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

The Fire

This happened yesterday while you were sleeping.

A man runs into the Shermans house and yells something in Swahili.
Steve responds in Swahili.

"Let's go." he tells me.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Fire."
"Where?"
"By your house."

I drop everything and I run. Down the stairs, out the front door, around the Shermans house, past the soccer field, past Brook's house, past Bibi's house, and I see my house with a wall of smoke rising up behind it carrying ash and debris over my head. It is windy and the smoke is moving fast.

I open the padlock on my door, run through the kitchen into my bedroom and throw important things into my trunk. Camera first. Books. Sleeping bag. Malaria pills. Warm clothes for Kili. I turn to leave, but I stop and fish out my camera and throw it over my shoulder before I run outside. I leave the trunk because the fire is not here yet, and I don't know where it will go or what it will do. A brick wall stands
between my yard and the burning grass and the thick white smoke on the mountainside.

More people have come – men, women, children, anyone who lives on our small, dry hill – and the smoke is swirling around them, billowing over my yard and around it toward the houses extending behind it, the other missionaries homes. My house is at the edge, the first line of defense. Next to my house, there is a small cluster of houses for Bible school students and teachers. A wide strip of dry, dead, thirsty grass stretches down the hillside from our homes, and beyond that, the firebreak. The flames are inside the firebreak, and they are marching through the grass toward our houses, leaving behind a circle of ash.

I jump over the wall and Nestori is there, cutting branches from a eucalyptus tree. I take one. I do not know how to fight fires, and there is no water around. Instead we all have tree limbs, rich and green and full of leaves and life, and we swat the fire with them as it eats the dying grass. Even children fight the flames, pounding the ground with small branches. We swat, the flames recede, and they come back stronger and eat more grass.

The wind is against us, and the fire is overwhelming. The flames forge toward our homes, and in some places they are taller than I am. The ring has reached the path that lines my wall, the only thing standing between my tinderbox of a yard and my home. The smoke is overpowering, blown by the changing winds, and I cannot help but breathe it into my lungs and it chokes me. I cover my mouth with my shirt, but the smoke still gets through. And so I run, gulp for fresh air, and run back. The grasshoppers jump and flit naked, their skin and wings taken as they've fled the flames.

I am hot and frustrated and out of breath, and I want to quit, but I am without sufficient excuse to leave the others, the women, the children, the missionaries to fight the flames without me. I am praying for help with the wind and simultaneously wondering how God can allow such a beautiful and useful thing to be so dangerous, to do such damage. This fire is not beautiful like the ones I have watched across the valley as farmers burned their fields at night. I am not taking pictures. I am sweating and grunting and gasping for air. I have calluses on my hands and they're already open and every swing of the branch stings, but the fire will not go out and we are the only things to stop it. Steve is next to me, and I tell him sarcastically that I am not having fun anymore.

The fire is creeping toward a cluster of trees, and I run in and begin to try to swamp it with my branch. I am downwind. My back is to the trees, and the fire is moving toward me and the flames are as high as my waste. A gust of wind. The flames are at my feet, at my jeans. "Get out of there!" comes from Steve's mouth, strong and desperate. I squint in the smoke and begin to run out of the fire. I feel the heat of the flames against my skin, yellow flames swiping at my face, at all of me. I raise my arms as I run, and behind me the flames take the ground I was standing on. I run beyond the smoke, into grass that will be consumed in a few minutes, and as I gasp for air I can smell burned hair on my arms. I feel my beard, and the hair is short and curled. My face is hot, but I am not burned. Only my hair is singed, gone from the underside of my arms and curled lightly up at the back of my neck below my baseball cap, now drenched in sweat. I am unharmed, but I'm going to have to shave.

The fire takes several acres of land behind my house to the east and south. It stops only at the path beside the brick wall. One side is completely burned, but the grass next to the wall is untouched. It doesn't get into the cluster of houses next to mine, only a short footpath away. It consumes a long stretch of grass, creeping toward the missionary houses behind me, in one place only twenty feet from one with a thatched-grass roof. Trevor tells me that they stopped it at one spot with a single bucket of water. Had it gone past, the wind could have taken it as far as his house, the last one on the hillside. Now, there are several acres of black land and sparse trees unharmed by a hasty and thirsty fire that wanted nothing more than to eat lots of grass and cover as much ground as possible.

The fire started inside our firebreak. Two kids who live on our hill were carrying coals to start a fire near their garden in the valley and dropped them in the grass along the way. They owned up to it later and received a public beating.

Steve tells me this happens at least once a year and that they don't have any pictures of people fighting fires. Now I know why. I had my camera with me the whole time, and not once did I think to stop and take a picture.

The only battle scars I've taken from this are the blisters on my hand and some singed hairs along my chin, on my arm, and at the top of my neck. All of our houses are fine. Still, I would rather not have to fight another fire in Mumba or anywhere else.

You Can Hear Ants

I just started a fire so I can have a hot shower tonight.

I've been here in Mumba for a little over a week now, and the adjustment has been kind of tough, as I knew it would be. I am learning just how attached to my standard of living I really am.

For starters, the food is different. Lynn Caraway affectionately refers to margarine for toast (Blue Band, anyone?) as axle grease. Lunch is usually rice and beans. We get American-like meals for dinner, but they're all just a little bit off. The other night, we had omelets, which made for our best meal so far.

The Shermans have missionary friends that live in the Rukwa valley a few hours away, and they have cousins visiting. They were up in Mumba for a day, and someone asked them what their first meal would be when they go home next week. He said they were going to Denny's. I thought, "Man, I could go for Denny's right now."

And at that moment, I realized that I was wanting Denny's and that something was seriously wrong. Seriously, Denny's? And I have only been here for two weeks. You don't realize just how much you're attached to things like greasy American food until they're gone.

But before you think life here is all mystery foods and rustic housing, hear this: A favorite evening activity here is playing Call of Duty. The Shermans have a wireless router that we use to play each other. Not a bad game, if I forget the fact that I've been regularly humbled by an 11 year-old along with everyone else I've played
against. Last night Aideni, a friend of Trevor's who lives across the field from me, got in on the fun. The Africans humbled me in soccer on the first day, and now they're humbling me in Call of Duty. It's great.

It's hard for me to get into my email. I have my computer set up to use a modem with a sim chip from a cell phone to get me onto the internet. It took me a few days to get into it, but now I've got it figured out. I pay by the byte, so it's going to be impossibly slow and expensive for me to put pictures up on here. I've taken around 300 so far, but they'll all have to wait for me to get home.

I have lots of pictures of ants. If you watch the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet, you may have seen one of those "World's Deadliest Animals" shows. I saw one once where Siafu, better known as army ants, were at the top of the list. They go into an area and clean out all of the living things. They devour rats and cockroaches and spiders and, sometimes, people trying to read.

Which brings me to how I learned that the house I'm living in (by myself) is built on top of a Siafu colony. The other night I was reading when Steve Sherman came over to get me for dinner. He went back outside then ran back inside and threw off his pants in my kitchen. He had ants in his pants. They crawl up your legs, and you don't feel them until they bite your thighs – the only remedy is to remove your pants and pick them off. But when we had eliminated the threat, we went outside, and the front walls of my house were swarming with millions and millions of ants, a group large enough to eat a sick or old person. They were taking it over. This is the first time I have ever been able to hear ants. Hopefully the last. But we took lots of pictures. You'll see.

The first week was pretty light, work-wise. Trevor, Steve and I have been building a movie screen out of bed sheets and 2x4s. When it's finished, and once our sound equipment is ready, we'll be going out to show the Jesus Film. Hopefully we can get started this week. This week I also started teaching Trevor some geometry and literature. Thankfully, I have a teacher's guide with all the answers for geometry. In literature, though, I fear I spilled all I had on the first day. Characters, setting, plot - conflict, crisis, resolution… What am I forgetting? (Amy, I'm looking in your direction.) I guess I can just make him read a lot and have "discussions." Also, I'll soon be working on a newsletter for their 70+ churches in the area.

Six weeks from now, I'm climbing Kili. Or, at least, I'll be trying to.

Four weeks after that, I'll be heading home. I miss all of you a ton, and I look forward to seeing you all then.

Time to keep that fire going.

In the meantime, keep praying.

jim

Ninafika (I Arrive)

It is hard to get on the internet, so I hope you’ll forgive me for taking so long.

First and foremost - I’m here and my stuff is here. Beyond that, there’s little more I can ask for. I’m still a little tired. Jet lag will do that to you. At 12 am Tuesday, the sun was coming up as we were going down into Amsterdam. Of course, it was almost six am there. There is something wrong with having another day begin when the last one has not yet ended. So I roamed the Amsterdam airport groggily until I met up with Gloria, a fellow traveler to Dar Es Salaam and onward to Mumba, whose children work as missionaries there and were provided us transportation.

If I am to file one grievance against the airport in Amsterdam, it is that they took away two unopened bottles of Dr Pepper as we were checked through security to board our plane. I purchased them legitimately at DTW, and I will not forget the offense. Dr Pepper poses no threat to air security.

Nevertheless we arrived (almost) on time in Dar Es Salaam where Mike and Lynn Caraway met us with Luka, a three year old they’ve taken under wing from their orphan ministry. His mother abandoned him in the woods as an infant, and after the family found him and returned him she abandoned him again. He was found and brought to an orphanage in Sumbawanga as little more than a skeleton. The Caraways usually take in a handful of orphans to nurse back to health, and they've temporarily adopted him (you cannot officially adopt a Tanzanian unless you are a Tanzanian) while they search for a home for him.

We stayed two nights there with a day in between to run errands and change money in the big city ($500 USD bought me 569,000 Tanzanian shillings.) We spent an afternoon at a pool/hotel on the Indian Ocean and had dinner at Subway, the only chain restaurant with any presence in Tanzania.

Yesterday, we drove across the country to Mbeya where we’re currently staying until we go onto Mumba tomorrow or Sunday. That’s where I’ll live until November. The main highway runs from Dar Es Salaam through Zambia, and it goes right through Mikumi National Park. Just beyond the entrance, we saw the aftermath of an awful accident that took place the night before. A semi truck sat in the middle of the road, still smoldering, and a passenger bus had careened off the side of the road into the trees. It looked as though it might have rolled over. There were probably lots of casualties.

Further down the road, the highway along a cliff up a mountain. Lynn told me that vehicles often break through the barriers on the side of the road and plunge over the cliff. It’s no wonder, as it’s a two-lane highway and people often pass precariously, usually at high speeds. Just as we neared the top, we saw a group of people gathered at the edge of the road and skid marks attesting to yet another tragedy.

Beyond the mountains is Iringa, one of the bigger cities beyond Dar Es Salaam. We stopped here for some lunch with some missionary friends of the Caraways. Less than two minutes on the road (a dirt drive that leads back to the main highway) we lost a tire. Mike and I changed it. I got dirty in the African sun, and it felt like I had arrived. We drove the rest of the way to Mbeya without a spare tire, and much of that leg was at night. Driving at night, as you might guess, is not a favorable option. Mike reinforced this point of few. In Tanzania, you needn’t worry about bandits harming you to take your stuff. “They’ll steal your stuff,” Mike said, “But they won’t hurt you.” The same cannot be said for Kenya where, as I understand it, the punishment for robbery is the same as the punishment for murder. There’s little incentive there to leave people alive after you’ve robbed them.

Still, we made it to Mbeya where we’re eating and resting well and staying safe. This morning we had pancakes and this afternoon I got a haircut (from an Indian barber – he did a good job, Mom) for 4,000 shillings, or $4. So for now, the culture shock has been minimal. Pancakes help that, along with fatigue. Tomorrow we’ll spend another day here and depart on Sunday for Mumba, which is another 6-8 hours beyond here, depending on road conditions.

Thanks for your prayers. Pictures tomorrow. Maybe.

jim