Christmas approaching

I don't feel very bloggish this morning but I'll give it a go. We have power so I'd better make the most of it. The rain keeps coming, there are less power cuts, but thousands of flies. Daniel is having great fun frying flies and mosquitoes with his fly sizzling gadget he bought in Dar.

Christmas is gradually coming to Dodoma - well at least to the MAF compound. My house ladies assure me they do celebrate Christmas here, but there is no sign of it yet. We on the other hand purchased a christmas tree and I have made a christmas cake (first time ever). You can't get all the right ingredients so it will be interesting to see how it tastes. Even more doubtful is the marzipan that I had to make from scratch!

I was really pleased this week because Eunice (the lady I mentioned a couple of weeks ago) came back having made 13,000 shillings selling paraffin and matches. I’d spent 6000 to buy the stuff, so I thought that was a pretty good profit. To be honest I don’t really care about the money, I was just so pleased that she’d stuck to the deal and was trying to make a go of it. She asked me to keep the capital and then she came back yesterday to buy some more goods to sell. It seems that microloans might be the way forward.

Elizabeti’s husband came back last week having been advised to wait until next July to buy a shamba (farm). They have put the money in the bank to wait until then. I just need to make sure they don’t spend it on anything else. Elizabeti also has a small shamba (like an allotment) in the area called Dodoma rural, it’s about 15Km from here. Here she grows a small amount of maize to feed her family. Last Saturday she cycled two hours to the Shamba, worked for 4 hours then cyled two hours back. The people here are so tough and have incredible stamina. No wonder the Africans are so good at long distance running!

It can be very emotionally draining living here, with people always asking for money for food, medical costs, bike repairs, funeral expenses, the list is endless. Everytime someone asks you have an emotional dialogue with yourself trying to sort out your feelings and what’s the right thing to do. I fluctuate between feeling very altruistic and wanting to help and then on other days I just feel very annoyed. I was reading in Lamentations this week, the verse that says, “his compassions never fail, they are new every morning” (Lam 3 22-23). It’s a good job really because I use up my supply pretty quickly. I think I am aware here how little I can do myself, I think it is very easy to find yourself running on empty and burning out very quickly. Here more than ever I have to stay connected to my source, “for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15v 5).

The children break up from school next Wednesday (20th Dec) and are off until the 29th January. Daniel has all next week off and on Boxing day we’re off to stay on an island off the coast from Dar. It’s very nice having such exotic locations to visit and for the price of a basic B&B in the UK. There is also the prospect of visiting a small supermarket, about half way from here to Dar, that sells exciting things that we can’t buy here, like yoghurts and hopefully some ground coffee. I am back on that awful instant Africafe they sell here. Not pleasant for me or anyone else who comes in contact with me early in the morning!