Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for October, 2007

Where is our House?

Saturday, October 20

After yesterday’s journey, sleeping in late this morning was very welcomed. We got up, showered, ate a light breakfast, and headed back to the office to use the internet and sort through the other things to choose what we wanted to take back with us to Riverside.
Dana and Melanie dropped Marcelo and me off at the office then went to the market to shop. A few hours later they returned and I had most of the items sorted upstairs to take with us, leave in Mbeya, or let Dana decide. She chose less stuff than I was expecting… good thing.
We spent a short while online checking e-mail, getting the latest news, etc. then left for lunch at the Karibuni Center. Lunch ended up taking about 30 minutes for them to prepare (Dana had lasagna and I had pizza) so in the meanwhile, I went outside and took pictures of the courtyard that is filled with flowers. There were a group of kids playing with a make-shift soccer ball who nearly trampled each other when they noticed this mzungu had a camera. “Piga picha! Piga picha!” they yelled out as they ran in my direction. That means “Take a picture! Take a picture!” The kids here love to be photographed and laugh hysterically when they see themselves on the little LCD of a digital camera.

I proceeded on to take picha za maua (pictures of flowers) when a Tanzanian man about my age walked up to me and greeted me in English. I responded in Swahili to show him I knew some of his language and that started a 10-minute conversation. Aside from the greeting, we both only used about 5 English words the whole time. That was very encouraging to me that I was able to stand there and talk to him that long and learn a lot about each other. His name is Zawadi (Gift in Swahili) and he has 3 children, 2 boys and a girl. His oldest is named Clinton… go figure! I told him all about me and Dana and even that we were planning (at least at that time) to travel to Nairobi to have our first child.
“Lunch is ready.” ended the conversation as he told me about his job as an artist. He showed me some of his work; hand-painted cards & a hand-crafted wooden photo album were my favorites but I didn’t want to buy anything at that time. I told him to keep an eye out for me as we would soon be living in the area.
After lunch, we dropped off Marcelo at the office for him to finish some computer tasks and then went to look at a house on the Baptist Compound (BC). It is a 7-house establishment built by the IMB almost 50 years ago. John & Kay (landlords) are in the process of buying from them. When we looked at the house, I LOVED it but the rent was considerably more than the rent of the house out in Ifisi close to where Marcelo & Melanie live. So, we pretty much wrote the house off as an impossibility.
We picked up Marcelo and headed for their house. A short bit after getting there we walked down to the look at the other house. It is nice and the rent is $100 less per month but the layout of the house is off. Three bedrooms, the living room, and dining room are in one building and the kitchen, bathroom, and 4th bedroom are on the other side of an open 15-foot wide courtyard in a separate building. Ick.
Dana and I were in the bed that night talking about the houses when we realized how close in cost the 2 houses actually were. Factoring in the fuel cost between Ifisi and Mbeya, they got close enough for us to have to really consider the house on the BC again.
I went to sleep hoping it would end up being the one.

A Trip to Mbeya

Friday, October 19

Marcelo (computer guy/friend working in Mbeya) called last night to say that they were coming through this afternoon to pick us up instead of tomorrow morning.  Tunku (Swahili teacher/friend) ended class early for us so we could pack.  We knocked that out and caught a ride out to the main road with all of the teachers as they headed back to Iringa town.
We only sat by the road for about 15 minutes before Marcelo and Melanie (Mrs. Marcelo).  We loaded the already heavy-loaded Toyota LandCruiser and took off for the 4+ hour journey to Mbeya.
It was just after dusk when we broke the city limits of Mbeya town but the streets were still amazingly active with cars and people walking around.  Our first stop was at OilCom, a gas station/‘supermarket’.  We bought a few things inside after I visited a trusted ATM for some cash.
Our 2nd stop was at the SIL office to drop off all of my things Marcelo had in his SUV.  After 15 minutes up and down the stairs we hopped back into the car and headed for their house.
After a late dinner and a little unpacking, we let down the mosquito net over our bed and turned out the light.  Wasn’t long before we were out, too.

The view of Mbeya Peak from Marcelo’s

26 October 2007

On Friday afternoon, we caught a ride with some friends who were driving the 12-hour journey from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya, our future home. We stayed with them until today with the main goal of the trip being to look at one housing option. The house is in Ifisi, a town 30 minutes to the other side of Mbeya. It is very beautiful but also disconnected because of the distance. Also, the layout of the house has the bathroom, kitchen, 4th guest bedroom, & a storage room on the opposite side of a 15-ft wide courtyard. Big turnoff.

We heard earlier in the week that there may be another house available actual in Mbeya the town and even better, only 15 minutes away on foot from the SIL office where I’ll work. Well, we went to look at it late Saturday afternoon and loved it. The rent is higher than the one outside of town but after other expenses like fuel, wear and tear, etc. they nearly leveled out. So, which one did we like more? The one in town by far. I took lots of pictures to show it to you but they are doing a lot of renovations to it at the moment so it is not as pretty as it will be when we’re there.

We visited the landlord (a New Zealand-er) this morning to walk through it one more time before making our decision. We verbally committed to the house and he e-mailed us the lease agreement this afternoon. The housing challenge is now settled. We have somewhere to call home.

More details to come…

Oh yeah, two other great things about today:

1- Dana made the 4-hour bus ride home without vomiting… always a plus…

2- A friend helped me figure out settings on my phone to use it as a wireless modem to access the internet and e-mail (EXTREMELY slowly, of course).  I am blogging from our banda!

Saturday, October 13, 2007
Jumamosi 13 Oktoba 2007

We slept in again this morning, getting up @ 830a. That was nice. Since we have a small fridge in our banda, we can keep milk here and skip breakfast in the dining room if we like. I had a big ol bowl of Frosties, a mug of coffee, and a shower before I caught the campsite vehicle to town.
The first internet cafe (has become our regular of late) didn’t have their connection for the third time in as many days. Off to look for option B. We (aussie friend & me) found it quickly and plugged the network cables into our laptops — hello world. Most of my time was spent uploading all the new files for the color scheme change on our main website. I had to work out a few bugs but at 10 kb/s, it took me nearly 2 hours to do so. All should work great on it now so explore away.
Then, I did some lightning shopping. 3 boxes of water, bread, napkins, fruit cocktail, strawberry jam, grape jam, a large kitchen knife, a fresh pineapple, and two small plastic dishes for make-shift bird baths. I hope they use it.
We cut up the pineapple as soon as I got home and OH MY GOODNESS it is good!!! I wish I could post the taste on the blog somehow… maybe in 10 years or so. Between now and then, no licking your computer screen…… Pete.

Friday, October 5

Ijumaa, 5 Oktoba