Bricks

Mud bricks drying in the sun.

Focus's house

The bike in the picture is how they get water. The nearest water supply is about a mile away.

We need more money to finish the project,(£500) so if you would like to help, let us know. The house really needs to be finished before the next rains in November but even better before we go to Kenya in July.

Focus' House

Thanks to some generous donations from the UK, we have been able to build the foundations of Focus' house. Once 3 or 4 layers of concrete bricks have been laid we will continue with mud bricks. They are cheaper and because, if it rains, the water will not get that deep, there should be no problem with it falling down again. The man doing the bulding work is Elizabeth's husband Daudie.

Driving the backstreets of Dodoma

 

Driving the backstreets of Dodoma

 

Driving the backstreets of Dodoma

 

ZBZ

 

One of our pilots did a low swoop over the party to say hello.

Swiss guys

 

These are the two swiss guys (on the right) that came as volunteers for a few months and built the playground. We get a lot of Swiss guys coming to do their civil service (alternative to military service) work. On the left is Ruben who came to do ISD work for his civil service and liked it so much he is now the ISD manager!

MAF kids

 

These are some of the MAF kids waiting for the opening. Daniel has just arrived back from Dar and is pretty knackered!

Playground

 

Yesterday was the grand opening of the new playground on compound A. It may not look like much, but it is very exciting for the kids. In a place where there are no parks, this is as good as it gets. We had cake and ice cream and an official ribbon that was cut.

Caleb

 

Yes it is boiling hot, but Caleb loves to wear long trousers!

Currently

 

Another beautiful African sky and a few ramblings.

Currently enjoying:

Our new fridge. MAF have bought us a new fridge so that we can sell our old one. It is huge and has a cool ice dispenser. We will only have it for a few weeks before we leave as it is really for the next family that come, but for now we are enjoying it.

Our car, I love our car, sadly we will have to say goodbye to that too. But I love the fact it will do almost anything I want, drive through huge ditches, on it's side (almost), through
water ; I can throw it about all over the place on all sorts of roads (or not really roads) with no problem. It has to be our best car ever, so far, I will be sad to see it go.

Our women's bible study, we are currently looking at Ruth.

Going out for dinner a lot. Daniel is spending a few days in Dar this week. So far I have only had to eat breakfast at home! You can't beat MAF hospitality and great supportive friends.

My children. It is so nice to have slightly older children who you can chat with and play games with.

Having a bath. Finally after about a year, the water pressure has been fixed on our bath so you can fill it up and have a hot bath. Before, the pressure was so low that by the time the bath was full enough the water was cold. (We do have a shower, in case you thought we hadn't washed for a year!)

Currently Reading:

Just finished 'The Lineage of Grace' by Francine Rivers. Amazing book about 5 women in the bible. I highly recommend it, it really brings the stories alive and makes you want to go back and read them again in the bible.

Currently watching: Just finished season 5 of Lost, how weired was that! Just waiting for the last season to be sold in town, probably next week!

James May's 'Toy Stories'- Josh is loving this DVD about silly adventures and feats of engineering with different toys.

Currently not enjoying:

The madness in town. 'They' decided to shut the main roundabout in town for repairs. It is the main intersection and the only way to cross the railway. We have to cross the railway to get to school, so we have spent the last week learning all the back routes to school. Unfortunately so has everybody else. There are no diversions signs, it is an everyman for himself system. This involves people driving all over the pavement, until the police stopped us doing that and now we have to drive on very bumpy tracks behind the market. Needless to say it is absolute chaos every morning, as no one gives way to anyone else, and there is so much dust you can't see where you are driving. Add to all the big cars, huge lorries, minibuses, bikes, people, push carts, cows and that is the drive to school. I have been stuck many times in absolute gridlock and there have been lots of accidents and 1 death that I know of. Please pray for safety when driving and give thanks that I have not hit anybody yet and nobody had hit me.

Currently praying for:
A smooth transition to Kenya for us and the kids. That Daniel will be able to do a good hand over to the next guy who is coming in July. Daniel is pretty busy at the moment but our neighbour who had just returned form New Zealand after 5 months away, said she had never seen Daniel looking so well!

Currently working on projects: Packing up the house and selling lots of stuff, but also trying to keep the house not looking too empty so it doesn't unsettle the kids.

Currently wishing for:
Still, nice chicken, but hopefully we will be able to get that in Kenya.

Currently learning:
To trust God, no matter what. Not something I enjoy learning, but I guess fairly fundamental.

Verse of the week.
"If only you would prepare your heart and lift up your hands to him in prayer. Get rid of your sins and leave all iniquity behind you. Then your face will brighten in innocence. You will be strong and free from fear. You will forget your misery. It will all be gone like water under a bridge. Your life will be brighter than the nooday. Any darkenss will be as bright morning. You will have courage because you have hope. You will be protected and will rest in safety. You will lie down unafraid and many will look to you for help. Job 11 v 13 -19

Chuckers and Keepers

The process of preparing our move to Kenya has highlighted some interesting character differences in our marriage. I can't believe these didn't arise during our move out here. Maybe they did and I've just suppressed the memory...

The clearest difference can be depicted scientifically as follows:


I don't know how this works in your marriage, or for you as an individual, but from what I have seen people vary along the scale, with one person in each marriage on either side of the centre line. Neither of us is any way near the centre line!

This was marked this morning, when I was going through the book piles that Libby had categorised ("Definitely take", "Not sure", "Would very much like to chuck, but don't hold out much hope...") The following example is a simple test to place yourself on The Stuff Scale:

On the 3rd pile was Libby's somewhat dog-eared childhood Bible. I was aghast. "What's this?" I asked "Your childhood Bible is on the chuck pile. How can you chuck your childhood Bible. This is your childhood Bible we're talking about!"

Not a clue! "We have 10 Bibles, and that one's really knackered" she said.

Where do you stand? (Clue: if you have no idea what I am talking about, you are on the left!)

I came to the conclusion that in all this trans-global shifting I maintain my identity by carrying my stuff (i.e. my history) with me - which is why it is virtually impossible for me to chuck out anything that has had any meaning in my life (especially my 'sounds'). Libby on the other hand (and this is my guess) maintains her identity through her relationships with her family - which means while she could pretty much carry everything that has any meaning with her to Kenya in a small plastic bag, she would collapse if deprived of the oxygen of communication with her sisters for more than a few days. (My grounding in 'stuff' rather than relationships may explain why my brother and i have only spoken to each other about twice a year since we got here. Or maybe we just hate the telephone :) )

Nowt queer as folk, eh?

Rare post from Daniel (warning: work related & long!)

[NB To lighten up this post I will be interspersing it with some photos from our conference that tell a better story than the one I am writing :)]

A while ago I had an NSRC meeting (it was ‘yesterday’ when I started this post, but is now somewhat longer ago!) I have to confess that I dread these meetings, probably above most other things I have to deal with. It feels like getting into a boxing ring with 4 angry Tanzanians and taking a beating :) This is an exaggeration.

On the plus side, this arena is definitely the one where I feel I learn a lot about the cultural differences between African and Western thinking (to generalise**). However it does sometimes makes me feel that although cultural understanding (i.e. understanding how the other person thinks and why) is possible, cultural acceptance (i.e. accepting that the other person’s way of thinking is right, or can be right) is considerably more difficult!


[Warning: everything below is necessarily filtered through my own perceptions and feelings, and so there is no guarantee that any of it (especially where I attribute motives) is accurate…It is also a huge generalisation based on my experiences.]

As an example: The African ‘support system’, as you probably know, is built around an intertwined system of family dependency (where everyone is family). i.e. ‘I have a problem and you’re doing OK; I will ask you for help, and you will give it to me because when the roles are reversed, you will need me to do the same.’

It appears that the employer is also expected to be part of this family. For example, I am often told that MAF should be like a father to the staff “You should see us as your children” – usually in relation to talking about salaries and benefits. (However, I note that when we put in place policies that are intended to protect staff (i.e. restricting the level of debt they can get themselves in), I am told that I am being paternalistic and patronising and shouldn’t get involved in how people run their lives. Which shows that things are not always straightforward).

This is fairly difficult to accept coming from the West, and as a Western-run organisation this kind of thinking is not built into our systems. However, one of our ‘core values’ is ‘care’ for our staff, which encompasses the Western notion of a ‘duty of care’ to our staff, augmented by our Christian ethos.

However, this tends to be interpreted locally as “You are Christians, who are supposed to ‘care’, and so you should pay everyone as much as they want/need to maintain the lifestyle they want”. [I am not underestimating the level of poverty that some of our local staff live in, and it is very hard to reconcile this with the lifestyle we have (which, although not plush, is Western)]. However, the economic reality is that we cannot pay staff as much as they would like to be paid, and even if we could I am not sure we necessarily should. It is ingrained in me (and I think most people) that the level of ‘reward’ should be linked to the level of ‘work’ that is done. The African mindset seems to be more that the level of reward depends on who you know, and how well you can manipulate the system. To be fair this is the negative end of a scale, and I don’t want to generalise more than necessary. However, I have heard that it is almost a requirement to take advantage of your position, unless you want to be seen as slightly crazy.


The perception of the ‘employer as parent’ clashes when combined with the fairly new labour laws in the country. These are grounded in a European framework. However, because the country has a socialist background the laws are weighted heavily in favour of the employee. In a country where most employers would probably take every opportunity to take advantage of their staff, this may well be a good thing.

It turns out to be something of a nightmare for Western employers though – firstly because Western employers tend to try and comply with the law, whereas I suspect for most Tanzanian employers the law is something to work around. The other factor is that Western employers (like Westerners generally) are seen to have bottomless pockets. This means that when you are sued for firing/terminating/retrenching someone (which is a matter of course – the court system is weighted such that it is always ‘worth a try’) you are at a distinct disadvantage.

(I won’t go into details about the various court cases we are currently in the middle of :( )

Another big cultural learning curve took place yesterday. We are trying to negotiate a retrenchment package, as the Labour Office has advised that a bi-lateral agreement is the best way to avoid being sued. I asked the Committee to consult with the staff and give me an ‘opening bid’. They suggested a blanket policy of 12 months basic salary. I thought this was both unfair and unaffordable, and so countered with a structured package taking into account age of the employee, length of service (‘capped’ at a certain number of years) and whether MAF was able to secure them alternative employment. They took this away to discuss, and came back with “We think the package should be 12 months basic salary”. I was somewhat dumbfounded, and thought that the negotiations had ground to a halt. I said that I felt like I was being blackmailed, and that they had flatly rejected my attempts to negotiate. They were genuinely flabbergasted at my reaction. After unpacking it a bit more, what they were actually saying was “We don’t see (or don’t accept) the rationale behind your package. Try again”.

It is possible that these issues are not cultural at all (or at least less than I think), and it is just that I have never been on the sharp end of labour relations before, but I am definitely learning things. Primarily; doing anything unilaterally is inviting a world of pain. Even if I discover or decide that we are doing something wrong, it is not acceptable to just correct it. There needs to be discussion, consultation and consensus for any changes to work. (Changes can be made, but there is a massive difference between making changes and changes actually working). To practitioners of change management I am sure this is obvious, but knowing something in theory and actually learning it through experience are two different things.


I am aware that my posts on these subjects probably seem rather negative, if not racist. I hope I am not, and I am good friends with many of the local staff (as much as one can be when one is the ‘employer’). I am just trying to reflect some of the struggles I face managing a cross-cultural organisation, in a ‘foreign’ (in the truest sense of the word) context. Congratulations if you made it this far :)

To temper this post, although I am quite excited about moving to Kenya, I am extremely miserable about leaving Tanzania. And surprisingly, it is not the profit and loss account or the balance sheet that I will miss, but the people. To someone who finds making relationship connections quite hard, to tear these up after four years in a close knit social and working setting is, I suspect, likely to be harder than I would have thought. On this level (although maybe not on other levels) I anticipate this move being harder than the initial move to Tanzania.


** As an interesting aside; coming from Europe, it feels like stereotyping to 'Africans'. However, more often that not, this is how my local colleagues describe themselves. This is actually fair enough, if you think about it, as the National Borders - and thus 'nationalities' - were pretty much written by a bunch of ruler-wielding bureaucrats in Europe anyway.

Red Sky at night

 

This was our evening sky from the compound. This on the day when we were woken up at 3am by an earthquake and had two more in the afternoon. I think I enjoyed the theory of earthquakes more than the real thing. Quite an unsettling way to be woken up!