The Eads to Tanzania

Visiting with Mwanzalima

Sunday afternoon, after the church's visit to our house, Pastor Paulo was not able to go out visiting with me. So I headed out with Mwanzalima, one of the deacons in Sweya, to visit some people that had not been in church that morning. 

Our first stop was to visit Faustine, an older middle-aged man that has recently begun to attend church again. His wife had died around the time that we first arrived last year, and he was left with three children to parent alone. He has just recently remarried, and for the last two months or so has been a very faithful attender. We arrived to find out that he had had a rather bad case of malaria. Because of medication, he was already on the mend, but he had not been feeling well enough to come to church that morning. I took more of a lead role in driving the conversation, discussing with them the text that was preached for the day. Although I directed the conversation, Mwanzalima and Faustine contributed some great thoughts about application. It is good to hear what kind of applications they made from the text. Thinking here is much more concrete and much less abstract and theoretical than it is in America, so hearing a person give their own illustrations and applications of a text shows very clearly that they understand its meaning.

This kind of visitation, the interactive teaching of the Word, is a joy. May God use his word to accomplish his work here.

Bugando

Bugando Medical Centre is the hospital in Mwanza and unofficially the second largest hospital in all of Tanzania. I have a friend from America, Dr. Robert Peck, who is working there. He offered to show me around last Thursday morning while he made his rounds in the internal medicine ward. I thought that it was a great opportunity to expand my cultural profile of the Sukuma.

While I learned much about the realities of health care here, particularly the kinds of diseases that are most prevalent, I also learned more about the general Tanzanian perspective on sickness and treatment. Here are just a few things that I learned as I followed Rob around:

HIV is the number one cause of death in Tanzania. Easily 30-40% percent of the patients that we saw were HIV patients.

Tuberculosis is very prevalent. It particularly affects those with HIV. We saw a number of patients that were being tested or treated for this disease.

The majority of patients delay coming to the hospital in order to be treated by traditional healers (waganga or witchdoctors). Their condition is most often worsened because of delaying medical treatment or because of the adverse effects of the treatment that they received through the traditional medicines. Commonly, this delay results in permanent disability or death.

Please pray for the Tanzanian people and the many physical problems that threaten life here. Pray, most importantly, for the spiritual life that only God can give.

There were many other observations that I made that have helped me put some more cultural pieces together. I am recording them all and putting them together in my ethnography. Thank the Lord for the foundation that is being laid for ministry here.

Our African President

I have mentioned before how big a figure President Barack Obama is here in Tanzania. He is constantly mentioned in the radio broadcasts. He is frequently mentioned when I respond to people's questions about where I am from. I don't always carry a camera with me. I want to avoid making people look at me like a tourist, and I don't want my neighbors feeling like they are an exhibition. But if I did carry that camera with me, I would be able to capture our president's face on backpacks, t-shirts, bath towels, large window decals for cars and buses, and any other assortment of products marketed to the East African.

There is an identification that Tanzanians make with President Obama. He has East African heritage, as his father is a Kenyan Luo. I have heard people joking off and on that Obama now has hundreds of Luo men claiming to be his uncle. Now they all want to go and stay with their "nephew"!

Here are a few of the products that I have been able to get a picture of.

Yes, that is bubblegum. It also comes in orange flavor.

We took this picture at a fabric shop in Stonetown. This is a kanga, a fabric wrap that women wear around their skirts. This one says, "Congratulations Barack Obama, Obama the Choice of God." Look here for another example.

Jana posted about using this umbrella here. She bought it to get through town during a heavy rain only to find out that it displayed our president. Look at the map that is in the upper left-hand corner of the picture. Can you identify which country is highlighted in red? Oops.

Kutoa Pole kwa Russ Fahlgren

Two weeks ago, we learned that Russ Fahlgren, a very good friend of ours from our home church, had died. Russ was an elderly man that always had a friendly handshake and an encouraging word. In his quiet way, he supported our ministry efforts at PLBC. He and his wife Becky became dear to Jana and me. After learning of it, I mentioned the family and the funeral at prayer meeting in Sweya. Last Sunday, Mwanzalima, the deacon in charge of arranging church visits, approached me before the service and said that the church would like to visit us kutoa pole na kuleta faraja (to give sympathy and bring comfort).

I have visited many others with the congregation in the same way. Usually two or three weeks after a funeral, the church will make a visitation announcement. After the Sunday service, the church body will walk together to the house of the church member who has had a relative die. They will hold a small worship service there at the church member's house. A couple of hymns, a brief exhortation from the Word, and a formal statement of sympathy and consolation. Then, they will pass around a plastic bag or basket to gather up an offering to help offset the cost of the food. Generally, the host has prepared some food for everyone, according to their ability. Sometimes it is tea and dried sweet potatoes, sometimes it is beans and rice. After the food, people part ways.

So, when I heard that the church was wanting to make a visit on us, I was thankful. First, they were treating me like one of their own. This is what they would do for any other church member, so it made me feel like I belong. Second, it showed that the relationship with the church is reciprocal, and not just one way. Here was the missionary being formally ministered to by the church. That is the nature of real relationship. Third, it honored the memory of our dear friend Russ.

We had a small service in our front yard that Mwanzalima and Pastor Paulo led. Then the church took up a small collection. Paulo had announced during church, at my request, that the offering taken at our house would go to support the evangelistic work at Sengerema, where a fifth church is being started. While it was not a great amount, it was an encouragement that they gave. It upheld their custom, and it was a fitting memorial.

Here are some pictures of everyone gathered.

  

 

 

Building Progress

I (Jana) took a couple pictures of the progress on the garage and houses at Tumaini this morning.

This is a picture of the garage (left) and the first house (right):

This is a picture of the second house:

25 September 2009

Today was mostly a business day.

This morning (Friday), we took a town trip for weekly errands, and I spent some time following up on work with the solar contractors for the house. Things are moving along. It is exciting.

This afternoon was spent working with the electrician and a generator repairman. We will have the electric wire and the solar installed in the houses next week.

As I was sitting in offices today or talking with these contractors back at our place, I was just thinking about our first full day in Tanzania one year ago today. Bumbling through greetings. Constantly unable to understand. Very tired. Now, things flow pretty freely. A true answer to prayer.

One Year

Today (Thursday) marks one year in Tanzania. We rejoice in the blessings that God has given us in learning and adjusting to the way of life here. This next year will mark a more formal transition to ministry, but this past year has laid the groundwork.

I am more convinced now than I ever have been that the efforts to learn a new culture must be as deliberate as learning a new language. God has given us the opportunity in the last year to do both. 

We rejoice in the goodness of God over these last twelve months, both in the blessings and in the struggles he has given.

On again, Off again, On again

We were still having some trouble with the blog, but it seems like we are up at full power now.

Two days ago (the 18th) was Grace's birthday. We celebrated a little yesterday with some friends.

The second week of Bible Institute finished on Thursday. The men have returned to their homes and will begin completing their assignments. It was exciting to see how delving into the understanding of such foundational truths as the Bible, God, Angels, Man and Sin stretched their perspective and challenged them to turn to the Word for the truth. Rob has arranged the class so that each student is responsible to preach a sermon on a text related to each subject, to write a doctrinal summary of his beliefs about each subject, and to take a brief test on each of the them as well. I think that the most practical way of knowing if they have absorbed the teaching is to listen to their preaching.

I missed the last two days of class handling an electrical problem at the houses. We got our first rain of the season on Wednesday. During the rain, lightning hit the transformer outside of our property, promptly shutting down all of our power. Three visits to the electric office in town (polite and persistent is my policy) got the problem fixed within 24 hours.

Breaking the Silence

After having some problems with posting to the blog this past week, we will be resuming today.

The last three days, Rob has been teaching theology courses in the Bible Institute. The subjects have been the Scriptures (Monday and yesterday) and God and the spirit world (today and for the rest of the week). It has been great to sit in on the class and listen to the questions and concerns that the students share in response to the teaching. It is illustrative of the major difference between the culture I was raised and trained in and the culture that I am seeking to minister in now.

The last week, I have been focused on writing about the traditional religion of the Sukuma people. I have become convinced that the traditional beliefs shape the average Tanzanian's outlook about every aspect of his life. It is both heartbreaking and riveting to begin to understand the fears and hopes that drive so many people here. I am at 35 pages, single-spaced for my rough draft with the goal of adding at least ten pages each week. I am hoping to have the rough draft completed this month.

To give you a look at just one of the many things that I have been learning about, I will give you this segment from my (very) rough draft:

"So, do you know what a kabeba is?" Jackson asked. I answered no, that I had never heard of it. He said that is like a giant, like a person that is taller than a house. They wear white clothing, and will often pass along the road at night. He said that it is not uncommon for people to see them, usually around 7:00 or 8:00 at night, just as it is becoming dark. He said that if you see one, you should never run away, because they will disappear and then reappear wherever you are headed. Finally, you will tire, and they will catch you. He said that the best thing for you to do is to walk slowly and stand to the side of the road to let it pass. He must have seen the disbelief on my face as he was explaining this whole thing to me. "There really are here! You know your neighbor that lives over there," he said as he pointed to the south side of our house. "Talk to him. He saw one recently."

I talked later with Pastor Paulo, and he said that before he was a Christian he feared makabeba (the plural form of kabeba) terribly. He said that people believe if a kabeba touches you, you will die. He said that his grandmother told him a story about two hunters that went out into the bush to hunt. They were suddenly being pursued by a kabeba. They ran and ran, but finally they tired. One of them finally said to the other, “Let’s not run.” As the kabeba approached, the hunter took aim with his bow and shot the kabeba in the heart with an arrow. It suddenly disappeared. When they returned home they had found out that their grandmother had died. She had fallen, and when she hit the ground, she was pierced through the heart by a short tree stump. They believed that the grandma was the kabeba and the stump was the arrow that they had shot to kill it.

Does this sound like "Jack and the Beanstalk"? Well, what would you say if you met someone told you that Jack was his grandfather and he had seen the goose that lays golden eggs?

Things that people in the West would relegate to children's story books or dismiss as fairy tales are beliefs that control people's actions, that dominate people's thoughts, that people tell me every so often walk down the road in front of my house. These are not stories that were told from a long time ago disconnected from life. I have stories of all different kinds (like this one) that people have a direct, personal connection to.

So if you heard the story of the kabeba from a friend, how would you answer?