Month: November 2023

Look what ended up in my laundry on Saturday! How does a crab end up in my laundry bucket? I set the crab free outside!

I’ve been working from home this week, which means I get to wear shorts. As the short rainy season is in full swing, it is great not to be walking to the MS-TCDC campus for Kiswahili lessons. There are almost daily and multiple daily downpours, which means it isn’t so hot!

The Short Rains have arrived!

Now that my work these days are in the world of English, my Kiswahili isn’t developing at the same pace.

I finished a chapter revision for an anthology project that is part of the CollECT research group for which I’m vice-chair and a co-editor of the anthology. CollECT stands for Colloquium on Epistemology, Context and Text in African Biblical Studies, which is a research group at VID Specialized University.

I also finalized by SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) presentation, that I will give in San Antonio on Saturday, 18 Nov., in the African Biblical Hermeneutics session with a them of ecological interpretations. This will be important to get feedback from African biblical scholars on my biblical eco-theological framework for my Marie Curie project. However, I’ve also put a considerable amount of time this past week as a respondent for the “Blessings and Curses” themed section for the Biblical Hebrew Poetry session. There are 4 papers to read, analyze, and develop a helpful response that extends the conversation. Two of them are rather technical Hebrew, which takes me a good amount of effort to understand. However, one paper is actually a PhD student from Duke University (supervisor Ellen Davis), who is using my PhD thesis (revised for a monograph) in reading curses in the Book of Amos. Wow! Who would actually read my book who didn’t have too?!? She has appropriated it well. I met her last year, as she came up to me after a paper I presented in the African Biblical Hermeneutics session. So, I’ve connected her with the CollECT research group, as she can join us via Zoom.

I’m still needing to get my head around one very technical paper of 16,510 words (most journal articles are 5,000-to 8,000 words). I have tomorrow before I take off, and if I need more time to process, I can do so while I traveling, but I hope to be done before I depart.

Today, Sunday, I preached at the Arusha Community Church. As it is all lay led, it is a rich, multi-denominational community of English-speaking worshipers. We had visitors from Madagascar today, and the bishop said it was like being in eternity already with all the multi-cultural representations.

After the service, Nanyoke came to greet me. What joy! Nanyokye is one of my former students from the MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School. She is the first Maasai woman medical doctor in Tanzania! We caught up a bit. I saw her last in Feb 2020. In 2016, she joined one of my church groups as we traveled into the rural Maasai areas, that was on the way for her to visit her mother-in-law, who lives not too far outside the Northeastern gate of the Serengeti National Park (which used to be Maasai land).

Nanyokye, the first Maasai woman medical doctor in Tanzania

After church, I was invited to dinner at the home of the ELCA East Africa Director, Daudi. He has a Maasai dad and an American mom, and he grew up some of his life in Chicago. The other guest was Laura, who is an ELCA Lutheran on a Fullbright Scholarship doing anthropological research on the effects of climate change on education. She was also a volunteer in Monduli 25 years ago, and like me, has continued to relationships and looking for opportunities to be a blessing to the Maasai. There are some significant shared links despite the different projects. However, I sense we will be good collaborators until she returns to Minnesota next April.

Tonight, the power is going off and on. In addition, I see the lights dim and return to bright. I’ve heard a rumor that Tanesco, the Tanzanian electrical company, has gone bankrupt. I’ll have to check this out. With the rains now, there should be a good amount of water accumulating in the hydro-electrical dam reservoirs. So, hopefully, it will get better.

One prayer request: My gardener, Jackson, (he basically came with the house I found out), got 4 bee stings on Saturday. I gave him some Benadryl pills and water to take right away, helped him put on some topical Benadryl gel (which I love for mosquito bites), and sent him home to rest with 2 more doses of Benadryl. On sting was to the right of his mouth on his cheek and another sting on the eyebrow above it. The side of his face was rather swollen. The colleague here, Randy, has his phone number—which I don’t, so I asked him to check in on Jackson to see if he is OK. I haven’t heard back yet. So, say a prayer for Jackson.

Mungu akubariki! (God bless you!)

On Sunday, I was invited to dinner at Daniel and Naiyonde’s home, with their three kids (see blog post  2023.09.24 The New Maasai Warrior). I’m always happy when I don’t have to cook for myself, but it is even better when in the home of friends. I had a fascinating conversation about many things that I’ve been reading, and I wanted to process them through with Maasai who know the culture.

One interesting aspect was socialism. Now I’ve lived in colonial territory (Hong Kong), independent former colonial territory now socialist (Tanzania), uber capitalist republic (USA), and Scandinavian social democracies (Norway and Sweden, of which Sweden has a history as colonial empire).

After independence, Tanzania started with African socialism under the leadership of Julius Nyrere. The Arusha Declaration laid out their dependence upon human capital while alienating anyone with capital from leadership. It put all the resources—including land—under the control of the government. So, no one owns land in Tanzania. They buy a 99-year lease. At the end of the lease, the government doesn’t have to renew it, and any building assets will be assessed by their assessors for remuneration. The Nobel winning economist, Amartya Sen, talks about living capital and dead capital. Living capital are assets you can leverage (take a loan against) for investments, such as a business venture or education to raise one out of subsistence poverty to a sustainable livelihood. Sen’s argument (as I remember from a long ago reading) is that the number one way to facilitate development is to give land rights, then people have access to living capital.

In Tanzania, it is zombie capital (my metaphor here), as it is the living-dead capital. One can take a loan against their 99-year leased land, but I’m guessing if it is not toward the end of the lease time. And compare this with my condo mortgage in Sweden that is a 99-year mortgage. Yes, really. (This is a bit weird for me who had a 15-year mortgage on my house in Bellevue and made extra payments to shorten the time horizon, and then paid it off early with Eric’s life insurance payout.) Yes, I have 2 properties, so I would be excluded from leadership under the Arusha Declaration.

The curious conversation was that Daniel didn’t really see Tanzania as a socialist state, because now there is a capitalist-driven economy. This has raised Tanzania out from the dubious distinction of being one of the 10 poorest countries in the world in the early 21^st century to now ranking 160^th out of 190 countries and moving into the lower middle-income rating, according to the World Bank. https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/what-does-tanzanias-move-lower-middle-income-status-mean

My understanding is that because the government owns all the land, it is still socialism. When the people have permanent land rights, then it could transition to a social democracy—the language used in Scandinavia, though with significant differences, as Scandinavia is a welfare state which works relatively well due to high taxes and good transparency with government finances.

I’m sure I’ll keep having good conversations and learning more.

Mungu akubariki! (God bless you!)

So, the day started with the frustration of trying to get my Christmas plane tickets. The Internet has been down when I had the time and mental capacity to think through all the variables for buying a ticket. The challenge is magnified when US credit cards want 2-step authentication with my USA phone number, which is “on snooze.” I ended up having to buy it with Swedish kronor, because the Swedes have an app on a phone that isn’t dependent upon an active phone account.

I did get a ticket purchased. I will be spending a few days in the Seattle area before Christmas to reinstate my residency there with my permanent address at my house in Bellevue. Then, I will be able to vote without Herculean efforts. Iowa only allows Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians to vote in a primary. As an independent, I’m feeling disenfranchised. Even if I was affiliated with one of these parties, I would have to send by snail mail a registration to arrive not more than 70 days in advance of EACH election. Then, the ballot would be sent to me in the post, and I have no personal mailing address here but only c/o a neighbor teacher. Then, it has to be snail mailed back. Three international mailings within 70 days is dubious. I also found that the online information was more limited in Iowa. So, I will go back to being an absentee voter in Washington and vote by email, which is standard for military and expatriates. A friend here says voting by email is also standard in Vermont.

After Seattle, I fly to Boston to spend a Hanson Christmas hosted by my niece. Anya will arrive from Sweden. My father-in-law’s health is up and down, and we want to make the most of our time together.

I have been dealing with the challenges of Internet & WIFI. On Monday evening, there was no connectivity, so I tried resetting my WIFI router. It wasn’t the router, but rather the Ethernet cable had no Internet connection. However, I ended up discombobulating the WIFI router. I could get it reset, but then my laptop couldn’t connect. I had to have the Ethernet cable directly connected. So, Joseph was my answer to prayer, as he came by and had his IT friend here come to help. Between power outages and just the weird situation where I have connectivity at one moment but not the next, they were able to get the WIFI router reconfigured. Yes, the connectivity keeps dropping out rather frequently.

The other answer to prayer was that I was finally able to connect today with the dean of the theology faculty here at TUMA. She is a lovely woman and very personable and capable. We have been tasked by our superiors at VID and TUMA to prepare an academic seminar or guest lecture, as well as time for the Norwegians (including my doctor father/fellowship supervisor) coming from VID to talk about ways to collaborate. We now have a draft plan that will be run past the vice chancellor. Some opportunities will be easy and free to implement. Some may be seeds planted with hopes for germination, and perhaps even fruition.

The last “answer to prayer” was a WhatsApp text proposal. The Pentecostal preacher I met on the bus over a week ago wrote me this message:

“I was praying for a long time about asking God to choose and give me a good wife from him whose fearing God and God Choosen for me,Yesterday God showed me, it’s you, and he came with your really photo on my spiritual face when I was in dreams after praying and sleeping. So you are my God’s choosen wife. Very congratulation”

As my friend and former Bible college teacher, Jean, used to say, “Well, God has not confirmed that to me.” So, how shall I respond to the Pentecostal preacher? While I clearly am not going to respond in any positive inkling, shall I block the dude? Maybe this is a teaching opportunity. I am a Bible teacher!

There is a concept of sugar daddy and sugar mommy here. No doubt sugar mommy motivation was also behind the 20-something young man at Rebecca’s house that blurted out, while heading out the door. “I don’t know how old you are, but you are very beautiful!” No, this stuff will not go to my head, as my mirror keeps me grounded in reality! I’m actually rather content with being single! As I’ve told Anya many times, “It takes a really good man to be better than no man.” So, the final answer to prayer to mention is my contentment.

Mungu akubariki! (God bless you!)