trips.schrull.us

No chapel today as the diocesan offices are closed on Saturday’s but Bill and the guys wanted to get an early start on some server

setup, so we got up at the usual time.  Bill headed down to the Bible College while I stayed behind as we needed someone to be here when they installed our new screen door.  I enjoyed a lazy morning, taking a hot shower (here in Kasulu!) and writing a long email to an old friend, while the fundi (every crafts person is a “fundi” of some type) shaped and installed the screen door.

 

And does that door make such a difference:  we have twice as much natural light and a nice cross-breeze now in the sitting room because we can leave the main door open.

This section of the compound is a beehive of activity, even on a Saturday. They are rushing to get all of the rooms ready for the Jubilee.  The bricklayers were continuing to build the walls of the room next door, using actual cement this time, instead of the usual mortar made from the local clay, so I guess they can’t make any mistakes, because it will be very hard to tear out and restart…..(remind me to do a post  on how they are constucting these buildings on a “slow” day.)  Else where, they were starting to install the plumbing in the bathrooms that are part of the other rooms.  You would think that all of this construction would be very noisy, but it is quite quiet by American standards.  No loud WHHRRLLL of power saws and drills or roar of air compressors.  No power tools at all.  The fundi who installed the screen door used a hand saw to adjust the length (it was a little to long) and a hand drill like my grandfather had to drill the holes for the screws for the hinges.  Needless to say, he used a basic screw driver to fasten the screws.

As for installing the plumbing (or electrical wiring for that matter), the bricks and mortar are very soft, so they just chisel channels in the walls where they want the pipes to go, and plaster over them when they are done!

 

Bill came back to the compound to download a MS Office update as the Internet at the Bible College was very slow today and I cooked a light lunch of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and lightly fried bread on the gas cooker.  Even on low, that cooker is HOT and it was a challenge not to burn things!  

 

After we ate we went into town to buy water and washing powder and see if we could find some more vegetables and fruit.  We found some of what we were looking for on a side street, but I really wanted an avocado and I hadn’t seen any at the side street veggie stands, so we asked Olivia if she could tell us where the market is so we could find some.  Olivia very kindly closed down her shop and took us to market.  It is a SEA of  people offering all kinds of vegetables and fruits.  I posted a picture of the old market several years ago…I’ll let Bill post the picture of this new market when he gets a chance to blog.

 

The car was very disagreeable on the way back to the compound. It didn’t want to start and kept stalling, and, we realized, smelled very hot.  We made it back and opened the hood to let it cool.  Several hours later, Bill checked the radiator.  Man was it low!  It needed 3.5 liters of water – almost all of the drinking water that we had bought.  Well, we didn’t want to put tap water in it as there is quite a bit of silt in it this time of year and that would really gum things up, so to speak.   The car was MUCH happier for it’s drink of water, and we went to town to buy more water and practice our song for tomorrow with KCC (the Kasulu Cathedral Choir).

 

We had dinner tonight with Cannon Wilson Mafumbi and his wife, Jane.  We had fun after eating dancing and playing air guitar to Lincoln Brewster’s “Giving it all to You”.  Cannon Wison had a friend video it with his iPad.  It was really funny to see but Lord forbid that it get uploaded to YouTube or posted to Facebook!  And then, before we left, they gave us four fresh eggs from their hens.  I am going to make a great veggie/scrambled egg lunch tomorrow after church.

 

Hope you all are enjoying a good weekend and Happy Mother’s Day and joyful Pentecost tomorrow!

 

Bwana Asafiwe!

 

Cathy

I’v been a bit lazy about blogging the last two days, so here is what has been going on….

 

We started yesterday (Thursday) morning down at the Bible College (LTTC the school formally know as KBC).  Again, the computer room was busy with students and classes being taught.  We even saw one session going that was using the projector that we brought last year to teach some Excel principals.  I spent a little time on the library side of the building catching up on news and then went shopping – by myself!  

 

I headed a couple of blocks away where I had noticed some tomatoes and bananas being sold when we drove by on Wednesday evening.  The proprietor also had some Azam Mango juice, so I picked up another box of that for Bill (“Billy loves Mango!”).  I then walked up the street I think of as “Goat Alley”.  It’s too narrow for cars, and in fact for automobile purposes it is a dead-end as a deep ditch with only a narrow cement “bridge” crossing it, divides the alley from the main drag.  I think of it as “Goat” alley because an entire herd of goats came down it when I was starting to go up it during a previous trip.  THIS was the street where I should have gone shopping when I was looking for a kettle a few days ago!  (Lesson:  never ask a man to guide you to the best places to find cooking equipment…in Kasulu at least!).  I purchased an aluminum kettle and a lid for the flat edged pot that I bought back on Tuesday.

 

Next was a trip across the “Main Street” and to the local parking lot and taxi stand to the area where the katanga and other cloth sellers have their stalls to visit with Olivia.  She is a good friend of many years, along with her husband Daudi.  This year Daudi is away attending an accounting course, as he is being groomed to be the next diocesan comptroller.  I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up something for Bill, and then strolled along the shops on “Main Street” until I found on that could sell me a small container of “Blue Band”, the local margarine, which we will use for frying eggs.

 

Feeling very pleased with myself, I headed back to the Bible College where we enjoyed lunch with the faculty.  We headed back DWT compound for the afternoon, where Bill began preparing for the Bilble Study he led today at Kidyama.  We also began practicing this year’s song.  (Tradition:  Pick a contemporary praise song, translate the chorus (simplified) into Swahili, with the help of friends here.  Teach to chorus to the congregations of the churches we visit.  Verses remain in English).  

 

Our house-girl has no place to hang the wash she does for us, so we will walk into our rooms to find the wash draped over the sofa and chairs.  I spent the afternoon jerry-rigging a drying line from two chairs and some crochet string out in front of the hostel, and realizing that the clothes would not be thoroughly dry by the time I needed to bring them in, improvised some drying lines in the second bathroom with some “command” hooks I had brought and some braided crochet string.  (Crochet string is on my list of items to always bring with us.  I always find myself improvising SOMETHING out of it.)

 

After dinner at Ephraim’s house, we had “Movie Night’ back at the hostel, watching “The Martian” on Bills’ computer (we bring a CD case of DVDs in case we start to feel “video deprived”.  I fell asleep for the last 10 minutes of it, but I had read the book and seen the movie before.

 

Most of today (Friday) was spent at the compound.  The schedule had this time reserved for Bill to finish preparing his Bible Study and for us to work on music.  He also managed to get the compound-wide wi-if access point working again.  The issue turned out to be some blown power-supplies, which they managed to find replacements for.  We also finally put up the last of the curtains we brought with us, and the “art work” in the bedroom (some sea-shore based paintings from a 2015 Lang Calender).  We had an early lunch (or really, “Elevensies”) at the diocesan lunch room – they make the BEST japati – and I bought four eggs from them that we will eat this weekend.  As for me,  I was basically lazy for most of the day, relaxing and reading.

 

Late in the afternoon we met Bwatta at the Bible College to drive over to Kidyama.  We received the traditional greeting for guests on

our arrival.  As always, everyone sang as we entered the church.  They had two choirs there, and both sang and danced.  Bill and I gave greetings from St. Paul’s and we sang this year’s song.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the chorus, but it did not go as well as I would have liked:  Bill got a frog in his throat as we started to sing and the gain on my microphone was so high that I overpowered him even when I held it more than two feet away.  Bill taught on Ephesians 2:1-10, illustrating the points he was making with some personal stories.  Bwatta translated.  Bill answered a couple of questions following his teaching and then we greeted the parishioners as they left the church.  Of course they fed us:  rice, potatoes, beef stew, fired chicken and bananas, all of which made a very nice early dinner.  As we dropped Bwatta off at his house, he apologized that they had not set up a place for us to go to dinner tonight.  We assured him that what we had just had at Kidyama was more than enough dinner for us!

 

There is no date in the heading of this post, but today is May 6th, which was my Dad’s birthday.  He has been gone more than 10 years now, but I find myself today thinking of him, and my Mom, who died last Saturday, celebrating this day together for this first time in years.

 

Blessings on you all.

 
It is still rainy season here in Kasulu and as we gathered this morning in the chapel for devotions the heavens opened with a deluge so loud on the tin roof that we could not hear one another as we read and commented on today’s passage from John.  The blessing was that after drenching the land, the rain completely halted just before the end of the half-hour gathering.  It did leave a certain level of humidity in the air though.  Unless we can “bake” them in the sun tomorrow, it is gong to be several days before Bill’s freshly washed heavy cotton pants dry.

We returned to the hostel to make our first breakfast here:  Instant Irish oatmeal with a spoonful of Neato (Full-fat dried milk from Nestle; I don’t know WHY they don’t sell it in the U.S.) banana and a couple of spoonfuls of local honey along with mango juice and coffee.

 

Next up was delivering the tablets we had brought with us to the DWT diocesan secretary, Emmanual Bwatta.  Our hostel and the office are within very easy walking distance from each other in the compound, but twenty tablets with protective covers, their chargers, plug converters and cables are HEAVY.  One of our rolling L.L.Bean rolling duffles to the rescue!  

 

Bill stayed at the offices to take a look at some networking issues that had occurred since we where last here in September 2015.  We had brought an amplifier for the outside access point and when we had left a large portion of the compound had internet access.  That was just at the start of rainy season and since then a lightening storm fried it and a couple of other network components. This happens all too often.  There is now a new cellular provider in the area with a very strong signal and very good rates.  You only have to go as far as Kigoma to get one of their cellular modems – two years ago you couldn’t even buy a cellular modem in Dar Es Salamm.  We think that perhaps to route to go is provide one of these modems, with perhaps a repeater to boost the signal for each building that is used by diocesan personal instead of trying to provide a central antenna that is all too prone to lightening strikes and power surges.

 

After chai in the diocesan lunch/break room, (Elevensies…japati and fried eggs and sweet chai, which served as an excellent lunch for us) we hung two more sets of curtains and a few pictures in our hostel rooms, and then headed down to the Lake Tanganyika Theological College (the college formally known as “KBC” or Kasulu Bible College.) Bill brought the mini-Mac server he had brought to more than supplement the mini-Mac server he had sent to Kasulu with the Bishop back in January when the previous server died a hard death.  This new server is faster, has more storage and memory than the server he sent in January.  Having both of them will provide a backup should something happen to one of them.  Tomorrow he will discuss with the LTTC computer staff how they want it configured.  In the meantime he got the College-wide wi-if network working again.  It needed to be re-configured after the various IP address changes that occurred with the previous server was replaced.

There is building everywhere here. The construction on the left is from last fall.  Not only is it finished, but it grew some friends.  These will be offices for the instructors.  Right now they have no private work space, just a common teachers lounge.

 

Dinner tonight was at Cannon Daniel Nyugwa’s house, out next to the Marusi Church.  Dinner at Daniel’s house is always a feast, and also full of interesting conversation.  Daniel will be reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60 this summer and will be retiring.  He is planning to move to Kigoma.  We will miss him on our future visits to the Kasulu area, but hope that we might see him when we go though Kigoma.

 

All in all, things have been going very smoothly, and we know that is a result of your prayers for us and for the work.  Keep praying, please!