TZ 2016 – Hump-day – 5/11/
This is how a door is trimmed to fit and Kasulu
Life has been pretty low-key here the last few days. Our section of the compound is very busy – a veritable construction zone, but with out the noise of power tools that you would find back home. Yesterday was “door day” when they installed the outside doors on all the other rooms (with the exception of the free-standing room next to us which is still in the wall-construction stage). Today they continued to work on the plumbing, did some electrical work and delivered, if not installed the bathroom doors. They have decided to add a sitting room to the front of the freestanding room that is still being built, so yesterday they were laying out the string to mark the foundation for that room and started to dig out where the foundation will go.
Yesterday morning we went briefly to the Bible College where Bill was working with various network configurations and discovering that to keep things really solid we need a new cellular modem that can be hardwired to the network to replace the wireless cellular modern that was purchased from some British missionaries a couple of years ago when they headed home. These modems are now available in Dar Es Salaam and we hope that one can get here before we leave so that Bill can be on hand for the final configuration. Even if he can’t, he will be leaving detailed documentation and should be able to help them via Skype calls to get it configured correctly.
Installing one of the Guest Room doors.
We came back to the compound where we had tea with our friend Festus and Bill spent a large part of the afternoon downloading some software that will better allow him to document the LTTC (formally known as Kasulu Bible College) network and setup. And Cannon Wilson arrived at our door with two dozen eggs! I don’t know how we can possibly eat them all while we are here as we keep getting invited to the diocesan lunch room for chai, which means that we don’t then want any lunch.
Edita (Mama Makaya) asked me if I would like to join her and say hello to the Mother’s Union, so I went down to the Cathedral with her later in the afternoon. I almost drove for the first time here, but she found a driver. The Mother’s Union meeting was a prayer service and Bible Study, which was of course in Swahili, so I understood one word in 500. Edita taught and it seemed like she did an excellent job.
Dinner was at Andrea’s, which is always enjoyable. She made us “spaghetti lasagna” with real cheese! It is a blessing to sit a talk with her and get her perspective on what is happening in the diocese and hear about her ministry and that of the other German missionaries in the area.
A dusty drive to dinner tonight.
Today was again laid back. Bill spent a lot of time in the DWT offices setting up some laptops to be able to talk wirelessly to a printer and other network-related things. Cannon Mafumbi supplied us with an an initial estimate of funds spent by the diocese on furnishings for our rooms. The Bishop and the Cannon both thought that these rooms should have a fridge and Edita thought that there should be a bed in the work room. We gave Cannon Wilson the funds to buy a small “dorm-sized” fridge and that was delivered today.
They also tried to deliver the bed. With everything that is going on in the work room, there is not enough space in there for anything larger than a single bed. The local wood furniture shop only had full sized beds but said that they would make it smaller. Their way of making it smaller was to drill new bolt holes (and make narrower bed boards) in the full (double) bed head and foot boards to the that single sized mattered would be centered on the head and foot board….which meant that the bed would take just as much space as if it was a full bed, plus you would probably trip on the extended head and foot board! Needless to say, the bed frame went back. We kept the mattress.
It’s strange to think that we only have two more full days here in Kasulu. Saturday we will be heading to Kigoma so that we can worship and St. Micheal’s Church there, and then Monday we will be flying back to Dar Es Salaam. I still have a few pictures to put up, and then I intend to “stage” and take pictures of our rooms so everyone can see our “Tanzania Timeshare”.
