We live in a beautiful country. And I have a very talented husband with an eye for beauty.
Tag: Life in Tanzania Page 16 of 26
Dar es Salaam sometimes reminds me of an adolescent boy. You know, when he starts growing so fast that he doesn’t know what to do with all his arms and legs, and his mind hasn’t caught up to his body yet?
Well, that’s our city. I can’t believe how much construction is going on. How many cars are being imported. How rent prices are skyrocketing. But private business is growing so fast that government infrastructure can’t keep up. I used to think that traffic was atrocious. Well, now it’s, umm…really atrocious. I used to be able to leave the house any time after 8:15 am to avoid hitting traffic if I wanted to go to town (about 10 miles away). Now I have to wait until 9:00 am, and yet there still seems to be sections where there is always traffic, no matter what time of day it is. I’m not talking about freeway commute traffic–because there are no freeways. When I had to be at the embassy at 8:00 am for Josiah’s interview 3 weeks ago, we left at 6:30 in the morning. To go 10 miles.
But what is worse these days is the electricity. Tanzania hasn’t gotten enough rain, and since most of the power is hydro-electric, that’s bad news. Couple that with a lot of mismanagement and corruption and “suddenly” the country doesn’t have enough power. This happened in 2006, when the power rationing got so bad that the entire city was without electricity from 7 am to 7 pm, every day. Two weeks ago, it started again. First it was twice a week for our area–Wednesdays from 6 pm to 11 pm and Sundays from 9 am to 6 pm.
Then, Friday afternoon, it went off exactly at 4 pm and came on at 11 pm. Uh oh. Bad news. When it goes on and off so exactly like that, we know it’s a cut and not just a little problem some where.
Thankfully, we didn’t have Youth Group this Friday since it was HOPAC’s break. But…uh, what exactly are we going to do with 40 teenagers on Friday nights with no electricity?
So, we hem and hah and sigh and try hard not to complain. Do everything without complaining or arguing. And we decided that we need to bite the bullet and buy a generator. Except that unfortunately, everyone else in the city has the same idea, so they are a little hard to come by right now. Oops.
When I get over being extremely irritated, I really end up just being sad for Tanzania. Obviously losing power for hours every other day (which could soon become every day) isn’t exactly good for the economy. This is an amazing country with incredible potential. It just can’t seem to get up on its feet.
This week is HOPAC’s mid-term break. So we went to the beach for a few days. We stayed one night at a beach hotel, and then visited some good friends at the beach house where they were staying. We immediately fell in love with this incredible beach house and decided we need to make our own trip there as soon as possible!
It’s the most amazing house…you can’t see from the picture, but the entire back of the house opens up to join the porch….all looking out to the ocean.
But even more incredible is the beach it is on…probably the most uniquely beautiful beach I have ever laid eyes on.
Waves crashing on the reef, creating huge geysers and hundreds of little water falls….
…filling small pools with warm water, perfect for the kids to play in.
Just fabulous!
Grace and her very best friend Caleb.
My lil’ skinny boy…but he’s getting taller!
That’s what it feels like–that we live in a park. Which is great, considering there aren’t any parks around here. Most of the plot is not landscaped, so there is a lot of potential!
Front gate and driveway
The yard. It is surrounded by a wall…waaaay back there. Love, love, love those giant trees. Someone told me they are non-producing fig trees. Maybe? I have no idea.
The house
We started Youth Group a couple of Fridays ago. So, so great to see the kids cavorting all over the place.
So thankful.
I’ve been thinking about pre-school for Grace for a while now. Pre-school in general has never been that big of a deal to me, namely because I taught kindergarten for a couple years and I know what I need to do to prepare her for it. But there’s one thing I can’t teach her: Swahili. And that is a very big deal to me.
My Swahili is pretty limited. I can get by on certain topics; my house worker and various store owners and fix-it men usually seem to know what I am talking about, even though I’m sure I’m butchering the language. The problem is that to become fluent in a language, you need to be immersed in it, and I’m not. HOPAC and all of our ministry is done in English. It’s also the official business language here, and all the secondary schools in Tanzania are taught in English. So anyone who is educated speaks English.
But it still is very much the heart language of Tanzanians. And since Grace is Tanzanian, living in Tanzania, it’s very important to us that she learn it. So, I’ve wanted to put her in a Tanzanian pre-school.
Problem is that most pre-schools around here are in English. Why? Because anyone who is able to afford pre-school wants his children to learn English, not Swahili.
So finally I found out about a Swahili pre-school. A Tanzanian pastor we know, who is the head cleaner at HOPAC, told me that there’s a little pre-school run in his church.
Today Grace and I went to check it out. I knew not to expect much, but well…. Hmmm.
The teacher is a beautiful young woman with a kind heart who obviously is doing this as a ministry. Each child pays 3000 shillings a month. You know how much that is? About $2.00. Per month. Per child.
The children sit in the concrete church building, about a dozen of them ranging in ages from 2-6. The teacher has a flip board up front with letters and pictures and numbers on it. She asks one student to stand. She has him repeat: a-askari, e-eroplane, o-oga, etc. She has him repeat it again. And again. And again. About 15 times. Then she moves on to the next child. All the other children just sit and wait.
And thus it goes. For four hours. The children never get up, never move out of their seats, never go out to play. Just keep repeating the teacher. Again and again and again.
Hmmm. But you know what? Grace liked it. She wasn’t as excited about it as Disneyland, but she liked it and wants to go back. So what do I do? I really want her to learn Swahili.
We’ll see. There’s a HOPAC teacher who has started working with the pre-school teacher and is trying to train her and give her ideas. We only have a month until our Home Assignment, so maybe we’ll try it this month and see how it goes.
Once again, as usual….just another reminder of how totally and completely and utterly blessed I am. The contrast between the opportunities afforded to my children, compared to these other precious little ones, did not escape my notice.