Galilee Song - Frank Anderson
Deep within my heart, I feel voices whispering to me.
Words that I can’t understand; Meanings I can’t clearly hear.
Calling me to follow close, lest I leave myself behind.
Calling me to walking into evening shadows one more time.
Refrain:
So I leave my boats behind
Leave them on familiar shores
Set my heart upon the deep
Follow you again, my Lord
In my memories, I know how you send familiar rains
falling gently on my days, dancing patterns on my pain.
And I need to learn once more in the fortress of my mind,
to believe in falling rain as I travel deserts dry.
Refrain
As I gaze into the night down the future of my years,
I’m not sure I want to walk past horizons that I know.
But I feel my spirit called like a stirring deep within,
restless, ’til I live again beyond the fears that close me in.
Refrain
We sang this song today to close our worship service at an international church here in Arusha. And the words gripped me. To live beyond fear. To leave what you have behind. It seemed like a sending song for us as we have three days to prepare before driving out to our final destination, Mugumu, for the first time.
Finally.
This small town, stuck between the borders of Lake Victoria, Kenya and Serengeti National Park, has been in our consiousness for almost 2 years now. We have done so much preparing now and my heart is restless to get there, to settle, to finally do the work we have been preparing to do, meet the people who are waiting for us, and be home. It will be a gruelling 10 hour drive from Arusha, the last half being extremely bumpy over roads in who knows what condition. We will load up as much stuff as we can into the Land Cruiser so with 4 adults, a toddler and a full load we will be squashed. But I'm excited to see more of TZ and to go through Serengeti on our way, and get a feel for the environment around Mugumu.
We have just arrived back in Arusha from 3 weeks in Lushoto. One of the more beautiful places I've ever been - the highlands of Tanzania complete with eucalyptus and jacaranda trees, rolling hills, cool weather. It was beautiful and we went on long walks everyday. Someday when I have time I will post pictures of that beautiful place. The highlight of our time was hiking up to a viewpoint with an 1000 meter drop-off overlooking the Masai Steppe (the plains) below. It was stunning. It was a challenging few weeks in other ways but God sustained us. Coming from Nairobi, Arusha seems so small, but now coming from Dodoma and Lushoto, Arusha is a metropolis!
I don't think we'll have internet access for awhile now. But please keep in touch with comments and e-mails. We love hearing from all of you, and could use your support in prayer over the next month especially as we settle into our new home. Pray also for the right person to watch Ben during the times that both Kurt and I need to work. We are hoping the community already has the right person in mind.
Thanks for your support everyone! Next time: from Mugumu!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Realities
Due to our lack of frequent internet access here in Dodoma, updates and e-mails have not been flying. Right now I'm in the health office of my sister, Jo's, church. She is working here in Dodoma with MCC, doing home-based care facilitation for people with HIV/AIDS.
We've been here for about two weeks now, and head to another language school in Lushoto on Sunday. While we've been here, Kurt has done some research on a potential water development project, I've been able to accompany Jo on a couple of home visits, and we've had some down-time to spend with Ben and get to know Johanna's life here.
Johanna is a local. She lives with two Tanzanian friends and her Swahili makes mine embarrassing. They just moved into a house three weeks ago, and have had non-stop company since. Her roommates, Vero and Janet, have shown us exemplary hospitality and helped us use our Swahili a lot (they don't speak much English). We have enjoyed cups of chai and swinging in the hammock on Jo's porch, eating rice and beans, watching sunsets and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Because of those same mosquitoes, Kurt and Ben were both diagnosed with malaria last weekend. Ben's temp spiked to 40.5 on Sunday night and we, with Jo's help as well as her pastor and pastor's wife, managed to find a dispensary open on a Sunday night that could test Ben. He had been negative that morning (I had suspected something was off), but I guess it just took some time for the little protozoa to spread enough to test positive. Anyway, he was quite positive this time. Then Amos and Esther (pastors) led us to another pharmacy that had all the medicine we could have asked for. We were so blessed to have people who cared with us and who helped us navigate our way through Dodoma and get the help we needed. The whole thing was a lesson in faith and trust for me. I even let a stranger give Ben a shot in the rear. Which helped a ton and within 20 minutes he was perky again. It had been quite scary for awhile to watch Ben burning up and acting so lethargic.
Anyway, four days later and my family seems to have recovered. We are thankful and feel like locals now. What with malaria and eating dried fish, what else do we need to learn?
Some other realities have hit me as I have gone on a couple of home visits. I knew they would hit but still felt unprepared when they did. We went to see a woman in Jo's program who was quite sick. We pulled up to her home, made of mud walls, greeted everyone, and then sat down to talk and figure out what was going on. I can't give all the details, but I know I witnessed suffering that I will never be able to understand. She had three children, and the eldest, 12, was running the house...cooking the meals, feeding the babies. Her 3 year old was quite sick with a cough and her baby also had a runny nose, swollen eyes and rattly chest. The woman would take long pauses to cough and right away I suspected TB. I know I will need to learn how to co-treat TB and HIV...so many questions. To hear this woman try to talk, to watch her pain, to watch her tired children...I can't describe it.
During the visit Jo and the other counselors brought along an MCC HIV care kit which are distributed by the material resources center. My heart was encouraged as I saw the contents: cough medicine. tylenol. nystatin. multivitamins. vaseline. polysporin cream. bandaids. and then clean sheets and towels. The woman was in tears as she received the sheets...she doesn't have any.
Since then Jo and her coworkers have taken her and her 3 year old to the local hospital. We visited her yesterday and she seems to be feeling a bit better. I can't articulate at this point all of my thoughts. I only can sense my own passion for this work growing the more exposure I get. A combination of feeling helpless to deal with all the issues - from health to economics to justice....and feeling empowered that even little things, like clean sheets, can make a huge difference.
As Kurt has visited some nearby villages to research water issues he has faced some realities as well. Families collecting water, literally cup by cup, from dry river beds. People who are facing the fact that their water supply will run out in two months. How can people function without water?
So that is a bit of an update. Please pray for us as we learn how to be here. How to balance life and work and family and relationships. How to live with integrity amongst people who suffer. It is not an easy thing when we have so much.
We've been here for about two weeks now, and head to another language school in Lushoto on Sunday. While we've been here, Kurt has done some research on a potential water development project, I've been able to accompany Jo on a couple of home visits, and we've had some down-time to spend with Ben and get to know Johanna's life here.
Johanna is a local. She lives with two Tanzanian friends and her Swahili makes mine embarrassing. They just moved into a house three weeks ago, and have had non-stop company since. Her roommates, Vero and Janet, have shown us exemplary hospitality and helped us use our Swahili a lot (they don't speak much English). We have enjoyed cups of chai and swinging in the hammock on Jo's porch, eating rice and beans, watching sunsets and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Because of those same mosquitoes, Kurt and Ben were both diagnosed with malaria last weekend. Ben's temp spiked to 40.5 on Sunday night and we, with Jo's help as well as her pastor and pastor's wife, managed to find a dispensary open on a Sunday night that could test Ben. He had been negative that morning (I had suspected something was off), but I guess it just took some time for the little protozoa to spread enough to test positive. Anyway, he was quite positive this time. Then Amos and Esther (pastors) led us to another pharmacy that had all the medicine we could have asked for. We were so blessed to have people who cared with us and who helped us navigate our way through Dodoma and get the help we needed. The whole thing was a lesson in faith and trust for me. I even let a stranger give Ben a shot in the rear. Which helped a ton and within 20 minutes he was perky again. It had been quite scary for awhile to watch Ben burning up and acting so lethargic.
Anyway, four days later and my family seems to have recovered. We are thankful and feel like locals now. What with malaria and eating dried fish, what else do we need to learn?
Some other realities have hit me as I have gone on a couple of home visits. I knew they would hit but still felt unprepared when they did. We went to see a woman in Jo's program who was quite sick. We pulled up to her home, made of mud walls, greeted everyone, and then sat down to talk and figure out what was going on. I can't give all the details, but I know I witnessed suffering that I will never be able to understand. She had three children, and the eldest, 12, was running the house...cooking the meals, feeding the babies. Her 3 year old was quite sick with a cough and her baby also had a runny nose, swollen eyes and rattly chest. The woman would take long pauses to cough and right away I suspected TB. I know I will need to learn how to co-treat TB and HIV...so many questions. To hear this woman try to talk, to watch her pain, to watch her tired children...I can't describe it.
During the visit Jo and the other counselors brought along an MCC HIV care kit which are distributed by the material resources center. My heart was encouraged as I saw the contents: cough medicine. tylenol. nystatin. multivitamins. vaseline. polysporin cream. bandaids. and then clean sheets and towels. The woman was in tears as she received the sheets...she doesn't have any.
Since then Jo and her coworkers have taken her and her 3 year old to the local hospital. We visited her yesterday and she seems to be feeling a bit better. I can't articulate at this point all of my thoughts. I only can sense my own passion for this work growing the more exposure I get. A combination of feeling helpless to deal with all the issues - from health to economics to justice....and feeling empowered that even little things, like clean sheets, can make a huge difference.
As Kurt has visited some nearby villages to research water issues he has faced some realities as well. Families collecting water, literally cup by cup, from dry river beds. People who are facing the fact that their water supply will run out in two months. How can people function without water?
So that is a bit of an update. Please pray for us as we learn how to be here. How to balance life and work and family and relationships. How to live with integrity amongst people who suffer. It is not an easy thing when we have so much.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Pictures of our life for the last month
We've been enjoying lots of delicious bananas since coming here.
We walk by this banana tree every day here
at language school on our way to class.
Aunt Jo (Carla's sister) came up to Arusha for MCC meetings from Dodoma,
where she also works for MCC.
Ben was happy to see her and even yelled "JoJo!" when
she came through the gate.
This is the "unorthodox" bbq I mentioned in my previous post.
We had a goat roast for visiting MCC country reps.
I'm pretty sure we had a wringer washer just like this in Eastleigh.
Bedtime stories. This is at our reps place in Arusha.
My Dad, Chuck, and his dog, Mac. My parents had Mac from
1997-2002. He's been living in a great place since then,
but he remembered my dad when he went to visit last month.
He even remembered Mom, Wanjela (an amazing gardener at Rosslyn) and the
campus itself. Amazingly bright dog. He's worked his way
back into my family's home. They weren't planning on
getting him back...but how can you resist this dog?
Another important milestone: Orange Fanta.
My sister used to chug this when we were little.
This was taken when we went out for Ethiopian food with
my parents, Ryan and Kristen and about 10 other Rosslynites.
We were told not to bother bringing lots of toys along...
people were right.
This is outside my parent's backdoor at Rosslyn, Nairobi.
Is it surprising, giving the lineage, (grandparents, specifically)
that he is a big time ham?
Minneapolis airport. Ben loved the moving sidewalks.
Minneapolis airport. Ben loved the moving sidewalks.
Our last day in Winnipeg with the Unger Family:
Big Ben and Little Ben:
Doesn't he realize how special this moment is?
Friday, August 10, 2007
Swahili
Kurt and I are in the throes of language school. Noun classes and possessive terms swirl through our minds as we try to sleep at night. Also disturbing our sleep are the screeches of invisible bush babies in nearby trees, a mosque call that happens more frequently than I think it needs to, and random monkeys jumping on our roof. Vilevile (also) we have a two year old who likes to wake up and yell "Mama!" so he can scramble into bed with us and ruin our sleep for a couple of hours. What a sweetie.
We are about 20 km outside of Arusha now, studying Kiswahili at a Danish development school and training center called MS-TCDC. However, my Danish has not improved. I don't know about my Swahili either, although I am soaking in the classes. After years of living in Nairobi it has always been a bit embarrassing to admit that my Swahili didn't go much further than "Sawa" so it is refreshing to get some formal training. Kurt and I are in different classes so we can't bug each other, but we do see each other at tea time, which is twice a day, if you don't include the tea I also drink at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And speaking of eating, we have been going to sleep with bellies full at the end of every day. Rice, curries, fresh avocadoes and fruit salads for lunch; crepes and omelettes and fresh masala tea for breakfast. And the occasional culinary treat that I would attritube to the Danes - like beef sausages. I don't always eat those. While we were staying with our country reps in Arusha we were treated to goat, duck and lamb as well. Not as delicacies, but as food that was actually cheaper than cow or chicken. We had a big goat roast last weekend and as you can see the bbq equipment wasn't necessarily orthodox. (I say "as you can see" because I hope to post some pictures. However, this may not come to pass - the connection is slow and my blogging skills are even slower - but we press on).
I digress...
Every morning here we wake up early and get ready, sometimes with a hot shower and sometimes with a colder one....then we walk the path from our little "room" past banana and jacaranda trees to get to the dining hall. We drop Ben off at the kindergarten, which is easier at some times than others - you can pray about that - and then go to class all day. We get out and have more tea, and then play with Ben, eat dinner, do homework, and try to get Ben down. It's a fairly small world here but we are enjoying it. We'll be here for another two weeks, and then get an additional month of study in a different area called Lushoto.
So that's kind of our life right now. Ben has impressed everyone with his balling skills already and is keeping up with the big kids. The child care situation is good but it ebbs and flows. He's been a real trooper but I think all of the changes are piling up and overhelming him a bit. He'll be ok and we're looking forward to all the time we can give him this weekend.
Well, class begins in 10 minutes so I'd better try to post this...it just might take that long.
We are about 20 km outside of Arusha now, studying Kiswahili at a Danish development school and training center called MS-TCDC. However, my Danish has not improved. I don't know about my Swahili either, although I am soaking in the classes. After years of living in Nairobi it has always been a bit embarrassing to admit that my Swahili didn't go much further than "Sawa" so it is refreshing to get some formal training. Kurt and I are in different classes so we can't bug each other, but we do see each other at tea time, which is twice a day, if you don't include the tea I also drink at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And speaking of eating, we have been going to sleep with bellies full at the end of every day. Rice, curries, fresh avocadoes and fruit salads for lunch; crepes and omelettes and fresh masala tea for breakfast. And the occasional culinary treat that I would attritube to the Danes - like beef sausages. I don't always eat those. While we were staying with our country reps in Arusha we were treated to goat, duck and lamb as well. Not as delicacies, but as food that was actually cheaper than cow or chicken. We had a big goat roast last weekend and as you can see the bbq equipment wasn't necessarily orthodox. (I say "as you can see" because I hope to post some pictures. However, this may not come to pass - the connection is slow and my blogging skills are even slower - but we press on).
I digress...
Every morning here we wake up early and get ready, sometimes with a hot shower and sometimes with a colder one....then we walk the path from our little "room" past banana and jacaranda trees to get to the dining hall. We drop Ben off at the kindergarten, which is easier at some times than others - you can pray about that - and then go to class all day. We get out and have more tea, and then play with Ben, eat dinner, do homework, and try to get Ben down. It's a fairly small world here but we are enjoying it. We'll be here for another two weeks, and then get an additional month of study in a different area called Lushoto.
So that's kind of our life right now. Ben has impressed everyone with his balling skills already and is keeping up with the big kids. The child care situation is good but it ebbs and flows. He's been a real trooper but I think all of the changes are piling up and overhelming him a bit. He'll be ok and we're looking forward to all the time we can give him this weekend.
Well, class begins in 10 minutes so I'd better try to post this...it just might take that long.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Travels and Birthdays
London in a day.
Here are the boys at Trafalgar Square. Ben especially enjoyed throwing our leftover US coins into the fountain.
Sleeping on an airport bench; a true MK rite of passage:
And lastly,
here's a picture of Ben's early 2nd birthday party.
We celebrated it with my parents and Kurt's brother and sister-in-law,
Ryan and Kristen, in Nairobi.
He enjoyed blowing out the candle repeatedly.
We'll try to post pictures of Africa soon.
Friday, July 27, 2007
So it begins
As I type there is bustle all around me. I'm sitting in my parents' old duplex at Rosslyn Academy. My mom is unpacking some bags that just arrived from the airport today, excited to finally be setting up home. Dad is out with Ben teaching him how to swing a bat. And Kurt is busy at work fixing lamps, computers, tables, and cameras on demand. I can smell a fresh pot of coffee almost finished brewing and I'm listening to tunes by Simon and Garfunkel.
And yet somehow, we are in Africa. How can Africa feel so normal?
We arrived here on Wednesday night after leaving Akron on Monday afternoon. We had a LONG 30 hour layover in London. It was fun, exhausting, and a little testing. Between jet lag, reclaiming bags, taking trains, buses, and the tube, finding places to eat...it was pretty exhausting. But we managed to get to Trafalgar Square, and snap a couple pics of Big Ben and Little Ben.
We arrived in Nairobi around 11:00 pm on Wednesday and got to the Mennonite Guest House 12:30 am. It was surreal. Of course, our camera batteries died in London and they didn't get recharged until now. So I've only taken 5 pictures of Africa and 3 of them are of Ben hitting a ball with a stick.
This post will not be long, since there is no time, but lots of chaos around me. We are happy to be back. We are excited about the moment, and also about what lies in wait. We are off to Arusha on Tuesday to start MCC Orientation.
I wil post some pictures and some more details when the dust settles in a couple of days. We are off to Ryan and Kristen's Kurt's brother and sister-in-law, here with MAF) tonight for supper. Ahhh, it's great having family on the continent.
And yet somehow, we are in Africa. How can Africa feel so normal?
We arrived here on Wednesday night after leaving Akron on Monday afternoon. We had a LONG 30 hour layover in London. It was fun, exhausting, and a little testing. Between jet lag, reclaiming bags, taking trains, buses, and the tube, finding places to eat...it was pretty exhausting. But we managed to get to Trafalgar Square, and snap a couple pics of Big Ben and Little Ben.
We arrived in Nairobi around 11:00 pm on Wednesday and got to the Mennonite Guest House 12:30 am. It was surreal. Of course, our camera batteries died in London and they didn't get recharged until now. So I've only taken 5 pictures of Africa and 3 of them are of Ben hitting a ball with a stick.
This post will not be long, since there is no time, but lots of chaos around me. We are happy to be back. We are excited about the moment, and also about what lies in wait. We are off to Arusha on Tuesday to start MCC Orientation.
I wil post some pictures and some more details when the dust settles in a couple of days. We are off to Ryan and Kristen's Kurt's brother and sister-in-law, here with MAF) tonight for supper. Ahhh, it's great having family on the continent.
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