai at about 9.30 or 10.00 (chai and chapatti), then lunch (ugali, meat and mchicha/spinach) at about 2.30-3.00, then dinner anytime from 7.45-8.45 (usually rice and beans, with chai). The meals were pretty heavy for our foreign stomachs, and we fought a constant battle with the family to not eat as much as they wanted us to eat. They would always say “ongeza!” (add) to us, as we piled our plates with small portions, about a quarter of what they thought we should eat! We still ate more than we really wanted though, as they wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we always had to have a second helping. We learned to start small! Another battle we tried to fight was against their insistence that we should “pumzika” (rest) all the time after we had done a little work or something. I think it was a cross between caring for us as guests, and expecting the wazungu (white people) to be feeble! Sometimes we were glad to rest, but I really got fed up of them asking me whether “umechoka?”/”are you tired?” They really didn’t believe we could walk very far either, and we tried to prove them wrong as often as possible, but weren’t given much chance! It was a sore test of my pride!

Rhoda was a very hard worker, and would get up about 6.30 (mchungaji got up earlier, and we could hear him praying in the next room at this time) to sweep out the main house and mop the floors. I tried to help her with this, but I had to ask every time, and it ended up being more effort convincing her I wanted to help than to let her do it as she is used to doing every day. Mama would also start the day sweeping, though she swept the yard in the midst of the buildings. The first night was kind of interesting, as we went to bed pretty early, due to the lack of electricity (not much to do when it gets dark) and so ended up getting a good 8 ½ or 9 hours sleep. I woke to the sound of scratching at the head of my bed, and was rather amused to find that a hen lived there!

The first real day that we were allowed to work, we went to the field next to the house to pick cotton. Feeling like I was in colonial times, we picked two big buckets full. They once again asked us if “umechoka”, which I got a bit frustrated about after the millionth time of asking, as I might be mentally tired from using Swahili, but I was rarely physically tired as they thought we should be. Unfair of me really, as they were just concerned for me! During that day we also asked to help mama with getting the dried corn off the cobs, which would later be used for making flour. It was pretty tough going on the old hands, but we persevered, even more so when mama continually said “kazi ngumu” (hard work) and insisted we stop. I think I have too much pride to quit, even if I was tired! The same was true of the next day, when we spent the morning hours “kung’oa maharage” (pulling up beans), which was pretty tough on your back with the continual bend and stretch. I refused to give up until Rhoda insisted we go back for chai, which was very welcome as we had not eaten before that and had been working maybe 1 hour from about 7.20 (the field was quite a distance away).

Sometimes we were allowed to help with the cooking, as Rhoda would help us to learn how, and we showed our complete ignorance of how to prepare food African style (1 knife for everything, and no chopping board or peeler). We took about twice as long as she, so often we would do very little as we felt bad that we were using the only knife and going so slowly. Washing rice was probably the worst in that sense, as I really had not got the technique down, and took about 4 times as long as Rhoda. She was very patient. I did notice that they seemed to always give us the best of the food, though sometimes I would almost resent the fact that they gave me about twice as much meat as themselves (and chai too), not only because I felt bad about it, but also because I was never hungry enough to really enjoy it.

They were very amused to learn about our countries, and especially so to hear that we have no ugali (an everyday food). I tried to explain the food we do have, and ended up getting into a pickle trying to explain pastry, and steak and kidney pie in Swahili! We had some good talks with the mchungaji at times, including talking about why people are just “Sunday Christians” and about what we thought about gay issues. A lot of the time the talking would come at night though and much of the time we were so frazzled by that time of day, that speaking in depth Swahili was not what we wanted to do!

The next day was Sunday, and we left the house quite early, to catch the daladala to Butiama with mchungaji and Rhoda. We arrived in Butiama and proceeded to the house of a relative of the mchungaji who then fed us chai, eggs and chapatti. Anyway, off to church we went, walking off away from Butiama to a hilltop, with a glorious view of the surroundings, and a small half built “building” which we discovered was the temporary church (they are building a proper one at the mo). People brought benches and chairs, and soon there were about 30 of us, of course with all the children staring at us. Mchungaji was not too happy, as church started 30 mins late, there was no choir prepared and the person for kids work was not there, but we continued, and had a good service of a nice length. We must have taken only 1 ¾ hours in total, very u-African! We did the usual introductions during the service too, though we were not to be introduced with the visitors, but were introduced as part of the mchungaji’s family – very nice. During the offering, a lady put some tomatoes in the offering, so these were duly auctioned off afterwards. After church, the mchungaji asked me to take pictures of the church members together, so we all gathered and took a picture.

After church, the plan was to go to Nyerere’s house to look at the museum, but on arriving we found that it cost more than we had with us, so we went back again. We then had to wait for about 1 ½-2 hours for the daladala. By the time we arrived back, we were hot and dusty and fed up. Entering the house, however, we found guests awaiting us – Johnny, Olly and their family (Mchungaji Marara, his wife and son, Hosea). After a short while they left to go and visit mama Kirango, who had malaria (and who was part of mchungaji Marara’s congregation, since his church was in Bisarye), and we ate. They returned before we had time to shower though, so after knocking my head on a shutter corner, waiting for hours (including having to get off the daladala when it entered an army base – off limit to civilians), having to receive visitors when I felt disgustingly dirty and eating when I was feeling a bit queasy after the bus ride; I was really fed up!

Monday was a day for visiting the Mchungaji’s house in Nyamuswa, and we “pumzika”-ed while Rhoda went to help pick the rest of the maharage, before we arrived in Nyamuswa at 11.15ish. The mchungaji showed us round Nyamuswa once the boys had arrived and we also got to sign the visitor’s book for Nyamuswa. We were fed sodas while Rachel and I signed the mchungaji’s visitors and suggestions book (he runs a kind of bank business) then left for his house with his son, Hosea, while he stayed to work. The next few hours were spent eating and talking, and by about 4.20 I was really frustrated, and trying to hold back tears as I fumbled for words in Swahili and seemed to be in the mchungaji’s firing line for questions like “why do you think people still fight each other, even in the West?” I think by the end they were convinced I couldn’t speak Swahili, and I was completely fed up. We left after a short talk done by Hosea on a Bible passage and a song and prayer. I was very glad to leave, as even though they were really welcoming, I just wanted to be somewhere more familiar – I was surprised how welcome and familiar mchungaji Wambura’s house looked! We arrived about 6.30 after walking the 4km back, and by the time dinner came, I think both Rachel and I were pretty exhausted mentally from trying to speak Swahili. We did a few speeches to say goodbye, gave mama the gift of a kanga, and went to bed, this time “tumechoka” (we are tired).

In the morning, I took pictures of the family, all the while expecting us to be late for the daladala, which was supposed to arrive at 7am. It arrived at 7.40am and we squeezed in as best we could. Musoma was a happy sight, and we splurged on a taxi to get us all to the office, where our car was waiting. Sadly, the car had a dead battery, so we had to jump start it then take it to the mechanic, though thankfully it was fixed by the end of the day. I think I would have had a breakdown if we had come back to no water or electricity, but praise God we had both, and we were so happy to be back home!

So, well done for getting this far, sorry it has been a bit of a long account!

Musoma

2008-06-11T01:46:00.001-07:00

So, we have finally arrived. Final tally:

Days from Iringa to Musoma: 5
Stops by the police: 5 (4 of which when I was driving)
Flat tyres: 1
Shillings spent on fuel: about 300,000!
Hours spent driving: approx. 30
Speed bumps: uncountable
Vehicles coming towards me on my side of the road: at least 15
Potholes: unknown, but oh so many
Helpful Tanzanians: all the ones we asked help from were wonderful, including the policeman.

Anyway, we have had enough of the inside of the car, and are ready to unload the poor overloaded thing. Now we just have to find out where we are living, and see if we can move in...

Iringa to Dar to Singida to Musoma

2008-06-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Well, the first leg of the marathon is complete at least. Highlights of the journey itself were probably learning to drive Rachel's car on the job (not too difficult with an automatic), overtaking enormous lorries crawling along windy mountain roads AND avoiding potholes at the same time (it takes skill y'know), being forced to slow down for a group of baboons crossing the road, and being faced with traffic coming towards me in my lane with nowhere to go but the hard shoulder (they WERE bigger than me).

Dar is still as manic as ever with traffic, and I was happy to let Rachel drive us back from our shopping trip, where we found out that we are bad influences on each other, and shouldn't be allowed to shop together without a limit on the budget. Thankfully for our wallets, we were rather limited by the amount of car space we have, and packing the car was truly a work of art. We even had to add in 2 more suitcases that were here in storage - it's a good thing the boys are getting to Musoma by bus!

Spending time in Dar was mostly a relaxing time: having some tasty meals with our good friend Arlene, walking on the beach, and getting lost trying to find Arlene's house.

Now, the journey will continue with the long stretch from Dar to Singida, in one day. I believe this is a good 11 hour journey, and some of it is on unpaved roads. Please pray for us as we set off at 5.30am...

The end looms

2008-06-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

So, can you explain how to play Dutch Blitz without the cards? Try doing it in English first then you will have a small taste of how confusing it is to do it in Swahili during an examination. Last Friday saw our language proficiency interviews and each of us took a turn to talk in Swahili with Johari, the wife of one of our teachers. She was lovely and made us feel at ease, but I really wish I hadn’t had that part of the conversation, cos it was difficult! Still we all passed with good reviews (though some seemed a little overrated actually) and got our certificates accordingly, though we had to cancel our Saturday lunch plans to do it.

We were still able to make our last trip to the farm, however, and 4 of us did the walk for the last time on the way there, getting a lift on the way back. We had the chance to marvel at the way the fields around us had changed through the 4 months we had spent in Iringa, and the dry season’s effects were becoming much more obvious as we saw fields of wilting sunflowers. Children followed us for some of the way, giggling like they do at seeing wazungu (white people), and we had a great time calling out greetings to all and sundry that we met on the way!

Unfortunately, we found out that during the night the new family in the banda close to mine had a major attack of siafu – big biting ants. I was confused at finding the remnants of the battle that the night guards had had with them, but on hearing the story I was relieved they didn’t come near my tent. I don’t think I would be able to sleep peacefully for a few nights after that ordeal – waking up with ants biting me!

Thankfully, we were able to reschedule our Saturday lunch for Sunday, and after leading the international Christian fellowship church service, we went to the house of one of our teachers, Hadija, for lunch. Mai was also there, having helped Hadija to cook, and we had a great time and good food too! We got to marvel at the terribly bad acting on South African TV, and play a few games of bao.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to see Africans at night without a torch? Put them in a black uniform like the night guards at the campsite, and like me you will jump out of your skin when you happen to swing your torch in their direction and realise they are sitting quietly only 3 feets away from where you are walking. I haven’t met with any snakes at night yet, but I think this makes me jump just as much!

Hmmm, now my tent zip has broken too. I am very glad it hadn't happened before, as I am now paranoid I will get all manner of nasties in my tent. Thankfully they are working on fixing it, but I don't know if they will have much luck - they are very resourceful though!

So, a few more days, graudation, then the long journey North...

Assessment looms

2008-05-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

So, we have had a great influx of people on the campsite recently - there are now 11 kids and 2 babies! It is probably a good thing we are going soon, as the dining room is full every day and when the teachers are there too, it is pretty hectic!

Sunday was our last chance to go to the village church (we are leading the international service next sunday so kind of need to be there!), so off some of us trotted off there and had a great time in the service. What was even more encouraging was that I actually understood most of the sermon! It was about faith and works going hand in hand, with examples from Abraham and Isaac. The singing was awesome as usual, and we had fun this time since we had bought Swahili song books recently so could follow some of the songs. We had to return as soon as possible to say goodbye to Will and Amanda, as they went off to Dar after lunch, so this time we didn't get to visit any of the villagers who had invited us.

This week we had a bit of a change up with the classes and I found myself in the brainy peoples class (by this I mean that the people in it seem to be human dicationaries). It was pretty discouraging at first, as I found myself slower, but it was a good lesson in humility! Tomorrow, we shall have an oral assessment, to see what level we are at - a scary thought. I am much more confident about my speaking when I am with people I know, but this teacher has been brought from Dar to test us, so that she won't be biased. Argh.

There still seems to be a void of mail at the moment, but I received a rather belated birthday card today which made me happy - it's the little things in life :)

So, one more week to go, graduation, then off to Musoma!

Old stones and xylophones

2008-05-23T05:03:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday we had an evening out! We were going to a benefit concert that evening, where one of us was playing the piano. It was a concert to raise money for Neema crafts, who are currently needing to pay for many of their workers to go and get some prosthetic limbs and the for new building, as Neema crafts is a place for disabled Tanzanians to work. We asked a driver to work overtime, and paid him ourselves, even taking him out for dinner so that we would be able to get back from the concert afterwards. The concert was pretty awesome, with two piano solos, a classical guitarist, a guy playing Spanish dances on his guitar, and a group of Danish (+1 English) singers. Mid-way through they sold some of their great chocolate cake.

Friday, we went on a fieldtrip. After the feedback we had given on the trips the week before, they gave us the vocabulary beforehand (a good thing with words like mmomonyoko – erosion!) and after the morning devotions we left to go to Isimila Stone Age site. There we were met by the guide, Daniel, and given a talk (in slow Swahili, thankfully!) about the stone implements we could see on the table in his office, and generally find all over the site. Isimila is an old lake basically, where animals were hunted as they came to drink, hence the tools found on the “lake bed”, which is now dry. I was pretty excited I could understand most of the Swahili! The funniest thing was the “thousands of years old” tool being used to prop the window open – only in Africa! We then went for a walk to the main site, which had some awesome rock formations! It was a little bit like Bryce Canyon on a smaller scale, and with different coloured rock – very dramatic! Sadly the view was ruined at one photogenic opportunity by a power cable running overhead. We walked for quite a while, and were very touristy taking photos of each other beside big rocks, then made our way back to the cars. On the way back, Johnny, who had been bravely struggling with his crutches through soggy and squelchy sand, was carried for a way by the teacher who was with us on his shoulders: a very funny sight which I have captured on camera.

Later that afternoon, some of us began a Lord of the Rings marathon, which I only intended to watch part of, having nothing to prove (after all, I have done it before!). The other crazy people ended at about 4am.

Sunday was another usual ICF church day, and I went snuffling as my cold had progressed during the night. We did our usual internet after church, but first we did a bit of praying over the Neema crafts new building which was supposed to have been finished that month, but was still very unfinished. After a nice lunch I chilled out until 4pm when some of us met for a walk and we went to the waterfall again.

On Monday we found that we had Moshi for our teacher, which is cool as she very nice. We had some new students at the campsite – a family who had just come from 10 years in Malawi, and a couple of single ladies. As a result, we have now got 7 kids and 2 babies on site! After class, we gathered altogether to practise singing 2 songs in parts for a performance on Wednesday. We didn’t do too badly, and Amanda had a laugh listening to us.

Tuesday, and we have continued to practise speaking in our classes, talking on topics such as Jesus’ miracles, his parables and why it is good to read the Bible. We pray for our teachers’ eyes to be opened here too, as we struggle to convey the truth in our faltering Swahili!

Wednesday was great fun, though pretty crazy, as we had lots to do before the evening excitement. We all met together at 5.30pm to meet the Tanzanians from the local church, and after handing out sodas, we got started with a barbeque and attempts at talking to each other (in Swahili). We heard the church choir singing, and performed our little song, then there were some dances and brave contributions from some of the kids. The evening didn’t last too long, only until 8pm, but we had a good time – I hope the Tanzanians did too! The language school presented the church choir with a xylophone mid-way through the evening, though we were unable to find the name for it in Swahili so they had a great time trying to pronounce “xylophone”.

baridi! kweli, hata katika Afrika!

2008-05-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we’ve had a pretty normal week in terms of class. Each morning has been warmer than the last, but that isn’t saying much as it has been sooo cold before 10 each day. When I go to class, I am wrapped up in as many layers as I can manage. On top of that, we have needed coal stoves in our outdoor classrooms to keep our feet warm. By chai time, I have usually stripped off the hoodies, and the kanga sometimes too, and by lunchtime and the afternoon, I am back to “hot English summer” gear! It’s crazy, but this is the dry season, and I am learning to adapt. I just didn’t expect Africa, and near to the equator, to be cold at any time. How wrong I was.

This week we have had Ismael again, and have been studying more Bible and even learning to read the newspapers, a difficult task due to the new vocabulary needed. So far, we have read Ruth, 10 verses of Ephesians, Psalms 139-140 and some of Genesis. I have received my second Swahili Bible too, this time the Revised Union Version, without the English translation.

It seems that even in Tanzania I can’t get away from people who know my sisters, and have now met 5 such people (same sister) – who would have thought it!

We were told on Friday, that next week will begin our ordeal of group sessions: this involves one or more of us standing up in front of the whole group and preaching/leading a Bible study in Swahili! Originally, they had planned to make us all preach, but we complained (I don’t even want to preach in English!) and they decided to let us do it in pairs, and do a study/testimony instead if we want.

Hopefully next week will produce our licenses, as the police now have the official paper, and are just waiting for the guy who signs them to return so we can get both signatures necessary. Some people’s provisional licenses have expired, but hopefully they won’t have any problems, as Ismael will be with us to help.

2008-05-04T01:37:00.000-07:00

Ruaha National Park

Simba

Twiga

Safari and May day celebrations

2008-05-04T01:36:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, we took a trip into town for our lessons to hear from some Tanzanian women (the teachers and one lady whom they had brought in to talk to us) about their culture. Included in this were hints about wearing kangas, about marital roles, about dress code and much more personal stuff. We got some good advice from them, and the women were really open with us, which was cool. We also got to go and see the stadium, where the May 1st celebrations were to be held. They had set up many stalls around the edge, reminiscent of any event or show in England, except no food related stalls. That evening we had a fun dance party in the dining banda, with line dancing, cha-cha, Viennese waltz and even some Macarena.

Thursday morning; we left for safari. We had to go via town, which was seriously snarled up with traffic for the May 1st celebrations, so that took some time to get through, but we eventually got off, and took another 2 hours or so reaching the campsite where we would stay. We had our lunch there at the camp, and then left for the park. We got to the park on the first day at around 3.30, and driving around got to see many cool animals. We came across some giraffe legs at one point, and then got to see the lions (thankfully fully sated with giraffe) a little way down the road – it was amazing how little they cared that we were there. We got to see some other cool animals that day, including jackals, swala, zebra, rock hyrax, mongoose, giraffe (live ones), and a crocodile. We left as the sun was setting, and made it out of the park just in time before it closed for the night, stopping only once as we stumbled on a giraffe right next to the road. When we arrived back at the camp, we got to eat our pasta and meat in darkness, to the light of a few candles. We discovered suicidal insects, which liked to die in our food, all over the tables too. One even took a nose-dive into my water.

We all woke, and were ready to go by 6am, but had to wait for the food to be ready. We set off and were at the park around 6.45 or 7am, after an encounter on the road with some African hunting dogs, which was pretty exciting since they are very rarely seen. We spent some pretty exciting moments that morning, seeing some new animals, and some old ones that we had seen the day before. We happened upon a lioness with her cubs at one point, which was really cool, and during breakfast we had an awesome view of the park in the early morning. Later in the day, we got to see some animals closer than we had before, for example many hippos (kiboko), some warthogs (ngili), a male lion (simba), more crocodiles (mamba), plenty more elephants (tembo), giraffe (twiga), zebra (pundamilia) and swala, some Grant’s gazelles, and many pretty birds. Daniel was a very good baby for the most part, only having a long screaming fit once, just before lunch on the Friday, which was mainly because he was tired. Alphonce was a great driver, pointing out many animals that we wouldn’t have spotted otherwise, and driving very carefully over the bumpy roads. We spent most of the time standing with our heads out of the roof, which was pretty tiring, so sometimes we sat on the roof itself, which was fun but meant we were very dusty and wind-swept by the end! We returned to the campsite by about 4pm, tired but happy with our sightings, and ready to travel back to camp. The journey took only 2 hours, and we were thankfully back in time for dinner, though I made the bad mistake of not getting changed for dinner and got many bites to prove my stupidity. My shower that evening felt WONDERFUL! Saturday has been pretty uneventful for the most part, except for the very exciting hippo sighting – yes, we have seen the Riverside hippo! He made a big noise, and we all ran out to see him, chasing his bubbles down the river until we saw him (or his eyes and ears at least!). The staff got very excited, when they realised what we were doing, and ran with us to see him. It didn’t matter that many of us had seen multiple hippos the day before on safari – Bartholomew is a special hippo.

Sticks and snakes

2008-04-26T04:24:00.001-07:00

On Monday we found that our class had Ishmael, for the first time. We had a good lesson, dealing with some leftover grammar bits and pieces, and conjunctions. In the afternoon we went into town to go and have an official Tanzanian sight test prior to getting the Tanzanian drivers license. The sight test took about 10 seconds (no joke): cover up one eye after another and read the same line of letters – I mean, if you could read them the first time, then you would be able to remember them for the second time!! Still, we paid 5,000 for the privilege of the stamped bit of paper, and it greatly reduced waiting times the next day. At first we were worried we wouldn’t get the test, as one man said we could but then the receptionist flatly told us to come back tomorrow.

Before our trip into town, I managed to miss a bit of excitement in the centre of the camp, as a snake dropped out of a tree right in front of baby Daniel and one of the kids. Thankfully, it wasn’t in a bad mood, even though it had just fallen out of a tree.

On Tuesday, some of us went into town again, this time with Ishmael, to go to the Tanzanian Revenue Authority to get a driver’s license. I went along, since I realised that it would be a good idea, and would keep my options open for driving other people’s cars. We had no real problems at the TRA, though they were at first unwilling to even think about it, but after we handed over the documents, we soon walked out with provisional licenses. Since we only had provisional licenses, we were required to go then to the police station and get the full licenses approved. When we got there, we found our plans foiled, as in typical African style, they had run out of the fancy official paper they needed to use for the licenses, so we got turned away at the last step – grrrr!

We had the fun task of ordering 140ish jars of jam this week. This is to keep us missionaries happy when we travel to our specific locations. This is apparently the best jam we will get in Tanzania, and I agree, it is pretty tasty! I have never had pineapple or grape jam before, but they are very nice.

Other events of the week include the very rude attack on me by a stick which somehow I managed to upset. It came and attacked my foot as I was innocently walking back from the toilet, and gave me a rather nasty cut right where my flip-flops go. Rude, I tell you.
We had the joyous task of each doing a 30 minute presentation on Friday also. This was to be chosen from a variety of topics, and in the end, despairing of thinking of anything interesting, I chose to do a piece about the lesser well known animals of Tanzania. Obviously, it was in Swahili, and managed to go reasonably well, but I did fumble more than I would have liked. Thankfully it was only in front of half the class.

Plans are progressing for our safari to Ruaha National Park next week, so we look set to go from next Thursday to Friday.

Museums and Orphanages

2008-04-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

This week started by being pretty uneventful, though very funny at times. We have Tunku as teacher this week, which is a first for me. He has started making us pray in the morning (in Swahili) before the lesson, so when my turn came, I had my prayer all planned out in the shower, but when it came to pray it went completely out of my head, and I started to talk in English at one point! We have also been studying some Bible stories. One day we had a hilarious moment when Julia was relating the story of the woman with an evil spirit to us (evil spirit = pepo mbaya), and ended up talking about the woman with bad wind (upepo mbaya).

We also had our usual cultural trip on Friday, this time to the museum commemorating Mtwa Mkwawa - Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe tribe (who originate from Iringa area). In the museum, we got to see artifacts from his life, but although they were behind glass to start with, the guide got them out to pass them round for us to handle – very definitely not something that would happen in a Western museum! Mkwawa was chief from 1878 until 1898, and was famous for being very warrior-like, and for a victory against the Germans in which 500 of them were killed. This was during German colonisation when the Germans had refused to cooperate with Mkwawa and had just established themselves at Iringa town. Later, he built a fort to defend himself from their retribution, but 3 years later the fort was overtaken and Mkwawa had to flee. He lived in a cave for a long time, but was betrayed by some of his men who had been bribed. He killed his bodyguard then himself, to deny the Germans the satisfaction of capturing him. His skull was taken to Germany until it was returned to Tanzania in 1954.

Anyway, on Saturday, I also had an eventful day. During the afternoon I went with some of the other students to Ilula Orphanage to play volleyball and football with them. I have to say I went with rather a bad attitude, not wanting to be there, but the girls were great and we had a great laugh as we tried to teach them the basics of volleyball. Needless to say it was rather chaotic, and balls went flying everywhere, but they seemed to have fun. Halfway through, we had a soda break, and everyone went round toasting each other with their bottle, wishing each other "maisha marefu" - long life. After playing some more, with different girls this time (we had to go through the teaching again), they treated us to two songs, one of which was about AIDs being dangerous - a bit random as entertainment, but understandable if you consider that this is how most of them lost their parents. After, they started dancing in a circle, with a few in the middle. During that dance, we each had a turn being pulled into the middle to dance, much to the amusement of the girls. It certainly helped me get over my selfishness of not having wanted to go in the first place, when faced with such gratitude that we came at all.

Some pictures

2008-04-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

Belated pictures from Utengule and the Mbeya trip

Birthdays and car accidents

2008-04-13T01:59:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday I went for another extended trip to town for girly outing to do internet and have lunch at Neema. The girls were lovely and treated me to my lunch as a birthday present, which was very nice! I sampled another of the wonderful sandwiches that they serve there, and was enjoying some passionfruit juice until a fly decided to die in it – oh the joys of Africa!

Sunday was another international church service day. The sermon was about loving each other, something which we had to put into practice not 2 hours later, travelling back to the campsite, all getting on each others’ nerves – communal living can be tough sometimes!

This week our class had Khadija again, which was good because we like her. We were very happy to learn that we didn’t have any homework on Monday, and I was able to spend some of the afternoon teaching some of the Tanzanian women to ride a bike. This was pretty hilarious, since we didn’t really remember well how we learnt, and we had to teach with mime and limited Swahili. I discovered that there are still lots of things I don’t know how to say. In the end, one of the girls picked it up pretty fast, another was well on the way to getting the hang of it, and another ran away after the first try. That evening we had a bit of a shock, as Amanda and Will got us all together to tell us that one of the teachers’ cars had had an accident – their car had lost a wheel or something, and spun a few times off the road. Thankfully the teachers were not badly hurt, but it meant that some would be off for a while, recovering.

Tuesday; my birthday! I woke up at my usual time, and opened my cards before going to breakfast and class as normal. Today, due to the lack of teachers, I joined with another class. I was very surprised to learn that two of the teachers shared my birthday! We learnt about the hypothetical conditional tense “If I had... then I would have...” and had many good laughs. At chai-time, I found a birthday sign hanging in the dining room, which looked like it was made by the kids, which was really lovely of them. The rest of the morning passed as usual, but seemed to slow down in the last hour as I got fed up of working on my birthday, and wanted lunch. I think that is the first birthday I have had to work on!

The rest of the week passed much as usual, but after that first day I moved back into my usual class, feeling much more comfortable practising speaking with people I am used to learning with. On Friday we had a cultural trip into town, which involved two Maasai coming to talk to us about their way of life. This was fascinating, and we learnt many cool things, then were able to ask questions. Some of us tried to ask in Swahili, and mostly succeeded in getting the idea across, with a little help from the teachers.

On Saturday, I went back to the farm for the first time in ages. This time I decided to take some cake along, as we always forgot before, then felt guilty for not sharing. I therefore spent some time in the morning making some brownies, and they were much enjoyed! In the evening we had an exciting time when the hippo made loud noises by the TV banda, but sadly we couldn’t see him either of the times we went to look.

Church was fun on Sunday, as it started raining partway through, and we had to move our chairs to avoid being dripped on as the roof leaked in random places.

Back to studying

2008-04-05T04:37:00.000-07:00

So, we went back to work last week. Friday was the official last day of the holidays, and I spent most of it in town enjoying taking time to do things slowly, without rushing. A friend and I therefore went over lunchtime and had lunch at Neema crafts, the place which employs handicapped Tanzanians to make crafts and great food. Since we had gone into town with the supply vehicle, which had left long since, Amy and I decided to take a daladala back to the campsite. We found the right one and got directed to seats at the back. The daladala kept filling up, until there was no aisle anymore (they have fold down seats in the “aisle”) and people were squashing around the door. When we set off, Amy and I worried about the fact that we were at the very back, as the bus was going a lot further than Riverside, to Ilula, so not enough people would get off to make space for us to exit. Our fears were borne out as the daladala continued to pick up people, to the point where they climbed in through the windows to reach minute spaces at the back. People were eventually hanging out of the door, getting splashed as the daladala drove through puddles at 40 miles an hour! When we reached our stop we were faintly worried by the thought that we would have to exit via the window, but were relieved when everyone obliged and moved out of our way.

The weekend was pretty relaxing, with only occasional guilty moments when I realised I should revise some Swahili. Sunday itself was a bizarre day for me, as having not enough spaces in the cars to take us to church, I opted to be the one to stay behind. I had an awesome time though, listening to some sermons I had recorded on a DVD.

Monday; we were back to our same classes, but this time we are in the classroom called mount Kilimanjaro, at the top of the hill overlooking the campsite. This means a little bit of a walk each day, but it is quite nice to have the exercise. Class has been with Vivien, and this week we have covered colours, weather vocab, mahali class (the noun class that deals with locations), stative verbs and causative verb endings. During class on Monday, we were required to do our usual chatting to Tanzanians about the campsite, and during that I managed to have some fun learning (and amusing the Tanzanians) how to walk with something on my head. I am amazed by their ability to carry heavy things, I have seen one carrying an OVEN on his head before! I managed ok with the basket of laundry, but only with one or two hands supporting it.

On April Fools day, we all got an email trying to convince us that they had moved conference to Switzerland, instead of Kenya due to the unrest – I am so gullible, it almost worked!

On Friday, we had a good cultural trip instead of class. We were taken to a school run by some Catholic sisters, and saw how they are taught to make really yummy food, like pasta (the nun who teaches the cooking classes is a diminutive but scary Italian lady who has been in Tanzania for 48 years!) and biscuits. That was a pretty short trip, and after it we went to spend longer at the Matumaini centre – a place which takes in single teenage mothers and teaches them crafts to support themselves with. They had an amazing range of crafts, and produced some beautiful things. We saw batik-dyeing (and tried our hand at tying the cloth ready for dyeing too), clay pot making, weaving (one of us had a go at this and took ages doing 2 rows – they are seriously speedy at it!), making little toys, computer classes, embroidery and knitting. We had a fun time, but were not able to understand everything that was said to us, sadly, so the teachers translated for us.

Mbeya

2008-03-28T04:34:00.000-07:00

So, last Friday morning I packed up my tent and set off for Mbeya. We packed all of our bags in the trailer attached to a Campsite vehicle, and bounced off down the road to the bus stop. I kept an eye on the luggage out of the back window, because it was bouncing all over the place, and I was worried that we’d lose some. Thankfully we didn’t.

Our 5 hour bus journey was reasonably uneventful, except for when we stopped for the toilet break (about 2 ½ hours through the journey) and the vehicle started to smell strongly of petrol. The bus itself is amusing, the upholstery is really bright and clashes magnificently and most long-legged passengers have barely enough leg room to sit.

We arrived in the pouring rain to Mbeya and walked to the guest house about 6 minutes away. We were then invited to another missionary’s house for some hot cross buns and there I met some of the Mbeya group who had come for the buns. I was amused to find that two of them knew my sister Julia.

Afterwards we went along to an Anglican cathedral for a Good Friday service. I got to meet one of my relatives who works in Mbeya for the first time there, which was very fun, in fact more fun than the service itself. At the beginning of the service we all stood for the Bishop to arrive, waiting for about 7 minutes in silence, looking at each other wondering what we were doing. When he did arrive, he did a sort of double handed wave, which we dutifully returned, then proceeded to do very little until communion.

After the service we all went down to the Mbeya hotel for a meal together – we had to wait...for 2 hours. At about 9.15 we got our food, so when we went back to the Karibuni centre we were all pretty tired, collapsing into our beds gratefully.

On Saturday, we met people for a walk to the Ngozi crater. It was about 1 ½ hours walking up to get to the crater, and it was through some absolutely stunning rainforest. Half way up, the parents with their babies strapped to them decided to head back again, as it was getting pretty rough going, but we continued on to the top where we had our picnic. I had worn my sturdy sandals, and got very muddy feet, but found that it was worth it, wearing sandals and a skirt, if only for the fact that everyone else’s trousers and shoes got disgustingly wet and muddy. Still, my legs were exposed to the biting insects, which was not fun. When we reached the top, we saw...nothing. There was loads of mist rolling across the lake, so the view was obscured. Still, we squatted down for lunch, and lo and behold, the mist cleared about 15 minutes later and we were able to get some great pictures. During the descent, the path was seriously muddy and we had an awesome time sliding down in some places, and getting absolutely filthy. I took a picture of my feet at the bottom to prove my filthiness! My thighs were seriously sore after doing all that ascending and descending, trying to steady myself from slipping etc., especially the next day!

After returning, we trudged out to a place called Mamaland, which was basically a bar/club with a place on the side that roasted meat and cooked chips. Most of us had roasted mbuzi – goat and chips, which was pretty tasty, and with drinks turned out to cost about £1.50! When we were leaving I managed to put my foot in about 4 inches of water which had flooded the entrance since our arrival – we had to exit via the back route. Only in Africa!

By the time we had finished walking round Mbeya after church on Sunday, we had some time to chill out and relax before we went to help cook pancakes in another room. We cooked up a huge pile of pancakes and had a homemade choc sauce, chocolate chunks, pineapple, orange and banana and pancake syrup for toppings. It was very tasty! We went back to our rooms very full, and ready to pack up for leaving the next day.

We were picked up by a daladala, which we had chartered especially, and arrived at Utengule by about 11.00. Utengule means “place of peace” in Kisangu, the language of the Sangu tribe. It is a huge coffee plantation, set in the mountains around Mbeya. Our bandas were spectacular, it really felt like luxury after tents and sharing the room at Karibuni! Sadly, when we came to eat our bread for lunch, we discovered some loaves had gone a bit mouldy, and in the end we had to eat a very random meal of porridge, noodles and avocado to use up our leftover food before we left. Though the weather was great when we arrived, it started raining later, as we played table tennis (outdoors), squash and went swimming. Upon returning to my room on the first night, I discovered the biggest, fastest and flattest spider I have ever seen, and proceeded to enlist help in getting rid of it. We found it had returned during the night, and had to chase it out again later – some insects just don’t understand how unwelcome they are!

For the remainder of our time at Utengule, we walked, played squash, swum and hung out together. It was a really fun time, and a great break from studying. On Thursday, we returned to Iringa on the Nganga bus line, which took about 7 hours, being picked up at the end by the Riverside vehicles. We were all pretty tired out by all the travelling, but refreshed by our break. Mbeya is a beautiful town, with some awesome mountains surrounding it – it was really cool to see the Rift Valley Wall from our breakfast table at Utengule! The only disappointment this week has been the breakage of my camera, which put an end to the excessive picture taking.

Another week in camp

2008-03-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

Doesn’t time fly? It seems like one day blurs into another when I have class! Probably the only notable event early in the week has been the afternoon of looking after baby Daniel. This was Monday afternoon, and was because both of his parents were sick and needed an afternoon to sleep. His mum brought Daniel around to my banda at 2.15, and I spent until 6.15 with him, occasionally accompanied by others. We spent some time in my banda, where Daniel chucked everything he could reach around the tent, until a hornet entered my tent and I ran out to avoid being attacked (with Daniel). I tried to take Daniel and put him in the stroller, but he was having none of it, so I took him down to the coffee banda, and others held him for a while. I didn’t have the strength of will to hear him scream as I put him in the stroller, so caved in and took him back out! Big softy. We played with Daniel for some time after that, in the coffee banda, until he started to get tired and then walked with him in the stroller to the end of the Campsite’s entrance road and back again. When we set off on the journey, I had looked at my watch and seen it was 4.30, when I came back I was bemused to see it was apparently 4.40 (we had walked 3 km), until I realised that my watch had stopped L. Maybe that was as a result of being thrown around by Daniel, but maybe not. Daniel had gone to sleep during the walk, so I tried to do some homework until he woke up, and I had to hold him again. I gladly relinquished him to his mum before tea, feeling that I had done my good deed for the year!

Class has been fine, with new topics being subjunctives, prepositions, passives and of course plenty of new vocab. Words to be careful not to mix up are now: kusini (south) and kuzini (to commit adultery)! A fun sentence in Swahili that we have had is “gari lilililiwa na Rachel” = the car was cried for by Rachel. What a tongue twister! This sentence refers to the tragedy of the Morgans’ car: it was accidentally backed into a tree.

Mosquitoes continue to love me, and I have even attracted a biting spider (buibui) or two, which have an even worse affect on me. Thankfully anti-itch cream costs about 40p for a tube here!
On Friday, after meeting my first African snake, the teachers took us to a school not far from the campsite. It was a school of about 270 students, and about 4 classrooms. We had to introduce ourselves, in Swahili, to the whole school – a terrifying experience! Then they sang a song to welcome us, then the Tanzanian National Anthem. After, I spoke with about 8 students in a group with 2 from our group. It was pretty tough going, as they were pretty shy, and soft-spoken, so trying to understand was made doubly hard! We had fun though, and ended up teaching them some songs, and they teaching us. After this, we went back to one of the classrooms and asked the teachers some questions about the education system etc. (attempting to do so in Swahili)

An eventful first few days

2008-03-09T01:18:00.000-08:00

Monday was an unusual day for us, as half of our group were sent to the market to try out their bargaining skills and market Swahili by buying food for the campsite. In the afternoon we did the usual aerobics before dinner. One of the babies of the group was brought in during the session, and joined in the exercises with his mother’s help – very funny, and great fun for him judging by his giggles.

On Tuesday, we had a very serious session to begin the day. The night before, one of the waiters had lost his father to Malaria. His father was only about 45 years old, and he himself only 17. The saddest part of this was the suddenness of it, as it happened that he was taken ill with Malaria only the day before he died. The lad, who was always so cheerful and chirpy, now has to shoulder the burden of providing for his family, who are all younger than him, or female. Most of the camp staff were allowed to go to the funeral. We offered our help, and in the afternoon I helped make a carrot cake for dessert J very tasty! In the morning however, the teachers used this opportunity to tell us about what to expect from a Tanzanian funeral, and let us ask questions. After this session and coffee break, my group was sent off to the market with a shopping list. My group had to get 20kg potatoes (viazi), 5kg rice (mchele), 4 piles of gingerroot (tangawizi), pilau spice (viungo vya pilau) etc. I wasn’t very good at using my Swahili, as I often froze up when spoken to, but the experience was good nonetheless. We spent over our budget, unfortunately, but apparently were only overcharged on the coconuts (nazi). The other group had to buy chickens from the market, though unfortunately they didn’t really know what they were looking for so they got skinny ones.

Wednesday was a very interesting day! We started the day with a lesson in slaughtering chickens from our teacher, then one of the guys tried his hand at doing it himself on the other chicken that we had. We then all filed into the kitchen and took over the cooking for the morning, learning to cook Tanzanian style. My first task was to peel tomatoes with a big knife (makes tinned plums tomatoes seem such a blessing!), help make some chapatti, then help get the pilau rice started over an outdoor coal/stone “stove”. We all joined in on the lesson in making coconut milk from the freshly grated coconut, and then some of us made a bean dish with some of it, then tried our hand at making ugali to finish. We were pretty tired at the end, as we had been standing pretty much all morning and making ugali had really tired out my feeble arm muscles – it is tough stuff to make, as you have to constantly stir it to keep it from lumping up.

For the rest of the week we have done very little exciting stuff besides the usual lessons. Sadly, one of our group’s cars got a bit dented when it was backed into a tree on Saturday. He had asked the staff to clean the car, but why they had to move it is beyond me! Needless to say, he is not happy.

Some campsite pictures

2008-03-02T00:33:00.000-08:00

Dining room view from Kilimanjaro hill

View of the surrounding scenery

Me at the waterfall near the camp, prior to getting soaked!

More language school

2008-03-02T00:31:00.000-08:00

Much of last week was the same as the previous weeks, with town trips and classes taking up most of our time. On Thursday we learnt that one of our number was sick, and one of us had to jump up and get the Malaria test kit, but thankfully she was negative (she hadn’t been in the country long enough, it takes 10 days to show itself). Basically she had the same sickness that some of us had in Dar; nasty but it passes in a few days. We kept her company that night while we watched the new Sense and Sensibility.

Friday was an unusual day as we had a half day of lessons then were told to revise all that we had done up until then for the rest of the time until lunch. Later that day I had a very productive afternoon, writing a letter, baking butterscotch blondies for someone’s birthday, and cutting someone else’s hair. Sadly I am still quite paranoid about his hair, and am convinced that it isn’t very good, even though he seems happy enough with it. He did say that he was quite happy to shave it off if it really went wrong, and he hasn’t done that so that must be a good sign!
Saturday was a beautiful day for the most part and in the afternoon some of us walked over to the farm for volleyball, while others drove. 15 minutes after we had left, the remainder of the people, who would leave later in the car, were told that no-one was actually going to be there, so when we got to the farm 70 minutes later we were greeted by the rest of our crew and no-one else. Some turned up later though. The walk over was very pleasant, passing through many fields and past houses and people. I was enjoying greeting everyone, and I think we caused a little bit of a stir among some of them who found it vastly amusing that wazungu were walking anywhere – no-one goes for a walk here for the sake of it.

Sunday was a fun day. We went to the Swahili speaking Vineyard church at 9.30 and enjoyed a new experience of microphones with waaaay too much feedback, songs without words on the screen and then a lively sermon delivered by an American then translated into Swahili for the rest of the congregation. It was great hearing both Swahili and English, as there were many words I could pick out, and that was fun in itself, but the sermon was very good too. The most amusing parts were when the speaker switched from English to Swahili, and then the Tanzanian translator would have to switch his translating to being from Swahili to English.

Monday morning saw us all in class together, learning about the noun classes in overview. It was quite nice to be all together, and although the noun classes are complex, they are also logical, and I enjoy knowing how to say stuff grammatically now! After lunch, 5 of us went to the house of one of the ladies who works at Riverside Campsite, and were shown how to make chapattis for the rest of the afternoon. We were able to get some good language practise in, as though one of them at least spoke some English, they all chose to speak to us in Swahili. I was a little frustrated at some points, when we ended up in 2 separate conversations, English and Swahili, yet I still don’t know enough Swahili to hold a good conversation with them. We got to eat the chapatti later, and take most of them back to the campsite for everyone else. We were walked back most of the way by one of the girls, and when she left us we decided to stay put for about 25 minutes and watch the sun setting over the distant hills – beautiful!

Tuesday was a great day, as one of the babies and another guy here (a Baptist missionary) both had a birthday, so we got cake for lunch and cake for dinner, plus an amazing Indian buffet dinner in the evening. It was sooo tasty! I also got to chat and pray lots with my wonderful prayer partners.

Another awesome thing that I have been noticing recently is that the stars are absolutely gorgeous here – when it is clear enough at night (which sadly makes it VERY cold), which it has been recently, you can see just how beautiful God’s sky is. I was looking up at them just now, while I brushed my teeth, and almost choked on my toothpaste in my abstraction.

On Wednesday, some of us went for a walk to a nearby waterfall. We set out with about 10 people, but my group got split off at one point, and we were the only ones who ended up actually at the falls. The view was very impressive, and at that point the sun was shining down on us, but as we walked back, we got caught in a downpour and were drenched to the skin! It was a very good walk, and I repeated some of it on Friday, this time in the sun! Later that afternoon, we had our usual praise and Bible study session, and I enjoyed this a lot as it was all about thanksgiving and made me think about all the things I am thankful for in my life.

Thursday was rather uneventful, except for a trip to town in the afternoon, walking around matumba – the second hand clothes market. As was to be expected, I was grossly overcharged and wasn’t sufficiently hard-headed enough to get a bargain, but managed to get two items for a decent price in the end. Our trip to the tailor to get our clothes was met with a rather embarrassed tailor telling us that he had forgotten all about them! We reordered the clothes and tried not to be impatient, as he is after all a very good tailor.

Friday was a great day for us, we were taken for a field trip to Ilula orphanage, about 40 minutes away from the campsite. We were told about the work that was being done, and got to talk to some of the kids (all girls at the moment). The orphanage is for those who have lost or will lose their parents to HIV/AIDS, and it was amazing to see the joy that is in these children despite their circumstances. The orphanage was very nice, and had its own animals (pigs, goats, cows, chickens etc) and fruit and vegetable gardens. The scenery was beautiful, with mountains rising in the distance and when we were there the sun was shining on it all, adding to the lovely view! Two of the girls I talked with (partially in Swahili, and partially English) were called Rose and Vashti, but I can’t remember the other names, unfortunately. (www.ilulaorphanprogram.org)

wiki wa pili

2008-02-21T04:10:00.000-08:00

Sunday was a nice and relaxed day, with church in the morning at an English speaking Anglican-ish style service, then internet until we got driven home (we take every chance we have at internet since we are in town so infrequently!). The afternoon was spent relaxing then playing volleyball. At one point we were convinced we had heard the hippo, but then after rushing to the river, found it must have been some of the water pipes groaning as a toilet was flushed. Very disappointing!

On Monday I was introduced to my new teacher, Deo. He was good fun to be taught by, and we learnt a song with actions on Tuesday as part of class. I was still in the same group by that point, but on Wednesday the groups were reshuffled according to the students desire to go faster/slower. On Wednesday we started to learn about some of the noun classes – the hardest part of the Kiswahili language. We also learnt all the titles for relations, and got thoroughly confused – my mother’s brother’s children (i.e. cousins) are referred to with the same name as my own siblings, and maternal uncles and paternal aunts have special names, whereas maternal aunts and paternal uncles are just called mama mkubwa/mdogo (big/small mother – depending on if they are older or younger than your mother) and baba mkubwa/mdogo.

On Monday I got the opportunity to go to town. I had fun in town, getting more material, going to the tailor, and finding some more tops in the markets. I hope that the clothes I have given to the tailor will come out as expected!

I have continued to be eaten by bugs (I now know how to say that in Swahili!). I was also bitten/stung by something that made the back of my hand swell up rather alarmingly on Tuesday. It is getting better now, but it was rather red and freaky for a while, and hurt when I flexed my hand.

Almost managed to not be able to post this, as I cleverly locked my laptop bag for safety, and didn't bring the key to town with the bag. It is a good thing the lock is reasonably cheap and I could break it!

Some views of Riverside

2008-02-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

Our dining room at Riverside

The river (minus hippo, sadly)

Description of life in Iringa

2008-02-17T00:59:00.000-08:00

The campsite is about 14km from Iringa town, down a little dirt track off the main road towards the river. There are 2 sites for the tented bandas and banda huts – one is a flat field close to the river, and the other part-way up the hill away from the river, on the other side of the central dining “room” (a banda) and most of the classrooms. The toilet/shower block nearest my tent has the best showers (heated by environmentally friendly wood fires) which soak everything within range (including your towel, unfortunately), but the non-flushing long-drop toilets, which tend to be a bit stinky! Each of our tented bandas has its own water bucket tap, and wash basin, so we thankfully don’t have to go to the toilet block just to brush our teeth. Inside each banda we have two beds (we are lucky to not have to share a tent, we get a lot of space!), shelves, a desk and chair, and bedside lamp.

One of the biggest issues us campers face is the fear of bugs – we have large biting safari ants here, which spring up all over the place and can only be effectively removed with kerosene. We apparently have snakes around, but so far I haven’t seen one, and although we normally could swim in the river, it is at present unsafe due to the presence of a hippopotamus.

So, a normal day at the language school would be:
7-8am breakfast: you can order any cooked item, and toast, porridge, cereal, pancakes and coffee are arranged buffet style.
8-10am first session of Kiswahili: 3 or 4 students are in a class with one teacher, and generally this session is spent reviewing the day before, or checking homework.
10-10.30: chai break
10.30-1pm: second and third sessions of teaching, with 5 minute break at 12.00.
After our buffet lunch at 1pm, we generally have homework to do, but often get to go into town to shop or connect to the internet. Dinner is much the same as lunch, served at half 6.

On Wednesday 13th, we had an interesting experience coming back from one such town visit. We had planned to go the day before to have a grand tour of the most reliable shops in Iringa, but it had rained non-stop, so when we saw the sun blazing on Wednesday we took the chance to go then instead. After a good afternoon seeing Iringa and buying cloth to take to the tailors, we left to the sound of thunder. As we drove back, the rain began to pour in earnest, and as we travelled along the road, we even saw an overturned lorry in a field next to the road. The river had been full to bursting before Wednesday, and many of the fields were already inches deep in water, so it was no surprise to turn down the dirt track to the campsite and have to engage the four-wheel drive. After some interesting puddles, we were then met with what seemed to be a proper stream, flowing at full force across the road. We waited for about 20 minutes behind the other vehicle, as the driver was nervous about going across, then braved the stream as fast as we could. Water came up over the bonnet of the car, and we were praying very fervently as we went across, but we made it safely back to the campsite. The campsite itself was a mess – some fields were inches deep in water, the river was fuller than I had ever seen it, and water was pouring down across the paths. Later we would find our tented bandas wet from where we had not closed the rain flaps. That evening, we all studied together in the dining room, and commiserated with each other over the fact that we had escaped the rain in England only to find that Africa isn’t always hot and sunny either!

Thursday 14th February; we had a very nice evening as Will and Amanda (the campsite owners) had decorated the tables with flowers and candles, and we had properly posh starters and a delicious buffet. The treat was still to come though, as dessert was a scrummy chocolate cake with strawberries (yes, they grow them here in Iringa!) and fruit was provided to dip into a chocolate orange sauce, the best chocolate I have had since coming to Africa. They had even given each of us a gift of a small box of fudge from a local craft shop. That evening, we had another worship session, with a devotional thought on love – very appropriate for the day.

Friday 15th February; we had to go into town today and practise our Swahili with random strangers, getting into conversation with them and finding out about them. I talked to some people from Maasai and Hehe tribes. I was surprised at how well we could talk, given we had done only 5 days of learning!

From Dar to Iringa

2008-02-12T04:17:00.001-08:00

Well, apologies for the delay in posting this, I have quite a bit to update you on now.

Last week was our final week in orientation in Dar Es Salaam. We had a relaxed week, with only a few particularly notable sessions. One was on Saturday, where we were presented with a discussion on justification vs sanctification, and the view of God’s grace as a gift vs wages in the eyes of the Tanzanian church. We were able to interview several members of the nearby Lutheran church on how they viewed salvation, and it made for a very interesting session!
On the Sunday, we travelled a short distance to a Swahili speaking church and proceeded to be very confused for the next 2 hours (short for an African service!) as everything was done in Kiswahili! After, we were taken to the homes of some church members, in groups of 4 or 5. We were fed very lovely food, and got to talk to them about their lives and how it is for Tanzanians to live in Africa. The couple I ate lunch with were not well off at all, but gave generously of what they had, and I was glad to present the mother with my prepared gift. The son, Solomon, was 4 years old and very bright and cheerful. His parents seemed to work very hard for his benefit, sending him to a private school, and even so his mother managed to be very active in the church. I was very touched by the generosity of their way of life, and sadly how little it would reflect my own in a similar situation – a lesson to me!

We had a wonderful evening on Friday, the last evening in Dar Es Salaam, and the Belinda Hotel. The hotel arranged African dancers to come and perform for us as we waited for our evening meal. They were very energetic, and it was so different to dancing that I am used to that I enjoyed it very much, even though I knew I was being feasted on by mosquitoes. After dinner, the participants and staff of orientation moved upstairs to our conference room for one last time to watch skits, raps, slideshows of photos (from the course, and from each participant, portraying their country and family) and distorted photos of the participants faces – very funny!
Saturday was a long day, with a 5.15am meet-up to load up the private bus, and a long journey to follow. We set off at 6.10am, after squeezing 15 people and their luggage into a small bus, and proceeded towards Morogoro for breakfast. After that very welcome stop (it was very cramped in my row, and my feet were constantly baked from the vehicles engine), we travelled further on into Mikumi National Park, along the Tanzam Highway. We were very lucky to see elephants, giraffes, gazelles, impala and baboons very close to the road, and our driver obligingly slowed down to let us take photographs (though sadly I was on the wrong side of the bus!). Finally, at around 3 o’clock, we pulled into Riverside Campsite in Iringa.

I was then introduced to my lodgings for the next 4 months: essentially a large army-style tent, pitched on concrete with two beds, a shelving unit, desk and chair inside, and outside covered by a banda hut. It was initially a scary prospect that this would be home for so long, but once I had unpacked and made it homier, it looked very pleasant! (www.riversidecampsite.tz) The evening was very enjoyable, with scrabble games and good food (I wonder how long it will be before I stop getting excited at the variety offered?) and despite the tremendous thunderstorms that followed in the night, and heavy rain, I felt quite cosy in my tent. I did wake up at one point convinced that I had a mouse in my tent, but thankfully not so! The only disadvantage of tent living is the slippery slope I have to navigate to reach the toilet block, which after the rain almost sent me down on my backside!

Sunday was reasonably uneventful, and due to the fact our language school doesn’t start until Monday, we had no way of getting to church, so planned our own worship session in the afternoon.

Monday: the lessons began in earnest! We started at 8am, arranging ourselves into groups of 3 or 4, then proceeded to small bandas set around the campsite to learn Kiswahili. Our lessons ran from 8 until 10, then after chai break from 10.30 until 1pm with a small break for 5 minutes in the middle. My group learnt the numbers in Kiswahili, and how to talk about what you are doing, as well as what you did yesterday and will do tomorrow. Kiswahili is a very logical language, and our teacher Moshi is very good. We didn’t get homework on the first day, as the exercise books hadn’t arrived, but we will be getting it in future!

2008-02-01T05:05:00.001-08:00

This week started on a wonderful note, with an extra half hour in bed! We were starting a new focus this week, and the week was to be entitled anthropology week. This started with talks on African worldview, religion, politics and history - a heavy beginning! On Monday, we had the afternoon off once more, so some of us filled in our time by navigating the swampy land behind the hotel back to the house of one of our leaders. Once there, nice and hot and sweaty, we proceeded to become much more sweaty by playing basketball against 5 or 6 teenagers, all ex-pat school kids. I think we got beaten by the team that was us students against them, but then they have had more practice at playing in this heat, or that is my excuse anyway.

Tuesday was a normal day for starting, and this time we had a session on “African friends and money matters”. We did a form of role play to help us to understand how this culture views money and generosity, and it was actually very effective in communicating that. Later in the morning, we had a trip to Mwenge market. This was a fieldtrip to teach us about Tanzanian markets, to be noted down in our anthropology journals. We were split into groups of 3 and charged with negotiating the purchase of groceries – my team needed two bags of potatoes, one 2kg and one 3kg. The market was good fun, and the bajaj and dala-dala ride to the market even more of an experience! Dinner later that evening was a lovely surprise, with all of us getting very excited over the appearance of a new vegetable – green beans. Very exciting stuff, I know. The food they serve us is good, but there is only so much of the same kind of food that you can eat for 2 meals a day.

Wednesday was a very fun day. We had the usual morning talks, this time about Islam, relating to the authorities in TZ, and a session about the tensions faced during missions work (coping with the stereotypes of missionaries from nationals and people back home, and with the things that we have had to give up to come here. ) We had an early lunch so that we could set off to Mbudya Island, one of the islands just off the coast, at 1.30. Despite our preparations and speed walking, we had missed the boat by about 10 minutes and had to wait for it to return to take us. Still, we got over eventually, after wading out quite deep into the surf and having a rocky ride 20ish minute ride over. The sea was so salty that we could float easily without effort, and this was a problem later as I could feel the salt everywhere on me, especially my face. After dinner, the 5 of us single girls had an interesting talk from an older married lady on the issues of singleness in missions. Sadly I discovered 3 new bites during it, and spent the time trying to ignore the agony of their itchiness until I could get to my room and cover them with anti-itch stuff.

Thursday was pretty much focussed on a trip to Bagamoyo historical Sea town and port. This was the place where many African slaves were brought through on their way to slavery in Eastern countries, and in fact slavery was only abolished in Zanzibar in 1922. We went to the Catholic museum there, and heard about the journey of Dr. Livingstone’s mummified body (he died in Zambia) to this Catholic church before it went to London, and Westminster Abbey. After the Catholic museum, we went on with the guide to the German fort, then on to see some of Bagamoyo’s farms. The plants around us were cassava, groundnut, cashew nut trees, pumpkin, and a few others.

Friday has been another day of talks, this time concluding the “African friends and money matters”, then a new talk from a Tanzanian lady about Roles of men and women in marriage, and attitudes to sex etc. This talk was very enlightening but I didn’t manage to get all my questions answered, and more arose as things were brought to light, so although I have learnt a lot, I still have many queries. I told my testimony today too. I was quite nervous speaking out in front of so many people, but knew most of them well enough by this point to be confident enough, and once I got going it wasn’t too bad.

Week 1

2008-01-27T03:44:00.000-08:00

Salama! Habari za leo? Karibu! Well, it has definitely been a week of adjustments! In order to help us to adjust, and not to hide away on the internet, we have only been allowed on the internet at weekends which has been odd to get used to. We started orientation on Monday morning, 8am, after a lovely breakfast of bread, pineapple, banana, and various hot things like omelette (not very Tanzanian I feel!). After the usual admin announcements, we have spent time in sessions learning Swahili (only about 30 mins per day, more will be learnt in earnest at the campsite after orientation), learning about health issues and precautions, cross-cultural teamwork, and hints and tips for living in Tanzania (e.g. like transportation tips) and more. We have a diverse group, with 5 Americans, 6 Brits, 1 Norwegian, 2 Canadians, 2 Swiss, 1 Austrian and 2 Australians. There are also 3 babies living with us all here, and they are very cute!
Lunch and dinner here are basically the same meal, a buffet of rice, some form of potato, chicken, beef, beautiful fish (we even had one served up whole still staring at us – that was tasty once you ignored the fact it was still looking at you!), veggies of some sort (usually carrot), and fruit salad/pineapple and watermelon. I LOVE the pineapple, so am having it as often as possible, much healthier than pudding after every meal. The food is very good, but not very African I feel!

There is a swimming pool here at the hotel, but it took a few days for us to brave its slightly murky waters. I don’t think the illness that some people have come down with is at all related, or at least I hope not, since I swam too! They provide us with lots of bottled water (2.5l per day apart from meals when we get more if we choose, or else a bottled fizzy drink) so I am constantly trying to keep drinking merely in order to not let the stocks of water in my room get out of control! Brushing teeth in bottled water also uses some of our supply, but since I drink 0.5l water with every meal as well as the stuff we are given, I feel practically afloat in water!
One of the biggest banes of my time here have been the biting insects, and after the second morning I counted 27 bites, about 15 of which swelled up to beautiful red and purple blobs on my legs (my right leg seems tastier than my left!) – attractive. Mosquito nets take some getting used to as well, and though I like sleeping under them, it is quite a faff getting out from under them especially if I need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, or alter the fan controls. I have tried to make friends with the geckos outside my room, but they are rather skittish, so I have given up even trying to photograph them sadly!

We have taken the time to wander down to the beach that is across the road, and enjoyed the warmth of the sea – so different from cold English shores! We generally have some of the afternoon free, so have been able to nap, walk around (though in pairs for general safety), or chat as we have felt like it. Our meeting room being on the top floor of the hotel is a distinct advantage, as the air is cooler up on the roof, and much nicer to sit in. (Although it is a long way from my room – 4 floors down and 3 up to get back to my room from the meeting room!) Some evenings have been spent playing Dutch blitz and Uno in the cool of that room, though it is unusual to stay up late and I usually get to bed at ten, to get up at six (it gets dark here at about 7.30pm). Having come from a country where summer goes with long days, I can’t get used to it being dark at 8pm and it not being late!

On Tuesday we went to see Dar Es Salaam town centre. It was surprisingly quiet compared to what I expected, but otherwise I hadn’t any preconceived ideas, and found it very interesting to walk around, though rather swelteringly hot! Thursday was also fun, with a trip to one of the admin team’s houses where we learnt the intricacies of cooking in Tanzania. This involved learning about the substitutions you can make to approximate food from home, and how things should be prepared in order to avoid infections. We got to eat the yummy pizzas we prepared, as well as the bread and vegetables. The house (or mansion rather – the team member house-sits it for missionaries on furlough) also boasted a lovely clean swimming pool, which was very welcome! Some people saw a turtle while there, but sadly I didn’t.

We visited a dispensary on Friday, run by Catholic nuns. We were split into groups and my group was shown the pre-natal unit before going to talk to one of the doctors. It was roasting hot that day, and I was glad to return to air conditioning in the bus! Some of us got out at our leader’s house and had a tour and refreshments, before we walked the “back route” to our hotel, the Belinda Ocean Resort. This route was basically ridges of mud criss-crossing swampy ponds! Often, the ridges would break off, and we would have to navigate the best way across, or backtrack to another ridge. I found it fun, but some of the others didn’t. In the evening we had a worship session with some more testimonies (we have been having testimony sessions during the day, from 2 orientation members each day. It has been great hearing how God has led people to work here and how He has met them as they grew up, whether in Christian homes or not.), then watched “Ratatouille” – very cheesy, but also very cute and silly, so good for a mindless evening of vegging!

We have continued to have classes on Saturday also, and so had the same routine as usual, but on Sunday we are going to be going to an ex-pat church in Dar. Next week we will go to a Swahili speaking church...

Hello from Tanzania!

2008-01-20T04:49:00.000-08:00

After about 9hr30mins of flight and many more of car journeys, I have finally arrived in Dar Es Salaam! It is a warm 25-28C here with more humidity than I am used to, so life is slightly sticky at present.

I think my parents may have reached Sheffield before I started flying since our plane was delayed about 1hr15 due to being too heavy for the runway we were scheduled for (at Heathrow). This was an issue because we were planning to take off from the runway which had the crash-landed plane on it and we wouldn’t have coped with the shortened runway. We did get to see said plane though, it was all floodlit when we drove past it. It didn’t look too badly damaged from what we could see, so impressive landing job!

Well, we got underway eventually and we found that the film choice wasn’t as planned, in fact we had a greater choice so I was quite happy. I watched 3 films in the end, and tried to snooze a little, but with a lack of success that led to me watching the 3rd film. I happened to be in the middle of the middle of the plane with a free seat on one side, though, so I could stretch a bit more than usual thankfully! Sadly there was a baby 2 rows forward who screamed for a good 5 or so hours of the flight! Food was indifferent as always, but excitingly packaged which is the main attraction of eating on a plane (for me anyway).

We arrived in Dar about 8.15 am local time (5.15am our body clock time) feeling very cramped and ready to exit. Then followed the usual fun with the authorities, and having to send one of our party members through the checks to pick up our original work permits (we only had print-outs of scans). We then found out that there were 3 unexpected fellow workers on our plane, and we were duly introduced to them, as well as the welcome team come to pick us up. After a good deal of dithering, we set off to the coastline where our hotel is located (Belinda ocean resort) and after even more dithering, ended up settling ourselves into our rooms. Showers were essential at this point, and food would have been good too, but we had to wait until half 1pm for that: v difficult after a very light breakfast at half 6 or so! Our rooms have air conditioning, thankfully, but this is very very noisy! The view is scenic though, and I feel like we are in luxury compared to what I expected. I have already had fun with the staff wanting to come in (to take my TV away!) while I was in a towel after a shower, and getting confused when someone responds to my “hujambo” of welcome with a torrent of Swahili that I don’t understand!

Orientation starts tomorrow, with a gentle ease-in (we have the first afternoon off to get over jet-lag, though we are very fortunate since we only came from England; some came from NZ, Australia or Canada!). I am not sure what to expect, but we need to be in the meeting room for 8am and right now my body is convinced that it is the evening, so I will have to struggle on for a bit longer. Next internet access will be the following weekend sadly, but I have a Tanzanian mobile number now for those who are interested...

Life after Christmas

2008-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I thought I'd write a new post and reassure you that I am still here, but I have nothing interesting to report sadly. The past few weeks have been full of good Christmas food (we finally got round to eating the Christmas pudding on 31st Dec!) and enjoyable company, but sadly now things are getting back to "normal" around me, and I feel a bit lazy. The sum total of my days are: random packing, popping into town for an eyesight test or a little something for Tanzania I had forgotten, quiet time (of course), cooking for mum and Julia, and some vague something passing for exercise.

I did have fun last friday/saturday though, when I went to Derby to visit my lovely friend Jennifer. It is a depressing fact though, that most of my meeting up with people is so that I can say an official goodbye to them as I won't see many of them for 2 years!

Well, this weekend should be fun, with a trip to Bath (and more goodbyes) and Bristol, and being prayed out of the church. Maybe I'll have more to say after that!

I shall leave you all with a random picture of the Dore ducks, that I finally remembered to take for my American friends (don't ask!).

Christmas and family

2007-12-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a busy week or so! After coming home from High Wycombe, and bringing Nanny with us, it was all change again when Gavin came to stay on tuesday evening. Not content with 6 round the table, we gained another two in the shape of Morag and Serge (my sister and her husband) and often had Julia's boyfriend Song around for meals too, making lunch a squishy 9 around our table. Still, it's always good to have family around, and last weekend was no exception, as games were played, talk was...er, talked, and food was consumed in great quantities - and this wasn't even Christmas day yet!

It was all change again on sunday afternoon, and as I traipsed over to Manchester to see my cousins, the other visitors departed too. When I returned on Monday, though, the house had gained another Gray daughter (the only one left - Eleanor), and my aunt also. As you can see, it has been a busy Christmas so far, and has only just started to calm down.

Christmas day followed it's traditional (well, traditional for us) routine of walk, lunch (about 3pm!) then presents. The walk is not something that I always enjoyed, especially when I was younger, but this 3 hour trek was very helpful for later to make the excess food eating seem justified!

It's really cool to think (as most people don't on Christmas day) just how awesome the birth of Christ really was. Not that it compares to what was done on Easter day, but Jesus had to be born in order to carry out His ministry and then die for us, so His birth is so exciting!

Anyway, just about 3 and a half weeks left in England, and then it's off to face Summer in Tanzania! I am trying to enjoy the cold now that I have it, since I won't get it again for a long time, but I can't stop looking forward to the sun.

Well, Happy New Year all!

End of training

2007-12-17T04:29:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, I have been bad at updating! Many apologies for that.

So, back to the language project. Asante Twi was possibly the easiest of the languages to study, but still we had a very fraught 3 weeks! Each day was cram-packed with data collection sessions with Grace, and hours sat in front of the computer entering data into Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEX) or listening to sound files of data. We were required to produce 2 phonology reports over the 3 weeks and 3 grammar reports. It was tough dealing with such ambiguous data (collected by 6 people who all heard differently!) and trying to make sense of it, but we managed to hammer out 37 pages of phonology (the final report) and 48 pages of grammar report (even scarier, that was 11,525 words!). The alarming thing about that, was that it is only a basic sketch of the language! We missed quite a few things out due to lack of time, and were left with many questions still. For some of us, this was quite hard to cope with – we like doing things thoroughly! It was good practise though, but has also scared me somewhat for my work in Tanzania, since I will be doing similar things there, but in Swahili not English!

Our final week of the course was spent doing an ICT (Intercultural Communication Training) course, with very relaxed days of discussion and film clips J. On Wednesday of the last week, we had our ART party, a wonderful time of mince pies, junk food (and actually some healthy food like fruit!) and entertainment. We had a quiz, with questions about our time in High Wycombe, such as: “what time were the two night-time fire alarms?” and “How many definite destination countries are we going to?” There were also multiple sketches, some with a series of very clever grammar jokes (we are very geeky, yes, and it was possibly a bit unfair on all the non-Grammar people!), and some making fun of the fact that we spent so much time socialising by imitating a staff meeting called together to discuss the progress of the track components “food studies” (reference to the wonderful food provided on centre), “sports” (ceilidh dancing, aerobics, football etc) and “word games” (crosswords, scrabble, grabble and take two). Maybe you had to be there, but it was a very funny sketch for us J. Near the end, we had a present giving game. This was where you opened a present in the middle (taken from a pile of presents) and then decided to either stick with it, or switch with one already opened. The swapping got rather ridiculous as more people opened presents, and people tried to avoid the unwanted gifts! The amusement was that the presents were essentially things that we didn’t want to take home with us wrapped up, but some of the gifts were really nice too, and everyone wanted them. I ended up with a tin of tuna.

Sadly, we had our closing ceremony on Friday, and then a splendid Christmas lunch for the whole centre. The food was very tasty, and I think I was not the only one to eat too much! The afternoon was rather sad though, as people left to go home, and our time on the centre ended L
I think I have written more than enough for now! More later...

Asante Twi

2007-11-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

What a bizarre week it has been, and it's only wednesday!

Sunday was rather fun, with a last minute trip to Cambridge leaving at 7am. When I returned, it was to the fun of a hairdressing lesson, with my fellow students as both hairdressers and models! It is very useful to learn to cut hair when you are going to end up in Africa or Asia, but sadly though you can learn to cut other people's hair, it doesn't do you much good when your own needs cutting. Thankfully, Olly was willing to be practised on by about 6 of us new hairdressers, and he has quite a lot of thick hair, so it wouldn't have been too drastic had it gone worse than it did. I think we did quite a good job!

Monday saw the start of our language project, where we began to analyse the Ghanaian language Asante Twi, aided by our able Language Resource Person (or LRP) Grace. Amusingly enough, Grace knows a lot about the phonology and grammar of her own language, so often has to bite her tongue to keep from helping us! She is a very good sport though, and has provided us with some very bizarre sentences, such as "the scrounger's arm is dislocated" and "his arm is not big". Since we have all this analysis to do in 3 weeks, we are finding it pretty hectic at the moment, but thankfully we can divide up the tasks between our group of six.

Tuesday was rather an un-fun day, however, with just one of the many mishaps being that I cycled to Wycombe General Hospital in the rain for my final Rabies vaccination, and found that the appointment had been made incorrectly so I had missed it. On returning to the centre, I found that I had also missed my lunch! Whoops, not a good day.

Tomorrow will supposedly bring a Thanksgiving meal at lunchtime, so hopefully that will be fun and will make up for my missing lunch on tuesday!

Bonfire night

2007-11-07T08:35:00.000-08:00

Try explaining bonfire night to internationals, it's quite an interesting task! Makes you consider how bizarre the practise of the night actually is, especially the tradition of putting a Guy Fawkes on the fire!

My bonfire night was very pleasant. It started at the weekend, with a trip to a friend in London taking me to see the fireworks in Battersea Park which were timed to music, and having a lovely hot chocolate afterwards. Bonfire night itself brought a celebration onsite, with vegetable soup and rolls to munch on - very civilised!

So, the phonology and grammar continues, and soon I will be trying out the newly learnt techniques on an African Bantu language (Bantu is a language family) called Asante Twi (from Ghana). Before that though, I get a long weekend off - woohoo!

Also of interest, is that I have started having informal Swahili lessons, and have learnt a few items such as greetings ("hujambo!", "umeamkaje!") and the numbers 1-10. I am very excited to be starting the learning already, it has been so long since I have tried to learn a foreign language, and I am determined to be good at speaking it by the time I return from Tanzania!

4 weeks in

2007-10-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Another glorious sunset from my window!

What has been happening for the past 4 weeks? Where do I start? My Assignment Related Training has been a jam-packed timetable of grammar, phonology, anthropology, language and society, teamwork, training in computer programmes and more phonetics.

We begin at 8.30 with a thought for the day from one of the course members or teachers, and a bit of praise before we have two sessions of our track components. Grammar has been the toughest challenge so far as we have had new terminology thrown at us each day! I am continually grateful that I am learning this in my language, but some of my fellow students are learning this in their second language: much respect to them.

Coffee break has become an essential time in our day, as we relax after the first two hours before moving on to the next sessions. I seem to have had more work in these last four weeks in ART than I did at University! Maybe that is saying something about how hard I worked at uni that I don't really mean, but I think that the level of work is due to this course all being packed into 11 weeks and because we are having to learn in such a short time what people study for degrees and phDs!

One of the tasks that we have been set has been to divide into groups and research a particular part of the world (preferably one we will be serving in or near). Since there are so many people off to Tanzania, we have formed two groups and are currently in the stage of writing up our findings on religion, politics, languages, geography and literacy in Tanzania. It has been a very useful exercise in finding out about the place we are going to, and also in teamwork, though not so much in cross-cultural teamwork as it should have been as we are all British!

We still manage to have good fun though, and I have been traipsing off on some weekends to Bristol, Faringdon or Bath and plan to go to off centre again next saturday. There is a bonfire and fireworks planned on centre for Nov 5th, and the kitchen staff have even generously offered to cook up a special Thanksgiving meal at Thanksgiving for all those Americans who will miss it due to being over here. The fellowship here is wonderful, and something that is truly a blessing! I have even become quite used to having a roommate, and find it very odd that she is away this weekend. It is very sad too, when we have to say goodbye to teachers and fellow students as we are doing this week; our phonetics and Fieldworks (computer programme for phonology and grammar) teachers are leaving us now that that part of the course is over.

So, it is onwards I plough into the weird and wonderful world of languages. Please pray that we would all be able to learn all that we are being taught so that we might use it to glorify God in the countries, and with the people, that we are going to serve.

Why Bible translation?

2007-10-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you lived in a country where the Bible doesn't exist in your mother tongue. Now think of yourself setting out on your Christian walk without the Bible to guide you. How would you know God's love for you if you imagined that He didn't speak your language? How would you understand it if you had to read it in a second, or even third, language? God's Word is there to challenge us, equip us for service, and draw us closer to Christ, but how can it do that if we don't understand it?

"If your God is so great, why doesn't He speak in my language?"

Cakchiquel man to translator

Through the work of translators with many different minority language groups, they have come to understand God's personal love for them. The task still to be accomplished is immense though:

429 languages have a complete Bible

1,144 languages have a New Testament

853 languages have at least one book of the Bible

There are 1900 active projects,

2200 projects still to begin and...

196 million people speak languages where translation has yet to begin

So for me, it's a matter of answering God's call to make His Word available to those who do not currently have it accessible to them. It's not a mission to force people into accepting Him, but making it possible for those who do want to know Him to do so in the language that connects their heart to God.

My role will not be in the final translation process, but in the very first stages of setting an unwritten language down; deciding an alphabet that works well with the sounds of the language, and setting down the grammar rules.

"After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb"

Revelation 7:9

A work in progress

2007-10-02T13:55:00.000-07:00

ELC, LACA, ART: some of the many acronyms that I have had to learn to use fluently! However, they do actually mean something to me now, having been through the Explorations in Language and Culture, and Language And Culture Acquisition courses, and now being 2 days into my Assignment Related Training.
My time on the campus, where I am currently studying these courses, began back in the early days of August when the 2 week ELC course started. I have been introduced to Anthropology, Ethics, Cross-cultural communication and many more subjects. The course participants were from many and varied backgrounds, with students coming from Malaysia, Madagascar, Russia, Romania and many more places even as far away as Beaconsfield! (the other side of High Wycombe for those unfamiliar with the area) We have been living and working together for many weeks now, and have had many exciting social events such as a ceilidh, a barbeque and multiple film showings. Our numbers have fluctuated though, as sadly people have left us to go on to other things, but then others have joined. Not that it is all fun and games though, we have had hours of phonetics sessions learning the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) and have even had a chance to implement our newly learnt techniques by learning a small amount of a foreign language! The languages were Tamil, Mandarin, Malagasy (Merina), Iranun and Kelabit (the last two are Malaysian languages). I was learning Kelabit, and can now proudly order food from the jungle, ask after your relatives and say the usual greetings.
Now that ART has started, I am now in the process of actually learning how to fulfil my role doing phonology and grammar in Tanzania, and so far I love it! (okay, it has only been 2 days, but that is a good start at least!) Since there are many different tracks to do on this course, we have split up into groups doing Language Study Skills (my group), Survey, Literacy and Scripture Use. We still have phonetics too, so we can still be seen walking around Horsleys Green making silly noises at each other.
I forgot to mention, we have also been through orientation. Two weeks ago, just before our week off, we were shown the ropes in this wonderful organisation with talks on finance, tax, health insurance and even investigating the Myers Briggs Type Inventory!
Life on the centre is fun, but we do try and escape at weekends. We have been on many walks around the area, and have even had trips to Oxford and the theatre there. However we have been told that soon we may not have time to do these trips any more, and this course promises to be intense. I had better get back to work then! More later...