Wednesday, 28 December 2011
TIME 06:41
A Belated Happy Christmas!

We hope you have enjoyed a happy Christmas wherever you are! We have had a lovely Christmas here! Matt, Amy, Elia and Finley arrived two days before Christmas it was so lovely having them to stay over the holiday. We had roast Maisy for Christmas Eve lunch, with some other friends as well. And then went over to Andy and Angela's in the evening for games and nibbles (yes, we even had mince pies, sausage rolls, butter tarts and Nanimo bars!)

Marc demonstrating how to play his new Tanzanian "cello"!

Christmas Day was fun blur of eating, opening pressies, eating, chatting, eating ... We had Christmas crackers and Christmas whistles conducted expertly by Amy. The roast duck was delicious and we enjoyed all the familiar treats of stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, Christmas pudding and even bacon and sausage!

We are so thankful for all the lovely things people have sent out to us! So many special treats sent out and saved and all so much appreciated and enjoyed! Thank you so much!

Christmas Day Lunch


Christmas Tea with Elia and Finley
Christmas evening bedtime story with Andy

This blog although written just after Christmas was never published due to internet difficulties! But here it is now, just a little out of date! We are now back from our holiday at Lake Nyasa, but that is all another story, so our new year's news will follow shortly!

 
 

 CHRISTMAS TREATS!
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Monday, 19 December 2011
TIME 10:16
The Other Side of Christmas

We knew we were not in England in the week before Christmas when we found ourselves driving along with a timing belt warning light flashing at us, having had a puncture in the very pouring rain, and putting the spare tire on to find it was flat. We managed to find a bicycle pump and gave it some air, which I don’t think any of us really thought would get us home! We phoned Andy in town before we drove through the Reserve (where there isn’t a phone signal) to say that if we weren’t home before 4pm to send out a search party! Amisadai in particular, just slightly nervous at the thought of a dark night in there … Mama Masawa had given us plenty of interesting stories of fierce animals as we drove through last time, which now seemed more scary than interesting! And we only had 3 slices of banana bread and two bottles of water as rations. But even despite a broken bridge which we couldn’t get across, we found another way and made it home in time for tea!
We had a good time in Magozi. It is still very uncomfortably hot there, although they have had a little rain there now too, and so there are grassy patches appearing. Everyone is getting ready to plant in their shambas (farming land) with mahindi (corn) going in now and soon it will be time to plant the rice. One problem this time was the water which was so bad, we couldn’t even treat and filter it to drink. We used it for washing – easier if you didn’t look at it! Thankfully we had filtered a lot of water before we left last time and also brought some bottles from home.
Would you drink this? (we didn't!)


Would you wash your face and dishes in this? (we did!)
Seriously, this is fresh from the water point.
Our reason for going this time was to support the church in their evangelistic outreach to the village. We paid for fuel for a generator and they were all excited to have some loud music and microphones! There was some great dancing too! Tim did really well with his Swahili preaching, and others spoke as well. I just went completely blank when they asked me to pray the closing prayer on Friday! It was good to see people so excited having a good time and hearing the Word of God. As usual we never really quite knew what was happening … we had been invited out for lunch but at the last minute found out that we couldn’t go. Then a a couple we had met at a Bible College a few months ago arrived from a neighbouring village. They needed a meal, so we ended up hosting instead! You have to realize, it isn’t as easy here when you can’t just pop to a shop to quickly get something. Neither can you quickly get something out of the freezer or put something in the microwave! But God always knows what is around the corner, even if we don’t! And in lickity-split time (well, almost!), dizzy with bending over the hot jiko in the midday sun and absolutely dripping with sweat, I had lunch on the table! We had also been invited out for dinner. But fifteen minutes before we left, as I emerged from my douse with a bucket of water, we found out that wasn’t happening either. So it was half a loaf of banana bread from Iringa for dinner. (What would we do without banana bread?)
Tim preaching in Magozi
The day before we went to Magozi, we had the EI staff Christmas party, which Angela and I were both rather nervous about, feeling very out of control! But Mama Kiri did a great job with all the cooking and we had enough food for everyone and fun was had by all, despite the untimely downpour! We were even able to skype Andrew and Miriam in the UK and so they were part of it all too.

Trying to cook in the rains!

But the sun came out later!
After all the recent activities and comings and goings, I am so excited about this week before Christmas, I have no unpacking or packing to do and we have no school to do! I must say that in Magozi this time I felt rather selfish in my eagerness to get back and enjoy some indulgently relaxing time. We have borrowed some DVD’s and books and I am very excited about some free evenings ahead! I know it is important to rest and know very well that this time more than most is a time to celebrate and enjoy all God’s goodness, but when you are living in a village like Magozi and surrounded by people who really have nothing materially, it makes you look at Christmas differently. Maybe remembering that first Christmas when God came to lift up the humble. We visited a newborn baby this week, lying wrapped in khangas on the dirt floor of a mud hut. Her name is Lightness and she is the daughter of the stoves group secretary, Ezekiel; there is real Christmas joy! And so knowing that for these friends, Christmas will not be much more than ordinary day (although there is to be eating and dancing together after the church service!), it does feel selfish looking forward to the treats we are baking and wrapping up here. This is certainly the other side of Christmas.
Baby Lightness

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Friday, 9 December 2011
TIME 10:34
Christmas Light

I love this time of year! The weekly Four Sundays of Advent, the daily advent countdown from December 1st and all the fun and reflection that goes with it. We are loving a daily advent calandar on our computer, sent from Laurena in Canada. Every day we find a new bit of the scene of London and enjoy the animated clip of the day! The girls love remembering the sights of London! We are enjoying all of our advent fun here in Tanzania. We have a perfect ending to our school unit on Light and Shadow as we talk about waiting in darkness for the great light! We have been looking at different religions and what a significant part "light" is to so many. We celebrated Hanukkah last week, something I realised I actually knew very little about! The girls are going to blog about that one soon, so I'll say no more! And now we can celebrate the coming of the Light to the world; a great climax for us as Christians!
Practicing carols for Advent
This week we have enjoyed a few days away with Andy and Angela, officially an EI retreat. It was a really good time of thinking about the future of our work here, and how we go about our work. We read and discussed a great book "Head, Heart, Hands: Bringing together Christian thought, passion and action" by Dennis Hollinger. It was fun being together and we enjoyed some relaxed time and some good food!
 
Wow! Steak!
 
And now, since our return, a large treetop brought in from the garden is decked with Christmas lights, in the form of the most pathetic fairy lights ever! These I found in town ... for a price ... and will be very surprised if they last until December 25th! Even Amisadai told me to quickly turn them off and save them for Christmas Day! But we also have beautiful candles made by the Consolata Sisters in the form of an Advent Candle (lines drawn on!) and an Advent Wreath.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
One of our verses at school has been Gen. 1:14-20 about God creating the lights in the sky. It is interesting as we decorate the house (thank you, Heather!) to think about God creating the world, decorating the world, hanging up the great lights in the sky. I have been reading Jane Williams' book, "Approaching Christmas" which reflects creatively on this thought. She includes a quote from John Donne which has added a rich perspective to our work on light and shadow, eclipses (of which there is one today!) and sun patterns, and the truth of the Light celebrated through Advent. I will finish with it here.

He [God] brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light. He can bring thy summer out of winter though thou hast no spring. Though in the ways of fortune, or misunderstanding, or conscience, thou hast been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damp and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of spring, but as the sun at noon, to banish all shadows; as the sheaves in harvest to fill all penuries. All occasions invite His mercies and all times are His seasons. ... 'God is thy portion,' says David. David does not speak so narrowly, so penuriously as to say God has given thee thy portion, and thou must look for no more. But 'God is thy portion' and as long as He is God, He hath more to give and thou art His, thou hast more to recieve.

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Wednesday, 30 November 2011
TIME 23:00
Friends, Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas All in One

On Sunday we managed to squeeze lots of festivities into one day! We met with the Pentecostal Church in the morning (where Tim was preaching), then celebrated the first Sunday of Advent at home with a little service the girls prepared and finished the day celebrating American Thanksgiving! A little out of order, but nobody minded! We had Marc, a potter from the States, currently working at Neema Crafts, for dinner, which aside from the puny little chicken posing as a turkey, was fairly traditional! We even had cranberry sauce! I looked all over the market for pumpkins with no success, but we splashed out on apples and with a real North American apple pie, no one was complaining. Andy and Angela joined us for coffee and apple pie and the girls excitedly presented their shadow play “The Story of Kuang-li” which you should soon be able to watch from their blog! All the festive activity was thrown together rather quickly and a lot of fun in our brief two-days at home!
Enjoying some apple pie!
Early Monday morning we took the bus to Morogoro, to visit our good friends Matt and Amy Dixon who have just moved there from the UK. We arrived in time for a late lunch at Ricky’s, where they treated us to burgers! It was wonderful to see them again and meet little Finley for the first time! The girls thoroughly enjoyed playing with Elia, now almost three years old. It has been a rough start for Matt and Amy with one thing and another, but we are so glad they are in the country and excited about having them here with us in Iringa for Christmas! We commiserated over car problems and water problems among other things, enjoyed bacon butties and chats among other things, and then had to be back to the bus station for 12:30pm the next day.
Playing with Elia and all the babies
We got home at 6:30pm and then another quick turn-around for Tim who quickly unpacked and packed ready to go to Magozi at 7am yesterday morning. He gets back later today, but the girls and I have stayed here to sort some of the chaos of the past week and do some schoolwork! In all the excitement, we seem to have run low on all kinds of things such as food obviously, but also pig food, drinking water, electricity, phone credit … and we haven’t had time to go to the post office, where we hear there are five parcels waiting!
Later ...
Well after all recent niggling frustrations with things like the kettle breaking, the puppy chewing my new boots and pajamas, continuing failed efforts at the electricity company to top up our supply, failed attempts at getting internet, failure to get through the dishes and laundry (we are really missing Mama Lucy who has been sick!) we had the most wonderful failure just now! Failure to carry all the packages out of the post office!! The girls and I had been trailing around town, hot and tired with not much going as planned, when we had the most amazing, exciting visit to the post office ever! We knew we had five packages waiting for us and were already very excited about getting them! But to our amazement, we had a post box full of green slips (each green slip means a parcel is ready to be picked up) - TEN! The staff at the post office found the girls' uncontainable excitement very amusing as we waited for ages to get all the parcels brought and signed for. We signed for ten parcels and they all started coming, but further to our surprise, when we counted there were TWELVE! The woman made sure we signed all ten out, checked my ID and checked orally that I knew my name several times, and then a little confused with the extra two parcels, just handed those over as well! The girls were quite beside themselves and now can't wait for Daddy to get home and show him the pile of brown paper packages tied up with string! Talk about favourite things! Then curiousity will only grow as they wait till Christmas Day! We don't know who you are yet, but thank you so, so very, very much those of you who sent parcels! I wish you could be with us to share in the great excitement! I'll stop now as I'm getting all teary-eyed! Lots of love from all of us!
Christmas comes to Iringa!

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Friday, 25 November 2011
TIME 07:37
Entertaining in Style

It has been one of those weeks with moments where I can’t quite believe what I am doing! When expecting guests, I used to plan the menus, go shopping for some food treats, spruce up a guest room and generally try to make things as pleasant as possible! Now here I was, escorting our guest in a bumping, dirty, dusty old land cruiser to a house even more dusty and dirty with not much beyond beans and rice for food (apart from the lemon cake and banana loaf which was a nice treat while it lasted!) When we arrived and she was “shown to her room,” I quickly started sweeping up rat poo, dead cockroaches and heaps of dust and dirt. Then began the mouse chase, after seeing one dart behind a shelf … another visitor had arrived by this time and while Amisadai and Louisa ended up standing on the furniture, she ended up being the one to spear the creature with a long sharp stick! Disposing of the thing with my dustpan, the thought crossing my mind is that of pretty, scented soaps and soft creams laid out on a pristine bathroom counter and a vase of flowers on a dressing table. But we have no bathroom, let alone bathroom counter and no dressing table even if we could find a flower! Actually the smell is sweat rather than soaps and flowers, and we can’t even offer a fan for some relief from the brutally uncomfortable heat! But Mama Masawa was lovely and settled in with our family, fitting right in!
Mama Masawa is a Tanzanian who works for the Diocese of Ruaha. She came to Magozi with us to teach the stoves group on business and marketing and also work with a group of people on improving reading skills. She was such an encouragement to the stoves group, inspiring them to work hard and be proactive in selling. We also presented the snazzy red Magozi Jiko T-shirts, which were a great hit! Now you can easily spot a group member in the village! The plan had been to come for four days of teaching, but unfortunately she was called back to town and so managed to squeeze four sessions into one short and one very long day! In the afternoons she worked on the reading. We had expected a small group of women, but it turned out to be a large group of men and women, all very keen and eager to learn or improve reading skills! We sat in a circle, taking turns to read out loud; I saw the marked difference between listening to the adults struggle to read and the children that have gathered at our house to read so much more fluently. The children now have an opportunity of an education that many of the adults have not had. We realized that this was a much bigger thing than we had originally thought, and this time with Mama Masawa just the beginning. The group was so eager to learn and the potential is amazing! We would love to do what we can to facilitate some reading groups for learning and improving. The ability to read – a free gift, but priceless!

Presenting the T-shirts
  
Reading Session (the group grew!)
It was a busy and tiring but very good week. The girls kept up with schoolwork, we kept up with meals (with only one struggle to keep the fire alight!), we kept up with drinking water and we kept up with the rodent kills! It often seemed bizarre (particularly at moments like going to bed one night wondering where the third scorpion had gone) that being in Magozi could be so good! But it was so amazing to see people so enthusiastic and eager to learn and improve, sitting for hours on uncomfortable planks through the heat of the day to do so! It was so encouraging to see the quality of the stove-making improve. It was great to have a late visit last night from Ezekiel, the group secretary, who came to ask for some flipchart paper and a marker pen so as to draw up some advertising posters to put up at the roadside, pointing to the jikos for sale in the village. He got busy right then and there in our little house with the small solar light! And then we were able to bring another lady back to town with us to get glasses, how wonderful to now see Mama Margaret able to read!  

Mama Margaret
As we had no meetings in Magozi today, we were able to come back early this morning, which was great for the girls as they were delighted to get back in time for their friend, Abeni’s birthday party! They then went to bed at 6pm! We are hoping to find a pumpkin in the market tomorrow and celebrate American Thanksgiving with a pie on Sunday evening (as we missed Canadian Thanksgiving this year!)  And then on Monday we are looking forward to getting the bus to Morogoro to visit Matt and Amy Dixon!
 
The first scorpion
(they got bigger!)



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Sunday, 20 November 2011
TIME 07:32
Ukwega and Back

Driving back this afternoon from Ukwega, a small village next to Magozi, I thought wistfully about 176th Street in Langley, Canada - I miss that road! It's long and straight with no potholes and you can drink a coffee driving along it (not that I particularly wanted the coffee at that point ... but to divert along the coffee thought, our recent tragedy with the cafetiere has been heroically rescued by the Belleguelles in the UK who in no time at all have seen to it that a new cafetiere is on its way to Africa! Asante sana!) Driving along, I also thought how strange it would seem in the UK to be taking your clothes off in the car driving to or from a church meeting as Louisa did today feeling excessively hot!
 

The Ukwega Church after shaking hands
at the end of the service
  Today we went to meet with a small, very new church in Ukwega, recently started by Yuda who is also the chairman of the Ebenezer Stoves Group. About 15 adults and surely twice as many children come together in a small, carefully made shelter of sticks and straw. Inside they have embedded poles in the ground with a V to support horizontal poles to perch on; village style "pews" on which with a sleepy Louisa on my lap, perching is no easy task! They warmly welcomed and received us; Yuda was able to talk about the stoves project, with the help of the girls who were wearing the new and snazzy group T-shirts and sang the Jiko Jingle! Tim preached and they were all very encouraging about his Swahili! And following the service (yes, very glad to stand up!) we shared a meal with Stephano and Vicki, elders of the church who live in the village. They are an amazing couple with great initiative and energy. They have set up a "cafe" in the village serving chai and rice and also established a small shop which they stock every month by going on the bus to Iringa. They are now talking about building a church building.

Yuda and Tim process to the front at the start of the service.
Yuda talks about the project with the girls in the new T-shirts!
This week in Magozi, the kiln was fixed and the second batch of stoves was fired! All 70 stoves have been "spoken for" so production really does need to pick up as with the whole batch effectively sold, there are none left to sell at the market! We are also still having some problems with the clay cracking, so really trying to solve this one!

We are all going back to Magozi on Tuesday, taking with us Mama Masawa who will be staying with us to teach until Friday on business & marketing and to work with women on improving reading skills. We will also be presenting the new T-shirts which will be hugely exciting! It will be a busy week being "hostess" to Mama and teacher to the girls, and trying to attend as many of the reading classes as possible too! The plan for girls is to learn about the light of the sun as we make sundials, but to be honest, I rather wish the sun might go behind the clouds a bit more this week!
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Sunday, 13 November 2011
TIME 03:06
Events and Unevents

This week, I actually think I can take on the challenge from my sister to write a whole blog update without mentioning animals dead or alive or on the plate, or sickness from either end! My week has been rather more uneventful than usual! But Tim has been part of a huge event! He has been in Dar-es-Salaam for much of the week. He and Andy both got there and back safely on the bus. Tim was booked home on a bus yesterday which didn't exist, but it was sorted out in the end! While in Dar, Tim was able to pick up some awesome T-shirts for the Ebenezer Stoves Group (they will be so excited to get them - I can't wait!). He was able to meet up with good friends Matt and Amy Dixon and their two little ones. We are very excited that they will soon be just a 5 hour drive away! Tim and Andy also went to look at vehicles for EI and put a bid in on one. Unfortunately, we heard yesterday that we lost the bid. And Tim went to the Campus Night, a huge three-night event for university students hosted by Victory Christian Centre (Pastor Huruma's Church). It was an inspirational time for thousands of students from across East Africa with a varied programme of music and speakers, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs as guest of honour. One speaker, Dr Charles Sokile (a Tanzanian), works for the UK Government, Department for International Development, as an advisor on how to help Tanzania come of out poverty. So the students could see how they can make a difference for their nation.



While Tim was away, the girls and I marked the events of Tanzania's 50 years of independence and then this weekend, Remembrance Day. But you can read all about that on the girls' blog! I was looking forward to making the most of a solid, uninterupted week in town for some schoolwork ... exploring light and shadows and quest myths and legends. We did well, but I can't say it was completely uninterrupted! We also enjoyed some company while Tim was away, with Angela and Inkeri (who is lodging with the Sharpes) over for dinner and a big girls' movie on Wednesday evening (I can't say what we had for dinner, or I fail the challenge), and Laura over for dinner and a little girls' movie on Friday evening!

Now we are all enjoying a quiet and uneventful Sunday afternoon!
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