Local Village

(view from behind our house to the ocean right)

(walking down the washed out path to the market--right)

One teacher (Ursula) at the school was kind enough to offer us Swahili lessons for a week. She is a sweet lady that teaches German at HOPAC. On Saturday a few of the girls went to her house for breakfast and she offered to take us around the little village behind our house. The walk to her house took just a few minutes, but it was so great to get a tour from a local. She took us back through dirt paths and we got to see more of a village lifestyle. There are so many great things back there, schools for children, little stores that sell the essentials, and hidden away behind some twists and turns is a huge market. They sell all kinds of vegetables and food. It was amazing and so close to our house too! We can get almost everything we need for our kitchen right there. For sure, we could live off of just the food that is within walking distance.

While we were walking, we met some local children. So they of course followed us and tried to talk with us. When we stopped one time, these two beautiful boys came running out of their home and jumped on us giving us huge hugs. It was so sweet. Clare decided to buy them all sweets from the store. They were very happy! But I was so glad to be taken around to the local places. It is great opportunity to practice Swahili and to support our neighbors by buying their produce instead of from a big store. Everyone was kind and friendly. It got some good pictures there. In Kenya, the store owners were not as excited about pictures, but here they were fine. I kept telling them it was for my friends and family to see at home! So they were happy to show others what life was like in Africa.

I keep saying, I wish people could see this. But even pictures don’t give the true feel of Africa. I hope that everyone can one day come here and see this great continent. It is so different. Everything is just different.

There has been some great opportunities opening up to get involved in some ministries here. Some teachers at the school run one, others are working in a village of one of the gardeners, some are teaching English through Bible stories, and many more. So I am praying and thinking about where I want to be involved. Please keep this in your prayers too. I can’t over estimate how much time I will have, but I also want to help and serve where possible.

Enjoy the pics!

DRIVING in Africa

One of the things I swore I would not do is drive here. I mean Philly has some crazy drivers…but it pales compared to here. In Africa, there are some road laws, but not as many as America. One of the best parts about cars here, is that since gas is so expensive, you NEVER see just one person in a car. It is really unheard of. If you are going somewhere, someone else will need a ride. The buses are always packed and frequently you will see trucks with people all squished into the back.

A few of us wanted to go to this one market and had no ride there, so I borrowed a car from school to attempt my first drive. I had to elicit help since I always forget to pull out and go onto the LEFT side of the road. It is very difficult to gauge if you are centered, or going off the road since the car is mostly on your left, not the right. I know that sounds confusing…but imagine keeping that all in mind as you are driving, passing buses that pull out in front of you with no warning, pedestrians, and bikes. Needeless to say it’s a bit nerve racking. But once you get the hang of it, it really quite freeing.

I took a short drive to a local store and back with no problems on Friday night. Then Sunday we tried to take the car to church and then the market, but it won’t drive FORWARD. It is the weirdest thing. It will drive backward, but when you put it in drive, the rear right wheel locks! So I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. So much for my first trip out on the road…maybe the Lord was giving me a little hint!

Thoughts on the bugs...

Gecko

Now bugs and I have never gotten along that well. As long as I can remember, I always scream and kill or scream and run when I find a bug in my house. However, there are just too many here to kill! I have decided that only mosquitoes are my enemy….they LOVE to bite. So I have turned over a new leaf. Spiders may now live in my house. Yes I said it, they are welcome. But only because they eat mosquitoes. Geckos also eat bugs…so they are more than welcome. We have a few that live in our kitchen. You can find them on the walls at any point if you know where to look.

Now one girl here, Michelle, hates Geckos. But that is because one fell from the ceiling and almost landed on her head. That would not make me happy either. But anything that kills mosquitoes is alright in my book…did I mention that I HATE mosquitoes. I mean really…do they have a purpose besides causing pain and spreading malaria. This is ridiculous!

Beach day...and the never ending walk

For a Saturday retreat, the missionaries from SIL (known as Wycliff in the US) invited the AIM missionaries to join them for a day on this little island. It was so beautiful and really relaxing. We climbed into this small motor boats that took us from the beach hotel called White Sands to a small island. No one lives there, but they have little Danda (Africa canopy) set up to hang out under.

When you get there, there are two guys hanging out in the restaurant. Really just an open area with a bar that sells some soda and anything you can get from the sea. You place your order in the morning…and just hang out on the beach. There is a great reef there to snorkel. Then the men go fishing and catch lunch to fry it up and serve it with chips.

That was the freshest fish I have ever had! After lunch we chilled for a bit and decided to walk around.

(this is the boat we took to the island..filled to the brim with people...and some water)

nd the island. It should have taken just under an hour to walk all the way around and Carley assured me that she had done it before. So 5 of us set off for our little walk. After about 40 minutes, we have to wade through this area, but don’t really think anything of it..since we did it once before. All we can see is a shallow pool and the island curves around so we can’t see very far down the beach. We all off through the water, but as we round the curve, it just more water and another curve. Firguring it can’t be much farther, we press on. The water isn’t that deep…just ankle height. Unfortunatley, the corners kept coming and the water kept getting deeper. But we keep giving it one more corner to get around. Finally it gets shallower, and we are sure that the next corner will be the beach where we started. Once round the last corner, instead of beach..there is HUGE flooded inlet. The next curve is quite a ways away. Now I should mention that one of the girls walking with us is only about 11 years old and another did not bring any shoes. The sea floor is just covered in small spiky sea urchins which feel like needles piercing your skin if you step on one. Of course I slipped and stepped on one. Sigh…that was a painful few days. So we trudge through the water coaxing the shoeless girl that she won’t hurt herself and the sobbing younger girl that everything will be alright.

I haven’t prayed that hard for a while, but with the tide coming in and us not sure how far we would have to walk through the water, I was feeling a bit nervous. There were also a lot of holes there which I am pretty sure were homes to crabs. We thankfully crossed the great abyss and found shore not too far away. The boat to take us home was just about loading up and as we came up on the dune, the SIL leader came over. He was sent out to find where we had gone. It was quite a funny story, once we got back and were stranded in the water. But we learned a great lesson from this….ALWAYS check to see when the tide comes in BEFORE you walk around an island!

The view from the roof of my house

One of my favorite places of the whole house is the roof. It is so gorgeous up there. You have this amazing view of the trees and in the distance is the ocean. You can also see the little village is that down the hill from our compound, but I will talk about that adventure later. I have been going up there to watch the sun rise a bit and read my devotions. One of the first sermons I heard here (yes in English) was an encouragement to not only read, but also to study, meditate, and memorize scripture. I took her advice and have been attempting to memorize Romans 12:9-21. I believe this will be my new life verse. I found it the other day while reading through Romans and it really struck me as such good advice in so many areas of life. So far I have memorized (don’t worry I’m not cheating) …Love must be sincere, hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. “ So not very far yet. But pole pole (slowly) I will learn. Anyway, I love the roof. It is a great place to go when you are just sick of being yelled at or stared at.

Mirror...should buying a mirror really be this hard?

Another day, Kate, Lisa and I decided we wanted to go to the local “mall”. It is a collection of stores, but only about 10. They are all high end clothing stores, but also a grocery store and a store called Game. This is the closest thing to a Walmart as it comes. They have oddest assortment of things, but never quite where you would think it would be placed. It took a lot of wandering to find what we needed. One thing I got was an alarm clock. I purchased the cheapest one (still over $20) but when I got it home, I realized the foolishness of the purchase. For one thing, it can never by my only alarm because of power failure. We don’t often lose electricity for long periods of time (only once so far), but it does go out and come back on rather frequenly. That means that my clock is constantly being reset. So after resetting it a few mornings in a row, I began to get frustrated. When the power does stay on…I began to notice something else. The clock doesn’t keep time. Every day it moves ahead of real time by about 1 hour. So the time is never quite right between the two problems. I had to laugh at myself. But I guess you learn. I had wondered why there were no alarm clocks in the houses….

Also that day, I purchased a mirror. BUT there was some confusion at the register, one person didn’t have enough money and we couldn’t get that through to the cashier. I think it is hard to believe that Mzungos (white people) could run out of money. So in the midst of all this, I put down the mirror and forgot to pick it up. Once I got home, I realized my error, but had no way to return the store without spending about $50. So the next day I found a friend who helped me translate a line in Swahili saying I had left the mirror and needed it back. I wasn’t able to remember the line though (it was very long) so I ended up reading it off. The man at the information desk thought this was hilarious. So in my limited Swahili I told him that I was a teacher here and was learning Swahili. As many places there were a few more people standing around who all thought this was hilarious and began teaching me. The one man began asking me questions about who I was married to, and if I was dating. He decided to teach me the phrase, “I love you” and “My lover”. I told him that I didn’t need those phrases, but he seemed to think that I did. The other guy wanted to marry me and the third guy took my Swahili notebook to write some phrases…and also give me his number. It was a hysterical conversation…I ended up getting my mirror back, a marriage proposal, and a phone number. Not bad for one shopping trip!

Setting up the house

My room (to the right)-the day I got my bed

Down the hall to the bathroom (right). See our washing maching!!! hurray :-)

Alright…now don’t be angry that I haven’t written!! I am not used to bloggin…I forget that this needs to be done!! Ha. But now I have a bunch of stories to tell you about. So in no particular order..i’ll fill you in on my last month of settling into life in Dar.

Delicia, Kate, and I flew together to Dar on the 31st of August. Now I had had just about enough of these girls…being with them 24/7 for the last month! So I was really excited to see my new house and set up my own room. But since this is Africa…neither of those things happened very quickly!

Cath and Tony (our AIM unit leaders) took us to the houses to see them, but they were not done being worked on. Apparently, the workers were under the impression we were not coming until the 8th and thought they had a whole week to finish what needed to be done. Now I am living with Delicia and a girl named Carly, who had not come yet. Kate’s house still was a mess, guys painting the outside, cement team putting another layer on the roof..water running down the sides of her house and INTO her house in huge puddles all over from the roof…stuff everywhere. It was quite disheartening. The good news was that my house was inhabitable….well according the millions of bugs that had taken up residence in the past month. Among the piles of stuff laying about I found assorted furniture in random places in the house. We all took inventory and began our shopping lists. The next few days was spent running all over the city trying to get the things that we needed to make the house into our home. But nothing here is as simple as it is in the states.
Picture of the bed leaving to go to the guest room.

After two long weeks of cleaning, arranging, going all over the city…our house is “finished”. We are still looking for some odds and ends…especially pictures since we haven’t bought any yet…but here is our home. We hope to have many people over to visit and enjoy it with us.