Don’t lose weight and eat more fat?

We’ve all heard the dietary advice to reduce fat, sugar and salt and increase fibre. We’re all aware that obesity is on the increase and we are told this is a bad thing. I’ve just been reading a couple of interesting nutrition articles (yes, once in a while I hark back to my nutritionist days and read some research) that challenge some of my prior knowledge and even the advice that I have given people in the past. Much of what I read was familiar, but some new angles on it came to light.

So, we think we need to reduce fat. But what does that actually mean? The research actually shows that it is not so much about reducing fat in our diet as it is about increasing a particular kind of fat – polyunsaturated fatty acids (also known as PUFAs) and within that especially what is known as ‘n-3’ and ‘n-6’ fatty acids. It seems that if we really want to reduce risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, we should concentrate on increasing PUFAs in our diet rather than focusing on cutting back saturated and monounsaturated fats.

So, where can PUFAs be found? Good sources include vegetable oils, nuts, seeds  (for all three of these some are better sources of n-6 and n-3 than others), avocados and oily fish (like salmon, herring or tuna). Typically if you are trying to lose weight, you might avoid these foods due to their fat content, but it is probably more to your advantage to increase these foods in your diet than it is to lose weight! Much to my chagrin I have been reading that being overweight can even increase life-expectancy, rather than decrease it (though this doesn’t mean that if you are happily slim I am about to advocate a weight-gain program) – what is more important is behavioural patterns and the kinds of foods we eat, rather than our actual size.

Also, if you reduce fats but just end up increasing refined carbohydrates to replace them you could possibly be making things worse. Instead, when eating carbohydrates, make sure that you are having them in the form of whole grains, vegetables and fruits. If you are familiar with the Glycaemic Index, you want to focus on low GI rather than high GI carbs. These foods can all have a positive impact on your health.

Coming back to the issue of size. While ‘normal’ weight people have lower levels of disease, there currently isn’t any real proof that if an overweight person loses weight, they reduce their disease risk. What seems to be more important is adjusting behaviour rather than size. In fact, many people who try to lose weight often end up putting it back on again, and then trying to lose it again, and it becomes something of a cycle. It seems that this constant up and down is more harmful than staying a consistent weight, harmful for both your body and emotional state!

In summary, if you want to improve your health and reduce disease risk, focus on what you can increase rather than on what you can decrease. Focus less on losing weight and more on listening to your body and mind, taking note of how food affects your mood, concentration, energy levels, fullness, hunger, ease of bowel movement and appetite. Enjoy your food! Focus less on reducing fat and calories and more on eating yummy foods like nuts, seeds, avocados, oily fish, wholegrains, fruit and vegetables. And finally, don’t forget to stay active – another vital ingredient for healthy living.

Let’s be amazed over our incredible bodies. Every cell is a miracle – beautifully designed! I like to remember that we are all wonderfully created, formed and fashioned by a God who loves us without partiality. So, here’s to more yummy food!!

P.S. The above comments are based on the two articles listed below. These articles look at a vast range of studies and compare and contrast them to see what common threads emerge. If you look on the internet you will find a load of people saying opposing things, and it’s true that advice changes as new research emerges and what I have written may need adapting in ten years’ time, but let’s be careful who we believe!

Bacon, L. & Aphramor, L. (2011) Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift. Nutrition Journal 10:9

Liu, A. et al. (2017) A healthy approach to dietary fats: understanding the science and taking action to reduce consumer confusion. Nutrition Journal 16:53

An African at heart?

A couple of weeks ago the church I attend in Mbeya, Majengo Baptist, celebrated the induction of a new pastor. After coming back from a trip, I discovered I had been appointed a member of the organising committee! I cynically assumed I was appointed because I am wealthy (in the eyes of people here), and all committee members had to contribute money to the costs of the event. But to be fair, I have never been asked to be on a committee before and I have attended the church for a good number of years, so although this may have been a contributing factor, I’m sure it wasn’t the only reason; they probably just thought it was about time I took my turn!

When I first found out I was on the committee and they explained about needing to make a contribution, I asked to see the budget so that I could understand how the costs were being worked out. Most of the budget was for food. They were anticipating catering for around 300 people! The event would be held in the new church building (on the same plot of land as the current church), which at the moment is little more than a roofless shell but is significantly bigger than our current building, so money was also needed to hire plastic chairs (to supplement all the wooden pews that were moved there from the current church) and to decorate the stage area. People were also asked to bring any tarpaulin they had to create some kind of covering against either sun or rain (thankfully it didn’t rain). The budget seemed reasonable, except for the oil. They had included 20 litres of cooking oil! I confess I couldn’t hold back the nutritionist in me and suggested they reduce it. Lo and behold, at the next committee meeting (the only one I actually succeeded in attending), they announced what I had said, agreed to reduce it and joked that I should teach them how to cook using less oil! I was somewhat embarrassed but it was all in good fun, and I think they did reduce it a tiny bit as I think they ‘only’ bought 15 litres in the end. The rest of the meeting seemed to be about who hadn’t paid their contributions yet, whether we should serve chicken to the important guests and what colour clothes we should wear to show we were the committee members. Like committee meetings the world over, it seemed to take very long time to achieve very little!

The day (a Saturday) came and I turned up around 9am to help with the food prep. I came armed with a chopping board, knife and potato peeler as I had a hunch they might come in handy, as well as a kanga (local cloth) to wrap around me for an apron. Other than the fact I was told I shouldn’t use a kanga that is mostly white when working in the kitchen, I seemed to fit in. I set to peeling and chopping carrots. A small group of children soon gathered round me – they all know me as I have taught most of them in Sunday school. They were fascinated by the peeler and were soon taking it in turns to peel the carrots while I was busy chopping. They were also fascinated by how fast I chopped – that’s the benefit of using a board (which I have never seen a Tanzanian using). We sat outside on some steps as we worked away. The other helpers seemed to get a kick out of seeing me there, and enjoyed how I was learning to do things their way.

After the carrots it was peppers. We had some good maths lessons as we went, as they counted out how many slices of peppers I was cutting, and then we did some subtraction and a bit of English. Next was a big basket of tomatoes (at which point I had to move to a shady spot, as I was in the direct sun and it was strong). Finally I helped grate some ginger (by which point I had a nice fat blister on my finger). After that there didn’t seem to be much else I could do, so I wandered over to where the induction service was in full swing and listened in to a visiting pastor preach for a bit. It was great to hear him switch briefly into the Nyakyusa language and promote the Nyakyusa Bible! (This is one of the languages that we are working with – we hope the New Testament will be published in 2018).

Finally the service was over after much singing and dancing around the newly inducted pastor and the giving of gifts (of which there seemed to be a lot, including things like new suits for him to wear). I was assigned to help serve the important people (the pastors), who ate in the pastor’s office and the Sunday school room, but I soon realised I wasn’t really needed there, so I went to help serve the long queue of people outside. There was rice, cooked bananas, beans, beef and a hot chili sauce and the inevitable sodas. I had already eaten (I was urged to do so before we started serving, as others involved in cooking were also doing, otherwise we’d be eating very late after everything was over). The queue went on and on, I’m sure some people there had essentially come for a free meal rather than because they cared about the induction service. The children were all made to wait until last which, on reflection, is the exact opposite of what seems to happen at celebrations in England!

And then the dish washing began. Piles of plates to wash in buckets (on the floor, being filled from an outside tap), with an old bit of sacking as the dishcloth. The plates were very greasy and the water was cold, so even after washing with lots of soap and rinsing, they still felt greasy! I helped with this for a while, but it seems that dish-washing is what the younger girls (teenagers) are supposed to do, so I was able to hand it over, which is a good job as my back couldn’t take much more bending in awkward positions! After making sure all the plates had been gathered, it seemed like there was little more I could do, so I said goodbyes and started to head off, but before I had got very far one of the ladies asked if she could borrow my knife and board to cut up a chicken. It turned out there was a whole cooked chicken left, and some rice, and so now it was the committee members’ turn to get a treat (i.e. chicken meat) and have a soda.

It had been a long day and this is a long blog! And I haven’t even mentioned the smokey wood fires, the massive cooking pots, eating rice with hands (the rice being so greasy that it sticks together), the need to add purifying tables to the pre-meal hand-washing water due to the current outbreak of cholera in the region and my sunburn!

The next day the new pastor thanked me for helping, and told me people had asked him if I had been born in Africa! Someone else commented that though I am an ‘mzungu’ on the outside (i.e. I have white skin) I am an African at heart! While unfortunately this isn’t really true (I am all too aware of how often I don’t know how to behave in this culture and how different my thinking can be), I took it as huge complement, and I thank God that in so many ways I do feel that this is my home and that I am an accepted part of the church family.

As I reflected on the whole event, I was struck by how on one level it is just like an induction service in England – with visiting pastors, lots of guests, a church service, food and a busy team of people in the background making it all run smoothly. But on another level it was so totally different, from cooking outside over wooden fires to dancing with gifts up to the pastor to brightly coloured cloth bedecking the stage to the absolute necessity of sodas being provided (maybe that’s not so different from the absolute necessity of a British church providing cups of tea)!

It was certainly an experience I won’t forget, and I pray that I may continue to serve as part of the body of Christ in Majengo Baptist Church, as God leads me, despite the deep cultural differences that sometimes threaten to overwhelm me and make ‘church’ something I sometimes find very hard to attend. Please pray with me that this church might grow in maturity, that the new pastor would grow in wisdom, that God’s Word would be taught faithfully and that as a body we might be “growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15 NLT).

A wonderful opportunity or a waste of time?

“The pastor will meet us in Mbalizi at 8.30am.” I picked up my two Tanzanian colleagues en route and arrived in Mbalizi at precisely 8.30am. The pastor was, indeed, already there, but he hadn’t expected us to be on time! He still had some shopping to do and the shop he needed to go to was still shut. While we waited, he invited us all to a little café to get breakfast. I declined to eat what the others chose – chicken, stock (with flat globules floating attractively on top) and chapattis (greasy but yummy). I couldn’t quite stomach that for breakfast and was glad I’d already had my porridge!

We had been invited to teach at a seminar in a village church in the Malila language area. The pastor was a former student of mine, someone I had taught at Southern Bible College (Tanzania Assemblies of God), and who was keen for me to visit his church and teach. He had got in touch with me through one of his fellow students, Oscar, who now works with us as a Bible translator. So Oscar came along too, together with Heri, a Malila colleague who would be able to teach people how to read their language.

We finally left Mbalizi at the time I thought the seminar was supposed to start! The village proved to be further from the main road than we had anticipated (a good 40 minute drive), and the road was quite rough and included a somewhat rickety bridge! However, we travelled safely, even if my car did get covered in dust (inside and out).

We had been told that we would have a morning and evening session on Saturday, an opportunity to preach in the Sunday morning service and another session on Sunday evening. We prepared to teach a number of topics: The importance of reading the Bible so that we can grow spiritually; how to read the Bible carefully and meditate on it; Bible overview; the need to love and value our children and teach them God’s Word; how to read the Malila language. We did indeed have all three sessions, however, over half of each session turned out to be choirs singing, so I had a lot less time than anticipated to teach! The choirs sang and danced with gusto and the sound system was loud – I found stuffing toilet paper in my ears helped make the volume bearable. My favourite songs were the ones sung without the sound system, where I was actually able to understand the words rather than them being drowned out by the music. By the end of two days I felt like I had spent a disproportionate amount of time sitting around compared to teaching. Each day we spent a good hour getting there and another hour getting home (after an unnerving drive in the dark). Each day I was in the village for about eight hours, but was only teaching for a couple of those. It felt like a very inefficient use of my time. But was it?

There were up to a hundred people there, from more than one church, who seemed to engage well. We were warmly welcomed by all, food was provided for everyone and all our expenses were covered. They even gave us a gift towards the project as well as a large sack of peanuts and another of maize. The pastor said more than once that he wants me to go back and teach for a whole week next year, though I find it hard to know whether the enthusiasm is to do with my white skin (which is very rarely seen there and so sadly people often see us as something of an attraction and even as superior) or a genuine desire for the things I teach, so I might be declining that invitation! However, usually we are the ones arranging workshops, encouraging churches to get on board, struggling to get people to contribute to the costs and therefore covering most of the costs ourselves. While this has the advantage of us being able to do things as we want (from setting the schedule to inviting participants from multiple denominations) and being necessary in new situations where we’re not known, it was refreshing this time to be invited and provided for.

So was it a waste of time? I don’t think so. But I do have to frequently remind myself that God’s economy is different to humans’, and trust that He can and will multiply the work of our hands.

Not alone

You have heard a lot about what I do here in Tanzania, so now it’s time I introduced you to some of my colleagues and helped you get a feel for the scope of Scripture Engagement work in Mbeya.

Jo records some Safwa singers

Jo (a British lady) specialises in making audio and audio-visual Scripture products available to people in their language, as many people prefer this way of engaging with Scripture, and some people can’t read. This week she is going to the Bungu language area to record local people reading Ruth and Jonah in their language. Once she has finished editing the recordings, we hope to distribute them via phones, CDs, radio and solar-powered audio devices.

Konga & Heri are kept busy supervising the literacy and Scripture Engagement (SE) workers who live in their language areas. They themselves were once literacy & SE workers in their own language areas – they did such a good job that we invited them to come and work in our main office in Mbeya to support their colleagues. They are frequently travelling to visit their colleagues, to encourage and advise them and help them teach workshops. We primarily conduct two kinds of workshops – one is to train Sunday school teachers in interactive ways to teach children the Bible (this often includes teaching them to read their language so that they can use local language Bible resources with the children) and the other is to train leaders in churches to read their language and prepare and lead Bible studies.

Frank (Tanzanian), Karin (German), Alison (American), Gift (Tanzanian) and Baraka (Tanzanian) focus primarily on literature production and literacy training, but their work often overlaps with Scripture Engagement, as books and literacy (as well as Jo’s audio and visual resources) are all essential to helping people engage with Scripture.

Literacy & SE colleagues (photo taken 2016, a couple more people have joined the team since then)

Prisca, Mwangunga, Mwangosi, Sambwe, Ngwatta, Nsolelo, Amani, Nzowa, Pitrosi, Majaliwa and Nyambo live further afield – they are the Literacy / Scripture Engagement workers who live and work in their language areas. They are involved in advocacy, teaching people to read their language, leading Bible studies and groups for listening to audio Scriptures and training others to do the same. They have a challenging task! Some have taken bold initiatives. Nsolelo & Amani recently started up two ladies’ football teams in Amani’s village, Mshewe. Before practising, the young ladies meet to learn to read their Safwa language and study the Bible together! A couple of other neighbouring villages have also started teams, led by Safwa literacy teachers.

Young ladies playing football in Mshewe

These are just the people directly involved in Scripture Engagement here in the Mbeya Cluster Project. There are so many more who are essential to the overall goal of seeing people engaging with God’s Word in their language and being transformed by it. I haven’t even mentioned the translators, linguists, IT specialists, administrators and others involved!

So, I’m not alone in this work! I have my own specific role to play, but I am very much a part of a broader team, and it is my privilege to work alongside these people. Please pray that God would direct our steps and that we would work together well, with God as our ultimate leader and teacher.

Laugh or cry?

Coming back to Tanzania after four months in England meant that certain aspects of living here became freshly frustrating – sometimes it can be hard to know whether to laugh or cry. But then there’s other things that I see that give me a good giggle, where a local person wouldn’t notice anything strange. So here’s a few things that I’ve smiled about during my time here:

• How do you tie back the curtains in church? Pringle tubes cut up to make loops!
• How do you transport your pig? On the back of a motorbike! In fact, I would love to have my camera ready in time to snap pics of the many things I have seen on the backs of push bikes and motorbikes, from armchairs to trays of eggs piled high to baskets of live chickens.
• While many younger people here follow the fashions we may follow in England (especially university students), there are some who have a uniquely Tanzanian dress sense. There’s the bright printed fabric trouser suits, the shiny lilac suit a colleague of mine wears (replete with shiny pointed shoes) or the man I saw walking to church today wearing a bright pink t-shirt, shiny pink trousers and pink shoes. I think they find our way of dressing often rather too casual – I certainly get the most complements from Tanzanians when I am wearing one of my locally made outfits.
• Who should be in class first – the student or the teacher? At a workshop I was teaching on for colleagues, a student ran ahead of me to reach our room first, as it’s not good for the teacher to be the first to turn up! (I wish this happened in our village workshops though, where everyone is happy to be an hour or more late!)
• I went to a local shop (situated on the grounds of the prison) to pick up a few items and suppressed a laugh when my shopping was packed into…wait for it…ASDA bags!!! Where did they come from?!
• Have you ever seen a rain frog? Little things that puff up and give off quite a croak. They’re hilarious.

And here’s some times when I don’t know whether to laugh or cry:

• Getting back from a couple of weeks away to find that all my rice flour has gone mouldy. As I try to avoid wheat, and therefore have to arrange for rice flour to be ground rather than just going to a shop to buy some, this could have made me cry. But then I have to smile too – I’d never have had to spread my flour out on a sheet to dry out before using it in England! And the neighbours’ kids happened to be visiting when I discovered the problem, so one of them emptied out the flour, another cleaned out the tub and then we played Uno! It’s impossible to be upset surrounded by excited children.
• Discovering some lush chocolates a friend sent have strangely melted and become infested with bugs. This has only ever happened once here, but why did it happen to this particular form of chocolate?! Bugs, bugs, bugs – we are often chasing cockroaches, swatting flies or sifting weevils out of flour. However, I recently spent some time in a town near Lake Victoria, and I suddenly realised how fortunate I was to live in Mbeya. Our cockroaches are slim, smallish, brown things, while theirs were big and black. We only get ants round our waste food bin, they have them running in a constant stream across work surfaces, however clean they might be.
• Back in Mbeya I pulled on my sandals for my first day’s walk to work. As my feet quickly became dirty from the combination of wet grass and dirt footpaths, I remembered that I had been choosing to wear walking shoes rather than sandals to go to work. I feel like I never have clean feet here, but I do rather like wandering around bare foot!
• Water pressure – another frustration. Often the pressure isn’t high enough for my electric shower to turn on, so I have a cold dribble of water to bathe in. The strange (and good) thing is that my housemate’s shower doesn’t seem to have this problem, so when I just can’t face the cold dribble, I use her shower. I really need to get someone out to look at it, but finding good plumbers who turn up on time is as much of a challenge here as in England!

And so I am settling back into life in Mbeya, with plenty to laugh over if only I have eyes to see it, so much human and divine creativity to make me smile. And in those times when it all just feels too much, I know that God knows what it’s like to suffer and He sees my struggles, and tomorrow is a new day.

Amazing rock formations (Musoma, near Lake Victoria, north Tanzania)

Enjoying colouring truths about God

A village workshop

Last week I was helping to teach a workshop in a village in the Safwa language area. The workshop was aimed at leaders in churches (pastors or leaders of groups) to enable them to read their Safwa language and to lead a simple Bible study using the Safwa Scriptures. We had been asked some time ago to do a workshop in the area and we hoped we would have a number of local churches represented.

Although the village was less than ten miles from Mbeya city, nearly eight of those were on very rough dirt roads, so that it took nearly an hour to make the journey. I felt sorry for the people we (my Safwa colleague and I) passed as the car left behind clouds of dust on the dry roads.

When we arrived we went to the pastors’ home and sat in his house for some time. It seemed that this workshop was going to start even later than usual! I soon discovered that everyone spoke Safwa, as I hardly heard a word of Swahili (the national language of Tanzania) and the children were also using Safwa. This actually surprised me, as in many of the places we go to we find that Swahili is used by younger people and children and it has led me to question the value of Bible translation, but here was a situation where the Safwa Scriptures could genuinely benefit the local church.

We finally started a few hours late, spending most of the first day focusing on learning to read the Safwa language. We had about a dozen people that day, most of whom were leaders in some capacity, though only a couple were actually pastors and only a couple of churches were represented, which was discouraging.

The second day we only started about an hour late, which is more typical. The aim of the second day was to learn how to lead a simple Bible study in Swahili or Safwa. However, the participants had changed – many had returned, though not all, and some new ladies had joined us who did not have any leadership position and several of whom were illiterate. We struggled through the day – I had to take out chunks of my teaching and simplify things considerably and left feeling exhausted from being surrounded by a language I couldn’t speak and from trying to figure out how to adapt the materials I’d prepared.

The final day I knew what to expect so things went better. For example, this time when we did a Bible study we did the whole thing in two languages, Swahili and Safwa, so that everyone could understand, including me! Also, when we split people into pairs to practise teaching each other to read Safwa, I took the ladies who couldn’t read outside and we listened to the book of Ruth in Safwa and talked about it. By the end, it seemed that people were excited to use their language more and many had bought Mark’s gospel and one or two other books in Safwa. We also left an audio device with the pastor so that people could borrow it to listen to the Safwa Scriptures.

This workshop both excited and frustrated me. I was excited by the evident need for Safwa Scriptures, but frustrated because there are so many barriers to making these Scriptures accessible to them (from literacy levels to geographical location). Please pray for these people and our work in these areas.

Coming back to the city was almost a shock. Although so close by, the village had felt like a totally different world.

Break time - getting some much needed sunshine! Still keenly reading their Safwa books.

What’s it like there? A few observations to paint the picture:

• We passed a school on the way, the children were all outside hoeing the ground and we passed others on their way to school with hoe over their shoulder. I wonder how much time they actually spend in the classroom and how many pupils there are in each class. It is not uncommon to have over a 100 pupils to a teacher.
• I heard that it is only recently that a primary school has been built in the area. This explains why so many of the ladies couldn’t read.
• At another school we passed, one classroom was half-knocked down – the blackboard was on the outside wall – obviously the students would just have to sit outside to learn.
• There is no electricity, though a few people have solar panels.
• When I asked how many people had had breakfast (at least a cup of tea) that morning (as part of an illustration I was making), only two people raised their hands. No wonder they could eat such a mountain of food at lunchtime, as they had probably been working on their farms before coming to the workshop and not had anything to eat. I usually ate less than a quarter of what they ate! (I tried not to think about the several litres of oil they used to cook our rice, beans and greens!)
• Everywhere bricks were out drying – it is the dry season so it is time to build.
• There were sacks of potatoes outside – it’s a cold, windy place at this time of year, a good climate for growing potatoes. Their other main crop is maize. There are no shops anywhere near and they don’t farm a wide variety of foods, so their diet is very basic.
• We gave a lift to a couple of ladies and their heavy bags of maize, taking them to the nearest mill to grind their maize into flour to make ugali (the most common dish here). It felt like we must have travelled three or four kilometres to get there, and they would have had to carry it back on their heads after grinding it, not arriving home until after dark.

Food mountains! Lunchtime at the pastor's house. Men inside, ladies outside.

Is it love?

I have just started reading a book I received for Christmas from my lovely uncle and aunt, called, “Love Story” by Nichole Nordeman. I have only read the first chapter (on Creation), but she expressed so well some of the questions that I often ask myself, that I am looking forward to reading more, and understanding more of the depth and breadth of God’s love for us. Shortly after reading this chapter, I listened to a Christmas sermon that focused on the death of Christ. As I held together in my head Creation and Crucifixion, I wondered, “Why?” Why would God create a world that He knew would lead to the cross? Where is love in such an act?

But then it was as if I could overhear a conversation that took place in heaven before the beginning of time, as God and His Son talked together about their plan to make the world. As they got excited about making a beautiful Earth, filling it with life, making people in their image that they would be able to interact with and enjoy being with, delighting in loving them and receiving their love, God said, “But you know what this will involve, don’t you?” And Jesus said, “Yes, I know.” It didn’t need to be put into words. They knew that if they made people in their image, with the potential to love in great measure and with the ability to make choices, that some would choose not to love. That some would not choose God and His Son, but would instead look for their own ways to love and enjoy life. And those choices only lead to death. And ultimately those choices would lead to the death of God’s Son. Because His love wouldn’t stop when human love did. His love would mean that He would die Himself, rather than give up on us. He created us with potential, He created us in His image, and His love means that He will not abandon that potential, but rather die Himself to bring about new life, eternal life, greater potential. Renewed hope.

And so God said, “You know what this will involve, don’t you?” And Jesus said, “Yes, I know.” He did not back out when He acknowledged the cost. The cross. Instead He said, “Let there be…” And there was. And we came into existence. And when the time came to pay the price of love, He became like one of us, like those He created. Yet perfect. He fulfilled His potential and loved unselfishly. He loved us to the point of dying for us, in that most terrible event and yet that most wonderful display of love, at the cross. So yes, it is love, that God should make this world, while knowing that we would destroy it. It is love, that God would make us to know Him, while knowing that we would choose not to. It is love that God would pour out His love, while knowing that He would be unloved. It is love that God would create life and beauty, while knowing that He himself would have to die an ugly death. It is love. And we can choose to love Him back and enjoy Him and delight in and thank Him for all the potential He gave us to be like Him and be loved by Him. Or we can choose not to. But oh what a sad choice that would be, to choose not to love our Maker and be loved eternally by His unselfish love.

It is love

When you consider freedom together with fighting,

When you consider life together with loss,

When you consider joy together with judgement,

When you consider creation together with the cross,

I wonder, “Why?”

I wonder why our God made the universe,

I wonder why he put life on the earth,

I wonder why he created humanity,

I wonder why he made us of worth.

I question love.

Is it love that makes what will be destroyed?

Is it love that forms relationships that will break?

Is it love that breathes life to what will die?

Is it love that gives, only to take?

It is love.

It is love, that led God to agree

With His son, before time began,

That though love would not be returned,

They’d still go ahead with their plan.

It is love.

It is love that made man in God’s image,

It is love that said, “Come and love me”,

It is love that allowed us to choose,

It is love that took God to the tree.

It is love.

It is love that though we made choices

That destroyed the potential God gave

He never stopped loving and giving

When giving led Him to the grave.

It is love.

A trip to train Sunday school teachers

Location: Magamba, Chunya District (1.5 hour drive from Mshewe, my village home). Most people there speak the Nyiha language and some speak the Safwa language or other languages such as Sukuma. Nearly everyone is also able to speak Swahili.

I picked up Amani (my Safwa colleague who lives in Mshewe) at 8am, or at least, I arrived at his house at 8am and he wasn’t quite ready, and our Nyiha colleague, who was supposed to be coming with us, hadn’t arrived either and wasn’t responding to phonecalls or text messages. We decided to leave without him. I played with Amani’s little girl while I waited for him to get ready and we set off quarter of an hour later. The road is a graded dirt road, and for the most part is rough but in reasonable condition, but some bits were very bumpy and made worse by recent rain.

As we drove, Amani told me he’d had a phonecall from the pastor who was arranging things for us in Magamba, to say that there was a funeral. This may not sound so significant to you, but I know what that means. It means that many people who I would have expected to see at the seminar will instead be at the funeral, which typically lasts three days. At some point on the journey we picked up three people to give them a lift to Magamba, as they were going to attend the funeral. When we arrived, we found out the person who died was a fairly close relative of the pastor who was hosting us, and so any hope of starting the workshop that day was lost. No-one would have turned up anyhow. Instead, we went to the funeral. There were crowds of people, women sitting in one area and preparing food and men sitting in another area. It was very much an open-air event, though thankfully we got ushered into a house away from the loud speakers and out of the hot sun. You wouldn’t have known that it was a funeral from the music being played, it just sounded like a typical gospel event.

We were joined by a group of pastors (as usual, though being a lady I wasn’t expected to be with the ladies) for chai and mandazi. For us the funeral involved a lot of sitting or standing around and waiting. I got a chance to chat with some people and show them local language Scriptures and later we got a chance to chat with the pastors who had come (it seems that pastors from all the local churches will come to a funeral to pay their respects and to preach) about our work. Can you imagine using a funeral in England as a platform for advertising what you do?! But here it was fine, and indeed a good opportunity, because at no expense to us, we were able to meet with pastors from various places that we might otherwise never meet.

The funeral in general seemed to start with lots of church choirs and music, followed by some preaching and then the burial, which took place in the back yard of the person’s home. Before covering the body, people were able to pass by and say their final goodbye. After covering, as we do in England, people could throw dirt in the grave and finally place flowers etc on it. I just observed all of this from a distance – I couldn’t really see anything, but asked Amani for explanations. After the burial, people gave their condolences in the form of money and they added it all up and announced the total sum. This may seem very mercenary to us, but I think we have to remember that a funeral is an expensive event – the family have to feed everyone that comes, and that could literally be hundreds of people (I don’t know how many people were at this one, but it looked like well over a hundred), so people’s condolences help cover the costs. (We got fed there too, even though we didn’t know the deceased. I got a plate of rice with a bit of cow that I tried not to look at or smell but just eat, it was offal of some kind – it tasted okay but the texture was far from pleasant).

We returned to the pastor’s house after food and sat and chatted about the Bible with some people that were visiting him, before returning to the funeral for a while to see the pastor. Now they were preaching. And when we visited the funeral again the next day, there was someone else preaching, so I get the impression that after the main event, the rest of the three days is taken with preaching and music and just being there with the bereaved people.

That night it poured with rain, a real thunderstorm. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep particularly well! Despite the rain it was still pretty hot, though by morning the rain had cooled things off. I was worried it might affect the roads, but thankfully it didn’t. So on day two we were able to hold the workshop, although the pastor was still at the funeral, and I think a number of others must have been too. Instead of the twenty plus participants we had at the first one, we had just six, and they were late. I tried not to be discouraged, and actually taught the children for a bit while I waited for the teachers to turn up – there were a lot more children there than teachers! They came and sat through most of the workshop, just for something to do. Sometimes I was able to involve them in games and songs, but mostly they just sat and watched.

The workshop went okay, but I had to squeeze 1.5 days of teaching into one day because of the funeral, so I had to do some rethinking! It felt a bit like they hadn’t learned anything, as the way that they did the exercises didn’t seem to show any improvement form the first workshop, and two of the teachers hadn’t done any teaching since the first workshop. But I just hope and pray that it has had some small impact. I was encouraged by one of the pastors at the funeral who said that he had noticed a difference since their Sunday school teacher had attended the first workshop. The six participants I had were an enthusiastic bunch and we had some lively conversation over lunch, so the day passed quickly and I enjoyed it despite having a headache and despite the heat (it got pretty sticky in the afternoon). And we had two little visitors – hedgehogs! First there was one, which I took outside, but it came back. So I took it out again, further away, and it came back. In the end we gave up, and it found a dark, dry corner of the church to hide in, behind the electric guitars, and later it was joined by its friend.

Before leaving we called by the funeral again to say goodbye to our host-pastor. The preaching was still going on. He took us to the market as he wanted to buy as a gift of fish, which are plentiful there as it is about an hour away from Lake Rukwa. I really enjoy the fish, despite the bones. They fry them so that they will keep for a while, without refrigeration. We gave three people a lift back to Mshewe, arriving back in the village around 7pm, and the evening sky was just stunning. As I drove the last little bit back to my house alone, I just stopped the car in the middle of the field I was driving through (on a dirt track) and watched the glorious sky that no photo could do justice to. Breathtaking.

Back in Mshewe

Yesterday I arrived back in Mshewe and I confess I wasn’t looking forward to returning to the village, even though it’s only for a couple of weeks. I had started to settle into town life and was enjoying some measure of routine, which comes with more office-based work, as well as the delights of electricity (most of the time anyhow), easy access to shops and the companionship of a housemate and other English speaking friends. However, I reassured myself with memories of the beauty of the Mshewe countryside and the fun I have with some of my village friends, and so drove back to the village with at least some sense of anticipation. My pleasure grew as I bought myself some grilled corn-on-the-cob and left the noise of the town behind, driving past buckets full of mangoes being sold at the side of the road before turning up the dirt track to where I live.

Arriving, I opened the kitchen door. My friends had kindly left me a bunch of bananas, but some other very unwelcome ‘friends’ had also been at work. The kitchen was a mess. Someone had left a bag of peanuts on the worktop – a fatal mistake. Mice love peanuts and the result was that not only were peanut shells scattered across the counter but they had also sampled the label on the bottle of oil, a pen lid and a box of matches, among other things! Entering the main house to check the situation out there I found the usual pile of bat droppings behind the sofa and had an unpleasant surprise in the bathroom – a filthy mess around the bath. When I turned on the tap to clean up the dirt, the water that came out was black and took about half-an-hour of running to become just about clean enough to shower in.

A couple of hours of cleaning and unpacking later, I finally took a shower in the almost-clean water and felt refreshed and ready to face living here once again. The sunset was stunning. My friend popped over to say hi. I cooked some food. I lit my new scented candle. I sat down to write this blog post to the music of the cicadas outside. It’s not so bad being here after all!

Waking early this morning to the dawn chorus and someone calling “Hodi!” at my gate, wanting to speak to me, I wasn’t so sure again. He wanted money for a sound system at his church! Did he have to come and knock before 6am in the morning for such a request?! I feel weary. But it’s a beautiful morning, I am working with my faithful colleagues today, with the chance to read the Bible together, and so there is much to be thankful for.

I know that I need to trust God to strengthen me for whatever lies ahead. The line of a familiar song comes to mind once again, “Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.” Amen to that!

All in a day

The alarm goes off at 6.45am, time to get up and get going. I put my solar lights outside to recharge then head to the kitchen to cook my porridge. As I eat I continue to read Genesis and ponder the life of Joseph. I turn on the tap to wash up but there isn’t any water, and there hasn’t been any since yesterday afternoon. Hopefully someone will fix that problem today. I get in my Toyota Prado ready to head to the village to pick up my colleague, Amani. As I’m about to turn on the engine I find a text message from Amani telling me he isn’t able to come to town today, he’s elsewhere. Frustrated with the constant change in plans I decide to head to town anyhow, to meet with my other colleague, John.

As I head along the dirt road, I pass through a check-point and a lady asks for a lift. She gets in the car and I show her how to fasten her seatbelt. She is a Safwa lady, so I play the book of Ruth in the Safwa language for her to listen to, which she obviously enjoys by the various affirmative sounds she makes! I negotiate my way through the morning bustle around the cattle market, where men in blood-stained white coats are milling around to buy and butcher animals, and up the pot-holed street past vendors selling potatoes and other vegetables on their road-side stands.

I arrive at our Safwa office, on the grounds of a garage run by a Swiss mission, where people are trained to fix cars. John has already arrived and we greet each other, “Mwagona!” We report back on the activities of the previous week and discuss plans for the coming months and a question that John had from his reading of Genesis (we are all working our way through this book). My morning drinks have gone through me so I head to the toilet, a nice hole in the ground. The bucket of water for flushing is empty, so I find a nearby tap and fill it up.

John heads off to visit some people and sell Safwa books. I remain behind to continue with computer work, taking advantage of having electricity and a fairly good internet connection while in town. The room gets warmer and warmer as the day heats up. 

At lunchtime I lock the office padlock and head out to find some food. I stroll up the dusty road and down a passageway littered with plastic bags. A vendor selling oranges tries to persuade me to buy some, a child calls out “mzungu” (referring to me, a white foreigner) and I squeeze past a mother carrying her baby on her back. I walk through the market where all kinds of wares are available, from kitchen equipment to shoes to food, and before I get totally lost in the maze I ask a lady where I can find somewhere to eat. She shows me to a room, with a grubby lace curtain for a door. On entering I recognised the table, I’ve eaten here before with my colleagues. The owner brings me a plate piled high with rice and with small portions of greens, meat and beans on the side. I get talking with the other people at the table, sharing about our work. I turn on my phone for them to listen to the Bible in their language and get into conversation about churches in Tanzania and the lack of faith in England.

It’s time to head back to the office, so I pay up (about 50p) and take a cocktail stick to get the bits of meat out from between my teeth that are the inevitable result of eating tough (but flavoursome) beef. On the way back I buy a five litre container so I can get some more petrol for my generator, which seems to guzzle fuel. I don’t know what the container used to hold, maybe soap or cooking oil. Someone has washed it out thoroughly and now it’s available to buy for a mere 50p. I also pick up some tomatoes, buying four for 10p. Back in the office I settle back down in front of my laptop to continue with emails, finance issues and other administrative things that have built up while I have been busy teaching over the past couple of weeks. A man knocks on the door and enters. He is looking for my colleague. We get into conversation and I show him the Safwa books and explain to him why the translation process is so long and thorough. He is a pastor. He takes my colleague’s phone number – maybe he will get in touch to invite us to speak at his church.

The office is hot, it’s hard to focus, but it’s not long until hometime. John has returned and we finish the day by praying together. I drive to the petrol station to get fuel for the generator before heading home, driving past the school children returning from a day of studies, slowing down to skirt round a herd of cows being driven down the road, and overtaking motorbikes, which are the most common form of public transport off the main roads.

On arriving home I unload the car and get changed ready for a walk in the slightly cooler evening air. I decide to head to the river for a paddle in the cold mountain water. It’s a beautiful spot and I watch the butterflies fluttering around. I spy a rock and some plants that look black, but on closer inspection discover they are simply alive with flying ants. As I return from my walk the sky is painted in the gentle pastel colours that come after the sun has set. I head to my carrot patch to pull up a few carrots for tea and I also pick a few strawberries as I pass through my friend’s strawberry patch, before returning home to wash my hair (having earlier boiled the kettle on the gas stove to give me some water to do so). 

My friend, Mama Pendo, arrives to make a cake. Armed with bananas from their own plot of land we set to making banana bread for some guests she is receiving tomorrow. A little later her husband arrives and we enjoy a good natter while we wait for the cake to bake, discussing everything from schooling to what grains we grow in England. At 9pm they leave and I accompany them the short way to their house, as it is polite to walk a little way with your guests rather than just wave them goodbye from the door. Now it is time to throw together a light tea with home made bread followed by a fruit salad of fresh pineapple, passion and banana. I sit in the lounge to eat while WhatsApping my parents and watching an episode of ‘To a Manor Born’, which is refreshingly British and light hearted after a day of speaking Swahili and dealing with life in Tanzania, while the generator drones noisily in the garage.

It’s after 10pm and time I was in bed. I head to the kitchen, wash up, turn off the generator and get ready for bed by the light of my solar lantern. Teeth brushed, I let down the mosquito net and settle down for what I hope will be a good night’s sleep, to the sound of the cicadas and the occasional hoot of an owl. Outside the heavens declare the glory of God as the stars shine out brightly in all their vast array, with the milky way marking a clear pathway across the sky. Sleep.

The little things

It is often the little things in life that can prove intensely frustrating or stressful or that can bring unexpected moments of pure joy. Here’s some ‘little things’ that I have experienced recently that have done just that.

The little things that frustrate:

• Going to the one bank that I can withdraw cash from without a fee, only to be told my card issuer is unavailable. I try again another day. It still doesn’t work. I end up going to another bank and paying the withdrawal fee and now I have cash. Why was my card issuer unavailable at the one bank and not the other?!
• Breakfast time and I go to get a banana for my porridge only to discover that fruit flies have been busy and eaten large chunks out of my bananas!
• My generator has stopped working. As this is my only source of electricity in Mshewe, this has made charging electrical appliances stressful and makes evenings tiring as I do things in much dimmer light than electricity would supply.
• Wanting to have people round for a meal but not having access (here in Mshewe) to the food I would normally use when cooking for guests.
• Time to wash the dishes, but when I turn on the tap there is no water. I can get some from the garden tap, but it’s just another of those ‘little things’.
• Finding bat droppings all over the sofa and floor every morning. (I am kept company in the evenings by the squeaking of bats in the attic! Their droppings fall down the gaps round the edge of the ceiling boards).

All these little things have solutions, but one after another can be tiring and stressful. Thankfully there are also the little things that bring a smile to the face:

• Stepping out my door at night and being wowed by the stars.
• Getting three letters from my parents all at once (one of them was posted over two months ago) and getting a surprise parcel of dark chocolate from a friend.
• When staying at my Mbeya home for a couple of nights, I found I had chocolate cake in the freezer. I’d forgotten about that. Mmmmm.
• Chatting with a guard from the coffee plantation one evening, I discovered he couldn’t read. I whipped out my phone and a stool and he sat and listened to Mark’s gospel, chapter one, in his mother tongue (Safwa). The next evening I found him by his fire and he listened to chapter two. Another evening, he was ready waiting at my house, eager to hear more, together with another guard. It made me smile to hear them laughing with pleasure as they listened to God’s Word in their heart language.
• Watching a stereotypically big red ball of African sun sinking in the sky at sunset.
• Holding someone’s baby at church, smiling up at me. (Some children here are afraid of white people as they are not used to seeing them, so it is a particular joy to hold a baby that shows no fear).

Waiting

I feel like I spend a lot of my life in Tanzania waiting.

Teaching pastors to read their Safwa language,
while we wait for others to arrive for a meeting.

On Saturday I was invited to a meeting of local church leaders in order to share about our work. I turned up on time with my colleague, Nsolelo, at 10am. There was no sign of anyone at the Moravian church where the meeting was to be held so we went to the pastor’s house where one other person was waiting. We were given something to eat (dry bread and cooking bananas) and drink (black tea) and we continued to wait and chat. Others then began to arrive, so we migrated to the meeting room and over an hour after we were supposed to start the meeting finally kicked off. After I had spoken I sat through the rest of the meeting, which proved to be totally irrelevant, until it ended well after my usual lunch time. On this occasion, as on many others, I just had to hope and pray that it wasn’t a waste of time and that God could somehow use the small contribution I made for His purposes. I had to remind myself that relationships are important and you never know what may come of a meeting like that.

Let me take you to a another event – this time a Sunday school teacher training workshop. I knew we wouldn’t start on time the first day, so I wasn’t too worried that even I, as the teacher, turned up a little late. The invitation letter stated that the workshop would begin at 9am, but it was around 10.30am by the time we got going, and still not everyone had arrived. I hoped that on the second day the participants might not be so late, but the pattern repeated itself until the end of the workshop and I just tried to keep the one or two who were on time (meaning only half-an-hour late) entertained with crafts and games until we could start properly! (All good training for teaching children, who are also usually late for Sunday school).

Or there is the seminar we were teaching at on Friday, which of course started late, but that was to be expected. The real waiting began after the meeting was over, when we were asked to stay for food (which takes a long time to cook when you are using wood as your fuel) and then, just as I hoped we could leave, I found out we had to wait for the host-pastor to come (who hadn’t attended the morning’s meeting) so that we could greet him before we left.

And right now I am waiting – waiting for plans to fall into place that depend on other people meeting and making plans, which they are in no hurry to do, as for them it is just something to get round to when they have time, while for me my very work depends on it.

I feel like I have learned more about living life day by day and being patient through these experiences, but at times it is just incredibly frustrating and l feel like I am wasting my time. Also there is something strangely tiring about waiting – I am much more tired after a day of sitting in pastors’ houses or in meetings, not doing or saying much, than I am after a day of energetic teaching. So, if you need a break from the hustle and bustle of life in the ‘West’, come and visit me and we can sit and wait together :-)

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)

This is the kind of waiting I would rather experience in my life, of eternal benefit. May God help me to wait upon Him, and to learn to wait patiently here!