Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Life in…’ Category

As an American, one of the things I have grown to deeply enjoy is a vintage Sunday routine. Usually, that’s comprised of a good morning at church followed by a good lunch and a relaxing afternoon in front of a football game. No live games were on this afternoon (still preseason) but they were airing the Panthers game from Thursday. A change out of the church clothes and going horizontal on the couch proved lethal for my consciousness. I napped well. Today was a vintage Sunday. Great to be Stateside.

Sitting here now watching a LIVE football game from the stinkin west coast. We’ve got it good.

Although churches are numerous in Mbeya, Tanzania, the sizes of the congregations usually don’t surpass double digits in count… on Sunday morning. Tonight, we went to our first Sunday evening service since about 2006. The church tonight was Northside Baptist in Charlotte, the same place whom has so graciously put us up in their missions house for the duration of our furlough. Northside has a large sanctuary that can seat over 1000 people. Tonight, there were about 150 people. In that space, the crowd looked small and in that regard, I became slightly somber.

Then, I remembered the land, the culture from where I just came. A gathering of believers this size was an extremely infrequent thing. As a matter of fact, there was not a single time over the 2 year span we spent in Tanzania at which we sat among a group this size who all spoke English as their native language.

So, was this really a somber event in that there was a small group in church tonight? No. There was a big group there tonight… and it was really, really nice.

In Mbeya when we left, the sun was fully set by 7pm. I mean dark all the way. We landed in NC within a day or two of the longest of the year, not dark until well after 9pm. Couple that with the same sun effect in London (was still light when we reached our hotel at 10:30pm) and you’ve got whackey people!
Eyes say to body, “Why are you so tired?”

Today was our planned final safari which took place at Mikumi National Park. It’s not the richest in animal life but it literally sits on the highway between Mbeya and Dar es Salaam.
When we go on safaris, Asher gets to ride up front with us because of the safe pace and better view.

We have no idea what they were all staring at.

This buffalo had a bad day.

This was the only watering hole in which we found hippos. They would only pop up a few inches out of the water a couple of seconds at a time…

…until we got ready to leave. Then big daddy came up.

For the final shot, I post a challenge. This was the ‘road’ out to one of the watering holes, but can you tell which direction it is heading in this photo?

The answer is completely straight ahead!

Up early tomorrow to finish out journey to our departure city… Dar es Salaam.

We got loaded up well this morning and pulled out of Mbeya by 11am. There were no problems on the road until this:

An overturned fuel truck completely blocking the road.
There was a small crew of guys chopping down trees to make a large enough detour to go around it.

And while we were waiting for our turn to go around the truck, this odd combination drove by. Look closely.

It is a truck… carrying a truck… that’s carrying a car. That’s just really odd to me.
So other than that and a little bit of construction to drive through, our journey today was way uneventful. As a matter of fact, I expected 7 hours to get here and we made it in 6!
We’ll sleep in a little tomorrow, take a leisurely safari and come back to the hotel for a nice dinner. Lookin like a good trip so far.

I don’t know what this kind is technically called but my vote is Tanzanian Tiger Moth.

One of the flowers in our garden in Mbeya. The normal colors are a rich red and a stark white.

An evening moon over Mbeya.

Lots and lots of stuff. We are truly American!  To be sure we’ll be able to drive the car to Dar with all of our stuff, we did a -Will it fit?- dry run of packing up the car.  All of it fit… after four different attempts.  The main purpose of these photos isn’t to show you what it looked like but for me to remember how I got it all in.  Here’s a list of what you see:

UofM large duffle bag
Large red garment bag
Large green duffle bag
Stroller
Infant car seat
Smaller gray carry-on
Small brown carry-on
Very large burgundy suitcase
Large Red suitcase
Two large purple Rubbermaid containers
Large gray plastic container

(Not pictured; still left to fit into the small spaces)
Toddler car seat
My laptop bookbag
Dana’s laptop shoulder bag
Asher’s backpack
Diaper bag
Dana’s purse
Camera bag
Traveling food
Jonathan
Dana
Asher

Floor to ceiling.

Closer look from the rear.

Closer look from the rear.

Left rear passenger door view.

The luggage hole for Asher’s car seat.