Be fruitful and increase in number

Picture from the 2012 Ikizu Luke celebration

The introduction to this post is in the following post (because I wrote the other one first, forgetting that the first one is actually the second one when it's on the blog).  Oops.

During testimony time at the Ikizu church, the pastor's wife stood up to share.  She began by saying what a blessing it was to receive visitors to the church and how happy she was to have us there.  Then she recounted how when she first met me at the celebration of Ikizu Luke back in April 2012, she was sad to see that we had no children.  But then, she continued, when she arrived at church that morning, there we were with a little girl!  (Insert sounds of cheering here.)

She then proceeded to say something along the lines of what follows: "Children are God's blessing on a marriage.  Too many white people have only one or two kids, and sometimes none at all.  I see lots of white people with really little families, or white women who choose to work instead of have any kids.  When I first met the Sandeens, I was so sad to see a white woman who was working hard at her career and not having any children.  But little did I know that she was pregnant at that time!  Listen, you women, God wants us to have babies!  Let's cheer for Enzota (my Ikizu name) for having a baby!  (Insert more cheering here.)  We should have children, lots and lots of children!"

Everyone then cheered some more, and she sat down.  I wasn't quite sure what to think.  It was nice that she (and others) were quite excited about Zarya, but, having been raised in politically-correct America, where you're not supposed to make sweeping, negative generalizations about people based on their color, her words made me squirm a bit.  It seems her idea is pretty popular around the country, being as 45% of the population of Tanzania is under age 15 (and I found that statistic on the internet, so I know it's true).  At least the fact I was hanging out in the back of the church with an occasionally-noisy baby didn't seem to be a problem for any of them!

Faith comes by reading (hopefully)

Lots of Tanzanian churches, particularly Pentecostal ones, have time during their Sunday service for testimonies of how God worked in people's lives during the past week.  People often share about how they were sick and God brought them through it or how he gave them safe travel.  Of course there are others, but those are the type I've heard the most often.

During Ikizu Bible Weekend (see previous posts), the church we were at had a testimony time during the afternoon service.  Mixed in with the healings and journeys accomplished, there were two testimonies that stood out to me, for quite different reasons.  Due to the length of them, I'll make them two different blog posts.  The first:

One woman stood up and shared how she had been at the morning service, during which Andrew, the two Ikizu translators, and I presented about the value of the Bible and Bible translation.  She had purchased a copy of the gospel of Luke in Ikizu after the service, and then she'd gone home for lunch before returning for the afternoon service.

Upon arriving home, she told the congregation, she'd gone to visit her father-in-law (it seemed that he either lived very close to her home or perhaps with her family), who was a very elderly Ikizu man, and not a believer.  She reminded the church that she and her husband had not been successful at trying to speak with him about Christ, although they had been trying for years.

She told her father-in-law that she had something she thought he might like to see, since he was an Ikizu man who valued his language and culture.  She handed him the book of Luke and started teaching him how to read it, using the little literacy booklet we'd given away that morning.  He could read in Swahili, but Ikizu is written with seven vowels and so requires some instruction at first.  She said he'd swatted her away and snapped that if it was really written in Ikizu, he could figure out how to read it himself, since he knew Ikizu better than she did.  At that point, people in the church laughed, so I guess he might be a bit of a crotchety man with a reputation around the village.  She then had to go prepare lunch for her family, so left him with the book.  But, before returning back to church in the afternoon, she checked on him again, and she said he was sitting exactly where she'd left him, and was quite engrossed in reading Luke!  She begged the people of the church to pray that reading the gospel in his own language would grab his heart, and he'd believe in Jesus before he died.

Family Picture Outtakes

When you do a family picture session, your goal is to get one picture where everyone looks good.  We recently had a family photo time (thanks, Chris Gilmore!), and succeeded in getting that one great picture.  However, we also had several pictures where Zarya is pretty cute, but her lame parents prevented the picture from being great.  In the interest of not letting a few partially-fabulous shots go to waste, I thought I'd post a couple of them here.

Ikizu radio interview

There is a radio station, "Radio Mazingira", based in the main Ikizu village of Nyamuswa.  A couple of months ago, Andrew and I, together with one of our Tanzanian colleagues (and Zarya was along for the ride, too), visited the station to introduce ourselves and see what opportunities there might be for doing something with them to promote the Bible translation work.  They were receptive to having us do something, provided we pay for the air time.

When we were planning an event in a nearby village, we thought of the radio station and wondered if it might be good to do something there while we were in the area.  Upon contacting the folks at it, we learned that on Saturday and Tuesday nights, they have a call-in question and answer time, which they invited us to do.  Since our plan (at that time) had us arriving early Sunday morning for a church service not too far from there, it didn't seem too tricky to go a day early and add on a Saturday night activity.

After some last-minute confusion about what time the program began, the two Ikizu translators and I (Misha) arrived at the station.  None of us really knew what to expect, and we were a bit nervous about going on live radio.  We were ushered into a carpeted room where a technician and DJ were seated at a table with a couple microphones and computers.  Almost immediately, the DJ switched the programming from music over to our session.  He gave a quick introduction to what organization we were with and asked us to introduce ourselves.  Before we knew it, we were on air!

We said a bit about Bible translation in the Mara region as an introduction, and then started answering questions.  The DJ asked us some, and people called the radio station with questions for us.  Before asking their question, the DJ had them say from where they were calling.  The translators and I were all surprised by how far away some of them were.  We didn't realize what a big area we were potentially reaching that night!  In all our years at the project, getting the word out about the ongoing work has been an issue.  We want people to know that the Bible is being translated into their language, but it's shockingly difficult to spread this news.  Despite many trips to many villages over the years, only a small group of people in each village hear the message each time.  Doing a call-in talk show for 45 minutes on the radio was a really fun new method to try.  We were in the area for two days afterwards, and we met up with quite a few folks who had heard us on air, so something worked!  We're already planning to utilize this method for announcements about JESUS Film premiers and other big events in the future.

Guesthouse life

If I had a picture to go along with this post, it would be of a room, about eight feet by eight feet, with a little bathroom attached to it on one side (divided from the room by a curtain).  The room has a window, covered with a curtain that matches the one over the bathroom doorway.  There is a bed, five feet across and six feet long, and a pack and play (portable baby cot) at the foot of the bed, that just manages to be able to be wedged between the wall and the bed.  Each bed has a mosquito net.  Add two small suitcases and a diaper bag to the remaining floor space, and it's a pretty full little room.  Oh yes, and add two adults that are too long for the bed, and a baby.

Andrew, Zarya, and I spent last weekend in Ikizu-land for a special Bible weekend event.  More details about the work we did over the weekend will follow in later posts, newsletters, etc.  For now, just understand that we were there for work purposes.  At first we thought we might go for just one day, since doing a village overnight with a baby seemed kind of extreme.  However, the ideas for what we could do while we were out there kept growing, and they were all such great ideas and seemed like really important things to do.  So, in the end, we opted to travel with Zarya and spend two nights.  As I said before, you can read about all the work stuff later.

The first night, the timing of things went a little differently than originally planned, and it ended up with Andrew needing to be the one to put Zarya to bed while I was off with the two Ikizu translators doing some work stuff.  She usually goes to bed right at 7:30 without any complaint, so it seemed easy enough for Andrew to handle this job for one night.  All he had to do was change her diaper and put her in her jammies and in bed.

At 8:45 I returned to the wee room in which we were staying (the one in the above "picture") to find Zarya wide awake with poop running down her legs and Andrew on the verge of desperation.  (Fortunately for you all, there is no picture of that.)  We immediately suspected she had amoeba, despite the negative test for it she'd had earlier that day.  The same scene repeated itself again the next night, with her little bowels letting loose at bedtime, so it wasn't just the fact Baba was the one putting her to bed.  (Side note: we got her tested again upon returning home, and this time it was positive for amoeba.)

If you're wondering about the desperation, remember the room in the picture?  There was no running water in that bathroom, and there was no door or curtain, let alone three inches of space, between our bed and Zarya's.  She might be cheerful about going to bed when in her own room at home, but when she knows we're just inches away from her, it doesn't go so smoothly.  She was still plenty happy, but happy as in wanting to play, not sleep.  She got the late night silly giggles and could not calm down, literally rolling around on her bed and laughing.  You'd think having had really bad diarrhea minutes before would have taken the wind out of her sails, but apparently getting it all out of her innards gave her extra spunk.  As for myself, it was a good chance to practice some fruits of the Spirit.  There is nothing like wrestling a hilariously giggling baby into pajamas while trying to clean liquid poo off the bed with no water or spare sheets to give one an opportunity for gentleness and self-control.

Speaking of sheets, at least I've learned by now to bring my own stuff.  Our room was equipped with one towel and one sheet.  No soap, no hand towel or washcloth, no blanket, no toilet paper, no nuthin'.  Andrew and I shared the towel, I didn't bother trying to wash my hair, and Zarya forsook bathing for a couple days.  I'd brought cloth to use for my sheet, and I'd packed bedding for Zarya, so at least she wasn't cold.  Andrew used the provided sheet.  After four years of marriage, we know ourselves well enough to not attempt sharing a tiny sheet when already sharing a tiny bed with an ever tinier mosquito net.

We survived.  I don't think we'll take any more village overnight trips with Zarya for a while.  It was pretty exciting to get home and take hot showers and put Zarya down to bed at 6:50pm with no protest from her (she slept till 6:50 the next morning).  I had been feeling grouchy about life in Musoma before the trip, and now I'm thrilled to be back in my lovely, huge-feeling home.  Our bed here might be on the exceptionally firm side, but at least it's big!  And there is water in the bathroom!

Water, sort of

Water straight out of the tap, is something we appreciate, knowing it's a luxury.  We have a pretty consistent water supply at our house, because we're fortunate to not be on city water.  Since we're a bit out of town - in a "suburb", if you like (ha!) - the school compound on which we live has it's own private pump.  Sure, it breaks down sometimes, but at least the person in charge of fixing it also lives on this compound, which likely helps in his motivation to fix it quickly.

For electricity, however, we do depend on the standard grid.  This past weekend it was down for repairs for two days.  With no electricity to run the water pump, everyone on our compound was using the water that had already been pumped into the storage tank.  It was enough to last us all for the whole time, which was really wonderful.  The pressure was pretty low by the end of the two days, but there was still water there.

When the pump was able to start pumping water out of the lake again, a lot of dirt had accumulated in the pipes.  We're used to this sort of problem and know to just turn on lots of taps and let the water run out for a while.  After a few minutes, it's clean.  This time, however, a lot more dirt than usual had gotten into the system.  I let the water run for a long time, and this bowlful was what I collected after all that!

In fact, the water was dirty enough to clog the little filter on our washing machine not just once, but twice that morning (and I didn't even try to run a load until after I thought it was "clean"), and the drain in the shower.  I'll grant you that the drain in the shower has some other issues affecting it, but the dirt made a noticeable difference for the worse.

By the next day, though, all was clear again and we're happily washing clothes, dishes, and ourselves once again.

The daily grind

I've been feeling rather overwhelmed by housework lately.  Usually I can keep up with what has to be done, with some help from Andrew and Rose, a woman who comes to help me a couple mornings a week.  Last week and this week, however, it's starting to be a little much and my grouch-o-meter has been nearing the red zone at times!  A few things have been contributing to this flood of work:

• Dust.  I cannot believe how DRY everything around Musoma is right now, and the lack of rain coupled with all the roadwork going on (a good thing, but it creates a lot of dust when they grade dirt roads!), the air is positively thick with dust, which then settles on everything in our house.  Zarya helps me clean every day by volunteering her shirt as a dust mop.  As she crawls around the house on her belly, she leaves little dust-free trails behind her.  Effective as her method is, I do still try to sweep and mop regularly.

• Death.  When somebody dies, the family of the bereaved all gathers together for a week or two.  Last week Rose's aunt died, so Rose has traveled to the other side of Tanzania to go be with her family.  I feel petty for pointing out that I am now overburdened by housework when she's grieving the loss of her aunt, but it does fit into this list.

• Diapers.  Really I mean all things baby-related, not just diapers, but I wanted to keep my 'd' theme!  Zarya is as sweet as can be and I love her to bits, but wow, is she ever time-consuming!  I don't think I need to say more on that note - if you've ever been around an 8-month-old, you know what I mean.

• Dinner.  There is no such thing as whipping up a quick and easy meal around here.  Musoma is fresh out of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and canned tomatoes theses days, not to mention that Wendy's is closed and the supermarket doesn't carry baby food.

• Dishes.  We have two dishwashers at our house.  They are named Misha and Andrew.

I'm learning something through my doldrums of drudgery, however.  The other day when I realized that instead of sitting down at my computer to work on checking Zanaki and Ikizu Acts, what I really needed to do was make baby food and clean the house, I remembered a job I had in grad school.  For one year while working on my Master's degree, I had a job cleaning the washrooms of the linguistics building on campus.  I spent about ten hours a week scrubbing sinks and toilets and mopping bathroom floors.  It was the best job I could have had that year - it occupied enough of my mental energy that I couldn't think about classes and I got a total break from all the brainy stuff I was doing, but it left enough of my mind free that I could pray.  Never before or since that year have I had such an amazing prayer life.  For at least five or six of those ten hours every week I chatted with God as I cleaned.

And so, instead of running through my mental list of gripes and complaints about poor little Misha, having to sweep the floor of her own nice house and wash the dishes in which she'd just cooked a big meal, I thought I'd revisit my grad school days and hang out with God while I cleaned.  You know what?  He was happy to help me work.  We swept and mopped together, we washed dishes together, and when I sat down to play with Zarya after it all, I was feeling quite happy and energized instead of angry and exhausted like I'd been a few days earlier after going through the same chores.  I am once again reminded that one of the few things I can control in this world is my own attitude.