2015 – Saturday and Sunday
Yesterday, I hit the wall. It was a relaxed but busy day, starting off with Dad fixing the wi-fi access for the DWT compound. The access point had stopped working before we got here last year and something had fried it enough that we couldn’t get it to take new settings. Bill brought the equipment to replace that, plus an amplifier and a lightening arrester so that, in theory, there should be internet access all over the compound, as long as the power is not accidentally turned off to it. It is really powerful and reaches down to the new guest hostel.
Wifi Amplifier and lightening arrestor for the compound.
After (a very late) lunch we went down to the Kasulu Bible college to store all the rest of the equipment we brought with us…the five monitors and thin-clients, four boxes of toner, two lap-tops, and the color printer and projector…(and the partridge in a pear tree). While we were there Bill got one of the wireless access points working again. It had gone off-line when the new method of accessing the internet was installed after we left. He will work on getting the rest of the access points around the campus working again tomorrow.
We had a lovely dinner with Canon Wilson Mafunbi and his wife and by the time I got back, shortly after 9:00 pm, I could not keep my eyes open. I crawled under the mosquito net and was asleep in minutes.
Remounting the wifi antenna.
Today has been a fairly quiet day. We went to the 9:00 am service at the cathedral. The service, as always, ran long. Today was baptisms, and when there is a baptism service a LOT of folks and babies get baptized. The font is in the back of the church and we were sitting in the front so I couldn’t see exactly how many, but it was a LOT.
Tanzanians truly believe in first fruits when it comes to offerings. If they don’t have money they bring whatever they have and it is auctioned off at the end of the service. The gifts today included peanuts, a huge stem of bananas, etc. Someone in the choir bought a bag of cassava as a gift for Bill. Cassava is a starchy root vegetable that is ground up and used to make ugali. Something (like wringing a chicken’s neck) that is beyond our talents! But we will figure out a wau to make good use of it.
Someone had brought a bunch of kangas as an offering and Dad was going to bid on one for me when Efram bought it for me!
Early this morning, Daudi Ndahana’s dad died and he and Olivia had to travel to Kibondo. Daudi will be there all week as his Dad had “many wives” and many children and there will be much to discuss. Olivia will be back on Wednesday. Needless to say, we did not have Dad’s chicken for dinner tonight, but ate by ourselves at the German house.
A gecko on the kitchen window sill.
However, Bill did pickup Daudi’s car before they left (they will be taking one of the diocesan Land Cruisers to Kibondo) and it has already given us a real sense of freedom. We are discouraged from walking between the DWT compound and downtown Kasulu and now we can drive on OUR schedule.
And now we are going to enjoy a movie night!
