Zarya, almost 7 months old

Our little girl is growing up so fast!  She can now crawl, turn pages in a board book when told to do so, ("Turn the page!" and she reaches out and flips it), eat some pureed big person foods (green beans, beef, zucchini, carrots, etc.), and occasionally she even uses the potty.  I won't claim that she actually has any idea what she's doing when the latter occurs, but sometimes when I put her on it, she goes.  Babies go a lot, so my chances of catching her at a time when she needs to go are pretty high.

She's a happy, busy, on-the-go baby.  Now that she can crawl, she doesn't see why she should bother to every stay still.  In the picture above, I'm hovering right next to her, pulling her back from launching herself off the couch every 3 seconds.  She's an active little sweetie!  (And not so little, either, if you can imagine that Andrew and I might possibly have produced a larger-than-average child.)

Tuombe: Praying before eating

Growing up, my family prayed before meals at which we were all sitting down together.  It didn't have to be a formal affair to merit a prayer, but it was a 'real' meal.  Like, we didn't usually pray before lunch, which was a bit more haphazard with us all eating different random leftovers or making our own sandwiches and sitting at the kitchen bar instead of the table.

Tanzanians are serious about the concept of praying before eating.  The other day (sorry, no picture - the picture above is a of a different day when we were eating with Tanzanian friends.  But I wanted to have a picture of some sort, because I know there are folks out there who don't read blog posts unless they come with a picture...) we went to the home of some friends for a quick visit and were given sodas to drink.  As was very typical, our hosts asked us what kind of soda we wanted, and then gave some money to their son to run to the nearest shop and buy them.  They didn't have enough money to spend frivolously for everyone to have a soda, so it was just me and Andrew with drinks in front of us.  The teenage daughter opened our bottles and poured some into glasses she had brought out for us.  Then, as we have grown to expect, she said, "Tuombe" (Swahili for "Let's pray".)  She then quietly speed-muttered her prayer of blessing, and closed with the mandatory "in the name of Jesus, amen."

In the States, I don't think if we had guests and gave them sodas, we'd pray over their drinks.  However, when people in the States do pray over food, the prayer is usually spoken in a normal voice.  I know part of the issue is just my Swahili, but it seems like 75% of the food-prayers I hear are said at an extremely rapid rate in a quiet voice.  Another interesting note is that 98% of the time, it's the woman of the house or an eldest daughter who says the prayer.  I think that in the States, it is often the man of the house who prays over the food when there are guests present.  Way back in 2006, when I was staying with a Tanzanian family for several days as part of my language-learning course, the women of the house prayed over the food in the kitchen just after they finished cooking it, and then took it into the dining room for the family to eat.  I don't know if it was because they felt it was more important for the food to be prayed over than for the consumers to hear the prayer or what, but that theory could fit with the speed-mumbling, too.  Maybe it's thought that God knows and understands, and he's the one who is being spoken to, not the other people, after all.

Andrew's travel day

The only ferry photo I captured.  This was departing from Mwanza on the trip to Kome Island.

(Yes, this is Andrew writing, as shocking as that may be.)
Last week I spent a few days in the Zinza language area for a workshop.  A group of us from the Mara Cluster office traveled down to the southern edge of Lake Victoria to Kome Island for the purpose of looking at how to write the Zinza language and discussing uses of mother tongue Scripture.  Since there were seven of us, I didn't need to stay for the entire time and opted to travel back to Musoma alone.  Here's an explanation of what that travel day was like...

It had been a rough night.  The guesthouse where we were staying, which was also where we hosted the workshop, had a bar.  And the bar was located directly outside of my room's window.  Being Friday night, the music was loud, the people were plenty, and it didn't quiet down until well after midnight.

I got up at 4:30am, which allowed me plenty of time to be out the door by 5:00 with clean teeth, my backpack, and a small suitcase.  I opted not to bucket bathe in the dark with cold water.

Standing alongside the dark road, waiting for the pikipiki (motorcycle) driver who had been contacted the previous evening, I enjoyed looking up at the amazing expanse of stars.  But the enjoyment faded as the minutes quickly ticked by and there was no sign of any pikipiki looking for a passenger.  It was really quiet, and my anxiety about missing the 5:30 ferry was rapidly growing.  It only leaves the island once every three hours, and that kind of delay would keep me from making it home at a reasonable hour.
 
At 5:30, two of the guesthouse workers arrived to begin their morning of making chapatis and chai for the day.  One of the ladies said, "Waryoba, umewahi!"  I agreed that I was up early, but expressed my frustration that my driver hadn't come and that I was going to miss the ferry.  She replied by saying that I had plenty of time.  I replied with, "But the ferry departure is only two minutes away!"  She replied, "But the ferry doesn't leave until 6:30, not 5:30."  Ai yai yai! Apparently there had been some miscommunication in my planning.  I could have slept (or at least tried to sleep) for another hour.

The pikipiki arrived at 6am and we headed down the dark, sandy road towards the ferry station.  During those fifteen minutes, the sun started to come up and I had a few moments to marvel at the beauty of the area and remind myself that I really do live in a pretty amazing, equatorial part of the planet and get to do adventurous things that many others only dream about (or fear).

At the ferry station, I bought my ticket and went to board the ferry.  As is quite common, a guy came up and wanted to carry my bag for me.  I declined, but then he wanted to help me board the ferry.  You see, the ramp onto the ferry wasn't long enough to actually reach dry ground, so someone was going to have to get wet.  If I wanted to stay dry, then I would need to climb on this guy's back and cross the twenty feet (about a foot deep) to the ramp.  Being the stubborn, "I can do it myself" kind of guy that I am, I opted to fend for myself.  I figured my Keen sandals would hold up just fine and I was willing to take the risk of getting bilharzia from the contaminated lake water.

Once on the ferry, I walked up to the front of the deck (only about 5 car-lengths) and found a daladala (small passenger van) which was headed to Sengerema, the town I needed to get to.  There was space for me, so I climbed in a back corner seat and later paid my fare.  As we approached our destination, I was informed that I had to get out.  The daladala must be empty when it departs from the ferry.  So I abandoned my seat and prepared for another wade as I departed from the fairy towards dry ground.

The one-hour trip to Sengerema was pretty much like any other daladala trip.  I found myself dreaming of being shorter as my knees were smashed against the seat in front of me and brought up to chest level.  Luggage, which had already been stowed, was occupying the place where I wished my feet could be.  Dust and exhaust fumes filled the limited breathing space for the 24 of us stuffed inside.

I was blessed to only have to wait about thirty minutes in Sengerema before boarding a bus and departing.  I had a middle seat, but didn't mind.  However, after about a thirty-minute ride we were at the next ferry station.  I didn't understand the proper procedure for traveling by both ferry and bus at the same time.  I just followed the crowd.  We all got off, bought foot passenger tickets for the ferry and headed to a pre-boarding area.  During my few minutes there, I took advantage of a choo (toilet) for the fee of 200 shillings (about 13 cents).

On the ferry, I climbed up to a seating area and found a seat.  Two young guys eagerly joined me there and tried to start a conversation in English.  I responded in Swahili, and they were pleasantly surprised with my ability to communicate in Swahili (which, of course, made me feel good).  We chatted pretty much the entire thirty-minute trip.  They had recently finished school, were working in the gold industry, were Catholic, and spoke strongly about the importance of God in our countries.

I got my same seat back after boarding the bus again on the other side, and we headed toward the large Tanzanian city of Mwanza.

At a busy bus station in Mwanza, about half of the passengers left, and it became clear that we'd be sitting there a while before filling back up and continuing towards Musoma.  I switched seats so that I could be by a window.  When someone started to tap my shoulder through the window, I at first tried to ignore them.  But they persisted, so I turned to them.  The guy standing there told me that I should move to the bus that was parked behind us.  I had seen it when we pulled in, knowing that it was with the same company, but I wasn't really comfortable switching buses without knowing what the consequences could be.  I finally broke down and made the move.  Sure enough, my new bus was full and soon ready for departure.  But we didn't depart for Musoma!  We departed for the tire shop across the street and spent the next half hour there dealing with the air pressure in one of the tires.  Ai yai yai.

A few hours later, after skirting the edge of the Serengeti and seeing herds of wildebeest and zebra, we arrived at the bus station in Musoma.  From there, all I had to do was get a pikipiki driver to take me the 25-minute trip home.  I was home by 4:30 pm and quite ready for a shower and a great meal prepared by my lovely wife.  And the smiles that Zarya gave when I walked in the door were priceless.

Zarya Jill, 6 months old

Look, I'm standing!  With just a wee bit of help, that is...

Zarya is growing so fast, when I realized we hadn't put a picture of her on the blog for the past month, I thought it absolutely necessary to get another taken and uploaded ASAP.  So, here's our big little girl!

Haircuts for Jesus

Ideally, there would be a picture of me with my freshly-cut hair right here.  Imagine it, because I don't have one and don't feel like taking one of myself at the moment.

When I was first interested in missions, I was a little put off by all the skills required by most mission organizations.  I wasn't a nurse, teacher, computer whiz, or pastor, and wasn't interested in becoming any of those things.  As  you all know, I ended up studying linguistics and joining Wycliffe, so it all turned out okay and my weird little skill is very practical for what I'm doing.

If you're thinking about doing short-term missions at a place where there are already some missionaries, do you know what one of the very most desperately needed skill is?  Cutting hair.  Yes, cutting hair.  If you have white-person hair and you live in Africa, guess what - you can't go somewhere local to get your hair cut.  And so you get it cut like the day before you leave your home country before flying overseas and then after a year or so, when things start getting pretty scraggly and awful, you break down and beg one of your expat friends to give it a go and you pray for decent results.  Or, you wait until you go on vacation somewhere outside of East Africa and try your luck there and pray it doesn't cost too much!

And that's the women's side of things.  Missionary men depend on their wives for regular cuts, and most end up with sketchy results because missionary women spent more time studying Greek than studying how to give haircuts.  And if you are a single male missionary, well, good luck to you, buddy.  Here's to hoping you can give yourself a buzz cut.

One of our American colleagues recently received a visitor from the States, her best friend, who just happens to be a professional hair stylist.  This amazing friend decided to offer her wonderful services, free of charge, to all and any who needed their hair cut while she's here in Musoma for two weeks.  Now if that isn't a fabulous skill and gift to everyone in the expat community here, I don't know what is!

So, if you are out there and thinking about missions and feel like you just don't have what it takes to be a missionary and wonder how you could ever be of use overseas, just think about that!

Denominations visited (thus far) in Tanzania

On our way home from church today, we counted how many different denominations we've attended at least once here in Tanzania.  I posted our list a little while back, but we've been to quite a few more since then!  Andrew is now at 12 and I've been to 14:

Roman Catholic
Mennonite
Anglican
Moravian
Lutheran
Seventh Day Adventist
Vineyard (Michelle only)
Pentecostal Evangelical Fellowship of Africa
Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania
Pentecostal Assemblies of God
Evangelical Assemblies of God (Michelle only)
Tanzanian Assemblies of God
Calvary Assemblies of God
African Inland Church of Tanzania

Inspired by that long list, we then wondered how many denominations we've each been to in the States.  After a moment, we realized that we could start listing nondenominational churches, but we had only a very few "real" denominations!  We'll stick with counting Tanzanian ones.

Greetings along the path

During my first few years in Musoma, it often bothered me that I needed to greet everyone I passed when I was running.  There are certain situations where it's okay not to greet people, such as if you are engrossed in a conversation with someone who is traveling along with you and you don't know the person you are passing.  But in general, greeting folks is the socially correct thing to do around here.  I found it irritating that I couldn't just shut my mind off and go exercise, but I had to acknowledge total strangers who just happened to be going along the same trail I was.

On our most recent trip to North America, during my first couple weeks there I found it very liberating to just trot along listening to music on my iPod and ignoring everyone, as they also ignored me.  But then the thrill of silence and being ignored wore off, and I found myself doing the "runner's nod" to other runners or people listening to music, and verbally greeting walkers (people walking have a wee bit more time to process and reply than runners).

Upon returning to Musoma, I resumed my usual practice of saying (in Swahili) "Good morning" or "How are you?" to people.  There aren't too many greetings one gives or receives to strangers when both parties are in transit and the questions and replies are standard.  Sometimes somebody (not me, I'm not that creative when exercising!) will mix it up with a "How is your exericise?" or "How did you wake up?"  Since the answers are all still the same ("Good!"), it doesn't take too much brain power.  It's easy, it's friendly, and I don't really think about it much one way or the other.

However, I was recently struck speechless when I was jogging along on a weekday morning and a man, a total stranger, walking along the path in the opposite direction gave me with a big smile and greeted me with, "Let's praise Jesus Christ!"  I had already begun to say "good", when I realized what he'd said.  There was a moment of silence, during which we passed each other, and then I turned around and called after him, "Amen!"

Uji label

I bought some uji mix the other day and thought y'all might appreciate the translation of the above label:

Soy Porridge

Special food for the health of all people

It is porridge with plenty of vitamins and much starch.  It builds the brain, liver, etc.  This porridge is suitable for children, elderly people, sick people, and pregnant women and is suitable for breakfast in the morning.

To use

Use five spoonfuls per liter of water, stir this porridge like normal porridge, drink the porridge with vitamins and it will make you have more strength.

Mixture

70% millet, 50% sorghum, 10% soy, 10% peanuts, 10% rice

Oh, where do I even start...  I should probably say that I do actually like the stuff.  What exactly I'm eating and what it does for me, I'm not sure (150% of the above combo).  It sounds promising and positive, at least!