New Year

I wrote some thoughts in my journal about entering the new year…
I feel both excited and apprehensive…
Excited because there’ll be lots of new opportunities at work, with the chance to grow in reliance on God as we step out in these different activities in faith. Also looking forward to going home, seeing friends and family.
Apprehensive because there were lots of struggles in 2008, so what will the year ahead be like – will I have learned from them and changed for the good – dealing better with the struggles of the future? How will friendships develop? Will I grow spiritually? Will I develop better relationships with Tanzanians, a better understanding of the culture and a closer connection to it? My prayer: Jesus, be the centre, be my source, be my vision, be my satisfaction, be my reward, be the one on whom I rely, be my discipliner, be my friend and brother, be my all in all.

Preparing for and enjoying a delicious New Year's Eve meal in my home. Round the table, L-R, there's Elizabeth (a colleague in Mbeya), Amy (a fellow Scripture Use worker, but in another project), me, Liz & Matt Wisbey, Ollie (a linguist from a project in the North of Tanzania) and Rachel (from that same project).

Out for a walk near my home, in the fresh green growth that the rainy season brings.

Another Christmas in Tanzania…

…A very different experience to last year! Rather than Christmas day with a Tanzanian family eating pilau (spiced rice) I celebrated this year’s Christmas with a group of friends, with some fantastic traditional Christmas food...
Eleven of us met up in Dodoma, the capital city of Tanzania, and stayed with friends there who have a lovely large home that could accommodate us all. We were nearly all missionaries from different Wycliffe projects across Tanzania. I went along with the Wisbeys (good friends of mine who I’ve mentioned before), who had been at language school together with most of the others there. Although I wasn’t at language school with them, I had met them all at our annual conference.
Christmas dinner was an amazing feat of good home cooked food – roast chicken and beef, home made stuffing, bread sauce and gravies, roast potatoes, veg and creamed corn pudding. Dessert was of a traditional American flavour - the most amazing pecan pie I’ve ever had (not that I’ve had very many, but it was truly scrumptious and dangerously more-ish). On top of that, someone made Christmas cake, and a few days previously I’d made mince-pies with Liz Wisbey (making our own version of mincemeat) which turned out really well.

Eating Christmas dinner (that's Liz on the right)

One of my favourite activities of my time there was walking up Lion Rock, from where you get a fantastic view out across the city and the surrounding countryside. However, this walk had to be taken fairly early in the morning to avoid the worst heat of the day – it’s a lot hotter than Mbeya. I also enjoyed going to an ice-cream shop, having crispy duck at a Chinese, reading, chatting and playing games (oh, and sleeping!).

Now back at home I am enjoying pottering around, doing householdy things (I get a strange satisfaction from doing housework) and doing up the lounge. On the way to Dodoma I went shopping with the Wisbeys in Iringa (where I went to language school), where there are several projects run to help people such as single mothers or the deaf. I was able to buy a lovely dyed cloth as a throw for the sofa, and a multi-coloured woven rug for the floor. It’s brightened up the lounge no end! The Wisbeys had bought me a lovely wall hanging for Christmas which just happens to match the colour scheme perfectly, so I can’t wait to get that up, make some cushion covers and so finish off the lounge makeover!

Just off to visit a friend…

…a simple thing by car, a direct half-hour ride to out of town. But when you have to rely on public transport and it’s the rainy season it’s a different story. The main form of public transport is something like a VW van, called a daladala, that may have seats for 15 people, but takes up to 25 if you cram together like sardines, which is the norm.

So, on Saturday my friend and I head to town to catch a daladala. We’re not sure we’ve got the right one as the conductor says one thing and the sign on the front says something else, but he assures us he’ll take us to our destination so we climb aboard. Half-way there we reach a bus-stop where everyone gets off. OK, so it’s not going where we wanted! However, the conductor refunds half our fare and tells us to get on the next daladala. A few minutes later we find what we need and climb aboard. Just as rain begins to fall, we reach the next place where we knew we would have to change daladala again. Fortunately we don’t have to wait long and we are off again. We are assured by a sticker on the panelling that…

Finally, arriving at our destination, we hop out into a deluge of rain. Though the friends we have come to visit are only a two minute walk away, we are soaked through by the time we get there – our little umbrellas are no protection against the torrential rain as we try to skirt the flooded footpath!
So, ‘just’ off to visit a friend? It took us approximately one hour to get there and we arrived looking like drowned rats! Nothing goes quite as you expect it to in Africa! (Oh, and by the way, we had a lovely time with our friends – we were soon into dry clothes and sitting down to a dish of something hot and steaming that I can’t quite describe but was apparently Paraguayan!)