Nzuri Sana!!

Hey guys!

Sorry I could not post last time I blogged. I was using the internet in town (Dar es Salaam) and my time was running out. But this time I have more time to tell you what I have been up to the last 2 weeks!

So after 24 hours worth of travel I made it to Tanzania. After I stepped off the plane, got my visa, and went outside, my first impression was, "Man! It is HOT!!" Seriously! I do not think I have sweat this much in my life! And I have done a lot of sweating in my life. Trust me. I mean I knew it was going to be hot. Dr. Joel (the director of the clinic) had told me so. And I had found out before I left that November-February are their summer months being the hottest of the year. So I was somewhat prepared... or so I thought. But I certainly was not prepared  for the heat and humidity! It is anywhere from about 80-90 degrees. But it feels at least 10 degrees hotter every day with the humidity. I would have thought that my years in Mobile, AL would have helped to prepare me. But unfortunately (or fortunately however you want to look at it.)I avoided the hot summer months there which would have been decent preparation. Anyways... enough about the heat.

Dr Joel picked me up at the airport. With God's perfect timing, he arrived a few minutes I stepped out of the airport. We headed to the YWAM base in his car. One interesting thing about Tanzania is that the cars drive on the left here. I did not realize that when I came. So that in itself made for an interesting ride because I have never ridden like that before. But it did not need it to be interesting because there were so many new things to be seen. Tanzania is very beautiful! Plus the drivers here are CRAZY!! I am pretty sure that I would have a heart attack if I had to drive here. No joke. I know they must have "Rules of the Road" here. But sometimes I wonder. Dar es Salaam is the biggest city in the country. Thus a lot of cars and people. There are a lot of pedestians, bikers (both bicycles and motorcycles) and drivers. And everybody just seems to do whatever the want! People seem to be walking all over the place. Crossing the street wherever and whenever they like. I am not the jaywalking police or anything like that. I jaywalk like the best of them. But when there are hardly sidewalks and cars are speeding down narrow roads, not stopping until they are about an inch from the object in front of them... Let me just say I would think twice about jaywalking. The scariest thing about it to me is how close the cars go to other cars, pedestrains, whatever. The roads are not very good once you get outside Dar es Salaam. The view is very pleasant though to make up for it. Whether we are passing a local market or passing on a hill that overlooks a group of houses and palm trees, it is all very beautiful to me. The traffic and roads get very bad around this one particular market about half way through. They are doing construction and the drivers are mad so things get pretty chaotic. After this place, things die down a little and the roads get a little better. It takes about an hour to an hour and a half to get to the base.

The base is a very beautiful place as well. Being about 30 minutes from the Indian Ocean allows this part of Tanzania to be fairly green. The base is 86 acres technically. But most everything is located near each other with the rest being plant life. The base has a lot of ministries. They have a preschool, primary school, vocational school (for carpentry and tailoring), and a DTS (Discipleship Training School). A lot of the people here have done the DTS program (which is a short program that helps grow your relationship to Christ). Everyone I have talked to about it cannot say enough good things about it. They have the clinic (a mini hospital). This is where I spend most of my time. And they have a lovely garden. Here they grow fruits and vegetables. Mango season is now. So mangos are constantly falling from the trees. And the children here are always eating them up. They are very good. There are 2 dorm like housing and about 3-4 houses that the permanent staff live in with their families. The room they put me in when I got here was very nice. It was pretty big as well. It was about the size of my dorm room for all of you who know how big that was. It even had its own bathroom! With a Western toilet!! None of the other rooms have that. They have community bathrooms for everyone else. The shower is placed on the wall in the bathroom. It was a really nice set up. I was so happy. It was one of the most exciting things to me. The other being that they have clean water here so I do not have to worry about getting sick from the water here. But like the saying goes, "All good things must come to an end." They moved me to a room next door for a night. Then they moved me across the hall to a room with many bunkbeds. So it feels kind of like camp. It does not have its own bathroom unfortunately. But I have been able to rig the mosquito net up a little better in this new room. Plus the mattress is a whole lot better! One thing that has been an issue here in the area are the power outages. In fact part of the reason it has taken me so long to post this is because the first time I tried the power went out in the middle of it! So Aunt Karen... you were right! Thanks for all the lights. Let's see. What else should I mention about the base... Ah the kitchen! They have a special building for the kitchen. They cook over an open fire. They have a oven to bake bread in (which they have every morning). Meals are pretty simple here. Bread in the morning. Ugali for lunch. Ugali is an African dish. It is made with corn flour and water. It has a very thick consistency kind of like mashed potatoes but thicker. They eat it with some sort of stew that they make. Usually just vegetables in the stew. They take the ugali and form it into balls. They then dip the balls into the stew to eat. Ugali kind of reminds me of grits to a certain extent. And some of my Southern friends know how fond I am of that. (It is not my favorite food in the world.) For dinner they either have ugali again or rice and bean/stew. I have been very fond of the rice. Outside the kitchen they have these big stone sinks. One is used for washing the dishes. The other has 4 smaller sinks to wash clothes in. I wash clothes by hand for the first time last week. (Even did a "load" today.) I felt kind of embarressed and priviledged when the people here asked me if it was my first time. It was not bad though. I think I miss the dryer the most because of the speed of the drying.

So now that I think I have covered most of the stuff that is on the base, I will tell you all the highlights of my days since arriving here. So my first day here, I took a tour of the clinic. It is not very big. It has 2 exam rooms, 2 patient rooms that have about 5 beds a piece, a pharmacy, a closet-like area to get blood samples, a lab, an injection room, a room for wound care, a labor room, and a delivery room. So a nurse, Mary, is taking me around telling me about the clinic. We go to the delivery room and there is a woman in labor there. (The women in the delivery room are the women who are in the later stages of labor.) She tells me she is ready to give birth and hands me a pair of gloves! So I have been in the clinic for about a total of 5 minutes and I am already helping deliver a baby! It was a baby boy. I helped clean him up and weigh him. 2.7kgs. Then we continue on our tour. On Wednesdays are "Baby Shot Wednesday." I am not sure what the Kiswahili name for it is. Something watoto. I will learn it and get back to you on that. It is a day that the mothers come in with their babies to get immunizations. But the second day I was here I helped with that. I was so tired though. Jetlag was still in effect. I mostly helped with the drop of Polio vaccine that every baby gets. The next day I helped in the Pharmacy. The patients bring the list of medications that the doctor orders and we hand them out. Like a pharmacy in the US. I mostly was just trying to learn things the first several days. Most people here speak very little English. And since I speak kidogo Kiswahili ("little Swahili") it makes things kind of difficult sometimes. But everyone is so patient with me. The nurses try to help me out, teaching me new vocabulary. They laugh at me a lot. But it is all good. On Friday they had a graduation ceremony for those in the vocational school. It was SO much fun! I had no idea what was going on. But I could tell some stuff without knowing what they were saying. They had a lot of song, dance and skits. It was very cool! The ceremony lasted 4 hours for the 10-15 students graduating! Just imagine if ceremonies lasted that long per person in the US! I think the ceremonies could last weeks! But afterwards they had a nice meal for everyone. There is a Norweagan family here: Rune and Elfrid with their children Hannah Joy and Samuel. Samuel is the cutest little boy. I have seen him learn to walk while I have been here. He is not yet running but I am sure that will come soon. He has very blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. (Sorry Andy. I still prefer the blue.) They have been so kind to me since I have been here. They speak very good English. So it is nice to talk with them. The first Saturday I was here they took me to this little resort about 2 kilometers or 5 minute drive from the base. It was very nice. It had a pool and a restaurant. It was nice to have some good food. On Sunday I went to a Kiswahili church. A guy from the base, Brighton, came along to be a translator. There was a lot of dancing here as well. I did not really know what was going on for the most part here as well. But it was very good experience. After church we visited a family who had lost a family member. We sang hymns and had a short message at their house. Community is very important. I like that a lot. For those of you who know I do not drink pop (or soda or coke or whatever you want to call it) I have a confession... I had pop. I told myself that if someone offers it to me I will drink it because it is a real treat here. So I did not want to be rude and turn it down. The family offered everyone a bottle of pop. I had a Fanta. And it was really good. That sums up week 1.

Week 2: In the beginning of the week I went to town (Dar es Salaam) with some people to run some errands and get some supplies. It was quite the experience. It is weird how there are similarities between the city of Dar es Salaam and Chicago. But in the similarities there are huge differences. I do not know how to explain it. I guess I will just have to show you guys when I can get some pictures up. But we went to a store called ShopRite. It is a very Western store. It has many things that I recognized. I bought some Nutella there. I like Nutella before. But now I think I LOVE Nutella. It has made breakfast much more enjoyable. This week I also saw a monkey!! On the base! Coming down from a tree! It was remarkable! I was not expecting it at all. I had heard that people have seen monkeys here. But I was picturing something smaller. But this monkey was rather large! I wish I could have taken a picture of it. But it ran away too fast. I hope to catch another one before I leave. I guess I could take this opportunity to tell you guys about the living things here. There are plenty of mosquitos as you have probably already guessed. And plenty of other bugs. The worst of them all in my opinion is something I have called the Snormapede. I have called it this because it looks like worm sort of but it is longer and thicker. More like a snake. But it has these legs like a centapede. Snake + worm + centapede = snormapede. They are these black "things" that are about the thickness of a finger and about 2 fingers length. They have a hard shellish thing (at least it looks like that). But its belly and legs are red. The first one that appeared in my room had little legs. It did not seem as bad. But I was still not very fond of it. The thing with these bugs is that I do not want to kill it because I am afraid of the sound it will make when I do. I am not very fond of that crunching sound. (I had found out later that they smell when they are killed.) So I took a dust pan and threw him outside. The second one to come into my room... he is another story. His was so big! His legs being the worst part! His legs stuck out about an inch from his body! I called him Captain Crunch. But like his comrade I scooped him up and threw him outside. In my room there were also 2 lizards. Usually I am not very fond of lizards. But I found out that they keep other bugs away. So I am okay with them now. I called them Doug and Skeeter. In the roads people sometimes drive their cows and goats. And there are chicken everywhere. I am sure there will be many more animal encounters that I will have. This second week I helped with yet another birth. Another baby boy. This one was a little more traumatic than the last though. I think that maybe if I see too many of these births I might decide to never have children! But everything ended up okay. On Sunday I went to a church where they speak English. It was nice to know what was going on. It consisted mostly of Indian people. So they had someone translating into Hindi for some of them. It was very good. There I met these 2 German young adults I guess. They are both 20 years old. Jan (German version of John I think) and Deborah. They are both working with a orphanage about a 15-20 minute walk from the base. They also speak English. Which is very nice. I have learned to appreciate being able to speak with people more clearly. There are still some language barrier. But not as bad as with some of the Africans. That brings us to this week.

Week 3: So the Germans have every Monday off from the orphanage. They like to take advantage of their day off and go to the city or the beach. Well this Monday they invited me to go to the beach. It was my first time to go to the Indian Ocean. And it was wonderful! We took the public trasportation to get there. They have these buses called "Dolla, Dollas." These things are crazy as well! People fight to get on. And they pack these things like none other! You think that there is no way to fit another person and they somehow get 3 more on there! It is amazing really! There is no such thing as personal space on a Dolla Dolla. We got a seat for one part of the trip. But we stood for pretty much all of it. There was even one time where Deborah and I were kind of barely hanging on inside the door. It is not uncommon for people to be hanging on outside of these buses. But the Indian Ocean was so nice! The water was warm. It has been a long time since I have swam in an ocean or lake that was warm. I thought it felt very good. I guess it can get uncomfortably warm later in the day though. But the water usually is very clear. And in parts of the beach you could see that. But Monday it was not as clear as it usually is. But it was still lovely. We went to this beach that was by a hotel. So we got some good breakfast and were able to use some good internet. I do not have a computer here. But Jan was generous enough to let me use his. But his is in German which made it pretty interesting. On the keyboard the "z" and "y" are switched so I kept writing "zou" and "zesterdaz" and things like that. But I got used to it eventually. I was just grateful to be able to use it. As some of you know with my history of beach-going I probably should have used a lot of sunscreen. And you probably have guess that I probably did not. I did use sunscreen. but obviously not enough. Because sure enough I got pretty sunburnt. But I think that is the norm for me. So despite the pain it is okay. That leads me to today, Wednesday. Another "Baby Shot Wednesday" Today I actually felt like I was helpful! I got to give all the babies their vaccines! I feel like that might sound weird that I am very excited about being able to give shot to babies. But I was very VERY excited! I had someone there helping to translate. But I got the hang of things very quickly. I hope that this was the start of me being able to do a lot more. I have mostly been in the pharmacy. Which is okay. But I would like to feel more helpful.

Nzuri sana! This is Kiswahili for "very good." Things have been very good thus far. That is a good description for how I am feeling now (despite the sunburn). I would like to thank you all for keeping me in your prayers. I could not do this without your support and God's help. He has definitely been my strength on this journey. I have some prayer request if you do not mind praying for me. One thing is the language barrier. Just pray that I will be able to pick up the language quickly so that I am able to interact with the people more. I also ask for you to pray that I could be more helpful in the clinic. I know that will come more when I learn more Kiswahili. But if you could pray that the nurses would allow me to do more that would be wonderful. Also just pray for the people of Tanzania. In this area there are many Muslims. And many of them go to the clinic and the schools here. Pray that I and the rest of the YWAM staff would show Christ's light in their darkness. One last thing for now. Please pray that I will not get homesick over the Christmas holiday. Thanksgiving ended up being okay. And I feel like Christmas might not be so bad because it hardly seens like Christmas here (being 85 degrees and all!). But it would be nice to not feel so homesick. Thanks again so much! Thank you for your prayers. For reading all of this! I know this is very long. It was much overdue. Now that I am more settled in I am hoping to update it at least once a week. Well hopefully you will hear from me in the not too distant future. I love and miss you all my friends!