Dagaa

Feeding cats is fairly straightforward in most places. You buy some dry cat food kibbles in a big sack or get them lots of little cans of potent-smelling meat and dump some in their bowl every day. In Tanzania, however, cat food requires creativity.

For starters, Tanzanians don't feed their cats, except perhaps some leftovers of their own ugali (stiff porridge usually made out of corn), so it's not like we can run downtown and get some cat food. Clive and Betsy do hunt a bit and particularly enjoy birds and geckos, but they need more than that.

Since Musoma is right on Lake Victoria, fish are sold here in great abundance. There are huge (sometimes up to six feet long!) Nile perch, big tilapia, little tilapia, and dagaa. Dagaa is a Swahili word; I don't know if there is a word for those kind of fish in English. Maybe they are called minnows, sardines, or wee little fishies... we call them dagaa. Dagaa are the cheapest form of fish. They are caught in great quantity and then laid out to dry in the sun. When they get to be a bit crispy, they are sold by the bucketful.

As you can see from this picture, there are some very little dagaa, and some that are a bit larger. They are dry and crunchy in the form in which they are sold. Tanzanians break off the heads and fry them up with some tomato and salt and serve them over rice or ugali as a cheap form of protein. They are mostly tiny bones, silvery skin, and big eyes; I don't think there is much meat on the fish. One does not clean the insides out of dagaa and filet them!

We freeze them, because they go bad if left out, and they smell rather potent. The cats don't seem to care if they are cold, and they don't freeze solid, since there is no liquid in them. We jokingly call them "fishsicles". Clive and Betsy go through about 3/4 gallon of dagaa a week, which costs about $2.00. Additionally, sometimes we make ugali and mix a bit of that in with their dagaa, and we usually give them the end of bread loaves. To fulfill his taste for getting in trouble, Clive steals every human food item he can, from raw papaya to stirfry to banana bread dough. He's particularly fond of cooked pumpkin and pasta (and of course anything with a hint of meat). But dagaa is what they are actually fed, and fed in great quantity. Several times a day we pull the dagaa Tupperware out of the freezer and toss a handful into their bowl, and the fishsicle chow-down begins.

Going once, going twice, sold!

I (Misha) don't know about you, but the words "going once, going twice, SOLD!" are not ones I think of as being part of a church service. Well, until I came to Tanzania, that is! Here in Musoma, and I assume in other parts of the country, auctions are a pretty normal part of many churches.

Most people give cash during the offering, but sometimes they'll give potatoes, a papaya, a pencil, candy, a chicken, or something else like that. At the end of the service, a church leader will stand up and pick up one item at a time and run a little auction to see how much money they can raise for the church offering. Usually things are sold for a higher price than what you'd buy them for at the market, since people are giving money to their church and getting an item, too. Typically, the person who stands up is an energetic type running around trying to get people to raise their bids as they compete against each other to pay for an item, so it really feels like an auction.

There is sometimes a little twist on the auction - instead of people bidding in an effort to buy the item for themselves, they will decide to give the item to someone in the church (usually the pastor or a guest). In that case, lots of people contribute small amounts and everyone who wants to take part in giving the gift can do so and it's usually 'sold' for a pretty high price.

Last Sunday I actually joined in the bidding for the first time. Someone had brought some green peppers, and I was all out of them at home. I thought that buying some at church might be a nice way to support the church and save myself a trip to the market! I started the bidding at 500 shillings for six little peppers and upped my bid to 800 shillings when some others bid after me, but I was victorious in the end. After that, apparently people were excited that their American guests were taking part and they auctioned off a little bag of potatoes and several tomatoes and gave them to us as a gift! (We passed the fun along and re-gifted them to the Tanzanian couple hosting us for lunch that afternoon.)

We are thinking that we'd like to take a Swahili Bible as an auction item someday. That way, we can bless the church with a nice offering and provide somebody with a Bible. If we do, we'll let you know how it goes.

Being a Missionary

There are many cool things about being a missionary. One of my favorites is the opportunity to serve as a link between churches in different countries...in our case, linking Christians in the USA and Canada to other Christians in Tanzania. After all, we are all part of ONE big body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12), right?

One area where I'd personally love to see more of a link is with the children, and I've been inspired by a project that was started in Uganda (the source of these pictures). American children have worked to create colorful and creative posters of recently-translated Bible verses in some of the Ugandan languages. After being shipped to Uganda, the posters are then used as gifts for Sunday school classes or individual children. Regardless of where they end up, gifts like these are treasured and serve as decoration, a helpful tool for learning that particular written language, and a reminder of God's promises in the Bible.

Do you teach a Sunday School class? Do you like to work with kids on creative projects? Do you know of children who would enjoy a creative project from which they could learn about children in Tanzania and create something special for them? We're working with nine different language groups in Northwest Tanzanian, and this year (2011) many of them will receive the first book of the Bible that has ever been translated into their language. If you want to be a part, please watch for more information coming soon here on our blog, or feel free to write me at andrew_sandeen@wycliffe.org to explore these ideas further.

Andrew

The First Ikizu Reviewers Meeting

On Thursday, February 17, the Ikizu reviewing team met for the first time! They worked on Luke 1-2, and 22-24, since those five chapters are the first ones we did and thus needed the most input and revision. It was almost embarrassing to look back at our early work and see what poor condition it was in, but it was also encouraging to realize how much we have learned since then!

My highlight of the day was talking with one reviewer who is an enthusiastic young church planter. Over lunch, he told me about how he likes preaching in Ikizu and having someone translate his message into Swahili for the sake of non-Ikizu in his audience. He said that although he knows Swahili well and is happy to preach in it, it just doesn't grab his listeners like the Ikizu does. He repeated several times that if the message is in Ikizu, people really listen and care a lot more about what he's saying, so he tries to use Ikizu as much as he can when teaching. The only problem is when he needs to read a passage or verse in his sermon - he then switches to Swahili and tries to translate it on his own as he goes so they will understand what it means. He's really excited that someday he'll be able to preach from the Ikizu New Testament! He laid out a whole plan he has for teaching pastors how to read and teach from the Ikizu Bible and how he's pretty excited for Luke to be printed and dedicated so that people can start using it.

The man in this picture is one of the reviewers. He had other commitments that day, but traveled to come be at the meeting and give his feed back on those chapters of Luke. I wasn't sure how well he could see, even with his super-thick glasses, since he was holding the paper about a foot away from his eyes, but he had quite a few worthwhile comments, so I guess he could see enough to read decently!

Teaching & Seeing Needs

What a rewarding challenge it has been to teach at the local Bible college lately! It has also proved to be exhausting and a TON of work! My expectations for how much time and energy it would take to prepare for a one-hour lecture in Swahili were far short of what has played out in reality. But I wouldn’t trade the great experience, which is an opportunity to study “how to study” the Bible, be pressured into A LOT of Swahili practice, and to interact with a motivated group of students who are committed to studying God’s word and sharing it with others through their churches and various ministries. I’ve been blessed and impressed by their desire to see real truth taught from the Bible in the appropriate context and in ways that people can understand.

However, I’m saddened by the many challenges and disadvantages these students have. There are the everyday challenges of caring for their families (most of them are married and have children), and there are the costs of dedicating to a life of ministry in Tanzania. Just in the past week I have heard how one student’s family is suffering from typhoid and amoeba. Another student asked for shoes because all he has to wear to church is a worn out pair of sandals. On Sunday evening I received a text from one of my students after storms had moved through the area. He was asking for prayer because the roof of his church back home had been completely blown off in the storm. He was obviously distraught, and it was clear that the church family was trying to figure out what to do.

More heartbreaking still, though, is the lack of resources available to these students for studying the Bible. I’ve become so accustomed to the many resources I have access too. But these guys in my class have next to nothing. One of them asked me yesterday for a Swahili Bible. Nothing more, just a Bible. I’ve explored their school library, and was astonished at what I found. There are a fair number of English books for the more advanced students who know English, but when I asked to see the Swahili resources I was taken over to a bottom shelf that had just a handful of small books in Swahili. Swahili is undoubtedly the dominant language used in Tanzanian churches, and there are plenty of resources published in Swahili, but access to them is poor. It is circumstances like these that motivate me but also leave me wishing that I could do just a little bit more.

Andrew

Did Ruth wiggle that night on the threshing floor?

Yesterday I worked with Rukia, the Ikizu translator, on Ruth chapters 3 and 4. In general, Rukia had done a nice job with the translation and our work went quickly because there simply were not very many corrections to make or questions to ask.

However, one verse had a significant issue in it. In the NIV, Ruth 3:4 says: "When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do."

In the first sentence and the third sentence, the Ikizu translation was fine. That second sentence, though, said something like this (in my English translation of the Ikizu): "When he's asleep, go and uncover his feet and lie down very still."

The word (it's just one word in Ikizu) for "lie down very still" wasn't the usual Ikizu word for sleep in Ikizu, so I asked Rukia what exactly it meant. She said that it meant you are lying down, but not all relaxed like you are when asleep. You are careful to not move and you keep your arms tightly at your sides.

That seemed a little strange to me, since I didn't see anything like that in any of the Swahili or English translations we were using as our references. I asked why she had not used the usual word for "sleep" or "lie down", but her answer didn't really make sense to me. We had a sort of circular conversation with me asking questions and her giving answers that weren't very clear as to why exactly the Ikizu translation had this "lie down very still" word.

Now, the reason why might have already occurred to you, but I was kind of dense yesterday afternoon, I guess. After Rukia saying something like, "I don't want people to misunderstand what is meant by 'lay down' in this verse," it finally clicked. Light bulb moment! I realized that she was trying to insert the info that Ruth and Boaz did not touch during the night. Ah ha!

So, what to do now? Did Ruth and Boaz do anything that night other than talk? What exactly woke him up suddenly during the night, anyway? The Bible does not say. It simply states that she uncovered his feet and lay down and that during the night something startled him and he woke up.

Both Rukia and I are pretty stubborn, but since I had the evidence of all the Swahili and English versions on my side, in the end the Ikizu draft said she laid down at his feet and doesn't mention if she wiggled or not. We're going to ask other Ikizu people and the translation consultant when he comes to see what they all think.

Translation is tricky, and understanding indirectly stated information can be even trickier!

Lunch

Most days we eat lunch at the office. A woman there is employed as a part-time office cleaner and has her own part-time business making food for us to purchase for morning snack and lunch. The menu is pretty straightforward:
Monday: beans and rice, beef (optional)
Tuesday: pilau (spiced rice with a little beef)
Wednesday: beans and rice and fish
Thursday: beans and rice
Friday: beans and rice, beef (optional)

So, can you guess what day of the week this picture was taken?

If you order fish at a restaurant in Tanzania, you get a fish. We don't have any of that silly American business of cutting off the head and tail, removing the skin, and taking the meat off the bones! If you only want 1/4 of the fish, then you can just pick it off yourself. Around these parts if you say you want fish with your meal, then you get a fish, the whole fish.

We're Getting a New Office!

Since I (Misha) arrived in Musoma in early 2007, the Mara Cluster had GROWN! We've been through a variety of office arrangements, none very ideal, but all functional for a time.

We're all pretty excited that sometime this year we're going to have a new building! This big building is going up in our current office's "backyard", so we'll then have use of our current space as well as this one.

The very incredibly most exciting part of it is that it will have a conference room! When we have workshops, we always have to go somewhere else in town, which is a bother, to say in the least. It's amazing that we've made it four years without a meeting room, and we're thrilled that someday the idea of being able to use PowerPoint while teaching the entire group of translators can become a reality. It's time for the cluster to enter the modern era...