trips.schrull.us

We are continuing to settle in to the guest house here in the DWT compound and I am actually starting to do a little “real cooking”.

 

Yesterday was church at the Cathedral.  We attended the 9:00 service and sang two songs with KCC (Kasulu Cathedral Choir) as back-up singers for one of them.  It was a comunion service – which is not done every week here in Tanzania, and as always, ran long.  It was 10:30 before the sermon even started, and sermons here are NOT short.  (Neither are the announcements, I think that they took up a good 10 minutes, at least just by themselves.)  We stayed through all of the worship, but left as the auction was starting.  (Often parishioners will bring “gifts in kind” instead of cash-money.  The gifts are auctioned off to the congregation at the end of the service.)

 

After church we returned to the compound and I made lunch by first frying some bread and then sautéing a small onion, some chopped mushroom and chopped tomatoes in margarine and then adding three beaten eggs.  It was tasty, but I managed to smoke up the place pretty good.  The margarine has a really low smoke point (folks here cook with oil but trying to find a small container of oil to buy is impossible).  Also the burner I was using does not know the meaning of “low”.  It was really hot!  I think that the other burner might be a little better behaved.  After lunch we napped for a while and the went for a drive into the hills above Kasulu to be tourists and admire the view.  Lovely isn’t it?  

 

Dinner was at Alberto’s house.  He is an instructor at LTTC and normally teaches church history and New Testement.  Last fall he tried to put a bit of Swahili into our brains.

 

Today was spent at the bible college.  Bill worked with our friend Festus on configuring the servers so that they students can use either Office 2003 or Office 2007.  He also re-discovered that we will not be able to use Winodows Server 2012 at the Bible College with the original thin-clients that we brought 10 years ago, although it will work with the “replacement” thin clients we have brought over the last several years.  (Even though we brought replacements, and the old thin clients’ control buttons a prone to sticking from the dusty environment along with other differences in older technology, LTTC prefers to have as many client stations as possible and won’t retire the old ones.)

 

While Bill was playing with technology, I was a student for the day.  It is the time of year when the wives of the graduating students who will be becoming priests are in residence for training on what is expected of a Pastor’s wife.  Deacon Elda, who teaches the class had invited me last week to come and sit in on a class.  The class was entirely in Swahili and from the approximately 10 words I recognized, which included “karabuni” (welcome), chai (tea) and chakula (food), I think that the lesson was on practicing proper hospitality, especially for important visitors.

 

We came “home” for lunch (Mashed Avocado, with a packet of chicken of the sea smoked Salmon (brought from the States), sliced tomatoes and a pan toasted slice of bread each, all drizzled with balsamic vinegar (also brought from the states) and returned to LTTC; Bill, once again to the computer room while I attended a debate in English on the proposal “It is better to receive salaries from the central Anglican Office than from the Parrish”.  The students did not arrive on time, which annoyed the instructor, an older Tanzanian gentleman who is used to teaching Form’s 1 through 3, where a strict schedule is kept.  The debaters did a pretty good job of making their points and it was an interesting discussion.  I will refrain from stating my opinion to the students (or anyone else) unless someone in authority asks me, as this is not my diocese!

 

Andrea came over for tea and conversation when we returned to the compound and then Bill and I took ourselves out to dinner at the Kasulu Motel, as no dinner host had been arranged for us this evening.  That was absolutely fine.  The chicken was very good and we are pretty proud of ourselves that we feel comfortable enough with being here in Kasulu to be able to be responsible for ourselves and not have to bother our hosts for everything.

 

Time for a shower and bed.  Blessings to all.