Well Adjusted

Tuesday marked the half-way point of my trip. Six weeks here, six more before I leave. We spent the day in Sumbawanga and I realized for the first time that things aren't weird anymore. This is at least a little
scary for me because the last time I was here, I never reached this point. Which made going home, back to Burger King and Television and the endless competition for your attention and your senses and your
dollars, all the more easy. I never really left last time. Now, I am really here. I am here because I am adjusted. And being adjusted is troubling because it means I'm going to have to do it all over again when I get home. People say reverse culture-shock is worse than culture shock.

Things don't seem so different now. I am used to the taste of the food and the lack of variety. I am used to rice and beans for every lunch, and I did everything you can imagine to make it seem less like rice
and beans before I settled on just letting it be rice and beans. I haven't had breakfast cereal since early August. I think before I came here my consecutive mornings with cereal streak was running into the thousands. I am the Cal Ripken of cereal-breakfasts.

I am used to sitting idly by during conversations, since I can neither hear or speak Swahili well enough to participate. But if people speak slowly enough and gesture and point and write and grab a translation
dictionary for me, I can just begin to make out what they're talking about. Of course, eavesdropping is right out.

I'm also used to not knowing what anything is, and just assuming I am not supposed to touch it.

I am used to longer church services with louder and better choirs, and character-testing spine-wrenching benches.

I am used to being perpetually dirty, perpetually late, perpetually sore and knicked and bruised. I am used to not being able to move my arms because my clothes are stiff from drying in the sun.

I am used to hearing every bit of news well after-the-fact. (Little Mexico burned down! They will have to build it bigger, stronger… I guess they'll just have to call it Mexico.) Odds are, I'm not up on your gossip. If you're sick, I'm sorry. If you're engaged, congrats. If you're married, I'm sorry. I'm glad to hear about your new job or promotion. Once I get back, I guess.

I am used to the weather being infinitely more pointless a topic of conversation than it is back home. "Sunny again." "Yup." (Although, last night it rained and all of Jangwani and Mumba said, "Holy Crap.")

I am used to having flies around my ears and spiders on my walls and cockroaches on my floor. I am used to "inside" being a subjective term and it not being a refuge from African wildlife.

I am used to seeing white people and wondering what in the world they're doing here. I always want to ask them, "What in the world are you doing here?"

If my time in Africa is half gone, then my time in Mumba is just about over. This weekend, we're going out to show the Jesus film one more time in the Rukwa valley (like Mumba, but hotter with less mountains and more bugs and snakes.) Next week, I'm leaving to travel across the country, first to Mbeya, then to Dar, then to Arusha where I'll climb Mount Kilimanjaro. (I will probably see lots of white people there and
for once, I'll be the guy that knows all the Swahili.) Assuming I survive trying to climb to the highest mountain in Africa without any experience or reason, I'll meet the Shermans back in Mbeya and go straight to Zambia for the rest of October. I fly home in early November.

If I can ask a huge favor, and if you don't mind terribly, pray that I don't die on the mountain. Climbing Oct. 6-11, if you want specifics.

Thanks for reading this. I appreciate it. I'll keep you updated on the mountain stuff next week.

jim

Rampant Soda Shortage Grips Africa

I Consider this a Total Catastrophe

They are out of Coke in Sumbawanga. They're also out of Pepsi, Sprite, Fanta, Spar-letta, Tangawizi and Mirinda, the entire variety of East African soda options. How a whole town runs out of soda, I cannot say, but this is Africa and things like this happen all the time. It's not unreasonable to hypothesize that the truck or trucks bringing soda from the bigger cities into Sumbwanga drove off a cliff. Not joking. And so, basically everyone in western Tanzania who hasn't amassed a wartime stockpile of Coca-Cola is Lent-ing it for September. A few opportunists in town have a few cases left and are selling them at exorbitant prices. Like I said, some things are the same across the world. I'm just waiting for the day an African pays $10,000 for a PS3.

Unfortunately for the Shermans, I am a soda drinker and converted them from non-Soda-ists about a week after I got here. And so yesterday as Trevor and I shared the last bottle of Coca-Cola, we were like island castaways somberly polishing off the last coconut, trusting that fate or future might somehow provide for our well-being in ways beyond our comprehension. To thee I entrust my being, Lord God.

Soda is best from the glass bottle. It always has been, it always will be. I'd like to know why bottlers in the United States have forsaken it. Is it too expensive? Then why can African bottlers afford to do it? Surely the novelty of glass bottles would wear off soon after the market has been inundated with them. Offer big deposits on bottles, people won't smash them on the side of the road. People can drink them where they buy them like they do here. Environmentalists would love the idea, too – less garbage. Of course, they're very heavy, especially en masse. But in the U.S., you don't have to lug them 40 miles to refill them. You can throw them in the back seat of your Dodge Shadow and haul them to Meijer. I'm telling you, there's some merit to this idea. (I'm not thinking clearly, am I?)

So anyway, we're out of soda out here and you can expect this blog to slowly regress into lunatic ravings until we're replenished. Count on it.

Miss you all,

jim

Tasty Animals and Ministry Things.

It's late and I just sat down to write this blog. A few minutes ago, I heard a huge explosion outside. Naturally, I went to check it out. Steve Sherman just shot a rabid jackal in his front yard. Never a dull moment in Tanzania.

Speaking of shooting things…

I went on my first hunting trip. Ever. I figure Africa is as good a place as any to learn about hunting. So, we borrowed Sumry's hunting truck (Sumry is a friend of the missionaries here and he owns one of the biggest bussing/trucking companies in Tanzania) and left for the wilderness early Monday morning. We drove five hours north, up through Katavi National Park, and camped just a few miles from its edge.

In Mumba we don't have to worry about lions or snakes (there are puff adders here, though) or tse-tse flies. So of course, I had to ask our guide, Bila, about everything I could possibly be afraid of. The seasoned veterans laughed at me a little bit. Still, I noticed that Steve slept with his shotgun at his side. Bila told me in broken English that, "Of course there are lions and they are very danger." Also among our friends: Big hairy spiders, cobras, black mambas, hyenas, bee swarms, wild fires, and hot African sunburn. It's also a bad idea to touch pretty much any plant. They all have thorns, and even the grass is so tough and stringy that it will cut your fingers if you try to pick it (this, I learned, with a bloody index finger.)

I don't have a hunting experience from the United States to compare this with but as I understand it, back home you put up a tree stand or a blind, sit down and fall asleep until a deer wanders into range. You shoot it, track it, cut its guts out, and haul it back to your cabin and string it up in a tree. I guess you could probably do it like that here. But we had a well-outfitted hunting truck, and we spent all day driving over the bush looking for delicious animals to blow away. In the end, the two young guys shot a reed buck each (reed buck are like small white tail) and three of us shot small fowl, which we cooked for dinner. We gutted the second reed buck and threw his remains about 100 yards from camp. It didn't take long for vultures to show up, and Trevor promptly shot one with a .22.

It is hard to sleep in a tent with just a shred of nylon between you and an animal appropriately called a man-eater, especially with a large tasty animal hanging from a tree just outside. Fortunately, the lions never visited us – they stay away from fires at night. But the hyenas showed up in the middle of the second night. We heard them yelp. It's a loud, ascending Ow-Woo-oot! And it's even better when they do it 20 feet from your tent, where you just peed. It's unsettling to hear things breathing, romping in the dry brush, looking for food. When they came, I went rigid in my sleeping bag and laid still and wide-eyed. Josh, next to me, slept through the whole thing. Hyenas, Steve tells me, can bite through an elephant's femur. We heard them crunching the bones, absolutely shattering them. Still, they're more like raccoons than bears. They're mangy and ugly, like big rodents, I guess. After about an hour in camp, around 4 am, they went away.

Since I've been here, I've eaten topi, rone, and now reed buck. They're all really tasty, if you're wondering.

Last week, we got out to show some films in Jangwani, the nearest village to Mumba. We didn't show the Jesus film because, as I understand it, that village has already seen it 37 times. We put up our screen and started some music and people came. There were probably 500 people at one point.

In the past, they had film reels. Pastors could preach while they changed reels, and people stayed to wait for the end of the movie. If you preach after the movie is over, everyone will leave. So with a DVD player and a projector, you have to pause it in the middle to let someone share the gospel. Lots of people tune out, and some of them leave, but movies are such a rarity that the majority will stay to watch whatever you show. So people get to hear a message. We could show pretty much anything and they'd stick around, but they really want stuff in Swahili. One of our films is from the US in the 70s, dubbed in Swahili. It's about a man who learns to serve Christ with his business. I'm not sure how well village-dwelling farmers identify with Christian warehousing strategies - it seemed pretty boring to me - but people ate it up. I guess that if people are hearing the message in whatever way it's a good thing. We have a pretty limited selection of Swahili language films to show as alternatives to The Jesus Film. If you find something good, send it this way.

We had some sound problems that night and we got started pretty late, unfortunately. The next night, our speakers died in the middle of a health film we were showing for the Caraways here. They could really use some quality sound equipment out here. It would be nice to have some good speakers and a nice amp. But you make due with what you have. Hopefully they'll all be fixed and ready to go soon.

See you all soon,

jim

Minority

Yesterday we went to the monthly market in Jangwani. It's a traveling entourage of vendors and other entrepreneurs, and they visit our cluster of villages on the fourth of every month to set up shop. They sell food and clothes and machetes and pots and tools and sandals made from old tires. And some other stuff, too. It's a big attraction for anyone who lives within ten or so miles of here, and some come from as far away as 40-50 miles. Everybody goes. There were thousands of people there. I guess they have nothing better to do.

It was about a 30 minute hike from the missionary houses, and I went with Trevor (missionary kid - I teach him geometry, he translates things for me, we're going to show the Jesus film), Josh and Silas (two visitors from Michigan who incidentally were in my cabin when I was a counselor at Grace) along with Denisi and Aidani (two guys who live on the compound whose fathers work for Kanisa la Neema, Grace Church of Tanzania) Trevor was the translator, I was the "adult supervision," Aidani and Denisi helped us get black people prices instead of white people prices, and Josh and Silas just looked for sharp things to buy.

As soon as we arrived, we were celebrities. It's hard to miss white people in a sea of black faces. People wanted to shake our hands, they shouted at us, either to buy their stuff or just to shout at us, and we had a consistent crowd of dozens of curious little kids who wanted to gawk at Wazungu (did I tell you that means white person/European yet? Well, it does.)

We visited the guy who was selling sandals made from tires. I got myself a pair for about $2. This, I think, is an essentially African souvenir. Forget the mass-produced carbon-copy ebony carvings and wax-prints, the rich tapestries, the bizarre novelty musical instruments – no, all I want is a pair of sandals made from a set of Goodyears, like real Africans would wear. (If you want some, I can bring you a pair if I see them again. Just ask.)

We probably did sandal-guy some good, because when we showed up, we brought a huge crowd with us. Everyone wanted to see what the white people were doing. We're a novelty. They don't see us out there that much. People stare, and some people touch. You can hardly blame missionaries for leaving their kids at home when they go out.

After a while our crowd dispersed. Presumably because we didn't do anything bizarre like fly or try to eat a baby or anything. A few children stuck around. Whenever I turned to them, they'd back up all cartoonishly and some would run and hide. A couple times I embraced it and mugged for them, which some found hilarious while others found it terrifying.

At one point, I walked off on my own toward the beer tents (some things are the same all over the world) to see if I could find a cold soda (soda baridi, they say). This proved to be a mistake, because when you mix large crowds and alcohol and curiosity, tact disappears. Lots of people shouted at me, and though they weren't trying to be mean, it was terribly uncomfortable. Maybe if I spoke better Swahili, I'd have felt better about it. It didn't take long for me to forget the soda and turn around and walk back toward the perceived safety and familiarity of the other white folk.

I am not used to being the minority. But in Africa, that is exactly where I find myself. The novelty of being a celebrity was cool for about five minutes, and then I just got this indescribably awkward circus-attraction feeling. This is probably the feeling some people get in the United States when they visit another part of town or
someone else's church or school.

Enough about the market though.

We're going to show the Jesus film tonight in Jangwani. I'll try to get a picture or something of the screen we built and the crowd. Next week, we're going hunting. I've never hunted before. Might as well start where there are lions and hyenas and cobras. I'm sure I'll have a story to bring back then.

Until then,

jim