Tag: Haven of Peace Academy Page 1 of 23

What It Was Like To Go Back

On July 10, 2024

I had forgotten many things in four years: the feel of my bare feet on smooth tile floors. The sounds of critters in the ceiling above my head when trying to sleep. A fancy wooden chair leaking sawdust from termites.

We arrived at the Dar es Salaam airport at 3 a.m., an hour later than scheduled, which meant that four flights arrived at the same time, overwhelming the baggage workers. It took two hours to get our luggage, and we blearily exited the airport at 5. There were 11 of us total: six Medinas and five Snyders, them with a decade of living in Tanzania, us with 16 years. You probably think we should have known what we were doing.

Almost instantly, we all realized that we had also forgotten how hard it is to live in Dar es Salaam – especially arriving at the airport all on our own, with no car, no home, no SIM card. We felt like brand-new foreigners all over again.

Our AirBnb host had offered to send a car to the airport to meet us, but the driver missed the memo that his job was to lead the two vans that followed him with our luggage and the rest of us. Most houses do not have addresses, and the pin on AirBnb was incorrect, which meant that we spent a good portion of our first morning directing our van drivers in circles as we tried to find the house—with no address and no local cell service.

When we finally arrived at the AirBnb we discovered there were no towels and no top sheets and no drinkable water and a pre-paid electricity allotment of only eight units a day, which was barely enough to keep the lights on. So we dug into our jetlagged brains and remembered again how to buy more electricity and how to find bottled water and breakfast for our cranky children and cranky selves.

After the first few days, we planned to move to a bigger AirBnb because the Dunkers were flying in from Kenya to join us. But the day before, I discovered this second house did not exist.

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh. We resurrected this dormant skill.

Still, I asked myself, How did I love this place? Everything is hard. Everything is frustrating.

But then I remembered.

Soon after we discovered that we had nowhere to go, well, we suddenly had a place to go. Carley, who has been our friend since 2005, heard about our plight and invited us all to stay at the Young Life ministry center. We found ourselves staying at a place that was way better than any AirBnb. Our kids hung out with her amazing quadruplets while Gil and the Dunkers held the Reach Tanzania Bible School reunion and Ben and Lauren and I made plans for our team, who would be arriving soon.

I was reminded of how we navigated the hardness and frustrations of living in Dar for so many years: we had an extraordinary community. Oh, right. This is why nobody new was ever allowed to arrive without a host. Shame on me for assuming we could handle going back to Tanzania on our own without leaning on our community. In four years, I have become so American. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone. We can handle this independently. No, we couldn’t.

The Last Day: March 13 and June 18

By Amy Medina

On June 18, 2020

In Other

Today, June 18, 2020 is the last day of school at Haven of Peace Academy. It’s still morning here in California but it’s night in Tanzania, so the day is done. We just finished our Last Day Assembly as a Zoom call, live streamed on Facebook for the whole community. After so many years of saying goodbye to others at the Last Day Assembly, for the first time, my children and I were listed as “leavers.” My HOPAC family loved me well today, having flowers delivered and enfolding me in their love, even across all of the distance between us.

About a week ago, our HR gal sent me the “Leaving Staff Exit Interview” form to fill out. And I sat there and stared at this form that I personally have given to many staff members, and wondered what on earth I would write. What are the highlights of your time at HOPAC? How would you rate your HOPAC experience? How could I possibly answer those questions? I arrived at HOPAC at age 24; now I’m 43. HOPAC has not been an experience. HOPAC has been my life.

My dad prayed by the baobab tree on the HOPAC campus before it was built. I was the first teacher to step into the fifth grade classroom on the Mbezi Beach campus in 2001. The cement dust hadn’t been swept away yet and the chalkboards hadn’t been nailed to the walls. I was there to see more and more of the coconut trees from the original plantation be cut down and replaced with the the science building, pool, admin building, library, performing arts building, kitchen, cafeteria, and playground–a rustic, rural patch of land transformed into our Haven of Peace.

I grew up along with HOPAC. I poured my soul and tears and sweat (so much sweat, this is the tropics, after all) into this school and in return its people and experiences twisted and turned me inside out, stripped me down and built me back up again. We are inextricably linked, HOPAC and me.

Friday, March 13, was the last day I saw my students. We thought that we were kicking off Service Emphasis Week (SEW), so at the end of that day, everybody put their SEW shirts on and squished into the performing arts building. The speaker had the kids make paper airplanes that said “SEW Go For It!” and at the end of her talk, everybody threw them in the air, hundreds of them.

Two days later, Service Emphasis Week was cancelled and the campus shut down. And just a few days after that, I was on a literal airplane, wrenched away from my home, my country, my Haven.

None of us knew that would be our last day together. But at least those last minutes of that last day were spent together, all 500 of us scrunched together, sharing the same space. We belly laughed over the group of teachers who did their rendition of “I Will Follow You.” The air crackled with expectancy and excitement. And because it was a special event, we got lots of pictures, including a group picture of all of us. Who would have known how important those pictures would turn out to be?

I am thankful the SEW assembly was our last time together, full of joy and anticipation, because it’s a sweet memory in contrast to following 3 months of sorrow upon sorrow. The frantic evacuation of many of our staff, many of us not knowing what was going on or why we were even in this position, far more fearful of our rapidly changing world than we were of the virus. The devastation of those left behind or who chose to stay behind. The heartbreak of the first COVID death in Tanzania being a HOPAC parent. Discovering that our beloved pastor and chaplain has brain cancer. Trying to keep a school and a community together while spread out across the globe.

There has been very little joy in my life the last three months. Just trauma, uncertainty, stress, guilt, regret, and sorrow. Sitting in front of a computer day after day, living out of suitcases for months, not knowing what the next week would hold, I had a dogged determination to finish my job as well as I could, but there was very little light in that fog.

So finishing today, like this, is not what I wanted or planned, but it is what it is. And despite it all, there is sweetness in the sorrow. Relief and gratitude and the seedlings of joy. Because nothing–not distance, nor time, nor COVID-19, can ever take away what Haven of Peace Academy is to me.

I Wish I Could Put “Fridays at Lunch” on My Resume

By Amy Medina

On February 17, 2020

In Other

On Fridays around noon, you’ll find me eating lunch with my students. Our “cafeteria” is actually a second-story, open-air thatch-covered veranda filled with picnic tables. One can get an amazing view of the Indian Ocean from up there, and the breeze blows away the humidity (but not the crows, unfortunately).

Friday is chicken and chips day–standard Tanzanian fare, and the most popular menu item of the week with our students. I usually arrive around the time of kindergarten lunch, which means as soon as I sit down, I am surrounded by small children like bees to a flower. They politely push to get the seats next to me, and the ones that don’t make the cut lean over the table with big eyes, shoving fries into their mouths while all talking to me at the same time, and whatever they need to tell me is very important.

I put on my interested face and try very hard to follow twelve conversations at once, all while intermittently exclaiming, Well, isn’t that funny! and Wow, that’s amazing! and You can go as soon as you’ve eaten two more bites of chicken and Please don’t hug me until you’ve washed your hands.

It’s a highlight of my week.

I’ve been staring at my computer screen a lot this weekend, trying to work on a resume. Gil has already sent out about 50 resumes, so I guess it’s about time that I start too. The internet says that my resume should only be one page long, which means that this principal job gets one paragraph. And I stare at the screen and think, How can I possibly describe this job in one paragraph when it takes me three paragraphs just to write about lunch on Fridays?

This job is the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done, with the exception of raising my own children. The load of this job sits on my head and my stomach like a boulder, every single day, a physical weight. It has stolen many, many hours of sleep, and each of those hours has a name and a face of a struggling child, a hurting teacher, an angry parent. “Responsibility” is my strength but therefore also my burden, because I just can’t let any fall through the cracks. I do anyway, of course, because being responsible for so many is impossible, and each problem I can’t solve, and each child I can’t help tears just a little more at my sore muscles that strain under the weight.

It’s been almost exactly three years since I was offered this job. Gil asked me recently after one particularly difficult day, full of exhaustion and stress and tears, “Would you have said yes to this job if you had known how hard it would be?” Ah, ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? How many of us would choose to step into the right, but hard choice if we knew in advance how incredibly difficult it would be? Marriage, raising children, adoption, missions–all are much rosier before we actually start living them out. God is merciful when he keeps us from knowing how hard things will be. We gravitate towards comfort, so think of how many amazing things we would miss if we chose only what is easy!

Yes, of course I would have said yes. It was obvious it was the right time and place and I was the person who needed to say yes. The strain builds muscle as well, of course. I was always one who ran away from confrontation, hating the hard conversations. I still don’t like them, but now I’ve had so many that I’m not afraid of them anymore. I was just an ordinary teacher, and an ordinary stay-at-home mom for so many years. I look at myself now with a sort of wonder. Who would have thought I would be filling out performance reviews? Who knew that I would become adept at conducting interviews and offering job contracts? That I would get experience in writing MOUs or coordinating a Christmas production or analyzing curriculum?

Honestly, I don’t think I realized I had it in me. Which, in itself, has been a lesson for me. Because just as I now look back with gratitude for those who believed in me, I too have the privilege of doing the same for those I work with. I’ve experienced the joy of giving a job and saying, I believe you can do this! And then being a cheerleader when they succeed.

True, many days I look forward to that day in June when I finally am able to release this burden. I will be choosing not to continue in school leadership for this next season of my life. But the stretching of my abilities, the relationships, the invaluable life experiences–I would never trade them for an easier three years. And I’m confident that as soon as this burden is gone, it will leave a hollow hole I will feel for a very long time.

This job is sacred to me. So it almost feels sacrilegious to condense it down on a resume to “Responsible for hiring, training, and performance feedback of staff, curriculum development, admissions, student discipline, and professional development.” I’d like to add, “Engaged in twelve simultaneous kindergarten conversations on Fridays at lunch.” Because that’s just as important.

Our lunch time view

These Four

By Amy Medina

On February 2, 2020

In Other

We live in a city of five million people, but it’s amazing how often we run into our former students from Haven of Peace Academy. I’ll be looking for a new showerhead, and she’s the owner of the hardware store. We’ll be eating dinner at a nice restaurant, and discover he’s the owner (Yes! Dessert on the house!). I’ll run into her in a meeting–the lawyer in the professional suit. Often we don’t recognize them–they’ve grown beards or are holding children–but when I hear “Mrs. Medina!” I know it’s one of them.

The first graduating class was in 2008, so there have been many since then who have gone away to college and finished college and have come back to Tanzania to make their world a better place. And it is such a joy–always, always, such a joy, to see them again.

A few weeks ago, though, we had a particularly extraordinary joy because we just happened to discover that these four girls were all in the country at the same time–which is a thrill that hasn’t happened in….maybe 10 years?

These four have always been exceptionally important–they were my students in fifth grade, then sixth grade, then they were Gil’s students all through high school. They were a part of every youth group and youth camp and Gil coached them football for four years. They babysat our kids and came to Grace’s and then Josiah’s first birthday parties. We visited them when they were in college in Minnesota. Over the years, we’ve seen one or two of them here or there, even had them visit us every now in then, but to have them all together again for an evening….that was a beautiful gift indeed.

They are all grown up now and very smart and very educated and they’ve had so many life experiences that make them absolutely fascinating to talk to. And when you consider that Gil and I had the privilege of being a part of their growing-up years, which makes our conversations with them filled with memory and laughter, well….it was a very special night. Especially considering our time in Tanzania is coming to a close.

So here are “my girls,” and if you go back in the archives of this blog, you’ll find some of their history there. (Though they might prefer you don’t do that, actually!) But they gave me permission to share a few pictures of our memories, so rejoice with me in the fun and blessing of students who have become friends.

Now

Then

Now

Then

Now

Then

Now

Then

Now

Then:

Pamoja Week at HOPAC Actually Came Out of Disunity

By Amy Medina

On November 17, 2019

In Other

Pamoja Week at Haven of Peace Academy actually came out of disunity.

When missionaries move overseas, they expect to learn to navigate the new culture of their host country. What they don’t usually expect is that they will also need to learn to navigate the cultures of other missionaries.

Sometimes this is hilarious. For example, I have fond memories with British or South African friends as we laughed ourselves senseless over our cultures’ varying uses of terms such as “hooter,” “fanny pack,” and “shag rug.” Depending on where you are from, you may be horrified that I just wrote such words on my blog.

Other times are not so funny. Like, for example, when you are trying to run an international school, and the Brits and the Americans have very different ideas of what makes a good school. One prominent example was when my friend Lauren (also an American) and I went to the (British) high school principal and told him that we wanted to plan a graduation ceremony for the graduating seniors. He looked at us as if we had just said we wanted to take the students on a trip to the moon. Because in England, there are no high school graduation ceremonies. Students don’t graduate–they just pass or not pass exams.

And that was just a small conflict. Back around 2004, the debate over American versus British curriculum almost made the school implode. It was like the Revolutionary War all over again, this time in Tanzania.

So anyway. Back to Pamoja Week. About 10 years ago, Gil and I took over the high school Student Council. Another (American) teacher had started it a couple of years previously, but hadn’t gotten very far because the concept of Student Council is also very American, and the British principal didn’t know what to do with it.

But when Gil and I took over, the high school principal just happened to also be American. Woohoo! (This is another important thing for missionaries to learn: You’ll eventually get your way if you just wait long enough for everyone else to leave.) So, great. We got Student Council off with a bang. And what does every good American Student Council plan? Spirit Week, of course!

Our American high school principal immediately agreed: Of course we could do Spirit Week! Why not? Except that the elementary school principal was British. And he had never heard of Spirit Week. His interpretation was Holy Spirit Week (after all, HOPAC is a Christian school), so down in elementary school, they had a special emphasis on the Fruits of the Spirit that week. He was fairly disturbed that up in high school we were dressing up with our clothes on backwards and throwing marshmallows at students’ peanut-butter faces. Because in England, you don’t have fun at school. (Hey–their words, not mine.)

This caused some–ahem–interesting discussions. Gil and I, in our stubborn American-ness, couldn’t understand why we couldn’t do it our way. The right way, of course.

It all came to a head during a rather tense “discussion,” when Kandyl Kotta, the Student Council president (who was thankfully neither American nor British, but Tanzanian), politely told off all the adults in the room. She basically told us we needed to get a hold of ourselves and act like adults.

Yeah, we were pretty ashamed of ourselves.

It was also Kandyl who suggested that we change the name of Spirit Week, since the name itself was causing a lot of confusion. We brainstormed ideas, but in the end, it was Kandyl herself who suggested the winner: Pamoja Week. Pamoja is the Swahili word for together.

And so, like so many other things at Haven of Peace Academy, Pamoja Week became unique to HOPAC. At first, Gil and I tried to stuff it into the American “Spirit Week” box by ending the week with a “homecoming” type event with a big soccer game on Friday night. Except, try as we might, we never could get a team to come play us for a night game. Instead, a couple of years later, the crowning event of Pamoja Week became International Day, an event that had already been in place since the school’s inception. They fused together perfectly.

Ten years later, how fitting that the week that caused so much division is now a celebration of our togetherness. How fitting that the week we celebrate our togetherness ends in a day where we celebrate our unity in diversity.

Last week, the Medina family celebrated our last Pamoja Week and International Day. With us leaving, I’m worried that the story behind it will be forgotten. Which is why I wrote it down today.

Pamoja Week and International Day, 2019