trips.schrull.us

It’s still dark out, 5:00 am and the Islamic call to prayer “floats” up the hill from the Mosque.  I say “floats” in quotes because sometimes it is quite off-key and can sound quite angry.  Other times it is quite tuneful and just a part of the Tanzanian environment.  The first morning we were here it was on the angry side and Shaw, who was already awake, took the Islamic call to prayer as a call for him to pray the Lord’s Prayer.  He shared that with us that t morning and ever since, we taken the the mosque’s calls to prayer as a reminder to pray ourselves.  Why should it only be the Muslims who pray five times a day when we are called to pray constantly?

It is still dark.  Perhaps it will be a sleepy rooster that will next sound, or perhaps it will be the local dog chorus.  While dogs are kept close tied and I never see them (no vets and rabies shots around here) there is no doubt that they are around as the chorus travels from the area on one side of the compound to the other.

The birdsong starts a little after 6:00 am.  (The sun comes up around 7:15 here, and it comes up suddenly…first a deep twilight and then, in a matter of minutes, it is light.)  A warble outside the window from the garden.  Chirps from the trees a little further away.  Still a different warble off to the left.  There are some birds that we have come to recognize by birdsong alone, we don’t know what they look like so we name them after their song.  There is the “Pan Flute Bird”.  It sounds just like a Pan Flute.  We enjoyed it’s song many times on past trips but it seems to have deserted the compound this year.  We did hear it off in the distance when we took our walk on Sunday and were at the top of the hill.  Bill says the the Pan Flute Bird has abandoned the Anglicans for the Roman Catholics!

Another bird with a distinctive call is the “Harrigan Bird”.  It’s song repeats the melody of the part of the chorus of “Harrigan, that’s me!” that goes “It’s a name that a shame”.  It repeats it over and over again, but never finishes the song which can drive us a bit crazy.

As far as I know, the bird on the left is NOT a “Harrigan bird” or a “Pan Flute bird” (nor is the picture one that we took) but we did see one like it on our Sunday drive.  The tail is fantastic.  Google identifies  it as a widowbird from South Africa, but we saw a bird not unlike it (without the orange on the wings) when we took our walk on Sunday.

Kasulu also has crows.  They are not all black like North American crows but have white “shoulders” like the birds in the Windex commercials.  They have loud raucous crow calls, with a Tanzanian twist.  They sound rather like our elderly short-haired Oriental cat, Woody, when he announces that he is in the room and it’s time for dinner.

As the people awake, so does the sound of children, music and conversation.  Occasionally there is the soundd of a truck, car or motorcycle engine and the honk of a horn to warn folks to get off to the side of the road.  But always the sound of industry, children yelling, people talking , a choir practicing, often the sound of a loud broadcast, and five times a day or course, the sounds from the mosque.  Roosters chime in throughout the day, as is their nature.  Windows are open at all times and there is no escaping the realization that you are surrounded with many people.

The bird song dies down at dusk to be replaced by the whirring of insects.  If we are lucky we will NOT hear the high pitched whine of a female malaria mosquito looking for dinner.  The human sounds continue until long after dark, and if it is a weekend night, it is not unusual to hear to loud music of a party going until 2:00 in the morning, accompanied by an occasional dog chorus.

Bill has just about finished up the major work at the Bible College.  Today we switched over to the new server,have  got TTLC (Tanzanian Telephone) to double the DSL speed, and connected the printer and copier to the network. The new pc in the staff lounge needs to be rebuilt in order to talk to the printers and Bill plans to recondition the old server so that it can serve as a backup.  We have been wonderfully blessed in how well the work is going.