Tag: Life in Tanzania Page 3 of 26

I decided I needed new shoes.

All but one pair of my shoes are sandals. I was going to be traveling to Slovenia, so I figured I definitely needed another pair of closed-toed shoes.

That was a week ago Friday, and Gil and I were scheduled to leave for the ACSI administrator’s conference in Slovenia that night. But I didn’t think about my shoe deficit until a few days earlier, and market day is only on Fridays. Which meant I had to go to the market to find shoes just a few hours before I got on a plane.

The Friday market is just down the road from our house. So after school last Friday, I dropped off Gil and the kids at home and rushed over to the market.

As usual, hundreds of vendors were out. Some had set up tables, but most used large pieces of plastic on the ground. Some were selling vegetables, kitchen supplies, toiletries, or school supplies, but most were selling piles of clothes and shoes, second-hand cast-offs from American thrift stores.

I pushed my way through the crowds, my eye out for black shoes. Luckily, about half of the shoes for sale in the market are black. Not because they originated that color, but because the vendors dye as many shoes black as possible. It’s the color required for school uniforms.

You look beautiful, the vendors would tell me every time I tried on a pair of shoes. I shook my head. These are too small, I would complain. Like Cinderella’s step-sisters, they would insist, No, they’re not! See? They will stretch!  

Finally I settled on Aerosole flats (dyed black) that would have to do. I wove my way back through the crowds, finished packing, and left for the airport at midnight.

Fourteen hours later, I was standing on the canal-lined streets of Venice, Italy.

The conference took up a good portion of our time, which meant we had just four afternoons to cram in as much European sight-seeing as possible. So we spent an evening in Venice and visited the famous Postojna caves. We toured the Slovenian town of Piran with its medieval architecture and stepped into the postcard that is Lake Bled, complete with castle and lake island church.

We stuffed ourselves with grapes and pasta and salami, and ate dessert way too many times. We walked along cobblestone streets with flowers poking through wooden fences. We delighted in the glass trinkets in Venice, the gelato shops on every corner, the pristine beauty of the Adriatic Sea.

And it all seemed like a universe away from the market down the street from my house in Tanzania.

I loved this trip. The conference was energizing, the weather was incredible (I could have worn my sandals after all!), and we were with best friends. The beauty filled our souls and we joked repeatedly that maybe God was calling us to be missionaries in Slovenia.

Venice

Piran, Slovenia

Postojna caves, Slovenia

Lake Bled, Slovenia

It was amazing.

But you know what?

I love the market down the street in Dar es Salaam. I love treasure-hunting there; I love the friendliness of the people; I love the unpredictability. I would much rather buy one dollar second-hand shoes at that market than the designer high-heels that are standard for European women.

Europe is extraordinarily beautiful, but so is Tanzania. Dar es Salaam can be dusty and humid, but Venice was covered in graffiti. Beauty and brokenness always live side by side. On any continent.

Venice

Home–Dar es Salaam.

While the northern hemisphere is battling through the end of winter, we down in the south are battling through the end of summer.

And that means we have entered the Season of Mold.

Kindergarten students in America and Europe dutifully cut and paste snowflakes in January, flowers in May, and orange leaves in October. But down here in the tropics, we never see snowflakes or orange leaves, and we get flowers year-round.

But every April, when the rain barrels in to wage war against the heat, we get the Season of Mold. Fortunately, we don’t require kindergarteners to cut and paste little green spores. Unfortunately, the mold decides on its own to paste itself to their pictures.

In April, everything molds. My kitchen table can grow a nice white layer overnight. The wooden arms of the couch. The couch cushions. The floor. Leather shoes. Belts. Vinyl lunchboxes. Pretty much anything that is capable of holding moisture manages to grow mold. Outside, the ground shoots up massive mushrooms.

Of course, that’s because there’s water everywhere these days. Overflowing the gutters, creating swimming pools in every yard, flooding the city. We even had two government-prescribed “rain days” last week when school was closed.

The bugs, which had been happily content in their trees and rocks, come out of nowhere. The flying termites and dragonflies swarm the air, seemingly popping out of the ground. Cockroaches scurry up flooded drainpipes. Giant African snails slime around on the walls. And the ants go marching two by two, hurrah hurrah….into my house….to get out of the rain (boom, boom, boom).

The air temperature plunges down into the high 80’s (with 85% humidity), which means that most HOPAC kids come to school wearing sweaters. And my kids just don’t understand why I won’t let them wear theirs. I am such a mean mom to allow my children to freeze to death in this frigid weather.

The other night, as the kids were getting ready for bed, the smoke detector in the girls’ bedroom went off. Gil had to yank it apart to get it to shut up. The next day, a smoke detector randomly went off in a HOPAC classroom. Coincidence? Nope. Extremely high humidity will do that. There’s no fire, but even the smoke detector is protesting the condition of the air.

But like the snow melting away into spring, the rain eventually melts away the heat. The mold doesn’t stick around, but everything is green and lush and growing–just like spring. It’s beautiful and renewing and soul-refreshing, just like the changing of the seasons should be.