trips.schrull.us

 

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.

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.

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”.

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.

 

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