trips.schrull.us

The last two days have been very busy and I have been too tired to post at night, so here’s a quick catch-up of what has been going on from my perspective.  Those of you who have been following our other blog, http://tzblog.schrull.us know the general shape of the last two days.

When we arrived back at the compound after finishing up all of our work on Saturday at the Bible College, we were treated to the sight of a wedding party that had come to use the compound garden for wedding pictures.  It was delightful.  Everyone was dressed in a way that was obviously for a wedding, but also distinctly African in style.  We went out to dinner at a hotel with our friends Olivia and Daudi. The best part about this experience was that Olivia did not have to cook (This is Olivia’s Kitchen).  The menu was very familiar: rice, potatoes, spinach, chicken, beef stew, followed by fresh fruit, bananas and pineapple on this occasion.

Sunday was wonderful worship at Murusi Parish, another confirmation and installing our friend, Cannon Daniel as the zone director.  This was a big deal.  Media coverage, including the local television station, ITV, recording the service for later re-broadcast.  Of course there were three choirs: the Murusi choir, the Murusi women’s choir and the Kasulu Cathedral choir.  (Murusi is actually a district of Kasulu and the church is only about 3 kilometers from the cathedral.  Of course Bill and I sang too.  We were hoping to do an additional song with Cathedral choir, but 2/3rds of the way thru the service the lights went out.  I mentioned how you have to pay ahead and have credits added to your power meter earlier.  The Murusi Parish forgot to check their meter and buy more credits before the service.  Being “on the grid” is still very new for them.

The confirmands, especially the girls, were all beautifully turned out.  It is easy to see the Murusi has a much higher standard of living than Msagara Parish, which we visited last weekend.  While the Msagara girls all wore black school skirts and white school blouses, the Murusi girls all wore new white dresses, many with silver motifs.  Many of them had elaborate hair-dos with strings of small white pearl beads and rhinestones wrapped around the up-dos, not to mention other “bling” of necklaces, bracelets, and in some cases, earrings.

Dinner Sunday night was a get together at another hotel (can you guess the menu?) with most of our friends from the diocese and Bible College.  A guest speaker, who had been spending the weekend teaching at the Cathedral about stewardship was also present and thanked.  The diocese and Bible College thanked us with a framed certificate and a surprise:  a painting of Bill and I that had been done from picture that Daudi had taken earlier in the week.  The stretchers were too big for the painting to be able to fit in our luggage so Daudi took it off the stretchers Monday morning before we left and it is currently folded up in Bill’s guitar case.

It was sad saying goodbye to Olivia, my Tanzanian sister.

We left the compound Monday morning at 7:15 after a quick chai (breakfast) at the Bishop’s house.  Daudi was coming with us to the airport along with Mama Askufo.  We were also carrying another young man who had an earlier flight to Dar es Salam.  As we had a couple of hours before our flight, we headed into Kigoma where we hit the fabric markets.  Our flight to Mwanza left on time.  I have to admit that I am VERY impressed with the changes to Precision Air since I last flew them 5 years ago.  We had a great time in Mwanza.  I am going to end here as we expect to board our flight Dubai soon.  I’ll try to post more from Dubai.

We are once again at the Bible College today, finishing up some final work on the computer system.  The new TTCL broad band connection is working very well, we just have a few final things to  install to make it easier to support the system when we are back in Connecticut.  In the background the Kasulu Cathedral Choir is practicing for tomorrow’s service in Marusa, where the Bishop will be doing confirmations and installing our friend Daniel and the Parish Priest.  We will be meeting with the choir this evening to practice the music we will be doing with them.

As I don’t have much new to report, I thought that I would share some of my favorite pictures from our trip thus far:

These are pictures from the road to Masagara last Sunday.

 

These are views from around the compound:  The turtle kept in the garden, our guest cottage and the sheep that was grazing in the center of the compound.

 

 

Here we have more scenes from the Kasulu main street and market.

 

Have a good Saturday, everyone!

The Kasulu Bible College Campus currently consists of two dormitories, a library (which needs more books) a computer room, a principle’s office, a teacher’s lounge and four class rooms.  The Bible College usually has a student body of a little less than 80 students.  In order to hold more concurrent classes they decided to build two more class rooms, which are currently under construction.

As is traditional for almost all buildings in Tanzania, including most houses, the class rooms are being built out of brick.  The brick is made locally;  the dirt here is basically clay, so dirt is dug, formed into bricks and placed into large cairns that are built in the form of ovens.  Fires are built under the cairns to “fire” the bricks.  Often, if there is enough space, the bricks might be made and fired in the same location as the house or building.

Cement or concrete is very expensive here, so it is used sparingly.  After the foundation is built, the bricks are laid using mud to hold them together.  This works well, but will not last for very many rainy seasons if not protected.

Basic window frames are installed as the bricks are laid.  These are wood with horizontal metal bars placed every 6 inches or so.  Later screening and a heavy open metal mesh will be installed on the outside of the bars, and if there is enough money glass or plastic window that can open will be placed on the inside.  (House holds that have less money often install wooden shutters.)  After the windows were installed on the classrooms, the bricks and windows were capped with about 8 inches of concrete.   Another foot or so of bricks will be laid on top of the concrete before the roof is added.

Roofing is one of the most expensive parts of a building.  Wooden trusses are erected and then corrugated metal provides the actual roof itself.  Poorer households will use thatch, which does not do as good a job of keeping out the rains and needs constant repair.  It is not unusual, when traveling between Kigoma and Kasulu to see men with rolled up tubes of corrugated roofing material strapped to their bicycles.

After the roof is put in place, a cement floor will be poured.  Every part of making cement, except for the water, must be brought in from other areas, which makes if very expensive.

Once the floor is poured, the inside walls will be plastered and painted, electricity must be wired, and finally, to protect the walls, which are basically held together with mud, from the seasonal rains, the outside must be plastered with a layer of cement.  Some doors, desks and chairs, and you have two new classrooms.