Sports day

I'm not sure anyone knew it was the Olympics here, but you would have thought it was the Olympics by the excitement in our house this morning. It was sports day today, a very serious competitive event fiercely fought between four different coloured groups. Our family are all in green. "We are mean, we are keen, we're the big green sports machine"!!! This turned out to be true and we had a jubilant bunch of greens on the bus home and a small yellow in tears. Yellows won last year so I don't feel too sorry for them. Caleb's class wasn't actually participating, but his teacher let me steal him to watch the big ones. He felt a bit left out having no races to run so joined the age 5 and 6 egg and spoon race. He got second place!! He says he didn't cheat, but I am not actually sure he understood the rules.

Other events this week:

The little girl who injured her head last week was flown home yesterday. Next week, subject to funds, work will start on the balconies.

One of the MAF Staff shot a buffalo and delivered 10kg to me. It's now in the freezer awaiting our next set of visitors.

3 year old Ruben next door had malaria, but has now recovered.


Daniel is the Acting Programme Manager this week whilst the PM is away.

Daniel continues to talk to the TRA about tax issues. One day it will be resolved.

A busy week

Monday- A 4 year old girl who lives opposite us in the flats, fell head first off the first floor platform onto a rock, that's about a 15 feet fall. It's all about who you know here. I was able to ring Daniel and have a plane standing by to medevac her to a hospital where they could treat her injury. She had fractured her skull, but she was operated on that night and is now doing well. Praise God that he guided all our decisions and MAF was able to help save the life of a local child. Consequently we are now very popular with our neighbours. My new project is to build safety rails on all the flats and also 3 new toilets. The toilets aren't related to the fall, I just thought they needed more than one falling down toilet for 3 blocks of flats. I'm the visionary in these situation, so it's now up to the provisionary (Daniel) to come up with the necessary finance.

Tues- We had a flying visit from someone in our church in South Oxhey. She works with Word for the World and was doing some work in Morogoro, about 3 hours from here. She came for the afternoon and one night. It must have been the shortest visit we have had so far and the quickest tour of Dodoma ever.

Wed- I had my ladies meeting in the morning and in the afternoon there was an afternoon in compound A at some one's house playing in the paddling pool. Well actually mostly playing out of it with the mud, but it was great fun. The pool is still closed, so these desperate times call for creative options.

Thurs- was meeting day. We had our family review with the program manager, Daniel met with the TRA (Tanzanian revenue authority) about some tax issue, I had a parents meeting at school and then in the evening was the international staff meeting.

Fri- There was a simulated emergency exercise in the hangar. The scenario was that one of planes had crashed and one member of staff had been raped. I decided to stay out of it having spend all Monday afternoon embroiled in a real emergency.

In the afternoon the whole team gathered at the airport to see the return of ZBZ. (our plane that crashed 2 years ago and that has been in maintenance in America) Over the last week it has been making its long journey back from America. It will be great to have the option of 2 caravans to fly.

Some photos, finally!!

This morning there are no earthquakes and the computer has decided to allow me to upload a few photos. One is Bethany playing with her best friend Raisha and the others are of Nane Nane (See previous blog)

Earthquake

There has been no rain in Dodoma since around March and it has now reverted once again to a dust bowl. Every evening I have to wash all the dust off my feet. The grass, or what's left of it, has turned yellow which means the landscape has taken on a dusty hue which is a little bit unearthly. This is contrasted by the strong colours of the beautiful bougainvillea flowers.

With the dust comes the heat and especially this week I have noticed the temperatures getting hotter. Unfortunately this has also coincided with the swimming pool being closed for maintenance. Life is tough!!

School continues to go well. In fact Caleb is so cross on the days he can't go that from next week he will be going everyday.

Still life is busy and I don't seem to be short of things to do. On Friday I drove the wife (Zeraphina) of our day guard to hospital to have her baby. She is now 38 weeks pregnant and because Dodoma General is to be avoided where possible we are paying for her to go to a slightly better hospital called Mvumi where there is a dutch gynecologist. The hospital is about 1 1/4 hours away from Dodoma on a very bumpy dirt track. I drove quite slowly for obvious reasons. The driving was enough I did not want to deliver the baby in the car too. Zeraphina will stay at the hospital with her mother until the baby is delivered. With no transport of their own, the hospital might as well be a million miles away, so it is easier for her to be there in advance. The trip home was OK but could have ended differently as I had a near collision with a bus. Another MAF wife had driven this route a few weeks ago and said she had lost control of her car twice. Listening to this |I made sure I prayed hard before I left. My prayers were surely answered. There was a bus coming very quickly the other way, clearly with no intention of slowing down even though there was not really enough room for two vehicles to pass easily. I had to slow down quickly and almost loss control of the car. My wheels were stuck in about a foot of sand, which is quite like driving in snow. Fortunately I manged to turn the car enough that the bus didn't hit me, but it was quite close.

One thing I am learning here is "Pray at all times (on every occasion in every season) in the spirit, with all (manner of ) prayer and entreaty." Ephesians 4 v 18.

This in a week when:

the price of Avgas and Jet A1 fuel goes up again


When there was a fatal crash of a pilot in Wamena, Papua New Guinea. The pilot was flying with the flying mission AMA and leaves behind his wife and 5 children.

This week our Cessna 208 started it's return journey form America where it has been for maintenance. Yesteday it flew to Iceland and today a flight via the Faro Islands to Denmark. Next week it continues it journey back to Tanzania

PS from Daniel: this post is called earthquake because we were woken at 6.00 this morning by an earthquake (my first). We weren't sure whether it was a quake or a big truck going by (which they do frequently). But the fact that it was vibration without much noise made us suspicious. Everyone on the other compound also felt it, so that has confirmed it. It only lasted a few seconds, but was still pretty exciting (or scary, if you're Libby :) ). Just thought I better add this note for clarification!

Nane Nane

Today is a bank holiday, nane nane, which comes a bit too soon as the children only started back to school on Monday. Joshua and Bethany both have new teachers and seem to be very happy with them and Caleb started Nursery on Monday too.
He seems to love it and in some ways it is not much different from playing at home on the compound because the nursery is full of MAF kids, including Elizabeth and Rueben our 3 year old neighbours on either side. In the morning Caleb plays with them at school and in the afternoon on the compound. I now have 3 free mornings, a complete luxury after almost 7 years of full time child care.

This week there is a big agricultural fair in Dodoma. It only comes here every 3 years so this is the first time we have seen it. Bethany's teacher went on Tuesday and enjoyed it so much decided to organise a class trip on Thursday. I love the way teacher's organise trips here. They basically decide to go and go. They did inform the parents but there was no other hastle involved. Anyway I drove the MAF minibus and we took a few cars. We saw a lion, a leopard, Hyenas, snakes and scorpions. All very exciting for small children and for the Tanzanians many of whom do not have the luxury of going on safari like we do.

Also this week I went to visit the street boys project in town. I just like to check up on these things when I can. All the food was already cooked and I helped serve it all out. They seemed to have a good system and ticked off the names of all the boys as they arrived. It is very nice to see the project working so well and the money being used properly.

(We are having problems loading photos, but will keep trying)

Back in the 'hood

Long time no blog! Thanks to those of the faithful who have been regularly checking our blog over the last month, and apologies for the delay in posting. We decided when we got back that we would save our limited inspiration for the writing of our next newsletter – so that all who read our blog would actually have something new to read when they get the snail mail. So I’ll try not to repeat anything here that we put in the newsletter (which is now winging it’s way to the UK using MAF’s ‘Big File Sender’. For some reason, even when zipped our newsletter is still 15MB, so e-mail is a no-no (2MB max). For those for whom the information is interesting (and actually means something) the file is uploading at 4.42kb/sec. ??

So we’ve been back about two weeks now. I have caught up with my June management accounts, have had an extended management meeting, have started thinking about the financial plans for next year and have a tax audit starting on Monday. Just for starters. I think they are probably trying to fish into the affairs of our International Staff again, but they will get short shrift from me – as the issue is still awaiting adjudication from the Commissioner of Taxes in Dar. You could pray that the whole thing goes well and that they won’t uncover any huge unknown tax liabilities. Firstly because we can’t afford, it and secondly because I don’t like being found doing something wrong – because tax people always seem to assume the worst motive.

Sorry, that was probably interesting to a minority, so I’ll start on the stuff you’re probably really tuning in for.

We had a good (though fairly rushed) time in the UK, with three Open Days in various places, plus trips to Bournemouth (to see The Wiggles – oh, and Libby’s sister); Sheffield, Leintwardine; Ashford (MAF International HQ), and Folkestone (MAF UK HQ). In two and a half weeks.

So it was fairly nice to get to Switzerland and stay in the same place for 7 days straight. We had 4 good days trips, some nice ‘stay at home’ days, and mostly good weather. One of our day trips was to ‘Happyland New’ a small ‘theme park’ place – where we went on just about every ride (and came away feeling fairly sick!) Unfortunately, we forgot to take our camera to that one, so it’s only going to be in our memories (and nothing here). It was really good to see Ben & Lucia and Kalia – who we hadn’t seen for at least two years, and to meet Rebecca – who we’d never met. Almost made us want another one *smile*

Here are a few piccies (internet willing)

[internet was not willing - will try again later with pictures]

Life back here is still a struggle for Libby. This week things intensified a little on the compound, as one of the mothers has expressed her view that she doesn’t like the children to play with toy guns, swords, boys and arrows, or even sticks. When the children all play in a communal area, this leaves us in a bit of a quandary. As devotees of Wild at Heart’ (at least me) we are fairly convinced that this kind of play is central to boy upbringing. So what to do? Still working on that one.

The children had a kids club this week, run by part of a team who are out from the UK for two weeks. They all went (for 4 of the 5 days) – even Caleb who wasn’t strictly old enough. Libby even left him for two hours on one day. Everything went well with that, which bodes well for his start at nursery next week.