Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for August, 2007

A challenge?  You bet but it is worth it.  We can communicate on a basic level now which takes away SO much frustration.

This is Dana enjoying (what’s up with that?) her Swahili homework.

Please leave a comment on this post stating which item(s) you are planning on shipping to us.

As fast as they can go, there are quite a few pictures uploading from our week and a half of orientation.  I have limited time (and data transfer) in the internet cafe here in Iringa.  Kind of a last minute trip to town that I jumped in on.

But, there are a lot of great shots all with links to a map so you can see exactly where each shot was taken here in Africa.  Africa.  Wow.

See them here. 

I was lying in bed last night watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and noticed at one point how I again ‘slipped’ out of Africa.  When I realized what I was doing and in fact that I was really falling asleep at a Swahili language school somewhere deep in Africa, it almost seemed fake.  Our experiences are so out of the ordinary that I have to remind myself ever-so-often that I am indeed a missionary in Africa.  It is kinda surreal.

Things are hard as we are now living in one of the tent bandas. It is basically one of those army tents under a thatch shelter. Cool thing about it is (versus the tents of others) that we only have one small hole at the bottom of the entrance through which mice and rats can enter. So, as long as we keep it pinched with a piece of luggage they seem to be locked out. I’ll try to get some pictures uploaded but access is very limited. I’m at the fastest connection in town and it cost 10,000 Tsh (Tanzanian Shillings; about $8.00USD) for 50 mb worth of transfer. That’s ample, especially for a quicker-than-dialup connection.

The above picture is one I took on the bus on the way to Iringa.  There were many-a-baboon along the road.  We also saw elephants, giraffes, impalas, gazelles, and zebras as we passed through a game reserve on the way up.

Dana has been sick a couple of mornings and is striving to develop some sort of a routine as that is how she thrives.  It is stretching us by all means but we’re getting to see God provide in some great new ways.

We’re off to orientation and will have limited internet access (if at all) for the next few months.  We’ll do the best we can at posting info.  In the meanwhile, pray for us to be able to soak up all we’re taught in orientation and language school.

THANKS!

We made it safely to Tanzania. I didn’t get any sleep on this flight either. Not sure whether it was adrenaline or just plain can’t sleep on planes. 9 hours 40 mins we were on that sucker. Time for some sleep.

We’ve got internet here at least for a few days. We’ll keep you posted.

Dana made the trip well. Some sleep. No vomit. Out cold now. Bout to join her. Mr. Sandman is your friend…

There have been many… um, mishaps let’s say, that have happened on our journey to Africa thus far. This is one of them from our last night in Paris.

After a day of walking to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, rue Champs Elysees, and everywhere else, the rechargeable batteries in my handheld GPS were kaput. So, I took out my little Energizer wall charger and checked the back of it for the operating voltage. Aw, it is only 110v and I’m in a 240v country.

Never fear, I brought my converter kit with me. It has one electricity converter (240v to 110v) and 5 electric plug adapters. I already had the French plug adapter in my hand when I read the back of the charger and whined to Dana about Energizer’s discrimination of our European friends. My whining must have distracted me from thinking through my next actions. I didn’t reach for the converter, nope just slapped the plug adapter right on the charger and into the wall. If you know anything about electricity, you know this was not a good thing.

I’d say about 45 seconds later… POP!!! Complete darkness and no sound coming from the rooms around us. Especially the one next door where the TV was blasting through the wall less than a minute earlier. Did I mention all of this was going on shortly before 2am in the morning local time????!!!!

The wretched smell of burned electronics filled the room and I yanked the charger off the wall. I opened the window to let out the stench and wondered what to do next. Dana finally talked me into calling the front desk (yes, I was actually considering not calling. Total embarrassment, I say.).

I called the desk and the woman who answered spoke only a little english. I said, “We have no ee-lec-tri-ci-tee.” She replied, “Please come to zee reception desk. Bring your key. I’ll give a new key.” I guess she only picked up the ‘eee’ sound and thought I had a problem with my key card. “No. I have no power,” I said. “Oh, come to reception and I’ll give you towels,” was her response. Something wasn’t clicking. She asked for a moment and got a colleague on the phone who spoke very good English and the phone call was over quickly with her on the way up to the room. In the meanwhile, Dana looked in her French phrase book and learned electricity in French is pronounced eh-lec-tree-cee-tay. Guess I wasn’t close enough.

Helped arrived a few minutes later and she asked for the small chair out of our room so she could reach the circuit breaker above our door. After trying to reset all of them, still there were no lights in our room. She offered to put us in a different, electrically-equipped room but we declined. Too late, too much stuff to move. We didn’t need power that night anyway. No A/C. No alarm clock. Not because there was no power. There was no presence of them so we were okay with sleeping in the dark as we normally are.

Whenever we returned to the room after Dana’s fight with climbing the Eiffel Tower the next morning, the power was in full force. I was scared I damaged the wiring in the hotel or something that would drive our travel cost up but it only ended up costing me the life of an innocent USA-only Energizer battery charger. Poor thing never had a chance.