I was barely able to Zoom last night with a dear friend that I’ve known since 1992. While the graininess and freezes were palpable, we were still able to connect through three power outages during the conversation. I’m grateful for the opportunity to connect after 4 days of being without Internet!
When asked, “How are you doing, really?” I replied that actually things are rather well. Yes, there are challenges and unknows that my INFJ (Myers-Briggs temperament) doesn’t thrive with, but really, I’m managing rather well. Yes, there are times of isolation. Yet, there is a deeper peace that comes with the palpable presence of a peace that “passes all understanding” that would be rather understandable with some of the daily issues. I know people are praying for me. I received 3 emails yesterday with the reminder of being carried in prayer.
Let me give a couple examples from Sunday. Most of my days, nobody knows where I am. I go, stay, make some visits, and the past 2 weeks, I’ve been walking to my Kiswahili course lessons. On Sunday, I need to get on the dala dala van/small bus to get to the English-speaking service, which has been important for community as well as making important connections. (A few have been Providential with a capital P!) As an introvert, it could be emotionally demanding to be squished in a row of 6 people with 4 seats and navigating what the unwritten social systems are in crammed van. (I often wonder what Jesus would do in these contexts!) However, I’m not having to psych myself up for the van ride or keep a mental alertness that is typical for me. I have a deep peace that I know is under-girded by the prayers of people on 3 continents.
It used to be my dad’s prayers that were the wind beneath my wings. I would Skype with him and let him know my special prayer requests. (And the tears come remembering this love he expressed in relentless prayer for me—as well as 66 other widows every day.) Before he died, he appealed to others to pray for me. I am deeply moved and grateful for all the prayers.
Today, before the power went out, (I’m now writing emails in a Word document that I cut and paste into email when I have electricity), I was listing to the Hidden Brain podcast by Shankar Vedantam. The current episode is on gratitude. I encourage a listen and then sing a chorus, “Count Your Blessing,” the old praise song that always seems to be heard in my head with my mother’s voice.
I am well. I am grateful for: all the prayers, email check ins, lovely Kiswahili teachers, being the only student getting individualized attention, Tanzanian friends who send a text just to wish me good night, three weeks of good lunches with good greens and veggies from their organic garden on the campus (that I don’t tend to cook for myself or want to risk buying from the market), the troupe of Colobus monkeys, the electricity that just came on, and the return of the Internet!
The delay in posting blogs is significantly due to either the power outages, no Internet for at least 4 days, or glacially-paced Internet when I’m home from my Kiswahili lessons. Yes, even the Gmail homepage won’t load!
Eunie Simonson was the matriarch of the missionary community in Tanzania. She passed on 30 Sept, but to have family from the USA present, the funeral was delayed to today. Having arrived in 1956, she and her late husband, David, transformed so many lives—even mine. To put the length of life in Tanzania in perspective, 1956 was the year that William Shockley started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View California, which was the beginning of Silicon Valley. (Check out Malcom Gladwell’s podcast, Revisionist History, and the episode, “Silicon Valley on the Couch.”)
One of the many projects initiated by David was the MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School, where Eric and I were volunteers with the ELCA for three years (2002-2004). During those years, Eric and I went through 3 miscarriages. (It was diagnosed that I have a septate uterus, a congenital deformation.) Eunie was one of the women from our missionary community who stopped by to express her condolences. She empathetically shared in our loss, as she and David also experienced a miscarriage. Not only at this time, but anytime I was with Eunie (the first visit was in 1992), I felt that her world revolved around me. She was an amazing woman, who touched so many lives and even survived a plane crash!
Eunie rests in peace and showered with love
Funerals/memorial services are always filled with mixed emotions for me, the deep loss mixed with the joy of seeing other special people. This was again the experience, seeing members of the Simonson family, the missionary community (Bethay Friberg, as the missionary community is appropriately dwindling with the established indigenous church), and teacher (Ciwila) and former students from the MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School (MGLSS). There was also a 6-member MGLSS choir, directed by Rev. Joel Nangole, my Monduli head pastor (now retired but still very active), and collaborator for the mission projects done through Cross of Christ Lutheran Church, Bellevue, WA (3), and Saint Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Bellevue, WA (1), and friend.
MGLSS choir
Three former MGLSS students whose lives are testimonies to power of education, and on the right, Mwalimu (teacher) Ciwila, with 22 years of impacting lives at the school. She is a rock at the school.
It was also a time for meeting others at Ilboru Lutheran Church, the oldest Lutheran church in the area (about 170 years old), with a walk to the Simonson home for the burial, where I had a lovely chat with Nashesha, (a playmate of Anya’s at the Arusha Community Church preschool in 2003-2004, with whom we did things together (confirmation retreats, Pasanki Easter egg decoration lesson, Great Wolf Lodge water park) when she spent a year with cousins close to Bellevue. I also met a German missionary, Stephan, who can speak Kimaasai. (This is the sign of an amazing missionary.) We had a wonderful chat about diaconal ministry in Maasailand, which is his passion. I look forward to connecting him to Wartburg, which was established through the work of the Lutheran pastor and theologian, Wilhem Loehe, who also had a passion for diaconal ministry. Stephan knew all about Loehe!
A full day after morning language lessons. Again I’m grateful to get rides from Randy, the former ELCA missionary who works here at Tumaini University Makumira with the music program and Cultural Arts Center.
I got up bright and early to start walking at 7:30 to the MS-TCDC campus. About 20 years ago, Eric took a course on microfinance and microenterprise development there. It is a very well-regarded program that was started with Danish international aid money. Also today, I remember Eric, as this is his birthday. Happy birthday, Eric!
It is a lovely campus. I had never been there before, so I wanted to give plenty of time. All went well with an early arrival. There were marabou storks, a greater hornbill, and colobus monkeys on campus, in addition to a large and luscious campus that has their own farm-to-table vegetable garden. This includes a coffee shamba (garden), and they produced their own coffee there. The pictures below identify the challenges of coffee harvesting, as there is not a one-time harvest. Beans need to be picked when they are red and ripe. But you can see flowering coffee, green, and red fruit, which is why coffee is very labor intensive.
Coffee flowers
Some ripe and red are ready to pick, while green ones need more time.
The “cherry” with the green beans inside.
The amazing and Providential gift of the day is that I am the only student in the beginner course! There is a teacher and another assistant teacher, who becomes my conversation partner! As I have some Kiswahili, but not good enough to get into an intermediate course and bad grammar due to the absence of formal lessons like this when we were ELCA volunteers, I am not a low beginner, but my teacher, Joyce, at the end of the day said that I was a high beginner. So, I don’t have to be bored waiting for new beginners to learn the basic greetings and how to count to 10, instead, I get tailored conversations to my capacity and questions. What a HUGE blessing.
Joyce is on a break as part of her PhD program in teaching Kiswahili. So, I have an expert in pedagogy of this language. This makes a big difference for me who needs to be able to understand the grammar. So perfect!
My classroom
When discussing my research over a break, we discovered that we three are all women of faith. I also learned at the end of the day that Joyce is also a widow. The challenges of being a single mom raising 3 kids in Tanzania is unbelievable. Somehow, she is not only surviving but has thrived.
Sunday morning meant getting on a coaster bus to Arusha for church at the Arusha Community Church for the English service and a great place to connect and even have some Providential connections.
In previous coaster bus blog posts, I’ve mentioned that sometimes purses get plopped into stranger’s laps to accommodate holding a child or hanging on to the hand bars while standing. Today, the “conductor” jumped off to help a mama with 2 girls all dressed up for church. The youngest was about 2 years old and adorable. The conductor picked up the 2-year-old and scampered on the bus with her, plopping her in the lap of a woman sitting by the door! Yes, a total stranger! Over the next several kilometers, the mama and older child find a seat farther back with now more people standing in the aisle and a few people between the mama and the woman holding the child. When the woman by the door moves, a man standing takes the child and takes the open seat! The child came with the seat!!! Later, he was getting ready to get off, so he looks back to the crowd and asks (in Swahili), “Whose the mama?” This is just fascinating to me to really see how the unwritten social contract of holding small children is shared by strangers in a bus!
I got to church and made a few connections with people I knew from before. One woman is in the missionary kid community that continued to live their lives in Tanzania. I helped her with a few tutoring sessions for computer skills at a time when she was a bit concerned that she was not able to be effective in her teaching role with the new technologies expected of her. She offered horseback riding lessons for Anya, while I gave the computer lesson. Pretty cool! She greeted me with a warm hug and lovely chat. Now, I’m praying for her brother-in-law, who has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
I stayed in town for lunch, as I was staying for the afternoon Maa (language) service, because I invited my former students via Facebook to meet me there. So, I had a couple hours to have lunch and try to find a few things in the big city shopping center. I could walk to the biggest supermarket in town where there are also some restaurants. I chose Chinese food, bypassing Pizza Hut, which is new since the last time I was here. They even deliver via motorcycle.
I got some rain boots for basically the same price as my lunch. Amazingly, they were made in Tanzania, not China! There was only 1 pair left and my size. I took it as a sign from God that I should wear them in the back yard when I’m working to restore a bit of the beauty that once was. While I’m not expecting snakes, it would be something possible. Most snakes bite at the ankles—not springing up high. Now you know why there are cowboy boots. (And did you see that Crocs now has a cowboy boot model!?! If not, here’s a link!)
I walked back to church to chat with my research assistant and work out some details of her very part-time, project based assistance. Which then grew into a lovely reunion as another of my former students, Selina, showed up to see me. Oh, she’s amazing. She is coordinating women’s empowerment, health (which sounded like the Form 3 biology content I taught her!), and even some climate change mitigation practices. So, I’m going to keep in contact with her. I have goosebumps now thinking that here are 2 women who grew up in stick, mud, and cow dung huts who are models for bringing the best of their culture forward. She has even named her children with Maasai names, which is less common, or they have a Maasai name but use the Swahili meaning.
Me with Liz and Selina
Another lovely connection was with Pastor Kimerei. He is a retired pastor, but he has an active role in rallying people to the Maa service.
Pastor Kimirei
He is honored by having the invocation and benediction roles in the liturgy, but he doesn’t preach or preside. I greeted him, reminding him who I was, but also, I then told him that not only did I spend the last year teaching at Wartburg Theological Seminary, where he earned his Masters of Sacred Theology, I have read his master’s thesis and have quoted him in my PhD dissertation and another paper! So, we will continue on contact, because I told him that the president of Wartburg is coming in January and would like to greet him at a special lunch for the alumni in the area. (There are 24 Tanzanians who earned a master’s degree from Wartburg, though some of them have passed, including the former Bishop Laiser and my dear friend, Lemburis Justo.
The service was suppose to start at 3:00, and at that time, there were a few people chatting outside. We got going at 4:15ish. The sermon was at least 30 minutes. After all, if you put all the effort into getting gussied up and get there, you want it to be substantial. I was able to give a greeting and encourage them in keeping their language alive. If you lose the language, you lose your culture, and then it is hard to know where you are from.
After the Maa service
At 6:30, while people were starting to pour their chai, I passed. Not only was it too late in the day for caffeine for me, I decided to text the taxi driver that I met last weekend to take me home as it was going to get very dark in 5 minutes. I was glad to be in a car with a good driver and a seatbelt. We passed an accident. He thought that a huge truck had a run in with a motorcycle driver. Lord, have mercy. There is a whole wing in the government hospital called the Toyo wing. Toyo is the brand of Chinese motorcycle that was dominant when the motorcycle taxis started to get popular. (Now it is more diverse.) I made it home safely and had a nice chat with the driver. He has climbed Oldoinyo Lengai, the Maasai “Mountain of God.” I would like to do this, yet, I’m not sure of my endurance and a knee that gets some KT tape prior to my long walks and hikes these days.
I made it home safely. Got the hot water tank turned on, started to work on dinner and the blog post, and the power went out. Fortunately, the water was warm enough for a sprinkle hose bath.
Tomorrow is my first lesson, so I want to be out of the door at 7:30 am for my 30-minute walk there.
I woke up to rain pattering on the corrugated tin roof. There is a ceiling lower than the roof, but the sounds on the roof (rain, monkeys, etc.) are rather noticeable. It was a heavy rain all morning and a bit more in the afternoon.
When the rain comes, the Maasai say, “Engai (the monotheistic creator) has come.” It is rather refreshing when things are so dry and dusty.
Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do when the grass starts growing. Do I hire a gardener to “cut” the grass with a thing that looks like a long knife with a bent end about 4 inches long—that is sharpened on both sides. This gets swung back and forth a zillion times to cut the grass. I’ve thought of just getting a battery powered grass trimmer, that in the long run will be cheaper but will not employ a person.
It seems that the power outages are increasing. I was presenting my Marie Curie fellowship via Zoom today with colleagues at VID Specialized University, and the power went out in the middle of the discussion. So, I logged in with my phone, using data. Fortunately, I had things ready on my phone to log in if the power went out.
Perhaps when the short rains come—and this is an El Niño year—then there will be more water for hydroelectricity. I just wish that it was like my colleagues in South Africa, who typically have a rolling brown out schedule. So, they know when the power is going to go out.
Tonight, the Internet is so bad that I can’t even send an email. It takes minutes for a basic webpage to load. So, I write this on a document saved to the desktop, so that I don’t have to make any attempt to link to the cloud.
Finally, the day before yesterday, there was a troupe of green monkeys hanging around my yard. One saw me at the window and slowly came right to the screen. The monkey spent a few minutes traversing the windows and climbing around on the bars covering the windows—real monkey bars!
I just love the hand!
After the rain, there is some purple rain! The rain knocked off quite a few of the jacaranda blossoms. Jacarandas are one of my favorite trees, but it is not indigenous. For my favorite indigenous tree, I think a red thorn acacia tops my list, especially during sunset on the savannah.
Two weeks ago, I was asked to fill in a last minute to be a Bible study leader for the Arusha Lutheran Medical Center spiritual retreat for the general surgery residency program, which I did this weekend. The program is part of the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons, which is a 5-year residency with a curriculum from the USA, with two, new stipended residents every year. The Arusha Lutheran Medical Center was started by the late Dr. Mark Jacobson, who not only was able to envision one of the best hospitals in Tanzania, but was able to bring it to fruition with a core of the gospel of Christ lived out in medical ministry. When I brought groups to talk with Mark about the Lutheran medical work in the area, there would be a mini Bible study or sermon from this Head Doctor and Director of the hospital. (Mark and Eric died from the same brain cancer.)
The Arusha Lutheran Medical Center
With minimal time for preparation, I drew upon lessons from the Book of Job, I taught in Sweden, with some cultural adaptations. I thought this would help surgeon to walk with patients dealing with suffering, as well as everyone will face suffering at some time in life. The Book of Job is powerful for wrestling with ultimate issues of the trustworthy nature of God; God’s justice; wisdom and who has the insight to speak about justice; the biblical texts that deal with retribution theology (obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings curses)—which are not wholly adequate—especially in light of the counter wisdom of Job (a critique of prosperity gospel theology); does Job (and the reader) fear God for the goodies in life and what happens if they are removed?; when God shows up, God responds to Job’s 23 “Why?” questions with about 65 existential questions to Job and descriptions of God’s control over chaos, represented in two amazing mythical creatures; and the call to trust a trustworthy God with all the unknowns—and more. What a rich book.
So, it was a mutual blessing, where I was able to be a blessing and facilitate six hours of Bible study and discussion, as I was able to build a bit of connections and networking. It seemed well received, and the coordinator even hinted about asking me back next year. Please join me in the first prayer requests of the relatively new Executive Director of the ALMC, Dr. Goodwill Kivuyo, for restored health to their finances. I had a lovely lunch conversation, where I heard a clear expression of a profound faith that keeps him in this calling. I had a sense of a Head Doctor and Director that naturally shares his faith as part of his identity and ministry, in a way that reminded me of Mark. There have been some difficult issues that Dr. Kivuyo inherited, which I don’t begin to fully understand, and I don’t want to misrepresent anything with only limited glimpses. Yet, I know this is an important hospital that has a distinctive profile of compassionate care for the whole person, not just the treatment of diseases.
On Saturday afternoon, we all went for a hike around Lake Duluti, a volcanic crater, that had a very enjoyable 3 km loop around the lake.
Lake Duluti
The retreat included spouses and children.
The hiking group
I had some nice conversations, and made some good connections with 12-year-old twins boys, who can finish each other’s sentences always speaking in English, which their mom says is their first language and actually are having to learn Kiswahili! They sat in the Bible study sessions, and soon I brought out my colored pencils for them to be able to draw while they listened. The next day, I showed them that they were water color pencils and brought out a brush.
At first the kids just stared at me—the only mzungu (white person) in the group—but I slowly made some friends. The time I helped out a mom, I had the blessing of being thrown up upon! Yet, I was glad to give her a break. This was a special time for these very busy people to have a rare 48 hours with family and time of worship and spiritual renewal. I was encouraged to see this community getting a bit of rest from a very rigorous and demanding program, and in my role, encourage them in nurturing biblical grounding of trust in a trustworthy God.
When we got back from hiking, there were perhaps 200 people all fancy. I’ve never seen so many sparkly dresses in one place (yes, but I don’t get out much). Then, the music started! The party was a stones throw from my room, but the decibels averaged in the high 80s or low 90s and peaking at 105 in my room. The comparison of 90 decibels is a power mower or a motorcycle at a distance of 25 feet, and 100 decibels is like a jack hammer or a jet flyover at 1000 feet. The bass vibrated my bed, though I could not sleep—even with earplugs—until the music was turned of at 12:38 am!
Now play this at 90 decibels!!!
I heard that after the hike, many kids were so tired that they were able to sleep, but most adults couldn’t manage to fall asleep until the music ended. In the morning, we awoke to no power, and I had no water. Good thing I showered after the hike! Back at home in the late afternoon, the power has been out twice. Fortunately, I turned on the on-demand water heater prior to a bit of raking in the back yard, and I have a flashlight in the bathroom ready if the power goes out. And before I get this sent, the power goes out again!
One other weird–this is Africa–moment was that I pulled out my keys to open my hotel room door, stepped inside, and then I realized that I used my home key! Yes, my hotel room and my front door key were exactly the same!
Doppelgänger!
One time with my church group of 20 people, we were in a guest house with about 12 rooms of occupancy. We arranged to keep some stuff locked in a room while we went out on a rural trip, so we weren’t so crammed in a vehicle, with roommates sharing 1 suitcase for a few days. We went down all the doors with our keys and only found one room that didn’t have a duplicate. So, that’s the room we used to store our stuff.
Finally, somehow, I just got three mosquito bites on my ankles. It rare that I get a mosquito bite in my house. Hmm. So, I put on some Benadryl gel and hydrocortisone cream. I was the only one who didn’t get malaria during out 3 years living here before, when Anya got malaria 3 times. So, I’m wondering if my fastidious application of Benadryl’s antihistamine has some mitigating effect?!? At least now if I end up for treatment at the ALMC someday, I now personally know the executive director.
Part of my preparations this month are reading the Tanzanian government environmental policies and master planning documents, with several major documents since 2007. Today, I was continuing with the Philip Isdor Mpango, ed., “National Environmental Master Plan for Strategic Interventions (2022 – 2032)” (United Republic of Tanzania Vice President’s Office, June 2022), 85, https://www.vpo.go.tz/uploads/files/MASTER%20PLAN-English_eBOOK_FINAL.pdf.
So, here are bits of non-trivial trivia related to waste management. Remember that Tanzania is a bit bigger than Texas with 61 million people, which grew 37% since 2012.
Solid waste management: “Only 10 out of the more than 100 urban centers in the country have sewerage [sic] systems…” yet these systems serve on average less than 20% of the local population (p. 115). In Arusha, it is only 7.5% of the population (p. 116). Then of the 10 sewer networks, only one was constructed after colonial times (1976 in Mikocheni), recalling that Tanzanian (then Tanganika) gained independence in 1961.
It is estimated that 1% of the Tanzanian GDP is lost due to inadequate sanitation, with factors including productivity losses while sick and money spent on healthcare (p. 120).
TUMA has some garbage cans posted around campus, where I deposit any plastics. I fervently try to avoid single use plastics, but things like sugar and salt come in plastic bags. I actually have a pile of these bags to try to reuse. I checked with my former ELCA colleague, Randy, and the non-plastic paper things will be burned in the back yard. Most of the neighbors burn plastics, which I can smell in the putrid smoke, and then I close my window.
So, here is your environmental lesson for the day. Burning plastics at low temperatures (not in industrial incinerators with scrubbers on the smokestacks) release toxic chemicals into the environment that are dangerous to humans.
“…burning of Poly Vinyl Chloride liberates hazardous halogens and pollutes air, the impact of which is climate change. The toxic substances thus released are posing a threat to vegetation, human and animal health and environment as a whole. Polystyrene is harmful to Central Nervous System. The hazardous brominated compounds act as carcinogens and mutagens. Dioxins settle on the crops and in our waterways where they eventually enter into our food and hence the body system. These Dioxins are the lethal persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and its worst component, 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), commonly known as agentorange is a toxic compound which causes cancer and neurological damage, disrupts reproductive thyroid and respiratory systems. Thus, burning of plastic wastes increase the risk of heart disease, aggravates respiratory ailments such as asthma and emphysema and cause rashes, nausea or headaches, and damages the nervous system” (p.701).
Verma, Rinku, K. S. Vinoda, M. Papireddy, and A. N. S. Gowda. “Toxic Pollutants from Plastic Waste- A Review.” Procedia Environ. Sci. 35 Waste Management for Resource Utilisation (2016): 701–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proenv.2016.07.069.
I met with Randy yesterday, who is amazing with what he has accomplished here in around 12 years. He came as a 1-year volunteer to help get a music program off the ground (originally funded by the Church of Sweden). Now there is an amazing Cultural Art Center with a staff of 19 musicians, dancers, technicians, and administrators. When I bring student groups, we visit the Cultural Arts Center and have opportunities to drum and dance along at times. The Royal Academy of Music in Denmark will have students here in December and half of January with lessons in drumming and dancing at the CAC.
Glory and Randy
The Cultural Arts Centeroutside
The Cultural Arts Center inside
Back to Randy, who informed me that there actually is a plastic bottling program that pays for turning in bottles! So, why are there so many bottles littered around the campus and especially on the roads?
My ELCA missionary colleague, Marvin Kananen, (who reads the blog, so hi Marvin), once said that the new Maasai warrior was an educated Maasai girl. This weekend, I had the joy of spending time on both Saturday and Sunday with Nai (not her full name) and her three children.
Reconnecting after almost 20 years!
Nai was my student in Form 3 (9th grade equivalent) biology class, which I absolutely loved to teach! Most of these girls came from traditional Maasai family settlements with huts made out of sticks, mud, and cow dung—as Nai did. Somehow, her father arranged for Nai to test and interview for the Maasai Girls Lutheran Secondary School, and she was one of 3 out of 100 girls who tested to get in for these few available slots.
After secondary school, Nai took a 1-month crash course in teaching to help fill a teacher shortage! Later, she was able to go back and eventually earn a bachelor’s degree. She now teaches English and Kiswahili in secondary school (O-level for those of you who know the British system) as well as being head of the department. She has 5 sections with 255 students, and then her administrative role. Her students cherish her teaching and care for them.
It is amazing to see the agency of a woman who grew up in a patriarchal culture (this is the technical term in anthropological analysis) where females are trained to be passive and facing painful consequences if they are not. Nai decided independently to learn to drive and move her family into the house still under construction. So, her husband calls her “Mama Surprise.”
Nai is married to a Maasai former colleague who is also a teacher. So, it is great joy to see these two thriving and being a blessing in their work, in their families, supporting their extended family members in schooling and health care. The new Maasai warrior is an educated woman.
On Saturday morning, I made my weekly hike to the next village for groceries. On the way back, I bought some bread that was so fresh it hadn’t been put on the shelf yet. So, I asked to take a picture.
The “seed” bread is wonderful!
This is part of a Lutheran church vocational program. They had a farmers market opening up an hour later, but I needed to get back and to my laundry to get it hung to maximize the sunshine. Nai and I will go another day, as I’ve offered to take her to lunch at their café.
Sunday was a costa bus rid to the Arusha Community Church. While standing, I heard “teecha” (teacher—as it is rare to have an mzungu on these busses/vans, and I get picked up at the gate of Tumaini University Makumira, and I was shown a chair. However, I mistakenly thought it was the flip down chair that fills the aisle in the back of the bus, but it really was the row behind, where I would share the flip down chair with another person and a bit of the seat next to it. Yes, 5 people in a row with 4 seats. After some got off, I ended up in the very back with only 4 across in the 4 seats.
It was the harvest festival Sunday at the Arusha Community Church. So, there was an auction afterwards to sell donated items. Low and behold, there was a rake! They sold both together. I don’t really need 2 rakes, but I can use them in different ways!
I did not buy the 3-month old male and female rabbits—offspring (a couple generations removed) from the rabbits from last year’s harvest festival.
The gift that keeps on giving!
At church, I met one of Anya’s playmates from our years in Tanzania. During our last year in Tanzania, Anya really wanted to go to school. There was a small pre-school program at the Arusha Community Church, and Maria was one of the teachers. Maria, originally from Germany, just oozes love and joy. Two days a week, Anya would ride to Arusha with Eric (we paid for kilometerage for the ELCA Land Cruiser that our missionary colleagues had). Eric was then volunteering for Heifer International, after dropping off Anya at the pre-school in the morning in Maria’s class. Maria, was willing to take Anya home with her until a couple hours later, when Eric would pick her up on the way home. At their home, Sophie Dorthy was about 3 years older than Anya, but still a lovely playmate. Maria found a picture of them from 2003 or early 2004.
Playmates in 2003 or so
And today!
Sophie Dorthy is now doing a PhD in Germany on the complexity of the environmental issues around palm oil. While palm oil is rather demonized in the EU for being non-ecological, non-sustainable, and one of the quintessential extractive (exploitative) industries, Sophie Dorthy’s research establishes that it is very complex and not a binary issue. Intrigued, I asked some questions about criteria and other environmental issues that can inform my project. One question for me is the role of humankind in the environmental criteria, which I have discovered in the InVEST model out of Standford University, but is beyond my capacity. So, I’m going to network with a dear friend’s daughter, who earned a masters in environmental statistics from MIT. This friend was also a playmate and soccer team member with Anya. So, my networking seems at times quite providential, even including Anya’s friends.
The power is going out several times a day, so this is being composed and sent over a couple days.
On Tuesday, I went to Monduli (yes, there and back is about 4.5 hours crammed into dala dalas!) to meet with Pastor Nangole. While he is retired as District Pastor of the North Central Diocese, I believe he still has some advisory or board role at The MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School (MGLSS), being one of the founding collaborators with the late ELCA missionary, David Simonson. While I was greeting him as a friend and seeking his wisdom as a Maasai elder at the beginning of my project, I was introduced to an evangelist from Soit Sambu, which is not too far from the northeast gate of the Serengeti National Park. He was in Monduli with his daughter, who was going to interview the next day for a position at MGLSS. “Evangelist” may be an uncomfortable concept for some Westerners, but here it is the role of a lay pastor who has gone through some theological education by extension (TEE) with some trainings at the center in Olonyo Sambu.
Besides having been in Soit Sambu a couple times with Pastor Nangole, this Tuesday’s visit seemed Providential for a connection with the Eric Hanson Memorial Scholarship. So, let me give some background about this scholarship.
My late husband, Eric, and I had/have a deep appreciation for the work of the evangelists in Maasailand. They are paid a pittance, but they are the ones who are on the front lines of ministry. They live among the people they serve and are very trusted. (The pastors come around once every one or two months to preside over communion, and with a bachelor’s degree, they are paid better and hold a higher status in this hierarchical society.) Eric had one special evangelist friend, and so we’ve always appreciated our connections with the evangelists.
When Eric passed from brain cancer in 2010, I knew that flowers, etc. would not be what Eric wanted. So, I set up a scholarship in Eric’s name at OBA for the children of evangelists, then a few evangelist parents could be released from the burden of trying to pay for secondary school fees. It could encourage them in their calling as evangelists—encourage evangelists and support education for the Maasai—as well as being a meaningful memorial to Eric! Perfect! Now for Christmas and birthdays in the Hanson family, we mainly give gifts to Eric’s scholarship, with a few small things under the tree.
Remembering Eric Hanson
The original scholarship was in partnership with Moringe Sokoine Secondary School, also a Lutheran school in Monduli, because there was no way at that time for me to get students into MGLSS. I knew and trusted the leadership at Moringe, and they were prudently separate from the scholarship committee but provided good transparency and accountability. Ultimately, I knew I could get evangelist’s children into Moringe. The scholarship was to be communicated to the North Central Diocese through Pastor Nangole.
I met the first 2 scholarship recipients at Moringe during one of my visits. However, the head of school informed me that these students came from really weak primary schools, and they were not advancing in their studies. I agreed that they could not keep on and limit the accessibility of another student from having a seat at the school. So, sadly, the evangelists kids were removed from Moringe but not removed from my prayer list.
Thus, my hopes for the scholarship were dashed. I talked with an ELCA missionary about perhaps shifting the program to vocational training, but I didn’t have a good network to make this happen when living in the USA.
Later, with the changes at MGLSS and opportunities to support Maasai girls from rural Maasailand, the scholarship was opened to fund students at MGLSS. (Yes, one is graduating this spring, and I will be there.) While all girls’ education is important, I was a bit discouraged with missing the opportunity to support evangelists’ children. Yet, of course, I was glad to be able to support girls at MGLSS.
This is the background to what seems Providential in meeting the evangelist from Soit Sambu, whose daughter has advanced academically enough to be called for an opportunity to interview. Thus, I have told Pastor Nangole that if she was accepted to MGLSS, I would like to get her sponsored through Eric’s scholarship. I have not met her, and my desire for funding is not a specific person but for funding an evangelist’s child—and other similar candidates. So, with the coordination of Pastor Nangole at MGLSS and Jason, Director of Operation Bootstrap Africa, the 501(c)3 organization that administers the scholarship, there is now one more student at MGLSS. She arrived today at school, the day of this writing.
Please pray for Sara as she gets settled in a new and very different environment, a boarding school very far away from home.
Did you ever play sardines in your youth group—if you were connected to the church when growing up? It is a game like hide and seek, but all but the seekers cram into one small space and wait to be found. Well, today I was crammed into one van from Tumaini University to Arusha, then crammed even more into another van from Arusha to Meserani. I was standing, but I couldn’t stand full height, and the guy to my right had his arm around me the whole way (perhaps 40 minutes!?!), holding onto the grab bar over my left shoulder. It wasn’t creepy but just a bit uncomfortable standing scrunched over. Then, I got a seat for the 14 km to Monduli, though my knees were between the knees of the two men I was sitting across from. There is really a different sense of personal space here!
This was my first trip to Monduli since arriving, the village where I lived for 3 years. So many wonderful memories filled my mind. I first stopped to see beloved Rebecca. She was the cook and day guard for my missionary colleagues, Jean and Marvin.
I forgot to take a picture today, so here is one from my last visit, Feb. 2020 .
Rebecca is a wonderful cook and owns a bakery. I had hoped to buy bread today, but she said that the electricity has been so unstable—going out during the baking process—that they had to throw away so much unbaked/under-baked bread that it was too costly to bake! It is the end of the long dry season before the short rains (usually November and December). So, my guess is that there is too little water to sustain the hydro electric plants, and there is no system for scheduled “brown outs” so that people can plan accordingly.
A couple nights ago, I felt so fortunate that I hit the “publish” button on my blog just before the power went out! Just a short time later, the power came on again, and I had just boiled water to do my dishes before the power went out again. As I have an on-demand hot water heater, it is better to just boil water to mix with the tap water for washing in warm water, which is also used for rinsing the dishes in boiled water, because the tap water is not potable.
I made plans with Rebecca for a visit to stay a few days after my Kiswahili course for immersion Kiswahili. After a nice visit with Rebecca, I walked up to the Monduli church where Pastor Nangole was going to pick me up.
I saw the Monduli Lutheran Guesthouse, where the Wartburg Theological Seminary Group will stay in January.
Here’s the guesthouse!
Then, Pastor Nangole drove me up the base of the Monduli mountains where he lives. We had a lovely lunch, and I presented the Marie Curie fellowship project framework to him. I told him that the project was designed to be shaped and developed in a participatory/collaborative way with Maasai stakeholders, who will determine the core values and learning outcomes that integrate a biblical-ecotheology (with a Maasai hermeneutic/interpretive approach), traditional Maasai knowledge of caring for the creation, and best practices of climate change adaptation and mitigation that are culturally specific for the more traditional areas of Maasailand.
Pastor Nangole has known me since 2002. And he knows my history working with the Maasai, because collaborated with him. He nicknamed me “kono kono” (snail), because it took me a while to return with my church and the support to bless Maasai and Sonjo churches in the area where he was District Pastor, yet everywhere I go, I leave a trail of blessing. My church in Bellevue, WA, made 3 trips with 6 groups in partnership with Pastor Nangole and under his leadership. These were amazing experiences with some amazing stories to tell. Here’s one:
One of the places we visited with Pastor Nangole was Esoit Sambu, way up in the north and not too far from the Serengeti National Park’s northeast gate. We had greeted each other and were inside the stick, mud, and cow dung church. There were some gaps in the walls with sunlight peeking through, and there were children peeking through the windows. One of the evangelists (lay pastors, for whom I have such great respect) was praying for us in Kimaasai, which was translated into English for us. It was profound—even in translation—and filled with words that knit us together as siblings in Christ. As he prayed, a light yet short rain began with raindrops pattering upon the corrugated tin roof. “God has come!” This is what the Maasai say when it rains. Rain, especially in this area of the savannah, is a blessing, because it is what nurtures the grass that feeds the cattle that sustain the lives of pastoralist Maasai. And it rained just when the evangelist was praying. One may think, what a coincidence. Yet, this was the dry season when it doesn’t rain for months!
Pastor and Mama Nangole and an evangelist from Esoit Sambu(a different one than in the story)
This was an important visit, because Pastor Nangole knows me as one who brings blessings (as we traveled with him for those 6 church visits and also connecting with him for the 2 university/college groups I facilitated). Many scholars have come to Tanzania to do their research in order to get a PhD or whatever. Few find ways to continue the relationships and give back—a sort of extractive researcher. Perhaps, because my relationships and partnership started before my PhD, it was natural to continue the relationships after the PhD. This is also one of the values that my doctor father, Knut Holter, holds and models.
My local collaborator, Prof. Parsalaw, knows of me. And he is a very important Tanzanian supervisor as a Maasai elder, scholar, and Vice Chancellor of Tumaini University Makumira. This is one of the critical (Providential!) resources needed for this project to even work. However, Pastor Nangole knows me as a friend and trusts me. So, Pastor Nangole can introduce me more meaningfully to Prof. Parsalaw. In addition, when the new bishop is elected, he will take me to the new Bishop of the North Central Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania for another very important introduction. I will ask for the blessing of the bishop before I approach any of the ELCT churches or schools to ask them to be a research site. So, this was an important day to discuss the project with Pastor Nangole and right away ask for his input to shape the project.
And I survived 5 dala dala rides! (There are no seat belts!)
