Comfort Zone: 5/29 – Power Outage and Our “Tanzanian Timeshare”
Apologies for not posting yesterday. As the title suggests, it was due to a power outage, but not here in Kasulu; it was back home in New Milford where the server that house our blogs is. It appears that our house was without power for most of a full day. Many thanks to our nephew and house-sitter, Chris Schrull, who not only was Bill’s remote set of hands in restarting the server and associated systems, but is ALSO going thtrough our fridge and freezer and throwing out everything that thawed/got too warm. Our thoughts and prayers for everyone who sustained damage and/or loss in the storm.
Life in the diocese is very busy right now with exams at KBC and the Diocesan Council Meeting up here at the DWT compound. This meeting, which is held twice a year, is a BIG DEAL judging from the way the chapel is decorated for it. Yards and yards of colorful satan fabric are swagged and cover the walls. Potted Palms were rented to decorate the room and all of the tables, in fact all the furnature except the chairs are covered with satan that is pinned in place.
We have been dividing our time between KBC and the DWT compound, trying to time our trips between the two places to times when folks are going between town and the compound anyway.
The start of our “Tanzanian Timeshare”.
Bill has mentioned the Guest House that is being built here at the compound in previous posts. There are a number of houses here at the compound as well as a room or two (such as the room we are staying in) that can serve as “studio apartments.” When we first started coming here, there was no German missionary on-site, so the diocese used German house as a guest house. Although the house belongs to the diocese, the German missionary society built the house, so they always have first call on it. The diocese can use it for guests when its empty, but not rent it out. All of the other houses can be, and are at the momment, either rented out or used by long-term volunteers to the diocese, such as Helen and Alister. This makes financial sense: the diocese needs any source of funds that it can find. But it also makes it very difficult to house short-term visitors, of which there are quite a few throughout the year. Andrea, the German missionary, houses the German visitors. Helen and Alister have been helping out by hosting the British visitors (as well as providing showers for the odd American visitor), but there are still folks like us that need short-term housing and it is difficult for us to bring additional visitors with us, which we very much want to do.
A few years ago, Bill expressed the desire to have a house of our own in Kasulu. I, being a Debby Downer by nature, immediately started finding problems with this idea. It was not the cost. Property in Kasulu is very inexpensive by Northeastern American standards. It was everything else: How would the house be taken care of when we are not here in Kasulu? Housing here needs to be in a compound for secuity at night, what would happen to the house when we can no longer make the journey to Kasulu and can an American even by property in Tanzania?
Another section of the guest hostel.
Bill had mentioned his desire to the Bishop, and the Bishop shared with us his desire to build a guest hostel in the compound. These will be “self-contained” rooms (bed + bath) for short term visitors. A special set of rooms that will include a sitting room would be built as part of this hostel, and these rooms would be ours when ever we visit. We agreed: THIS we could support. And it covers all of my concerns. The guest hostel belongs to the diocese. It is in the DWT compound and will be maintained by the diocese whether we are here or not. Of course “our” rooms will be used by others when we are not here, but they will always be available to us when we visit and they will reflect some of our tastes (which we will pay for of course) such as tile floors, and furniture that we plan to shop for when the building is complete. The first, most important piece of furnature has already been purchased: the bed that we are sleeping in this year will be moved to the guest hostel when it is complete.
We sent starting funds for this project earlier this spring and constuction is well underway. We hope that it will be complete by the time that we visit next year and that we will be staying in our “Tanzanian Timeshare”, perhaps with some others from St. Paul’s in the adjacent hostel guest rooms!