Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Africa Training’ Category

In honor of Kent a new good blogging friend and proud parent/grandparent of a tenant family currently at the campsite, I’m posting this 16+ minute video tour of the Riverside Campsite in Iringa, Tanzania. This is where we attended Swahili language school and I filmed this in early November last year.  You can even hear some Swahili, or at least my attempt at it, with English subtitles! Enjoy!

**WARNING** This is a very large video file that will cost a lot if you have to pay for internet service per megabyte (like in Tanzania).  All you high speed folk in the States ain’t got a thing to worry about.  If the video becomes jerky, pause it for a minute or two to allow more to download ahead of you.  Then playing it should be good.

This is video of water from the shower in our banda in Africa.  You’ll see me fill up a bucket in a dim-lit bathroom then carry it outside so you can see it better.                                 

A couple of nights ago, I was walking to the other side of the campsite to help a fella out with his computer. Along the road is this tree:

Appropriately named a Sausage Tree because of these:

There are quite a few of these sausages hanging from the tree and they are heavy.  My guess is around 15-20 pounds for a full grown one.  So, that means you don’t want to be under the tree when one of these things fall because it could knock you out with ease, maybe even put you face-to-face with Jesus.
So, here I am walking with my trusty Maglite passing under the tree when I hear leaves rustling right above me.  I must have done about 8 different ninja moves before I finally aimed my flashlight upwards into the tree.  Nothing was falling but there was something moving around up there.  I was puzzled until my light hit a set of little eyes.  From that, I was able to make out the shape and color of his/her little furry body.  Sure ‘nough… it was a bush baby.  Not only one but at least two of them were up there.  I think I startled them as much as they did me.

Don’t mess with a ninja under a sausage tree… gotta be some Swahili proverb or something about that…

I had no idea my brain could function the way it has over the past 3 weeks.  So much information for such a small mind as mine!!!

Dana is leveling out morning sickness wise.  Not sure if it is because of the vitamin B complex or the surpassing the 1st trimester mark.  Either way, she’s now hungry almost all the time!  Jonathan likie.

We’ve settled into our banda with the Nicholls. It is so nice to be able to stand all the way up in our room!  I received word today that we’ll be moving again… yet another step up.  We’ll have a banda with a small kitchen to ourselves!  We should move at the end of this month.

Not much news outside Swahili overflow.  Oh, we’re in the process of buying a vehicle.  Takes 4-6 months to finally get it (importing from Japan) so pray that it is fast for us and we have it by the end of language school in mid-December.  We’re dipping a little further into our savings than expected to get a vehicle but it will be well worth it.  I wish I had even just a moped right now!  You don’t realize how much you depend on private vehicle ownership until you’re without it for a month.

Saturday morning gave me some free time to actually go bird watching.  My species count is up to 28 at this point.  There are tons of birds here.  I heard 400+ species can be found at the campsite alone!  Anyway, here’s one of my favorite so far.  It is a Little Bee-eater.  From the bottom picture, you can see how it got its name!

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.