Nyumba yangu imenishindwa!

Yesterday morning I was sitting in my office thinking about what I should blog about next. Now that my pictures are updated I'm going to try and post more often. I couldn't come up with anything exciting. Then last night was one of those nights where everything that can go wrong seems to. It really wasn't so bad but I was tired and hungry so it seemed worse than it really was. So the title of this post is 'my house has defeated me!' It seems appropriate. I had a good day. I went to the office for awhile then Robert came and took my fruit tree shopping. We went to 4 places to buy everything. One day I'm going to have a beautiful yard full of fruit trees! The problems started when the day was passing faster than I was able to get my work done. I forgot to water my wilting passion fruit vines until I was in the kitchen trying to make dinner. Since there isn't a hose or anything outside I left food cooking and began filling my mop bucket inside to cart water to the 8 vines outside. I wanted to continue cooking so Tisho, my language teacher, and I wouldn't be eating dinner at 9! Of course that wasn't my best idea. I ended up burning some of the food. Then because everything is always dusty here and I was spilling water from the full mop bucket on my trips outside to water I ended up with muddy footprints all over my clean floor....that bummed me out because I had just spent hours over the weekend cleaning. The final straw was my kitchen sink. My sinks don't like me. I turned the water off to the living room sink because it keeps leaking water all over and a plumber won't be out til the weekend. The one in my bathroom drips all the time and I can't make it stop. A few weeks ago I had the kitcehn faucets replaced because they were impossible to turn on and off. I was told that I must have messed them up by turning them off too hard and ruining the seal. I thought that sounded likely since the water shortages meant often I'd be washing dishes and then there would be no water. I'd turn the tap off and try to make it tight so if the water returned it wouldn't come pouring out and be wasted if I wasn't around to hear it. So for the last few weeks I've been very, very careful. Last night all of the sudden it breaks again. Now there is no way to even get the water off short of shutting the main line off outside the house! When that happened I was ready to throw in the towel, leave the house and go out to dinner somewhere. It's amazing how it is the little things that drive you nuts when living in a different culture. I don't mind never blending in, eating different foods, wearing different styles of clothes or even struggling at times to communicate. What's the hardest to deal with on a day to day basis are the little things around the house. I miss being able to call my dad to fix stuff or in this case to pick up the phone to call a plumber!
After a good nights sleep I'm able to see the humor in the situation though. This morning I put my kanga on and stepped out to turn the water back on to the kitchen. I was able to make breakfast and clean up and then just stepped back outside to turn the water off again. It's really not such a big deal and isn't too much extra work until a plumber comes. Plus, I'd rather do this and have water than go through the water shortages we've had the last few months. As for the muddy footprints, well, I'm not expecting company so I'm going to wait another day or two before mopping the floor again.

FGM meeting

The Tanzanian government has laws banning female circumcision but it still is a common practice for many people groups here. Angelica, a missionary from Germany, has been educating women in the villages she works in for a long time about issues surrounding female circumcision. Recently a group of women in 2 villages pledged to help end circumcision in their areas. This is huge as they are some of the few with this opinion. When the government banned female circumcision Tikwa, the spiritual leader for Masai in our area, spoke about how circumcision would need to end. Many of the men assumed the practice was stopped. Instead women began circumcising their daughters as toddlers and doing it in secret. This increased the dangers as unskilled women were called upon to perform the circumcisions. Mama Mmari and Barbara organized a special meeting for Wednesday in Tikwa's village. Tikwa had his representatives in various villages come Tuesday to begin discussing the issue. Mama Mmari, Barbara and Angelica invited women from area villages to come hear various presentations on Wednesday. Unfortunately due to cultural restrictions amoungst the Masai (women and men apparently don't meet together like this) not many women came. Instead of the 200 women they were hoping for there were probably only about 20-25. Representatives from the UN and the US Embassy also came. They are going to provide support for the diocese to increase it's area of education. Evem though the meeting didn't turn out exactly as planned it still shows that progress is being made through education. The pictures at the end show the Masai Morani (warriors) dancing. The last 2 are videos. I was really excited to watch the dances as it was my first time seeing it in person. I hope one day to make it to a real ceremony so I can see the girls dancing too.
This doesn't really relate to the meeting at all but I have to say that Roberto Quiroz has to be one of the nicest people I've ever met. He's the Cultural Affairs Officer for the US Embassy. He invited Josh, Sue and I to come to Dar es Salaam anytime for a BBQ at his house!

zanzibar

I can't remember whether or not I posted these pictures. If I did, then I apologize. I went to Zanzibar with some friends from the language school in August, right before I moved to town. Zanzibar is beautiful and I'm looking forward to going again when my sister visits.

Bungo

Here are a few pictures of the outside of my house. It's from when I first moved in and the walls are still nice and white. Now the walls are covered with little hand prints from the kids. The church just finished building me a fence around my house this week. I'm super excited about a little privacy. Today I had 8 passion fruit vines planted and a few other plants. It will probably take awhile to collect flowers for the yard since there isn't a flower shop anywhere. I just have to look for vendors along the road. They line plants up in shady areas throughout town. Once it looks nice I'll take and post some new outdoor pictures. The only indoor pictures I have are from when I first moved in and the place looked more like a flophouse than a home! I had a mattress on the floor and 2 plastic chairs for a couple of weeks. Now most of my furniture is in, but I still need to get the couch and chair cushions covered, need to paint and put up some pictures. My goal is to get this done before my little sister Liz visits in June. Hopefully I'm successful. I'm sure you're sitting there thinking I'd have to be incredibly lazy not to get those things done in 4 months but you'd be surprised at how long things take. Thursday Tisho went to town with me to try and help me find a few things. It took 2 hours to find and buy 1 fan, 1 shovel, 1 pair of gloves, wire, a lock and 10 small plants. The extra time wasn't even us walking around. I hired a taxi to drive us around otherwise who knows how long it would have been. The walk from the fan store to the plants would have been about 20 minutes unless we were slowed down by carrying all of the stuff I already mentioned through town! I was going to buy paint but it started to rain. The skies opened and even with an umbrella I was soaked in seconds by the sideways rain. Maybe this week I'll make it to the paint store! As much as I enjoy living here there are times when I think about how nice it would be to be able to run into a Home Depot and quickly get everything done in one store.

Mikumi 9-10

For the fall semester there were 2 students from Wartburg College at the Lutheran Junior Seminary. Pastor H asked me to go along on their overnight trip to Mikumi so Morgan would have someone to share a cabin with. I was really excited to go back to Mikumi and have the chance to spend the night. I met up with Pastor H, Morgan and Michael at LJS for lunch and then we drove to Mikumi. We drove around the park until dark. It was amazing. I saw more animals this time than on any of my other trips to Mikumi. It hadn't rained in months and everything was really dry. Many of the water holes were dried up completely. There were 2 water holes that the hotel regularly pumped water into. For this reason we were able to see many animals right where we were staying. We we arrived back at dark we discovered that the Cape buffalo had taken over the hotel. It was a bit scary. We wanted to go to our rooms for a few minutes before dinner and encountered a number of buffalo that were way to close for comfort. At the door I had Morgan stay back from the room while I tried to quickly unlock the door without disturbing the buffalo about 15 feet away. Throughout dinner we could hear the buffalo roaming back and forth between the 2 water holes and later we heard the elephants come in and push the buffalo back a bit. The staff assured us that the buffalo wouldn't cross the 1.5 foot tiny fence separating them from where we were eating. I wasn't so sure. During the night I was woken to the sound of something that looked similar to a deer grazing outside my window. The next morning we woke up to see the elephants were everywhere. They were meandering through camp away from the water holes right between all of the cabins. It was amazing. One even stopped to eat grass from one the cabin's roof! The staff told us the small swimming pool had to be drained because elephants had been going there for water. As we walked to breakfast we saw fresh tracks from the elephants and buffalo. We also noticed that some buffalo had wandered over or around the tiny fence we were assured they never crossed sometime in the night....wasn't really that big of a surprise to me. We were able to go out for another drive before returning to camp for breakfast and then heading home. It was an amazing trip.

send off party

I went to my first(and so far only) send off party back in November. My friend Jofrey's sister was getting married. He invited Tisho and I to go so that he'd have some friends at her party. The send off party is for the bride-to-be. She invites her family and friends. As you can see from the pictures it is a big deal. New dresses are made, there are cakes, gifts and lots of decorations. The groom and a few of his family members are invited. I was told that this is the chance for any of the groom's family to publicly state if there are reasons why they do not want their son/brother/nephew/grandson to marry the woman. If the send off party goes well then the wedding happens. For the wedding the groom will invite his family and friends and only a few members of the bride's family. It was interesting. The groom and best man only had a minor role to play during the celebration. The bride sat up from with her maid of honor. In a strange twist of Western culture the bride and maid of honor fed each other cake before the cakes were given to family members. Sadly the rest of us weren't given any cake!

msiba

My neighbor Raymond's sister passed away mid-December. Her name was Sara. She was in her mid-thirties and was a single mom. Normally I would never take pictures at a funeral but Raymond asked that I bring my camera to the service. Josh and Sue gave me a ride to his home village about an hour and half from town. Thankfully another friend, Paulo, went with us. He used my camera to take pictures and took far more than I would have been comfortable taking of the family and the service. Since he's Tanzanian he was also able to move around and blend in. He'd been a pastor out at Sara's village church a few years previously and had a relationship with the family. I was grateful since I really only knew Raymond and his wife Flora. This allowed Sue, Josh and I to remain outside during the very crowded service so that people who knew Sara could be inside the church. It looked like about 300 people were there.
Funerals are very different in Tanzania. There is a morgue here but no funeral home to take care of all of the details for grieving families. It was up to Raymond and his family to transport the coffin from the hospital morgue out to the village. The coffin stayed in the house overnight. Then the next day it needed to be carried from the house to the church for the service. The walk from the house to the church was long. All of the men formed 2 lines and the coffin was passed down the row all of the way to the church. The women went ahead and stood in the shade waiting. It was a moving sight and showed how important community is here. I didn't post many pictures but I wanted people to get an idea of what a Tanzanian Christian funeral is like.

Udzungwa

Hahaha, for the longest time I couldn't get pictures to post of my blog. I've been uploading them to Picasa but couldn't connect them here. Today I finally realized it is because pop ups were blocked....yeah, obviously technology isn't my thing! So this afternoon I'll overwhelm all the people that receive an email when I post by trying to get all the pictures uploaded. For Thanksgiving some friends and I went to Udzungwa National Park to hike and then Dar es Salaam. The idea was to stay busy so we wouldn't miss our families so much. For the most part I think it worked. The heat and sunshine were so different from Thanksgiving in Iowa that it felt more like a summer trip. Hiking was fun, although as this is Tanzania things aren't quite as simple as going to hike in a park at home. But overall the day was awesome. For awhile I thought I may pass out and die but my friend Tisho carried my bag and Morgan and Tisho kept encouraging me so I didn't just take a seat and wait for them to hike back to me. I'm glad they did or I would have missed out on seeing the waterfall up close and swimming....maybe next time I should work out or something before climbing/hiking! Our 'Thanksgiving' meal ended up being Friday. We found an amazing place to eat after hiking. Saturday we crossed back through Morogoro on our way to Dar es Salaam. We spent one night there. Tisho and I tried to show Morgan, Michael and Stephanie around in a day. We weren't the best tour guides ever since neither one of us likes Dar and neither one of us has spent much time there. But we saw a few fun things and even went to see a movie. It was my first time at the movie theater in Tanzania. It was really fun.
Tisho and I were back in Dar a few weeks ago and tried to see another movie. This time we weren't as fortunate. After sitting in the theater for an hour watching ads and previews someone came to tell us the movie was broken and couldn't be fixed. We were bummed. Guess I'll have to think about taking the 3 hour bus ride to Dar in the future just to watch a movie. It would stink to make the trip and then have the movie not work again!