Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for March, 2009

Our front porch light.

Those big rocks were laid incorrectly as a foundation, thus causing the front porch of the house to slant in. That’s not good for big rain storms. Water should stay outside of the house unless invited. So, the rocks had to go.

Metal roofing
One of the more common types of roof material… at least in Mbeya. More thatch out in the villages.

Outside toilet
This is the door to our outside bathroom. Technically, it is an outhouse. You walk through that door and there’s a hole in the ground.

Shoo isn’t a Swahili word. It’s what happens when you smell something that stinks. We had to extend the sewage vents because the wind was able to carry the smell indoors. Shoo!

This is something builders use to sift rocks and other bad stuff out of sand.

Last Wednesday, I was going here, going there, trying to deal with the theft we experienced the night before. While we were out, I stopped at the office to drop something off for a friend. Joey M., a Tanzanian pastor working with the language project in the area of partnership, told me of a planned trip the next day about an hour away down into the Sangu plains. They were going to have a Sangu language committee (all Sangu mother tongue speakers) meeting and he wanted to take 20 copies of RUTH and JONAH on cassette tapes. So, I made the copies and took them to him the next morning before they left. That was Thursday.

Friday came and it was a day of final recording for the Nyakyusa language for the same two books as above. While picking up Gordon M. (Nyakyusa) at the office, one of our team leaders gave me a special thanks for sending the cassettes with them. All 20 sold in less than 10 minutes! That’s amazing considering the economic struggles that people group has due to their geographical location. Then, the other team leader e-mailed me that afternoon and said another Sangu pastor wanted 10 himself! That’s on top of another 20 the translation team leader asked for!

I also have noticed while I’ve been out and about in Mbeya that every recorded cassette tape being sold, be it songs, preaching, or whatever, have color covers. What were mine in? Grayscale. I don’t even like the word now. Grayscale. Sounds like a gloomy disease. So, with the belief that our produced materials should at least reach local standards for those items, I redesigned the cassette labels and case covers with some color.

I chose yellow and green because those are the colors of the covers of RUTH and JONAH, respectively, for the eight language groups in which the books have been printed. We are a team, after all!

Gutter

A corner section of the gutter on our house.

Metal door

This type of door is common on Tanzanian homes.