Back to colder shores...

Well a few things are official...

Firstly, I am a terrible blogger. I haven't kept up with this nearly as much as I'd like to. I'd like to be able to transport everyone over here to Tanzania so you can get a glimpse of the richness of life over here. Sometimes I feel like words couldn't do it justice.

Secondly, I'm going to be moving back to New Zealand at the end of May, in just under 2 months now.

Thirdly, I won't be settling back in Auckland this time, but will be making the shift down South to Christchurch. I've never lived in Christchurch but with people down there that I need to spend some long-overdue quality time with, I feel that it's the right time to make the shift.

So it is with very mixed feelings that I'm starting the process of making the shift back. Its not just a physical shift but a mind and emotional shift too. I've discovered that even though I'm not a highly structured person, I very much need to plan the next step in order to make a smooth transition from one place to another. For this reason, I've already spent at least a couple of months researching jobs, looking for a car to buy, house to rent etc...all things which are logically much better left until closer to the time, but which make me feel like I'm doing something to help along the transition process. Does it mean I have a job, car or flat yet? Not at all, but at least I feel like I'm doing something!

To say I'm going to miss Tanzania is an understatement. I love this place more than I ever imagined I would. Every morning these days when I sit on my stairs with my coffee I am so thankful for being here. It's the peacefulness of the dawn, and the way that solitude and noise mix together. Its the dirt road with all of the people just doing life. Hard to explain and even harder to leave behind. How do I explain how at home I feel here? How do I explain what it's like to wake up and know that this is 100% where God wants me to be except to say that being here in Tanzania reminds me everyday of the grace of God. I can do nothing but give Him glory for the way He brings things together.

I am encouraged though that it is not a place itself that makes it the right place to be. If God has called me to Tanzania and has shown Himself faithful here, and He has time and time again, then surely the same will be true in Christchurch. Can I feel just at home in a freezing cold Christchurch winter as in this endless summer over here? I'm sure of it. Though it may require a few more clothes.

Anyway, enough forward planning for now. I still have two months here and I plan to make the most of it! Corinne and I are heading off for some road tripping on buses in the next week or so- yet to decide exactly where we'll go but I figure that while I'm here I really should see a bit more a the country. As well as that, my very good friends Dan and Kirstie are coming over at the end of April so I get to spend my last month sharing Tz with them! They're going to be doing some working in the Joshua Schools here, especially down in Magugu and I can't wait to have them here.

That's all for now...more later.

Beautiful children...

Mairowa

I enjoyed my time out in Mairowa last week so much that I thought it deserved its own blog. After almost a month of holidays, including a week on the beach in Zanzibar, and two weeks up in Kenyan Highlands, I was feeling plenty relaxed and ready to get back out and see our student teachers.
Mairowa is a small village a bit less than an hour off the main road from Tanzania to Kenya. Its smack bang in the middle of Maasai land and very much off the beaten track. When you arrive you could be forgiven for thinking you'd stepped into the pages of a National Geographic magazine, complete with round mud huts (bomas), young Maasai boys looking after massive herds of cattle, and little children looking rather disheveled but incredibly social as they go about their day to day life. Men and women in traditional Maasai dress stop and greet us at every opportunity. The brightly coloured blanket clothing (shukas) draped around their shoulders and contrasts with the stark dusty environment. Of course you see plenty of all of those things all over Tanzania. Mairowa just multiplies it all and takes away the western things that get mixed into the towns and cities.

We drove toward Mairowa and came across a young shepherd boy asking for food. Our driver had half a donut (madanzi) left from breakfast so offered it to this boy. The boy refused however and indicated that the driver should throw the mandazi on the ground so he could get it. He was so terrified of coming close to the car that even his hunger wasn't enough to get him to come even one step closer. In the end our driver wrapped the mandazi in a paper towel and threw it out to the boy. The boy snatched it up and gobbled it up lightening quick. Amazing how the things that are everyday to us can be so foreign to people living out here.

Four of our student teachers are now in Mairowa for their final 3 month teaching practice and then will return there after exams to teach for 3 years. They are all sponsored through teachers college by the organisation that runs the school, Imara Ministries. When we visited them last week they shared with us some of the challenges of getting to know a new place, especially one as remote as this. One of their biggest challenges is that that the students they are teaching hardly know Kiswahili, let alone English. Most of the children and their parents speak Kimaa (The Maasai language) at home and to each other. That makes teaching at an English medium school a bit of a challenge! They're rising to the challenge though and we saw some good lessons with creative ways of making themselves understood. Its times like this that I encourage our students to make full use of body language and gestures! We had fun learning a few Kimaa words and doing our best to properly greet those we talked to.

Another Mairowa 'challenge' is the lack of phone reception. To be honest, it still blows me away that out here in the middle of nowhere there is even any phone reception, but given the number of people who use cell phones in Tanzania, I guess there has to be. We quite enjoyed our 40 minute walk each afternoon up the hill to search for those little reception bars that connect you to the outside world. Its very hard to get lost on these walks when any person passing by will happily point you back to the only guest house in town, though we did manage to find ourselves stuck in a field of beans, surrounded by think thorn bushes put there as a fence. Some children sitting under a nearby tree had a great laugh watching us jump the thorns to get out. Our best reception spot is right next to a thorn bush just by the 2nd Maasai boma. It makes for very public but picturesque phone calls.
At night, I saw the most stars I have ever seen in my life. It literally took my breath away every night. Every constellation is accentuated when there's no electricity. The darkness always just makes the light seem so much brighter. I'm sure that's a good parable for life right there.

A life less mediocre

In only three weeks our year long stint at Keranse School will be over- actually a year and three months, though I have to say time has absolutely flown. In November our student teachers will all move from their respective training schools to Arusha for a month. They’ll live on base at The Joshua Foundation and study for their end of year exams. Then next year they’re on to new and exciting places and adventures for their final three month block practice, government final exams in May, then life as the newest Tanzanian teacher graduates. Us mentors will continue to be in schools every other week for that teaching practice, but will rotate through the six different schools rather than the one we’ve been in. It feels a little like the end of a long uphill battle to get our students through the challenging theory and practice part of their course, but the view from the top is worth it. This week especially I have been so encouraged by what I’ve seen them achieving in the classroom. I’ve seen dramatisation, science experiments, composing songs, cooperation games, cooking classes, field trips to the local market and countless other excellent teaching strategies, always made doubly impressive by the minimal resources available and less-than-seamless syllabus they have to work within.

Us mentors often find ourselves reminding our student teachers as they work through their course that it is God who gives us wisdom. But when I stop to listen to what I tell my students I have to confess I often forget this very thing myself. Over the last year and a half I have constantly been pushed out of my comfort zone, teaching an unfamiliar syllabus in an unfamiliar country to people with very different upbringings to my own. So many times I have found myself completely at the end of my own abilities and crying out to God to give me wisdom. I think that’s exactly where God wants me to be- at the end of my abilities and crying out for his! I pray and hope that I’ll never fall into the trap of being too satisfied in my own abilities. I think that sitting still in that place is really not so different from moving backwards. What a waste when I serve a God who so willingly pushes us out of our comfort zone and then shocks us by staying right there and walking with us.

I know at least 6 young Tanzanian men who are at the start of that journey and who are going to make a huge difference in the years to come as teachers. They have chosen not to settle for the status quo and I have to say that I’m inspired to do the same. So here’s to a lack of comfort zones and a life less mediocre.

Mama's Kitchen

I thought it was high time that I wrote a little about our little business venture over here...Mama's Kitchen. As the name suggests, the Mama's Kitchen products are home baked goods such as cookies and brownies that are sold in the local supermarkets here and to some safari companies. I think in the West we take for granted that we can rock on up to any supermarket and be surrounded by choice for snacks. Fancy a cookie? Here, have 5 different varieties. Feel like a take away snack? How about 2 aisles worth for choice. Not so here in Tanzania. When it comes to convenience, I-just-feel-like-something-sweet foods, the choice is seriously lacking. This might be an excellent thing for our waistlines, but let's face it...when you have walked up and down the dusty main street for several hours trying to get all the little jobs done that take hours here, who wouldn't feel like something little to snack on? That's where our products come in.

Let me tell you how Mama's Kitchen came about. At the end of last year, Corinne and I started to think about ways that we might be able to bring some support into this work we're in, helping out mentors with living costs and the like. After a few different trials and failures, we hit upon the cookie idea. Initially we thought that the sole market would be in safari companies, aimed at Western visitors who are quite partial to a bit of morning tea while out viewing wild animals. A few taste tests and recipe perfecting sessions later, we had our first client...a friend who runs a safari company and was quite happy to trial our products and see how customers liked them. Fast forward to today and we are now with the same safari company and also in 2 local supermarkets. At last count, our products on the shelf at one supermarket sold out within a week which is better than we had hoped for. Mama's Kitchen is officially a part of East Africa Development which is the business department of The Joshua Foundation.

The latest hit? Dark chocolate brownie. Mmmm. This one is almost worth making a trip over to Tanzania for. Just in case you needed any arm twisting!

Searching for God knows what

Today's blog has nothing to do with Tanzania, except perhaps that life is a constant journey of discovering more about who God is and who we are, no matter where we happen to be- Tanzania included. I'm reading a book by Donald Miller at the moment called Searching for God Knows What. I'm only halfway through, but something about this passage just jumped out at me and I had to read it several times.

...That is the thing about life. You go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but the whole time there is this deeper language people are really talking, and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fashion, or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable, What if the economy we are really dealing with in life, what if the language we are really speaking in life, what if what we really want in life is relational?

Now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden language we are all speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind.

That's the kind of Christianity I want. God seeking to bring us back to relationship with Himself...now that's a gospel worth hearing.

Shamba life

This whole year has been full of new experiences and adventures. Last week was no exception. I had the chance to head out to a friend's family's shamba (farm) in Kilindi district. It was a 14 hour trip to get there on 4 buses but surprisingly, we arrived feeling quite relaxed. I think it must've been the soothing bumps on the road.

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Kilindi isn't marked on this map...but if you draw a line on this map about an inch left of Korogwe, that's where it is. As you can see...its not really a metropolis. In fact the closest little shop to where we stayed was several kms walk away. The people who live in these parts truly live off the land.

Its humbling to see firsthand just how happy people can be who have so little. Our friend Hussein's family moved out to Kilindi because farm land was far cheaper than in Arusha and they knew it was a way that they could provide a good life for their family. Materially they don't have much, but in reality they live a rich life. They grow all they need to survive on their farm. They work alongside each other every day; Mum, Dad, Brothers, Daughter in laws, neighbours. In everything that I saw, this is a family and community that loves, respects and looks out for one another. They are gracious hosts. I have never eaten that much in my life! They love to laugh and love nothing better than a good story. They truly live a rich life.

Hussein's mum took it on herself to teach us village ways. So for a couple of days we were properly immersed in 'village school'. Harvesting, preparing food, cooking...the days for women here revolves around the next meal of the day. She chatted away to us in Swahili and it was a pleasant surprise to understand plenty.

All in all, Kilindi hasn't made me want to move to the bush permanently. But it has certainly given me a new appreciation for the people who live this life. And just in case it ever does become home...at least I now have Shamba-life 101 under my belt!