October 31 Friday

Dear Journal,

Today I awoke at 4:30 a.m. Because Mr. F, Joy, Dad, and I were supposed to take a bus to Kibidula. Since Memere only has a five seater truck and twelve of us were going we decided

to take public transit. Well we hiked up to the bus stop in the dark and stood waiting on the road freezing for an hour. Just proves that one can never rely on African buses! Finally, we started walking back to where Memere n the back. I sat on mom’s lap two of the five hours. I tried something new and interesting today. Pepere bought and cut us some sugar cane! You don’t just plain eat it, you take a small chunk, bite into it, chew, then spit it out. So basically you are

just sucking out that wonderfully tasty sugar juice. The texture is like wood so you can’t swallow it anyways. So that was a yummy new, experience. When we finally arrived here at Kibidula we ate a wonderful meal of spaghetti, garlic bread, and FRESH salad! My family and I are staying at Kibidulas’ guest house. I get to stay in a little room all by myself! I haven’t had that pleasure for a long time! The missionaries here try to grow fruit trees but their ripe nectarines are the size of a small bouncy ball! It is amazing what water, good thinning, and juts enough pruning will do! Oh, I am so glad to be here! Real toilets, real showers, and a room by myself! They’re spoiling us! Well I’d better stop.

Brook

October 28

Dear Journal,

Today after taking pictures of everything from the choo to washing clothes I went down and tried to help clear more of the land in front of the church for Memere. Soon, two little girls that had adopted mom yesterday came over and started helping me put burnable junk into bags and carry it over to the burn pile, they are so adorable! Later two of the bible worker’s youngest kids came and helped as well. They are very hard workers. Pretty soon I started

asking them how to say things in Swahili and after a while they began teaching me tons of words! They’re five year olds! During lunch it began raining and pouring! Everybody rushed inside including the two little girls Mati and Mage. They played and played with us. Their

mom and dad just work out in the field and leave Mati (five) at home to take care of Mage (three), so they’ve started coming here. I was holding Mage and playing with Mati when Joy

warned me that I’d better not become too attached because I can’t take them home. I love them. It’s because of them that I’m here.

Brook

October 29 Wednesday

Dear Journal,

This morning at about ten-o-clock Memere took us to her house so we could sort clothes for the orphans Memere helps take care of. We probably sorted about eight one hundred pound bales of children’s clothes. After a while some of us walked down to the duka (wal-mart) to buy some baking powder for the cooks. When we started back we had a crowd of African children following us yelling, trying to say something in English. We ate chili for lunch day! Yum, yum! I haven’t had that for a long time! On the way home we passed lots of people in brightly colored clothes on carrying large pots on their heads. We asked Memere’s bible worker Barasa what they were doing. He said that they were heading home from a funeral. We asked why they had big bowls on their heads if they were heading home from a funeral. He said that after the funeral people bring food, just like a potluck like we have in America!

The bathrooms here look very different from at home. We call them squattie potties. They are just holes in the ground.

I have found that the people here look so much smaller tan their age. I ask some of the kids their ages and they’ll be thirteen and a foot and a half shorter than me. I tell them my age and they look at me like I’m a giant and murmur in Swahili "she’s tall" or "she’s big"! LOL

The rains here are cold rains, not like the rains in the tropics. They’re like the ones at home except for the fact that it REALLY pours. I’ve never seen it rain so much at one time. One good thing about the rain is it settles the dust a lot better. You’re not always choking on ti.

Showering here is quite interesting. We have camping tent showers but we usually wash our hair in the faucet down at Memere’s spring, then scrub ourselves in the shower.

Brook

     Laundry takes a lot of energy and time around here. This morning our whole family scrubbed our cloths down at the spring. Memere buys long orange strips of over half a dozen bars of soap. We also have a bunch of scrub brushes and tubs too.

I mostly did the job of beating out the main dirt. We put the cloths in a bucket and filled it up with water. Then Dad and I traded off rolling up our pants and stomping in the water to agitate the cloths. It works kind of like a washing machine that we have at home. The water turned brown pretty quickly. Then we would grab the brushes and soap and start scrubbing. Once we thought the cloths looked OK we throw it in the first rinse bucket, someone would dip it a few times and then we would rinse it in even cleaner water. Beth and ‘Stina like to operate the ringer. They put the cloths in one end and turn the handle until the cloths comes out. Dad’s thick jeans take a couple times through before we’ve squeezed all the water out. Then Mom hangs the cloths on the line to dry.

Debo, Metu, and Hannah came down together holding a broken tub over their heads they sang as they walked something about Jesus and the children. Hannah comes from an English speaking family but since they have lived there for almost a year she speaks a lot of Swahili, and her little friends Metu and Debo have learned more English so they sang the song partly in Swahili and partly in English. They giggled as they sang and we all laughed to see six little legs walking down to us under the bucket. Then they all decided to help us do our laundry. They all grabbed a sock and started lathering it in soap. Then they ask us for our brushes. Pretty soon Mati and Maga came down. So we had five tiny kids helping with the laundry. They did actually make the socks much whiter than we would have.

 It took awhile, but we finally had everything hanging on the line. Each family has to do laundry so we take turns, but the work: leveling the ground moving sand and building doesn’t stop. It’s like walking into another world when we take a break to see what the others have done.

Now we have to watch out! The clouds that build up all morning let loose in around lunch time. When someone reports the first drop of rain we’ve all learn to drop our meal and run down the bank for the cloths line. We retrieve all our cloths even if they haven’t finished drying. By the time we reach the door a less than a couple minuets later the down pour has started. We finish eating inside and hope for the rain to stop soon so we can work some more.

Oct. 27

Dear Journal,

Today Memere came and picked us up at 6:30 a.m. to transfer at least one thousand bricks onto a huge truck to our building site. So all fifteen of us early risers crowded into Memere’s little Mitsubishi and headed off. After loading and loading for two and a half hours we started toward home standing in the lori on top of the bricks.

This afternoon we started Vacation Bible School in a school at Lupalilo. The schools here are so different than at home. The classrooms look dark and dingy and dirty. I think it went really well but afterward one of the teachers kept the late kids and caned them over the back with a bamboo stick, but most of the teachers arrived late as well. Along with the headmaster trying to change all the dates and times for VBS Memere just said, "We’re not coming back", so I guess we may just do VBS here in Mago . This evening as Kenzie wrote in her journal she started complaining of head and stomach aches. We hoped it wasn’t malaria and a test proved that she didn’t, but her fever is still 101.5. We don’t know what she has. I better head to sleep it’s been a long day.

Brook

Today we tried to have a VBS program in the Lupalilo government school. Mrs. Kahler and Mrs. Teresa T. had arranged with the headmaster to have a class for an hour and a half for ten days. Although the class room looked small and time short, we loaded the truck this afternoon and drove to Lupalilo (about a 20 min. drive). Kids wandered around the building aimlessly, but they all crowded around us excitedly and cheered when we appeared. We found no teachers around, no classes, just kids, kids, and more kids with nothing to do. We waited and waited for the teachers to arrive. Barasa our translator sang with the kids outside for awhile. Memere explained that the children do not want to come to school because they have no reason to when the teachers may or may not show up. Finally a few teachers came and we asked about the details we needed to start class. We ushered in the kids in the first few grades and they scrambled through the doorway eagerly and shoved to find a seat on the long narrow benches that lined the room. The dirty little classroom seemed stuffy especially with all those little bodies crowded inside. I  willingly took the job of watching the generator outside while they told the Bible story. I just had to make sure that no little fingers played with the cords. A tiny little girl teetered up the steps towards me chattering away, but I couldn’t understand. Just as I glanced up I heard a loud whack! A small boy put a hand over his back and ran with pain as the school teachers roded his buddy and then sent them both around the building. I didn’t know what to think. It appeared that the boys had not done what they should have, but the punishment seemed so severe. I turned back to the little girl standing beside me who played with a small strip of cloth. A few minuets passed. A few kids walked in late and I saw the painful expressions on their faces as the stick lashed them on their backs. They didn’t cry, but held their backs as they hurried on orders around the corner. This repeated over and over again. None of the teachers showed any sympathy. They sat undisturbed on the steps a few yards from me. As far as I could see they gave little more supervision then the strapping. My turn came to teach the kids inside our little classroom. We turned off the generator and pulled it inside. I set up my few props on the table and began to tell how amazing God has made their bodies and a little bit on how they can take care of their bodies. The kids all enjoyed taking their finger prints with the ink pads we brought. I had prepared for a longer time to teach, but I realized as I stood beore them that that wouldn’t understand more than the simplest concepts. Time seemed short to. I skipped a lot of what I had planned to say, but that’s ok.

After finishing up the program we had to pack up and wait for Memere to pick us up. Most of the group decided to walk back. We had the generator and a box of supplies so we couldn’t carry it or leave it behind. Mom Mrs. Teresa T. and I chose to wait until we could have a ride. While we waited on the front steps to the classroom the headmaster came and told us she wanted a signature. Mrs. T. volunteered she followed the big lady around the corner. As mom and I sat there I told her about what I had seen. She seemed just as surprised as I felt. Mrs. T. came back several minutes later chuckling to her self because the headmaster did not like her signature, and Mrs. T. couldn’t make one that would suit her.

Under the watchful eye of the teachers some of the children swirled the dust of the little path way around (sweeping with a tree branch). We felt tired and the loud noise of all the children and the dust combined made us look for somewhere better to wait. I knew Memere’s house stood not far from the school so I walked to the other side to see if I could remember where it was. I recognized the place at once. I ran and told Mrs. T. and Mom that we wouldn’t have to walk far, so we picked up the boxes and headed up the trail. While taking a brake from carrying our heavy load two small children standing alone looked at us with sad eyes. Mrs. T said to me, “I just don’t understand.”

JOY

October 26

Dear Journal,

Yesterday, we had Sabbath school and church till noon. After sabbath school and church we sculpted things out of play clay and then guessed what the other person had made. Some of them turned out quite funny. Sam made a rolled up

armadillo, it took a LONG time to guess that one. After lunch we started up the hill and towards the actual village of Mago. I took lots of pictures and showed some of the kids their pictures on the camera. They always think the cameras are so amazing. On the way up on the walk one of the bible workers nephews asked about what it looks like in America compared to here. We tried to explain what snow looks and feels like but I don’t think he really understood. I can’t imagine not knowing what snow looks like. Nowhere in Tanzania does it snow except for Mt. Kilimanjaro. I guess that is ok because otherwise many people would die from lack o f heat in their little brick and thatch houses. Today we shoveled tons of gravel into 5 gallon buckets, then had them hauled to a different building site. I’m really sore. I’ll write later.

Brook

Three special little girls joined our group a few days when Mrs. Kristen T. and Brook did their laundry down at the spring. Mati and Maga wandered down and sat on the bank watching and helping to scrub the socks. When they finished Maga fell asleep in Mrs. Tall’s arms. At lunch time, we gave both the girls a bowl of rice and beans. Brook has really taken these little ones in. She holds them, talks to them and plays with them. Soon Yuli joined them, and these three and five year olds come in the every morning and leave in the evening. Our group has adopted them, and they always come ready to wash socks, play in the dirt or just sit and watch us. One thing we’ve noticed about  little Yuli-she never smiles, and she weighs next to nothing. To come this close to these children is a very special experience.

The last few days I’ve played with a bunch of little kids. Our little friends Metu and Deborah the bible-workers youngest kids, Mati, and Maga, and a dozen others run around catching bubbles that I blow. I don’t think they have seen bubbles like this before and they seemed pretty excited. I have them sit in a circle and play “Duck, duck goose”(Mbwa, Mbwa, Tembo*) or I line them up and try to have them play follow the leader. They love it, but they don’t understand the part about staying in line. Between games we sing the only song I know in Swahili “I’m In Right, Out Right.” They all like the song, so it doesn’t matter how many times we sing it-their happy! I also try to sing “Zachias was a Wee Little Man” but I only can sing a few words of it. It usually ends up to be a Debora solo because the other little kids don’t know that song so well.

I really like playing with them. It gives me a chance to practice my Swahili. They don’t seem to mind if my jabbering even though it might not make much sense. After a bunch of games, I ask them the names of different items around the yard and a bunch of them will say it. I try and pronounce the word just like them, but I can tell from their giggles and them trying over and over to emphasize the word that I haven’t said it right yet.

I had quite a few of the kids playing one day for several hours. I kept having to run in and drink some water. The kids would all stand at the door because we had a rule that they had to stay out unless especially invited. They asked me for water several times but I couldn’t let them use all our cups and water the boys had hulled, so I had them all line up. Then we proceeded down the hill to the spring. When we arrived I realized I had a problem: they all couldn’t drink at once, but they all started to make a dash for the tap. I tried to hold them back. Then I asked someone doing laundry down there to help them take turns. I sat down and sang songs and learned new words with the kids and one at a time I let them run down to the tap and drink. When they all had their fill I brought them back up and told them a story with pictures from our book. I felt exhausted when I finished the story so I sent them home.

You can see how much fun I have with these kids. They’re like any other little kids anywhere in the world: cute, sometimes dirty, playful, but they can be naughty and mischievous too.

*We don’t know the names of ducks and geese in Swahili, so we changed it to “dog, dog, elephant”.

October 24^th

Today I woke up late at 7o clock!!! I had to hurry to dress, pull my hair back, and make my bed. Yes, we have to make our beds even in Africa! Pepere preached for worship it turned out very good. After worship and breakfast we started to work. There was a large pile of sand on the back so we started shoveling it into five gallon buckets, then all the dads and boys would put them in the truck, haul it up to the building site, and dump it. We moved 10 tons of dirt and it worked out great for efficiency and it ended up SUPER fun. We ate lunch, then started hauling down small pine trees from a forest, down the road and putting them in a pile. It’s kind of scary hearing that the boys are using machetes to cut down trees but I guess it’s a learning experience for them.

Tears stung my eyes. I know little things like this shouldn’t bother me at least not in the mission field, but there I stood in the little shower tent shivering as I waited for someone to walk by who could bring me a bucket of water. I had drained the little shower bag and I still needed a little bit more water. The evenings here become very cool sometimes, and with water still dripping off me I felt very cold. On top off that, some of my cloths had fallen on the wet floor. Even then, I had to admit that my predicament really was small, but sometimes the small things in our moment of exhaustion seem the hardest. A couple nights ago one of the other kids in our group found his bed full of cement that had fallen out from between the bricks. Tired from the long day of work he said, “I don’t know if I can handle two months of this”.

We all have had different trials. Some of us sleep soundly, but a few have trouble sleeping through the constant snoring and shuffling of people heading to the choo.

Preparing food for such a big gang with such limited resources has its challenges for the moms. Although Miriam faithfully cooks the main courses they still have a big job! Sometimes they have to set out supper’s loaf of bread when we don’t have enough food for breakfast.We all brought granola, but we have to ration it so it will last the trip. The rules of the kitchen consist of this:

1.      Eat Ugy (a soupy sweet almost tasteless porridge from maze flour) if you want granola

2.      Eat everything you take

3.      Eat enough for breakfast to hold you till lunch

4.      Take only one (sometimes two) slices of Bread

Sometimes swallowing the ugy takes pure will power even for adults. We do enjoy the little bananas and a few other fruits though. Beans and rice don’t taste quite as good as they did the first meal after a week of that as our main menu, but with chili sauce or avocado I still like it!

We live like kings and queens here no matter what petty little problem we have. We can hardly complain when we see the children in the same dirty ragged cloths everyday. They eat ugaly or ugy three meals a day in tiny little brick houses with dirt floors. We have come to help these children, so we will keep smiling everyday!~JOY~

October 23^rd

Dear Journal,

Today we started with worship, then had breakfast. The cook(Miriam) made something Memere calls fat cakes. They are deep fried dough balls kind of like doughnuts without the sugar. They aren’t very good for you but I like them.

At about 1:30 Memere, Pepere(her husband), Uncle Jason’s family, the African workers or fundis, Arianne(a 15year old missionary girl), drove up, just in time for lunch. After lunch the adults decided to take the rest of the day off. All of us kids started playing frisbee on the field. It felt good to run and play. Arianne, Joy, and I rode with Memere back to Lupalilo where she lives to do some things. While we were gone it poured really hard, so when we arrived back it felt FREEZING cold!!! We still had to wash our hair and feet in the spring, in cold water. BRRR.

For dinner we had,Yum!, popcorn and water melon. Oh, by the way Uncle Jason wired the church so we now have lights when the generator is on.

Well that’s about it.

Brook

I have kind of lost track of all time. The days fly by and I can hardly remember the day much less the date. Our days our full and busy we enjoy the evening when we have taken showers and eaten supper. Mrs. Kahler reads to us and we sit around the big room on our beds. My uncle put lights up in the chapel so after dark we can still see with the generator on. We also really enjoyed having My Uncle and Aunty and all my cousins come up for a week. They brought a friend of mine from Kibidula and a load of “fundis” (workers) who worked with us for several weeks. I guess we looked a little dirty because they commented that we had changed a little since we left Kibidula. Working in the dust and grime of Mago made us all look alike in at least one way-dirty! Everyday we sweep the floor a couple times and always we end up with a large pile of dirt. The girls and I had a nice time with Ariane. She worked hard with us, and she could almost beat the boys at some of the jobs. She helped us all with our Swahili and translated when we ran out of words (didn’t take long for most of us). When the kids crowded around she would help me play games with them. I told the kids a story from a picture book with Ariane translating. We told the story about “Little Lad and the Loaves and Fishes”. After all our work has finished a few of the girls run down with me to the spring and we wash our hair. At first we had trouble with having an audience all the time, but after awhile, I guess the African kids decided that watching the “Masungus” wash their hair didn’t seem so exciting. None of us felt disappointed with a having no eyes staring at you while you scrub your head in that cold water. I had fun with my little cousins too. Emy would sit on my lap and peer into my mouth and ask me why I had those things on my teeth. I would try to explain why I had braces. She liked to role on my bed with me and loved to laugh so much fun! Uncle Jason started the men and fundies on building the orphan home. The walls have grown fast, but of course, to keep the fundies working we had to bring in the supplies. Memere runs from the moment she awakes till she plops in bed trying keep up with supplying our working men. She hardly even eats. Everyone has learned that on any errand that you take with Memere you must bring yourself a banana because you may miss the next meal. On the excursions to pick up bricks or wood we might drive an hour on the rutted roads to someone’s yard and load up the back of the pick up and drive the long road back. Everyone in the villages knows my Memere, who they call “Mama Janet”. So at any point along the way we might have to stop and chat with a person for 10 to maybe 20 minuets. Yes, the trips do seem long sometimes, but we all enjoy a break from the digging, hoeing, laundering and cooking sometimes. 25 of us pilling into the back of the pickup at 6:30 in the morning made us feel very adventurous. No, this didn’t happen every morning, but we needed a early load of bricks and everyone except a few ladies wanted to take part. Most of us didn’t realize that we COULD squish that many people in a pickup even if we didn’t have seatbelts on. We couldn’t say we felt comfortable, but we COULD have fit in a few more African style. They always have more room and even if you have to sit on someone’s lap you’ll squish in. Every bump someone moaned, and we hung on to each other fearing we would fly out at one of the bumps. Driving over here really is an experience! When we arrived at our first stop we had to sit around and wait for the big stratle truck to come on African time. Oh, the definition for African time comes to this: “a little while after….or sometimes a long time after…” Well, it didn’t take him to long just maybe 20 or 30 minuets late. We formed a chain and tossed the bricks up to the people who stacked them in the truck. It didn’t take us long to load those bricks. Someone had set them out in a neat stack we didn’t have to sort through bad brick to find the ones we wanted. Memere informed us all that we had a couple more stops to make. We all hopped in the big truck. And did the scariest off road driving I have heard of. Most of the time you would drive a Rover or something, we rode in a stratle truck. The stack of bricks was set up on a little hill so we turned, bumped over a ditch and backed toward the bricks. Sometimes it felt like we would tip over. The next pile took us a little longer. The bricks had mud over them and had three fireplaces underneath. The people make their own bricks in these oven like piles. We didn’t know what to do at first. “Chip away the mud?” “Are all the bricks good?” Word soon passed around and with a lot of inspecting by Memere we learned how to tell if we had a good brick or a bad, uncooked one. Most of the bad ones had black burned spots on them. This stack of bricks had a lot of uncooked ones. We had another chain passing the useable bricks from one person to the next. The rest of us just sorted setting bad bricks aside and passing good ones to the chain. We counted as we worked. The stratle truck would carry 1000 bricks this morning, so we had one more stop after this one. The next pile seemed similar to the one before: more sorting more passing, stacking, counting… Then we hurried home for breakfast. ~JOY~

Rice and beans tasted really good last night! Everyone, even the normally more picky ones, raved about the food. I guess when you haven’t really eaten except for a few snacks since breakfast you like anything. On this trip we haven’t eaten very much: mostly peanut butter and bread and granola bars. When we had the dishes cleared away and taken to the kitchen we loaded the trucks with mattresses and stood in the back of the truck holding on to the mattresses. As we drove back to the chapel (we ate supper in Lupilalo at Memere’s house) we noticed the mattresses on Memere’s truck, ahead of us, shifting. Then one started to slide from under the rope that tied it down. We shouted and Ben beeped the horn, but Memre plowed on. Finally after a few mattresses had fallen off, Memere noticed the commotion. Mat and Sam jumped out of the pickup bed and hoisted them on the roof of our truck. I climbed out too, and we walked back scanning with our headlights the sides of the road to make sure we hadn’t lost any others. We didn’t find any more so we hopped back in the truck. A few minuets later we arrived at the chapel. Our luggage lay strewn all over the floor. We only had our flashlights to help us rummage through everything to find our pajamas and sheets to cover our mattresses which we laid along the walls. We pushed all the boxes and suitcases to the middle, but exhausted from our long day we left the rest of the work for the morning.

Everyone hustled about. The organizing had just begun as I crawled out of bed. The ladies dumped craft supplies in some bags and food in the totes. They wrote the different contents on the lids, and put them in the foyer which we would use as the kitchen. I helped salvage granola from a busted bag in a suitcase. Every morsel of food counted on this trip. I found a bunch of bananas, peanut butter and bread. I mixed up some milk and started serving granola in the bowls Memere had brought. As the adults hustled to put some order in our mess the kids ate breakfast. By worship time everything looked better. We eagerly set out to work. We dug a compost pit and carried planks of wood and moved a pile of bricks. We have to do everything by hand. With no tractors, one vehicles and very limited tools we walk back and forth with our arms loaded working like the people do here! Now we have started working on leveling the field in front of the chapel. That will take awhile.

Still ~JOY~

This morning Memere took us on a tour of her property. She has pine trees, a spring, a stream, and even a waterfall! It’s really pretty here. After the tour we took our clothes down to the two faucets at the spring and began the long process of washing clothes by hand, wringing them out, then hanging them up to dry in the sun. After lunch I went down to help Joy level dirt and some African kids came by and started teaching me some words in Swahili. They are so willing to teach me, it’s amazing.

Later, as Joy headed up to do something she stepped into what we thought was a dead fire. Well, it actually turned out to be live coals and she burned the top of her foot pretty bad. Her mom put some aloe on it and she sat and journaled for a while. Soon, more kids had come so we decided to put them to work. We needed dirt leveled so the kids and some of us got in a line and walked sideways back and forth stomping it out. Some of the kids even sang in Swahili as we did it. After we had stopped working Bri and 'Stina played the violin and flute for them and they loved it. Then, Joy and I tried reading them a bible story in Swahili but since we don’t know much it turned out kind of hard. I’ll write more later.

Brook

The eight hour trip from Dar to my uncle’s place at Kibidula took thirteen hours for our large group of almost 30 people. The little bus chugged along at a slow pace, and the back had little or no shocks at all. Every speed bump on the road made us fly out of our seats. We had relief riding in the more comfortable truck. I noticed fields with large plants called sisal that looked like pineapple plants. The natives in the area use them to make burlap for crafts and rope. We saw Zebras, Giraffes, impala, water buffalo, and baboons when we passed through the game park. We stopped to eat at a truck stop. It really felt like Africa! The butcher’s table sat right beside the stove where they cooked our food. I almost stepped on a chicken’s comb lying on the ground. I ordered ugaly and beans. Ugaly, the main dish the African’s eat, is made out of maze, a white tasteless corn. I really liked it the first time I came. This time I didn’t enjoy it so much, but I didn’t mind it. We continued our travels, and finally we drew near to Kibidula. Some of the surrounding trees look like ours at home: Eucalyptus, and even pine trees, but I really like the African looking acacia trees with broad flat tops.

            Hungry and tired we arrived at Kibidula. Just walking into a real home relaxed all of us. As I had stayed with my aunt and uncle a couple years before I enjoyed visiting there again. Aunty Annie had arranged for each family to eat a scrumptious dinner at the staff homes. We had spaghetti at their house with the Kahlers. After eating little more then peanut butter and jam, granola bars and airplane food for almost a week, our mouths watered at the sight of spaghetti. I held my new cousin. All the visitors looked at her and talked to her. We also had fun with Twa and Emy.

Aunty Annie gave everyone a quick tour of Kibidula, before we stared on our way again. Though not completed, the buildings that they had started two years ago had made a lot of progress. I stopped at my friend's house we visited for a few minuets and I introduced a few of my friends to her and her mom. Although we all had traveled enough for a long, long time, we still had a long drive ahead of us so we climbed in our vehicles. I rode in a truck. The other pilot at Kibidula besides my uncle drove us. I learned a little more about the culture here as he told us about the peoples lives and their beliefs. I found it interesting that many of these people do not try to achieve or acquire more then their ancestors. It show a kind of disrespect. So most of these people continue content to never see more then a few miles from their village, how the fields, and just survive. I know that the culture here digs deep and you hear of many sides of their lives. Life there seems so hard, yet simple-a struggle for many just to survive.

October 20- We have all realized through this long trip how far we have come from home!The drive with our little bus puttering on behind us took about 8 hours. Normally Memere can make it in 5 hours, but the little bus could only give a few miles per hour on some of the long hills. I eventually traded mom and I rode in the bus. We had to stop a couple times to fix a leak in the oil or something. Mrs. Kahler handed every one a piece of gum and said we could block it up with that, but our driver didn’t seem to impressed with that idea. We all had lucked out with a piece of gum at the end of the deal. When we stopped a small boy with his father stood by the road. The boy’s nose ran really bad so we gave him a tissue and him and his father a piece of gum. Our mechanical stops only took a short time then we would again start plowing up the road. I tried to ask the bus drivers, “How long to Mago?”, but I guess I needed to work on my Swahili some more. When the man didn’t understand me he would just turn away and ignore me. When we finally started seeing signs for Lupilalo I became very excited! I didn’t recognize anything yet but I assured everyone we should arrive soon. We stopped at the turn off to the property. They loaded all the luggage on the truck and brought it down to the chapel where we would all stay. The kids and a couple adults stayed behind waiting for a ride back to Lupilalo where Miriam would have supper for us. Right then, our relationships started with the African people. A crowd of children had gathered to see all these “Masungus” (white people as they called us.) We wanted to run around a bit after sitting all day. We started playing tag, and then we decided that we should invite our audience to play too. I found it a blessing all the work I had done with Brook studying the Swahili language at home really helped us communicate with these kids. Brook and I tried to explain the game as best we could. They didn’t understand everything, but we had a good time chasing each other. We had our first glimpse of how fast those kids can run in that game. I could hardly catch them. The children giggled shyly, and even our kids could not quite feel comfortable running after them. We could not imagine how a month or two later the relationships we would have with these very same children. Relationships we will always cherish.

~JOY~

We made it to Kibidula on Sunday after about fourteen hours of driving. When we got there they had made us wonderfully tasty spaghetti and yummy garlic bread.

I slept very well that night. We left Kibidula at 11:30 in the morning and arrived here at Mago around 5:30 at night. It’s been a lot of hard days traveling.

This morning I woke up, had worship, then had breakfast which consisted of ouji (a sweet porridge made of maize which not many in our group enjoy), granola, and peanut-butter banana sandwiches. After break fast we started working. First, we hauled bricks up to beside the church where we live to make a platform and walkway for our showers. It was hard work! The bricks are made of made and crumble and break easily. After hauling bricks to the church we hauled them to another place where we’re going to build a orphan home for baby orphans. We hauled a big pile of boards to the same building site. My arms hurt very much at the time and it feels very good to rest them. After hauling bricks and boards we nailed plastic up on the windows so it wouldn’t become so cold and nobody could reach in and steal anything as easily. Finally Memere’s carpentry students put our beds together so we could sleep on a bed not just a mattress. We each have our own bed and place to put our things. A bunch of kids from around here came this afternoon and just stood outside of the church, staring at us. They loved Leila and wanted to hold her but she was scared of them. They also love having their pictures taken on the digital camera and love to see them selves on it. We decided to take the kids down and play with them. We played Duck, duck, goose with them and they loved it. I really had to use all of the words I learned in Swahili and it was a good learning experience for me. Since I didn’t know how to say duck or goose in Swahili we played dog, dog elephant!!! Since the dads have finished working for the day they are playing frisbee with some more kids who just came.

We saw lots of animals at the game park, giraffe, impala, waterbuffalo, and lots of zebra!!! It was SOOO cool!!! I’ll write tomorrow.

Brook

Yesterday, we enjoyed Sabbath on the beach. We felt glad to rest from our travels on such in such a beautiful place. We arrived on the beach Friday evening after landing in Dar es Salaam, clearing customs (which took a long time), and loading the trucks and the little bus that my Uncle had rented just for the trek from Dar to our destination Mago. In the sweltering heat we unloaded the necessary things that we would need at the beach: food, a change of clothes and, yes, a swimsuit. The water sounded better then anything else. Then the guys loaded all the baggage in the bus, and we walked down to our tents set under grass roofs. Right on the white sandy beach they looked over the turquoise sea of foaming waves. Palm tress stood on the beach making the scene complete. I put on my swimsuit, and plunged into the warm ocean water. It felt so good to rinse off the sweat from the intense heat and humidity. We enjoyed the crashing waves for a long time that evening as the stars began to shine. Early the next morning a few swam out body surfing the waves and snorkeling. I waited until afternoon to venture again. An African worker warned us that when the tide was low we could step on sea urchins. We thanked him and warned everyone to watch out for the critters, but that didn’t keep us from the water. A bunch of us put on our masks and snorkels and tried to see some fish. We didn’t see much, so we stood in the water talking about it when dad suddenly screamed with pain, “oh, I got nailed again!’ He quickly retreated to shore but as we turned to leave I felt a sharp burning, stinging sensation on my leg, and Mr. Tall also felt a slight sting too.Coming out of the water I had huge lumps forming on the back of my knee from a jelly fish sting. Memere said it would last only a little while. It became red and swollen with those little lumps. It eventually did heal and I guess I learned that jelly fish really do sting! As for dad he had needles poked deep in his foot from a sea urchin, and he had to have a minor surgery that took a large crew of Mr. Tall, Memere, and the supervision of the rest of us onlookers, comforters, resource persons, and instruction givers to dig out all the brittle spines. It took us until the tide came back in to swim again. ~Joy

October 19^th

Dear Journal,

            This long trip has tired and tested each of us to some degree or another, but the long days, fatigue, air sickness and everything else has made us stronger and helped us to look to God for help. One of these instances came as we whizzed along the streets toward the airport this morning. Mom realized that she had left her ID and all our money in her hotel room. We did not know how we could reclaim it. Would someone steal it? My mind whorled. Mrs. Kahler and I prayed about it and others did too. We asked that it would find honest hands to deliver it safely. God answered our prayers by the time we had arrived at the airport a hotel worker had found it and a taxi driver drove it to us. With only a short wait and a tip for the driver and the girl who found it we received all the missing items safely. We thanked the God together because He has stayed by our side the whole trip! ~JOY~

October 17^th a.m.

Well we’re on our way on the last part of our airplane journey. This flight from Ethiopia to Dar es Salaam is only about two and a half hours long. Yay!! We’re so close!! We stayed in Ethiopia last night and I had about six hours of sleep.(which is a lot at this point) The ride to the hotel was quite interesting, our bus driver drove pretty fast and jerky around corners. In Addis Ababa where we stayed there are no speed limits, stop signs, or stop lights!! The hotel was also quite interesting. In a lot of the rooms there were cock roaches! It was really loud at night, it sounded like a million dogs decided to bark right outside our window.

As we rode on the bus I saw lots of houses, more like dirty, stinky, shanties along the road where some people live. I saw lots of beggars as well, from old grandmothers, to teenagers. Some of the beggars were blind, some had diseases, and some looked just plain poor. Oh, I have to go, I'll write later.

Brook