(Wageni means strangers or guests. The dual meaning always says to me that a stranger is a guest you haven’t had the chance to get to know yet.)
In Africa, the best laid plans rarely come to fruition. Today, things went amazingly well. Everything that I hoped to do happened and there were three additional meaningful visits.
I joined the students for morning prayer. There has been some disobedience, so there was some punishment. I don’t know what went on, but I trust the leadership to respond wisely. I talked a bit with Dr. Msinjili and we arranged to meet the math teacher that has been supported by Cross of Christ at chai time. However, I relayed that I’m expecting a visit from Pastor Nangole, so if he comes at chai time, I won’t be there. Indeed, Pastor Nangole arrived just before chai time. I sent Anya up to the administration building with a message letting them know of my delay. I had a nice visit with Nangole, who invited me for dinner. I regretted to inform him that I had plans to meet for dinner, but I could come afterwards for some chai. He would send his car to pick me up from Monduli town.
After he left, I went to the administration building and met the teacher. He is an enthusiastic young man with a love of teaching. He shared his philosophy of teaching math, and I was very encouraged. He is highly committed to the students and puts in additional time after class to help the students. I am eager to hear of the national exam scores in the future, as it sounds like they will dramatically increase.
Math here is very tough. As there are few government university scholarships, the exams are made to weed people out. One visitor when I was here, Carl Bennett (now with Jesus), was the statistician for the Manhatten Project, and he taught at Princeton. He looked at the Form 6 National Exam and said that he thought that only 50% of his math major students would get better than 50% on the exam—the 13th year of formal education, as our senior in high school is the 13th year of formal education including kindergarten. However, math is a gatekeeping subject. If students do not get a satisfactory mark in math, they can’t earn a “division 1” in their national exams, even if they ace their other subjects. So, math is important for all students.
Next, one of my former students greeted me. She is using her education in a pretty good job, however, she is a single mother and the father is not helping with any support for the child. The father has a very good job, but there is no teeth to the laws on the books that require paternal support. Single mothers are very often abandoned to scratch together a life for themselves and their children. I prayed for her, and encouraged her to seek help for the laws to be enforced.
I was then able to find Ciwila who took me to see the cows that my church had purchased for the school in order to provide milk for the chai. Milk is very important for the Maasai. It is the main staple of their diet. They have 9 cows total, but some are calves. Dr. Msinjili said that they will have a visitor tomorrow who will discuss the options for bio gas for the school. However, the cows are a bit far from the kitchen (which makes sense), so they have to see what is possible.
The coffee beans were also drying in the sun. The harvest isn’t very good this year, and the prices aren’t very high I hear. Still, there will be some income.
I returned to some packing for tomorrow’s departure, when Rebecca came with lunch. Rebecca is a joy to have around. She had help along, and we shared a Kvikk Lunsj, Norwegian chocolate that Marta gave us as a going away present.
I asked Rebecca about the prices for the dala dala (the “public” transportation, where 21 people are crammed into a 15 passenger van) to Messerani. The price is 700 shillings. However, she encouraged us to use her taxi driver and negotiated a price for him to drive us 14 km, hang out for 2 hours, and drive us back. The cost was about one-third of the price of the taxi in Norway, where we went 14 km in about 14 minutes.
Prior to Rebecca’s taxi pick up, we were saying goodbye to her with a big hug and a gift to support her new bakery, just as Diana and Nelson showed up to greet us. Just then, Evangelist Marko called to ask us where we lived. We arranged for Rebecca’s taxi to bring Marko here, which was perfect serendipitous timing!
Diana was our helper while we were here. She has the closest story to Cinderella that I know in real life, up to the point of the fairy godmother. She is an orphan who went to live with her aunt, but while her cousins were funded to go to secondary school, she wasn’t. Now, we support her son in an English medium primary school here, as this seemed to be a way to support an orphan and single mother. With an educated son, she will have a better future. Diana brought gifts of African fabric (khangas) for both Anya and me. They are both doing well. This is wonderful news. The son, Nelson, was translator for us today, and did a very fine job. Diana and Marko know just a bit of English, I know a bit of Kiswahili, so Nelson was a blessing for the afternoon. We had fun with memories of when Anya was little. I had ordered some of Rebecca’s cookies, which we ate, and I sent the rest home with Nelson and Marko.
Marko’s son, Richie, is a 9-year-old with special needs. I’m not sure exactly, but a friend guessed that it is a cerebral palsy from a very high fever. I don’t know, but I know that the care for people with special needs is important. So, Richie is in a special needs school. Marko relayed that he is gaining capacity in self-care, and they are so pleased that he is able to attend this school. Marko was also a friend of Eric’s, so I am so pleased that Richie is supported with Eric’s memorial scholarship.
After they went off, we had just enough time to get ready for our taxi pick up. Musa is a safe driver, in a nice car; it even has seat belts! Our destination is the Snake Park. Think of a campground, an 18 wheeler repair shop, a highway bar, and the Reptile Gardens in a Giligan’s Island meets Africa motif! The South African owners, BJ and Lynn, are worthy of a book!
We arrived at the Snake Park just a couple minutes before Sarah arrived with her three girls (aged about 3 to 7) and Elizabeth (from our airport pick up).
Each of Sarah’s girls ran up to Anya and greeted her by name and with a big hug. They are adorable! The youngest took to Anya right away, and they rode the camel together, while the oldest two rode the other camel together. (Unfortunately, the pictures are on Anya’s phone that isn’t easily accessible.)
Sarah is one of the most amazingly gifted people with inter-personal communication skills that I have ever met. She is a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand. When we lived in Tz, we would regularly go to the Snake Park on Friday evenings for burgers and pseudo group therapy. Sarah also worked in Monduli at the center for physical rehabilitation that specialized with children with skeletal fluorosis, where the naturally-occurring fluoride in volcanic soils supplants the calcium in bones and causes multiple mini-fractures in the legs of toddlers. It is corrected by surgery, plaster casts, and lots of tender loving care. Her work continues with the Plaster House in Arusha. Her husband, is in South Africa trying to buy an airplane, so he wasn’t with us tonight.
We also missed Jean and Marv this night. This group was our core community during our Monduli days. Sarah said tonight that she couldn’t have survived without it. She added, “This is Africa,” with an entirely different meaning than when the power and water go out and the plans never work right. In this sense, it is an interdependency that holds us; beauty and goodness in the midst of what often seemed to be chaos and frustration. Tonight we commemorated our community and celebrated our friendships.
Musa’s taxi then took us to the Monduli Lutheran Church, where we met Nangole’s son, who drove us up the mountain to Nangole’s home. It was a casual time of chai and fruit as we talked about his wonderful retirement celebration, the church in the North Maasai District, our Cross of Christ Lutheran mission team, the new Lutheran university branch coming to Monduli this September, and the Maasai Research Group this past semester in Norway, as well as other things. Pastor Nangole prayed for us, and then his son drove us home.
Today was Africa, in the best sense.
Tomorrow, we go to Maasaini, and we don’t expect to have Internet access until the 27th. So, keep us in your prayers, as we hope to be a blessing as we stay with Dr. Steve and Bethany Friberg and their daughter, who is a friend of Anya. They plan to take us hiking and camping on Mt. Ketumbeini.
With blessings,
Beth
Ah, we also miss the Snake Park Community as well; the most of what we miss always includes the people of TZ. Prayers and love, Safari njema.
Here is my favorite Carl Bennet story. Introducing him to someone, I mentioned that Carl and Einstein taught at Princeton at the same time. “That’s not true,” he said to me. I apologized and said, “What did I hear wrong?” With that Bennet twinkle, he said, “Einstein never taught.”
Is it too late to request a cookie for Jean and myself from that (now) world famous bakery? They can be old, stale, crumbled, and dusty, so long as they’re Rebecca’s cookies. We’ll pay you when you get here? If it’s too late, hamna shida!
Marv