The Easter hat parade

Daniel is in Dar again this week for 'flying' visit. He flew down at the crack of dawn this morning and will fly back tomorrow morning in time for a full working day. It beats the 7 hours on the bus. Last Friday saw the very big event that was Caleb's Easter hat parade. He had been looking forward to it all week. "is it today mummy, is it in a minute mummy?" he won second price for his creation, although I secretly and completely unbiasedly thought he deserved first price. He told me after he thought the prize was for his singing. Well at least he had a good time!

I have had a hectic day trying to sort out the schedule for 6 Dutch business men. After a few hiccups they flew in from Kenya (only an hour late than I had planned) and now I have shipped them off to Ruaha National park to look at elephants. Tomorrow I have arranged a Tanzanian meal with all the MAF staff and the rest of the week they will visit various MAF projects.

On Friday we have the school Easter production and the farewell for Alan and Davina.

Please pray for my house lady Sarah whose nephews and niece have gone to the police to say she is a bad lady and is beating them. Those of you who have met Sarah will know this is highly unlikely.She will go to speak to the police tomorrow, so please pray that she will have a Godly police man who will be able to see the truth.

A normal week

Daniel was away for the beginning of last week. He got home late on Wednesday night. One Monday Bethany came home with her first wobbly tooth and by tea time it had fallen out. She is very proud to have joined the ranks of the toothless. Tuesday Josh caught a frog that he wanted to take to school. However after looking on the Internet I decided that it would be dead by morning and so we should let it go. At which point it promptly escaped inside the house and then we had to catch it again in order to let it go outside. Wednesday Caleb had an itchy backside, (too much information you might say) but i decided worms or no worms it was time to de-worm. I am not the biggest fan of checking backsides for worms, so I like to take precautionary measures. Thursday we had a staff meeting with one of the executive team from MAF International. It looks like we will be downsizing to fit in to the new world financial situation and the missionaries from the global south. On Friday we had the said important person for lunch to discuss stuff. There are lots of changes afoot here, so lots to talk about.
Friday night there was a power cut and then lots of noise from the electrical box on the side of our house. The power was back on in the morning but shortly after breakfast it went off again. However this time it was only our house. We had no electricity all day and had to wait until late afternoon for Tanesco to come and fix it. This involved a slightly worrying situation with a man with large rubber gloves a ladder and a lot of hissing and crackling. Well the electricity is back on again now, but will probably go off again tomorrow. C'est la vie. (probably the only bit of French I remember!) The upside of the power cut was that we got to go out for lunch. Sunday we had already booked to go to the local pizzeria for mothers day lunch. This has recently opened close to our house and also has a mini golf course and a play ground for kids. It's quite exciting for Dodoma and gives us somewhere else to go. By Sunday afternoon we were all very hot so headed off to the pool to cool down!!!

Rain

This morning the rain is pouring down. It's nearly the end of the rainy season and we have had so little rain, yesterday I thought that maybe that was it until November again. It has been really hot and humid the last few days, so it's lovely to have it a bit cooler.Probably not cold by western standards but as cold as it gets here. Actually it says 29 degrees C on firefox!! People are predicting a bad year because of the lack of rain. It seems the difficult times may be ahead of us wherever we live. See davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com.

Daniel is away this weekend on a men's weekend in Kongwa. It's a farewell for two people who are leaving. Alan the Program Manager and Gero a pilot, both are going to Kenya. This morning they are planning to take a trek into the hills in Kongwa.(See picture from a previous trip) On Monday Daniel goes to Dar to try and sort out the Dar office and next Month he is in South Africa for a MAF Africa leaders conference. Unfortunately we don't get to go too!

We were planning a ladies and kids lunch today, but I am not sure what will happen now as it is raining. Normally you have a 99% chance of it not raining.

I was cycling into town yesterday and a Tanzanian guy came up beside me and started talking, the conversation went something like this.

Guy "Are you going into town?"
Me "Yes"
Guy " Are you late for something?"
Me " No, I am going into town"
Guy "You're going so fast, are you late"
Me No I am just going into town"
Guy "But you are going so fast!"
Me "I am just going into town"
Guy "Why are you going so fast if you are not late?"
Me "Just for the exercise"
Guy "Oh" Very puzzled look, then he laughed and went off

Time is so different here. For Tanzanians there is no need to hurry because there is always more time coming. For us we need to hurry because we are running out of time. Exercise is also a very western idea. Most Tanzanians have a lot of walking and cycling in their everyday lives already, they don't need exercise.

I am trying to think what else happened this week. Tuesday was a bank holiday, although some people took Monday. It was all very confusing as it is one of those holidays that depends on the moon and we have to wait for the Imam to announce which day it is. We mostly don't know until the actual day whether or not it is a holiday or not.

Apart from that things plod on as usual. I am busy planning a trip for Dutch business men in a weeks time. They are coming to look at the work at MAF and will spend a few days flying around and looking at different things we do. Think that's it for now.

Whilst things are relatively peaceful here, remember to pray for other parts of the world not so far from here. Things in Madagascar are quite difficult at the minute and some people think the country is heading for civil war. If you are interested, here is the blog link for a MAF family living in Madagascar http://www.xanga.com/Jocsh. Please pray for the safety of the MAF team there.

Daniel calling...

Hello folks. Long time no blog. Life has been a little crazy around here (for a change). I am catching up at work after a couple of weeks of distraction in February. And as Libby has already mentioned, I will be taking over the Programme Manager-ship later next month as well, so I am trying to get ahead, before I get behind again :)

One of the things we are grappling with at the moment, is where best to place our aircraft and pilots. I had a meeting with all our Dodoma-based pilots a couple of weeks ago, and we have another tomorrow night (hopefully to actually make a decision!) It is quite difficult not to fall into the trap of seeing people as resources, and forgetting that they are people. Please pray for me in this; there is a balance somewhere, but it's hard to find. It will be good for the programme as a whole when these things are sorted out and we have some clearer definition of how we will be implementing the strategy that we have devised over the last few months.

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Changes are also afoot at our Church (the Anglican 'cathedral'). We had a 'congregational meeting' a few weeks back, where a bunch of us expressed our unhappiness at the 'Anglicanness' of the services. Things may change...we have been allowed the 3rd Sunday of the month to play with! We shall see how lively things can get (if we have the energy!)

Speaking of the cathedral, the kids got the Jungle Doctor series for christmas, and I have just read them all. Paul White was based at Mvumi Hospital, which is just down the road from us. It was quite strange to read in one of the books about him visiting the cathedral, and describing it to a blind boy. It hasn't changed a bit! It was also quite cool to read about the MAF flights they took.

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That's about us for now. If you want to read about the trans-world Simkins debate about 'The Shack', visit my brother's blog. If you want to read more, you can visit this review.

Over and out.