Zarya, 5.5 months old

Here's our happy girl at age five and a half months old!  She loves her toys and enjoys the challenge of trying to crawl after them after she throws them out of reach.  She still can't crawl, but she wiggles and wriggles her way over to them.  Sometimes she gets tired along the journey and stops to lick the floor for a while.  It's good motivation to keep our floor clean, or at least try to do so.  Zarya hasn't been sick yet, so apparently all the dirt she's ingested is helping her immune system.  She can sit up, but is prone to suddenly careening over, so we don't let her sit by herself on the concrete.

In the wild jungle

We recently took a trip out to an Ikizu village and had to ford a river in order to get there.  Also, we were recently without internet at home for twelve days.  These two troubles are surprisingly similar.

I find that people are either shocked by the fact we actually have internet at our home and that personal motor transport is an option where we're at, or they are appalled to find out how irregular and slow both of the above are.  Somehow the phrase "missionaries in Africa" makes some folks think of us living out in the bush, using kerosene lanterns for light, traveling by donkey cart, and eating only what we can grow in our garden or shoot with a bow and arrow.  Others are astounded to realize that our electricity, water, internet, and mobile phone network all go out regularly, sometimes for extended periods of time, and that we drive an 18-year-old vehicle and roads are in very poor repair.

It's a bit of a conundrum to whine about the lack of internet for nearly two weeks, because I know I should be happy that we have internet at all.  And when we take a trip to a village a bit of a distance from Musoma and whine that we had to take a bit of a risk and cross a river to get there, I'm reminded that the adventure concluded with us sitting high and dry in our own vehicle and hiring some young men to push us across.  So yes, both situations were challenging, but really, what should I expect from life in Sub-Saharan Africa, anyway?  Four lane highways and WiFi at rest stops along the way?

So, here I am, whining in hopes that you are in the group that will sympathize and feel like we're really roughing it out here, sacrificing our comfort and security for the Lord.  And if you're in the group that thinks I should be feeling thankful that we usually have quite a few conveniences and comforts at our disposal, well, what can I say, because to be quite honest, I'm in that group, too.  But I still wanted to whine!

Baby and Baba, Baby and Mama

Zarya watching TV with Baba (until I interrupted them with the camera, that is)

Almost five months old and ready to celebrate her first Easter!  He is risen!

Diapers, nappies, bunting...

There are a lot of words for the cloth you wrap around a baby's bum - diapers, nappies, bunting, and more.  What I call it is "my life".  This is our indoor clothes line and there is always some of Zarya's bum gear hanging on it.  We have an outdoor clothes line, but that would entail needing to do baby laundry in the morning, then walking outside, hanging everything up with clothespins, and having to go outside again in the evening to collect it and find somewhere indoors to hang it overnight to finish drying.  Oh yes, and cleaning the bird poo and tree bombs (we have a fig tree with branches that overhand our clothesline that drop little pellets that explode on impact) Yeah, changing diapers is enough work - I'll take the easy way out on hanging them up to dry, even if it does kind of ruin the view of Lake Victoria!

Banana storage experiment conclusion

As promised, I am reporting back to you about how my great banana storage experiment went.  I'm a little late in posting the results, but I assure you that I ate my bananas right on schedule.  This picture is taken exactly one week after putting two bananas in the jar, and the not-so-great looking bananas left on the stem are part of the original bunch, so you can compare how they aged in their peel versus in the jar.

I ate one of bananas that was in the jar three days after putting them in there.  It tasted just fine - like a perfectly good, normal banana.  However, I will point out that the bananas I was eating off the bunch that still had their peels on were also great at that time.

The banana in the picture was consumed shortly after it posed for this glamour shot.  When I opened the jar, it let out quite a bit of pressure, like I'd been flying around with it in an airplane and had just landed.  The banana itself was only slightly softer than it had been a week earlier (and the bananas with the peels were much, much softer by this point).  It had a strong flavor, though.  It wasn't necessarily a bad flavor, but it was like ultra-banana taste.  So while putting the bananas in the jar certainly preserved their life longer than staying in their peels would have, I am not keen on doing it again.  I'd rather have mushy, normal tasting bananas than firm, strong tasting ones.

Actually, what I'd really rather have a week after buying a big bunch of bananas is banana bread.

Zarya, almost 5 months old

We have this interesting contraption at our house that is a combination swing and high chair kind of thing.  Because Zarya is prone to suddenly keeling over forwards when sitting up, I like to attach the tray to the swingy-seat and put her toys on it.  Since she thinks the main point of toys is to chew on them, it makes sense to put them on a tray for her.  Apparently zebra legs are tasty stuff, as are book pages.  She can't quite sit up all by herself yet, but she loves trying and this chair offers enough support that she stays upright even when she lurches around.  She's almost five months old and seems to want to grow up quickly - she gets very frustrated that she can't sit, stand, or crawl and tries very hard to master these big girl skills.  For my part, I wouldn't mind if she stayed a little baby for a wee bit longer!

Once a pastor, always a pastor

Pastor Magesa and his wife

Andrew and I recently visited Pastor Magesa and his family at their home.  Magesa is one of the Bible translators for the Jita language; you might recognize him from pictures from the time when I was the adviser for the Jita team.  This was the first time I'd met his wife and although I'd seen some of his kids before, I'd never interacted with them until this visit.  He has a really nice family, and a very pretty wife!

During the course of our visit, Andrew asked him if he was still considered a pastor, even though he is no longer teaching regularly at a particular church.  Magesa replied that he still preaches sometimes, filling in when the regular pastor can't be there, and that his extended family still comes to him regularly in a pastoral role, when they need advice or a mediator or something.

Also, he said friends and neighbors sometimes treat him like he's their pastor.  He told us how one acquaintance came to him for help when the teenage daughter of one of his relatives needed prayer.  She had an evil spirit trying to kill her.  It would throw her into the lake trying to drown her, or take her out to the main road and attempt to get her run over by a passing motorcycle.  Magesa said he prayed for her and she is much better now.

He told us this story as a short example, rather off-handedly.  It took him all of three sentences to relate how this high school student was being attacked by a demon, and then he moved on to talking about how he's the guest speaker at a church this coming Sunday.  Even after six years in Tanzania, I still think stories like this sound like they are straight out of the gospels.  It's not that I don't believe there are currently evil spirits out and about, but Americans don't tend to casually chat about them.  But they are a reality and I appreciate people like Pastor Magesa who calmly and capably deals with the evil that comes his way in a Godly manner.