Christmas time

We had a nice Christmas week. In many ways it sums up quite nicely the duality of our life here.

On the Sunday night before Christmas, I got a call to say that one of the street boys we support was seriously ill. He had been ill for a couple of weeks but had deteriorated rapidly. He was taken to the hospital in the evening and I went to visit him in the morning with my dad who was visiting. He survived the night and was being treated for typhoid and malaria and some other infection. In many ways I felt powerless to help him and in other ways all powerful. Dad and I were able to pray for him and I was able to pay for the taxi to take him to hospital, £5 a night for a very nice clean bed and all the drugs he needed. The hospital was quite empty, which wasn’t suprising because by Tanzanian standards it is very expensive. £5 is what some people earn in a whole month. Anyway he is now getting better and has been discharged from hospital.

He has gone to live in Sarah’s house for now until I decide what to do. His living conditions are quite appalling. He lives in a collection of shacks with a few other families. It would be a horrible place to live if you were a cow, never mind a person. They have no beds and just lie on a piece of cloth to sleep. Some of the other boys I support live here too, but they are also sick, so I’m wondering whether they have Typhoid too? On the other hand their housing is quite normal for lots of Tanzanian families. I’m wondering whether to built yet another room on Sarah’s house and fill it with bunkbeds as a kind of dormitory for the boys we support. It wouldn’t be much, but it would clean and they would have a proper bed to sleep on.

We spent two nights at the end of the week in a luxury resort in Bagamoyo on the Indian ocean. We spent Friday at the Paradise holiday resort swimming and relaxing by the pool, drinking sodas, playing pool and soaking up the sun and being served by waiters in Arabic waistcoats and hats.

How can two such diverse worlds exist. How can I be part of both worlds. How can I enjoy such luxury when I know how the other half lives. I feel like I have a right or a need to ‘get away from it all’ and relax and forget, but what about their rights, to health and education and enough food etc..?

We drove back to Dodoma on Sunday. All was going well until two hours out of Dodoma we started to smell burning rubber. For a while we thought it must be someone else, but when we realised there was no one else on the road for miles - and we heard something snap - we decided we should probably stop. Fortunately it turned out to be the belt for the air conditioning and not the fan belt, so we were able to get back home with no problem. Breaking down here is much more of a problem when there is no AA to rescue you!!!

Guest blog #3 Wendy

It’s funny how seeing photos of a place and hearing stories about life there, doesn’t necessarily conjure up an accurate idea of what life is really like. I thought I had a good picture of where Libby and family lived and what life was like in Dodoma until I got here! Not just the idea of what the kids’ school would be like and how far it was from the house, but also in ways that Dodoma is so different from any place I have ever been to. I have been to cities where the very poor and the rich exist side by side, not somewhere where any evidence of wealth is nearly non-existent.

My first impressions were wrong too. I had a lovely lunch and went to the pool with the sun beating down on me and I thought ‘who says it is difficult to live here?!!’ Since then however, I have seen houses that are more basic than any house I have ever seen with absolutely no electricity, no cooker- without things that I thought were basic necessities.

Along with such poverty come the constant dilemmas about what to do when you see such needs all around- who to help, what to get involved with. All of this requires a strength and wisdom that only God can provide. In our own environments we can know what to do, drawing on past experiences and lessons learnt as we grew up, but for Libby and Daniel, apart from asking people who have lived here longer and learnt more, they have to so depend on God whose knowledge surpasses all cultures.

I’ll enjoy the mangoes, safari, getting to see a new culture but I am also appreciating more than ever before the sacrifices my big sis and family have made by coming here. There is also a sense of purpose in them that I didn’t witness while they were in England. Africa is definitely good for them!!

Ramblings (Libby)

As I write this it has gone very dark. The rain which started a few weeks ago only lasted two days and it has been hot ever since. This afternoon however with the glowering rain clouds it looks like the rain might have finally come again. Caleb has fallen asleep on the sofa and the other two are up a tree somewhere or trying to light fire like the Masai!! Daniel has gone to a friends wedding where ‘children are loved, but not allowed’ and will probably go on for ever. There is always a start time for weddings. But generally the wedding actually starts hours later, so it’s very difficult to know what time to arrive.

Daniel and I actually had lunch out together today, thanks to our lovely neighbour's who offered to babysit. Second time this year, it must be a record! The children went to the Wende resort down the road and had chipsi mayai (egg and chips)and ice cream, we had steak and chips. Steak is very cheap here in case you think we are living it up.

Things plod on here as normal. There is still no sign of Christmas, although we have put up our own Christmas tree. I must admit I do miss that Christmassy feel you get when it’s dark and cold and you see all the Christmas trees and Christmas lights. However it is nice not to bother much about Christmas shopping apart from the odd Internet purchase. We don’t even have to worry about buying loads of food in because there isn’t loads of Christmas food to buy.

In fact I much prefer living here in many ways and am not sure whether I would want to return to the commercialism/consumerism/materialism of the west.

At the beginning of the week the compound looked like a world war two bomb site with huge craters. However we have now sacked the first tree cutting team and the MAF facilities team moved in and within the week two craters were filled in and two other trees chopped down. It’s quite hard work here without chain saws and proper equipment, especially in one of the hottest weeks of the year.

I got stopped by the police again this week when I was driving the MAF minibus. As usual I was sweating a bit and braced myself for a battle and made sure I only spoke in English. However all they wanted was to say hello and then waved me on?????

We are once again in the middle of a another TV drama, Prison Break. With no other TV and nowhere to go, DVD watching has to be one of the main forms of entertainment for the ex-pat community here. Yes Prison Break is a bit far fetched, but if you like 24 type things you’ll probably enjoy it as much as me. I hear 24 season 6 is on it’s way to us, although we might need a break before we start that one. Just in case you think I am a square eyes ( I am), I also just finished (well actually I only started it yesterday) ‘ A thousand Splendid Suns, by the author of the ‘Kite Runner’, Khaled Hosseini, highly recommended. See I can be literary and watch rubbish and I enjoy both.

Enough rambling, ‘Prison Break’ awaits…..