Arrival and the first few days

(Emily writing)

In short, God is good.

The long version (typed on a German keyboard, so forgive any odd punctuation or y-z swapping, I still cannot find the apostrophe key):

Our flights were smooth and uneventful, though involving far less sleep than would have been my preference. Upon arrival in Dar es Salaam, we had to blindly hand over our passports and $100 apiece to the immigration officer to get our visas. He promptly disappeared, at which point we noticed that we had no idea what he looked like. Ummmm...an African man in a blue uniform: not helpful in this particular place.

But no worries! We received our visas, ALL our luggage made it safely to Tanzania, and our host J met us and shepherded us to the ferry. And more praise to God, because we were just in time for the early ferry, our seasickness meds worked, and we made it to the island of Unguja (aka Zanzibar) in what J told us had to be the smoothest trip he had ever experienced!

More praise: our extremely budget hotel is WAY more comfortable than anticipated, even offering A/C and a bathroom in each room. We were awfully grateful for that when the first stomach bug attacked. We are talking the kind of mess where you have to nap on the floor of the bathroom because any other sleep option is too risky, and where your abs feel like they have been run over by a semi by the time you finally finish vomiting. Thus far, three of us have had the one day stomach thing, but all have recovered. Praise God for the discovery of antibiotics too!

After a day and a half of culture/language/travel orientation, we dove into various ministry efforts. Here is what a typical day has looked like, thus far:

6:45 am: wake up. water pressure is only enough for one shower at a time in this hotel, so most of us are resorting to the water squirter each toilet is equipped with - freezing water, but effective in a pinch! (note: the use of toilet paper is not unknown, but unusual outside of tourist areas. Locals have a squirter hose next to the toilet if they are well off, or a pail of water with a dipper if they are not. Apparently air drying is de rigeur. I have not had to try the dipper method yet.)

7:15 am: breakfast and group devotions at hotel. Breakfast is always identical, and involves pear juice, hot tea or instant coffee (yes, in Africa!), a baby banana and a slice of very bland papaya, one fried egg (oddly, eggs have whitish yolks here so look like egg whites only, but we have been assured they are not), two slices of white bread toast, butter and jam, and sometimes a sausage which looks like what we would call a hot dog. This is also better than expected, though the sameness is getting to us, not to mention the incredible amounts of oil everything is cooked in.

8:oo am: walk to the daladala station. On the way, we are required to greet absolutely everyone in the neighborhood with a "mambo" (to young people), a "shikamoo" (to anyone over 50 or so), or a "hujambo" (to everyone else). The exchange of greetings is an intricate and beautiful thing here, and probably accounts for why no one is ever on time. We are starting to get the hang of it, and it is a good thing, too; one of my English students explained that greetings were so important, if you failed to greet someone and then were hit by a bus, that person would most likely walk by and ignore you lying in the street, since you had been so rude. According to our hostess R, her students said the "most offensive thing anyone could do to you" would be to fail to greet you. Wow!

8:15 am: board daladala. A daladala is like a pickup truck with benches in the back part. About ten people fit comfortably. The usual load is more like 16-20, and our record so far is 26. In this country, men and women do not touch one another in public...except on the daladala, where you have one cheek on someones lap, someones elbow in your ribs, a small child perhaps on your lap, and your head scarf threatens to blow off and be lost. Think sweat. The daladala is priced right, though, at the US equivalent of about 20 cents per ride. The conductor takes your money, but NEVER speaks English, so if you cannot communicate which stop you want, you wait until it passes and you holler and point until the driver stops, at which time you backtrack along the dusty road. It is also common to be stopped by the local police for a shakedown of the driver; we have already seen this many times. I think the driver pays a bribe because he loads the daladala beyond its capacity, but we are not totally sure about this.

8:45 am: arrive at the school for a brief morning meeting, and divvy up the responsibilities of the day.

9:00 am: scatter to our various ministry opportunities. Here is what some of them look like!

Bill: teaching a seminar on "Building Healthy Communities" for the three team couples who live on the island.

Two or three of us: providing babysitting during the 3-hour seminar for the children of the abovementioned couples.

Andy and Scott: working on installing computers at the school, fixing their computer network, and doing various technology-oriented tasks.

Gwen and a few others: visiting the local school for the deaf and assisting in classes there. To say the deaf are second-class citizens here is an understatement. There is no money for hearing aids. There is no accessibility for anyone with any kind of disability, physical or otherwise. And the only schooling they would normally get would be in a special ed class with mentally challenged students, who are basically ignored. The government does not provide any kind of benefits for these children, so this nonprofit deaf school is quite a new idea here.

Emily and a few others: teaching English conversation class to any adults who show up. We started with 5 students the first day and ended with 12 - I think "free" is powerful motivation here! Most of our students are young, single, and Muslim, taking English with the hopes of getting a better job someday. We worked on some basics, like describing people, clothing, giving directions, vocabulary related to family and home. We also had some odd and far-reaching conversations. I was asked about what Americans think about family planning (meaning, I eventually figured out, does the government restrict how many children we can have). They were gratified to hear we could have as many as we want, but surprised to find that no one may have more than one wife, regardless of religion. We discussed the difference between the Zanzibari concepts of community above all versus the American focus on individuality. They asked my opinion about "cohabitation" (this allowed me to put in a plug for the Injil (NT) as I said that, while shacking up was common in the US, as a follower of Isa I did not believe it was right.) This led to questions of inheritance: can illegitimate children inherit? Not here, it seems. And, most challenging, one young man obsessed with American slang and idiom asked me if I could explain something he heard in a movie. I said, sure, I would try. So he says, quoting, "What the f*** are you doing?!" I was floored. I gave it a stab, albeit with some embarrassment.

All of us, at times: prayer-walking around the island. Just walking around, praying, greeting people, praying for them. Praying aloud for or with people if they consent, or just praying as we walk. And explaining what we are doing, and why, to curious passersby.

All of us, at times: visiting locals. A lot. A visit takes an unknown amount of time, but is an important way to show people they are valued. It always involves food, which is sensitive to us since many of these people may spend a weeks salary to feed four of us wazungu (white people). But to turn the food down is not only an insult, we are "denying" them the blessing of sharing hospitality. We may not turn down food, though if it looks dangerous to our health, we can pretend to eat it and hide it at an opportune time in our bag. It also involves bringing a small gift to our hosts - we brought earrings for the women, and small multitools and flashlights for the men. But the gifts must be given privately, or we may cause jealousy in the hearts of those present who do NOT get a gift.

7:00 pm: head to dinner at a local restaurant. Typically, we are so tired by now that we slump in our (invariably NOT padded) seats, sip our passionfruit Fantas (the black currant ones taste like cough syrup), and stare exhaustedly at our rice and fish curry. I am not quite tired of rice and curry, but perilously close, and we have many more days to go. Perhaps weight loss will be in my future?

9:00 pm: team meeting, debrief, and prayer session. Our hotel has a quiet rooftop deck we like to gather on, after a significant amount of DEET is applied. This is a great time of day.

10:00 pm: Crash on our very firm mattresses (think similar to those hard foam crib mattresses for babies). They use only one sheet; on top is a furry blanket, which I think would be a nightmare in the hot season.