I arrived in Musoma on the 2nd October after a 9 hour bus journey from Nairobi to Sirare on the border, where I was met by the Red Rocket (one of the GoMAD landrovers). From there it was about an hour and a half to Musoma. The bus journey was bearable, and I spent most of it asleep. Part of the journey was through the Masai Mara, and I did see a couple of gazelle which brightened the trip. Once I got into Tanzania, the scenery changed quite suddenly. The beautiful sunset was followed by an absolutely incredible lightning storm then very heavy rain! It was great to see the team again and a plate of chapati lasagne awaited me, which was very gratefully received.
We are staying in Eagle Lodge on the Diocese Compound, in a small area called Bweri, just outside of Musoma. It is a purpose built house for GoMAD teams, and I love it! The showers are cold, but I wouldn't want anything else, given how hot it is out here. Water cuts are very frequent, but we have two large water tanks outside for when this happens, and there's something quite fun about showering using a jug...! Blackouts are less common, but always seem to happen at about dinner time, so my head torch comes in handy. It really makes you appreciate things like being able to flush the loo without having to carry water up the stairs, or fill the kettle without going into the garden.
Every day is different, and something always crops up that foils even the best laid plans, but here is a general outline of a day here in Musoma:
7.30am: Breakfast of toast and jam and bananas (or porridge if we're feeling really extravagant. We did have marmite, but I massively misjudged the size of jar required and we finished it in 2 weeks...!)
8.00am: Team devotions - a time to study the bible together and pray before the day ahead.
8.30/9.00 am: Leave for one of the projects in the surrounding villages (see below)
1.00/2.00 pm: Lunch at the diocese hostel. Lunchtime can be anywhere between 12 and 3, and can take anywhere from 30mins to 2 hours! We have rice and beans every day with a tomato sauce and the choice of beef or fish (my preference is the fish) and vegetables. To begin with I was unsure if I'd like the food there, but I do really enjoy it and I imagine I will miss it when I'm back home. The best part of lunch is always the soda (I am slowly becoming addicted), especially as they are cold and sweet (77% of your GDA of sugar!) after a hard morning's work in the sun. The fanta flavours out here are amazing - Passion Fruit is my favourite, followed by pineapple then blackcurrant.
3.00pm: Back out to a project for the afternoon
6.30pm: Sunset. If we're lucky and we got back early, or it's our day off, we will go up Eagle Rock next to our house and watch the sun set over Lake Victoria. It's so amazingly beautiful, and I can really sense God's majesty and power up there. If we're still out working, sunset signals time to pack up and leave, before the mosquitoes descend!
7.30pm: Dinner. During the week we have a Tanzanian lady called Rosie who lives with us and cooks dinner for us. Her best dishes are chapati lasagne, beef stew and chapati and chips mayai (Chip omlette - it's a traditional Tanzanian street food and I can't get enough of it! We have it every Friday, and she makes a gorgeous salsa to go with it.) At the weekends, the team cook. We take it in turns to cook on Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes, then we go out for a meal on Sunday evenings. Dinner is followed by debrief, where we chat through our day, our highlights and lowlights and then pray together. Our evenings can be spent doing a variety of things, from playing articulate or poker to deep meaningful spiritual conversations (for some reason these always happen in the kitchen where there's no where comfortable to sit, rather than in the common room!). Last Saturday we had a mini ceilidh which was very good fun, but very hot!
Fridays are our training days, so instead of working out at the projects we sit down together to plan the following week, work out what materials need buying, update all the budget spreadsheets, plan Sunday School sessions etc. Saturdays are our days off, where we enjoy a Rehema lunch (Rehema is a fab cafe in the diocese compound that serves all sorts of delicious food, milkshakes and of course, chilled sodas. They have a beautiful craft shop next door where I think I will end up spending all the money I don't spend on soda! We had breakfast there this morning, and their pancakes are DELICIOUS (Tim - be very jealous!))
On Sundays we go to church in the morning and help run sunday school there. The offerings in the service are really interesting, as some people brings goods like eggs rather than money, and these are then auctioned off at the end of the service, with people either bidding to buy it for themselves or someone else. Last Sunday afternoon we walked up Dead Chicken Rock and did some rock climbing and relaxing at the top, looking over Lake Victoria and the spectacular Tanzanian countryside. This week we are going to host a sports afternoon. I'm really looking forwards to spending some quality time with the kids. Sunday evenings we have our own worship session back at Eagle Lodge, which are always a really lovely time.
This blog post is already very long, so I'll just tell you about some of the projects we are working on out here, and I'll try to update you on the others over the following weeks.
The chicken project: In Mikiringo village a previous team had built a shed to house 100 broiler chickens which will grow much faster than the normal chickens out here and have much more meat on them. The idea is to sell them to Europeans living out here and to create a project that provides income both for the local people running it and for GoMAD. The first 105 chicks arrived 2 weeks ago, 5 have died and some of the others have typhoid but they're having medicine so we hope they'll be ok! We've nearly finished building the first extension to the shed for these chicks to move into on Tuesday so we can have another 100 chicks arrive on Thursday. We've then got another 2 weeks to get a second extension built. It takes 6 weeks for the chicks to grow to the right size, so the hope is to have a rolling stock of them.
The market garden: In Nykanga there is a massive field which is being cultivated by a number of Rafiki group memebers (a sort of co-operative group of local farmers set up by GoMAD). The aim is to produce a harvest of crops all year round that can be sold in the market and create an income for both the farmers and GoMAD. We are overseeing the project to make sure they plant everything properly and harvest it at the right time. We have had an issue with some very large burrowing bugs that come out at night and eat the seedlings but the insecticide is starting to work. In the previous attempt at a market garden, the carrots were all planted too close together, meaning most of them were too small to sell. We spent a long afternoon sat on the floor in Eagle Lodge classifying carrots into sizes. We managed to salvage 4 buckets to sell, and are now slowly eating our way through the remaining 6 buckets!
Health: This is a really important part of what we are doing out here. Most days we will take people into town in the landrovers to get them tested for a number of medical conditions, either at the testing centre, the coptic hospital or the government hospital. The walk to town for the villagers is too far and too expensive if we weren't there to help them out. Yesterday evening, just as we were finishing for the day out in Nykanga, one of the men we work with told us his son was sick. We walked out to his house to find his 5 year old son with a fever, and his grandaughter was unwell too. Suspecting malaria, we took them both into town, hoping that the testing centre would still be open. Malaria can develop so quickly in a child that they might well not be alive the following morning if we were unable to get them seen to. Fortunately we made it just in time and got them both sorted. They both had malaria, and we were able to get the medication they needed. For me, it was quite difficult to see, although we've had numerous cases of this since we arrived, it was the first one where I sat with the child all the way through. On the journey into town, the little boy was quite excited, turning his head to look at every piki piki (motorbike) that passed, but by the time we had finished, he could barely keep his head up. I'm just glad we got there before the centre closed and I pray that God will help him get better quickly.
I am abolutely loving it out here. Tanzania is such a beautiful place, and I actually prefer the way of life to back home. It's much less frantic and people appreciate the small things in life much more. There's no pressure to worry about how you look and it's great to be with a team where we can openly discuss our faith and pray together. There's a real sense of God working through us and we are forming really close friendships.
Prayer requests:
Thank you to everyone who is praying for me, I really appreciate it.
- Pray for wisdom in deciding which projects to devote out time to, and how to allocate our budget for health
- Strengthening in the team relationships, and for any small grievances to be sorted out quickly.
- For opportunities to share God and pray with the locals
- That God will challenge each team member in their faith and in aspects of their lives that God wants to change. I've been particularly challenged this week about trusting God. I've always thought to myself, 'Yeah, I trust God with my future', but I felt God saying this week, "Are you trusting me with 100%?".
- For successs in our work and determination and courage to keep on working in the heat and the difficult times.
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