Yet more teaching

I am writing this as I sit on my bed in the retreat centre of an Anglican church and Bible college in the hills, in the village of Milo, which is about an eight hour drive from my home in Mbeya. I can hear the ladies next door chattering away as they get ready for bed, having returned from their evening prayer and worship time at the church that’s less than a hundred yards away; I could hear them singing and praying from my room, which was a lovely uplifting thing to hear floating through the night air. These ladies, together with the men who are sleeping at the college a few yards away, have been my students for the past three days. This is my third year of teaching at the college, but this time, instead of just teaching the students I was invited to teach a seminar of several days for both the students from the college and leaders of groups in the Anglican churches of the region, totalling nearly fifty people. I felt honoured and encouraged that they should organise for all these people to gather together and then invite me to teach, indicating that they had obviously valued my teaching enough in the past to ask the bishop for permission to hold this seminar.

It’s quite an operation to provide accommodation and food for all these people in a small college (of less than ten students), though the college and church has a good amount of space to put people up, and it’s not easy for the participants either. I never cease to marvel at the ability of communities here to feed large numbers of people over a wood fire; if I even just put my head round the door of the kitchen my eyes start to sting from the smoke! Then there’s the need to heat water for everyone to have bucket baths each morning (it’s too cold here to bathe in cold water). Another challenge is that there’s not enough blankets and sheets to go around so everyone was expected to bring their own (except for special guests like me, my colleague and a couple of church leaders), and the thin blankets people brought with them wouldn’t have been much protection against the chilly nights. Some people have travelled quite a distance – a few have asked for a lift back to the big town of Njombe (a good three hour drive away on dirt roads), as they don’t have enough money for their return fare. I am humbled by people’s readiness to come despite the challenges, and the cheerful spirit with which they face each day, even getting up before dawn to attend a 5am prayer meeting in the church. I have a lot to learn from their attitude.

The teaching took place in the church, as the college’s classroom would have been too small. I really enjoyed the short times of singing between sessions and before prayer times, as the church resounded with the harmonious sound of their voices. I taught the usual things such as how one can do personal devotions and family devotions and how to lead Bible studies. I am no longer surprised that so few people put up their hand when I ask if they have a habit of daily Bible reading or if they read the Bible with their children. I hope and pray that some will start to do these things after the seminar. To be honest, I am starting to get a bit tired of teaching the same things several times a year in different colleges, and then doing it all over again the next year. I love teaching, but repeating the same material (as it’s always to new students) is taking some of the pleasure out of it. I am wondering if there is the chance for me to take a slightly new direction in the future as I would love to do more actual Bible teaching, not just methods for engaging with the Bible (though I believe these to be really important). People have a real thirst for Bible teaching, which was made clear to me today when we started our final topic of looking at the big picture of the Bible – when we got to lunchtime one of the students commented that he wanted to stay and carry on learning this topic rather than go and eat!

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I have now returned home, praising God for safe travels on some rough roads in our project’s Land Cruiser. I ended up giving four participants a lift to Njombe, and it was fun to listen to them talking as we drove, as they spent most of the trip recounting the things they had learnt in the seminar and discussing how important and useful they thought those things were and how they could use them in their church fellowships. It was so encouraging for me to hear their enthusiasm and to see just how much they had taken in. In October there will be a seminar for teachers in churches and they plan to teach them some of the things that I taught during this seminar, particularly how to prepare and lead Bible studies, so I was able to leave my teaching notes with the Bible college teacher for him to use. This is the kind of thing I have always hoped would happen – that those I train would go on to train others. I really hope they follow through with this plan and pray that it will help people to dig deeper into God’s Word and grow to know Him and love Him more as a result. To show their gratitude I was given a sack of millet (bit different to the standard box of chocolates you might be given in England)! At some point I shall ask a Tanzanian friend to take it to a mill to be ground so that I can use it to make uji, a form of local porridge.

In some ways I was sad to leave Milo – it’s such a beautiful area, with some old forests (where I saw colobus monkeys one day), stunning views, nicely kept homes and wheat growing in every available space, and of course being back in Mbeya means back to the office, to difficult decisions and to my to-do list. However, it’s always good to be home, to have time to be with colleagues and friends, to speak English, to sleep in my own bed and to prepare for the next opportunity to teach.

What's normal?

Last week I had another trip to the Malila language area, this time to the town of Ilembo. At least, a ‘town’ is what people there would call it, as it is a relatively large settlement for the area, with a number of shops, a primary and a secondary school, lots of churches and a large weekly market, which certainly makes it sound like a town by any standard, but in size it feels more like a village. But who decides what is a village and what is a town? I naturally compare everything to England, as that is my home country, but does that make England the ‘norm’ and anything that’s different ‘odd’?!

On this trip I realised there were a number of things that I have come to consider ‘normal’, but which to a visiting English person might seem distinctly odd! But of course, what’s ‘normal’ and what is ‘odd’ is all a matter of perspective and of what you are used to. So, in case you ever come to visit and join me for a trip, here are some normal things to expect. (By the way, it was a trip to teach in a tiny Baptist Bible College, where I enjoyed the group of nine students and the chance to teach an overview of the Bible and how all Scripture points to Christ, while my local colleague led them in practising reading the Malila language).

Each morning at the college we were served chai (tea) and mandazi (a deep fried dough, something like a doughnut). This was exactly what I had expected, including the tea being very sweet, though unexpectedly they had added something to it that gave it a pleasant kick (like ginger, but apparently it wasn’t ginger). Thankfully, knowing that such a breakfast was normal here, I had come prepared with my own breakfast – homemade cereal bars and bananas, as I usually avoid wheat. Unfortunately, from Wednesday onwards they also put milk in the tea, so I couldn’t drink it any more (as I need to avoid lactose too). Oh, I guess that’s something else that might seem odd to you…maybe you are thinking why they couldn’t just have served the milk separately. But that’s just not normal here. You boil the tea in a big pot and everything goes in, including the milk, which is a good thing as this means the unpasteurised milk gets boiled, thereby making it safe to drink.

On the first day there I asked them to point out the toilet to me. I could see what I thought was the toilet, but I just wanted to be sure! As expected, it was the little red brick building, with a piece of sackcloth hanging over the entrance in place of a door. The flooring was wooden, with a hole in the middle, beneath which was a very deep pit. No toilet paper, though a few leaves in the corner indicated what they would use if they needed something. I was prepared, with toilet paper in my pocket, as it is the exception rather than the rule to find toilet paper provided anywhere. A long-drop may not be normal in England, but I have grown to prefer it in many contexts here, as it is more hygienic when only your shoes touch what others have touched, and they don’t need water. A flush toilet with no running water available is not pleasant.

Lunch was usually ugali (a lump of white stuff made from maize flour and water that you roll into balls with your hand and use to scoop up whatever accompanies it) with beans. I rather like ugali, so I was pretty happy about that. As is normal, we didn’t eat with the students. Anyone of status (whether or not I like to think of myself that way is beside the point, for here a teacher, pastor or guest naturally has status and is treated with honour) eats separately. So I knew not to head out to join the students for lunch, but rather we found our lunch set out on the desk in the office. An empty bowl with a jug of water sat next to it. Oh, I forgot to say, because it’s just normal to me now, that there is no place to wash your hands after going to the toilet. Rather your left hand is considered ‘dirty’ and not used in any transaction with other people. So, when it comes to mealtimes, you always start by washing your hands, which is what the jug of water was for. Someone pours water over your hands into the bowl, so you can wash them. Often they will have heated the hand-washing water up, which was particularly nice there, as the weather was really chilly so my cold fingers welcomed the warm water.

Through the week, various things popped up that required us to make adjustments to when we would teach. While changes in plans are completely normal here, this is not something I have come to get used to. I still find it frustrating, though thankfully the teaching I had prepared was something that could be stretched or reduced according to how things went. 

The more I think about the trip, the more I notice things that are different here that I hadn’t even thought to mention when I started to write, as they have become so normal to me. Like the wooden benches that the students sat on but the plastic chairs that the teachers were given, or the principal of the college turning up on his motorbike as that is the primary form of transport here for anyone that can afford it, or the ladies cleaning the floors with a wet cloth, bending from the waist down to work at it (no mop) or that the floors are plain cement.

Then there was the guest house, with the socket hanging off the wall, one window lacking a pane of glass, a bathroom door that wouldn’t shut and paint peeling off the walls. Having visited this guest house before, I knew what to expect, but I would add that this isn’t necessarily normal – I have stayed in some very nice guest houses in other areas. What is normal though, is to not have hot water available. So when you want to have a shower, you ask the guest house staff to prepare you a bucket of hot water, so that you can have a bucket bath. And there isn’t a special bathing area, rather you bathe in the little toilet room, and the water runs into the toilet. So you often find a pair of flip-flops in your room for you to use to go into the bathroom as the floor is often wet.

I’ve just realised that this blog could be endless! Maybe you’ll come to visit one day and then you’ll get to enjoy for yourself all the weird and wonderful ‘normal’ aspects of life here. Writing this blog has given me a chance to look at my home through fresh eyes again – what a privilege it is to live in and learn from another culture, even if at times that can be challenging. I am so thankful for the gracious people I meet who accept and welcome me despite how odd I must seem to them!

An eventful trip to Santilya

The church where workshop was held

I woke up to a chilly morning typical of June in Mbeya. Where I was heading was going to be even colder – Santilya, a village in the Malila language area which, at nearly 2000 metres, is a few thousand feet higher than Mbeya and consequently a few degrees colder. I was going there to train Sunday school teachers for three days along with two colleagues – Mwanjalanje, the Literacy & Scripture Engagement Coordinator for the Malila language area, and Mwangunga, the same for the Nyakyusa language area, who was coming to gain experience in teaching this kind of workshop.

I had packed my warmest jacket (a Roxy coat picked up from the second-hand market a couple of years ago) as well as longs socks and even a hat just in case! I had no idea where I would be staying – previous trips to the Malila area had involved dank guesthouses, so I was prepared for such an eventuality. I picked up Mwangunga from the Benedictine Centre where he had stayed the night, and we headed off in my Toyota Prado on the nearly 30 mile ride (about one and a quarter hours of driving), much of which would be on graded dirt roads. As we drove, my car started to make some alarming noises. It wasn’t the first time, but the car had been checked over at the garage and the fundi (a generic word for a craftsman, in this case a mechanic) couldn’t find anything wrong, so I had set off with lots of prayer but not too much concern. However, now the sounds were getting louder and not stopping, whereas before they would come and go and I noticed black smoke coming out of the exhaust. Thankfully we arrived safely and I promptly phoned the fundi. A plan was put in place for his colleague to come and look at the car on Friday, the last day of the workshop. 

My bedroom

It turned out we would be staying at the pastor’s home, while our colleague, Mwanjalanje, would come and go every day on his motorbike from his home just a couple of miles up the road. The workshop was scheduled to start at 9am and we had arrived around this time, but as I had expected we didn’t start until much later. First we were welcomed by the pastor and shown to our rooms and given tea, chapattis and fried plantain. My room was small and neat with a double bed and a thick blanket, but it all smelt a bit musty, an inevitable result of the cool, damp climate. I wondered if I had been given the pastor and his wife’s own room; I think this was quite likely. They took good care of us, providing us with mountains of food (sometimes rice, sometimes ugali, usually with cabbage, beans and meat) and bringing a metal basin of glowing charcoal into the living room in mornings and evenings for us to warm ourselves. They heated up water for us to wash each evening, though I balked at the idea of washing outdoors in a little area round the back of the house, under the cold night sky! The toilet was a long drop in a clean tiled room, and even toilet paper was provided – it was one of most nicely kept toilets I’ve seen in a village. The only downside was that it involved going outside and a few metres down the hill (the house was on the side of a steep valley) and fiddling with the padlock every time I needed to make myself comfortable, which was a little awkward in the middle of the night.

Practising teaching memory 
verses using actions

About fifteen people attended all three days of the workshop, with a few others attending here and there. There was a huge range of ability, from some who had a number of years of experience of teaching to others who had never taught. As usual, we looked at different aspects of a Sunday school lesson and how to do them interactively as well as how to plan the lesson from start to finish. Majaliwa also spent time helping them learn to read their Malila language – some could already read it quite well (for example, one lady had been trained to be a Malila literacy teacher), while for others it was probably the first time they’d read their language. While it will be challenging for the teachers to put into practice everything they learnt at the workshop, and some haven’t even started teaching in their churches yet, I hope that each one of them will at least have picked up something that they will try and find helpful. I particularly pray that they will become readers of God’s Word, as this is not only foundational to teaching children the Bible, but also foundational to their own relationship with God. Some of the participants didn’t even have Bibles, but during the workshop a few people bought Mark’s gospel in the Malila language. Most of them also bought the Sunday school teacher manual that I developed and use as the basis for most of the teaching. Now it is Majaliwa’s job to follow up how they do and to continue to provide support and training if they want more in the future.

On the way to Majaliwa's home 
(he is the one in the middle)

As Majaliwa lived so close, I had hoped to visit his home one evening, but now my car was out of action. I suggested we walked. I was only semi-serious, but to my surprise they took me up on it and off we went, along the road! The surrounding countryside was beautiful, mostly covered with small farms. Arriving at his home we had the pleasure of meeting his wife and his youngest child, but by the time we left it was already dusk and distinctly chilly. We walked briskly back along a shortcut, involving some steep ups and downs and wooden bridges in the rapidly fading light. I loved the walk, and am used to ups and downs from my rambles on the hillside in Mbeya, but Mwangunga wasn’t so impressed and chose not to join me the next evening when I went for another walk with one of the workshop participants to her home, complaining that we marched like an army! 

Being towed home

My fundi’s colleague turned up on Friday morning as planned, having caught a local bus, and looked over the engine, discovering the source of the problem to be that the oil pump wasn’t working properly. It would damage the engine to drive it home in that state and it wasn’t possible to fix it on the spot, so my fundi came out to tow us all the way home. After lengthy goodbyes (involving lots of thank yous and being given a gift of some local fabric) we finally set off. Thankfully the fundis did the driving. The tow rope broke six times, but the fundi didn’t seem particularly fazed by this and we eventually made it back to Mbeya after sunset, around 7.15pm, very thankful to God for a safe arrival. While God may not have prevented the problems from occurring, He was certainly with us through them as I had felt unusually free of anxiety about the whole situation. 

I am writing this on Monday. I wonder how the Sunday school teachers who were on duty yesterday got on with their classes. I wonder if they tried any of the new games they learnt, or made the story more dramatic and exciting by acting it out, or used a quiz to review the lesson or used actions to help the children learn the memory verse. While what we were able to do felt like a tiny drop in the ocean of need for education and training, I just hope and pray that God may multiply the work of our hands and use it to strengthen His Church.

Taking the bus

It’s 9am. I sit on a blue plastic chair with a blue plastic table in front of me with a few flies on it meticulously cleaning themselves. If I pause for a moment and look around, my vision is filled with the colour and bustle of the bus station, with vendors selling their wares, from flash drives to leather flip-flops, and with glass cabinets filled with fast foods ideal for a quick snack before you travel such as some popcorn or bread, a mandazi (doughnut-like item) or a piece of fried cassava. Further away I see a range of beautifully woven baskets for sale, while nearer at hand is a display of gaudy, cheap watches and sunglasses, probably made in China. Others are holding boxes of drinks and biscuits up to the windows of the buses that have arrived, hoping to earn a few shillings, sometimes running alongside the buses as they begin to depart, still desperate to make a last minute sale or get the money they are owed off a passenger who has bought something. And then there’s the sounds. I shut my eyes for a moment and hear music playing from a radio somewhere, conversations, bus engines, a vendor advertising his wares and a caterer calling for food.

I am waiting for the Al Saedy bus to arrive, the one going to Mbeya. It will have started in Dar es Salaam this morning at 6am. It has a reputation for being fast and I just hope it will also be safe. Someone from the bus company comes to tell me to get ready, the bus will arrive any minute. I stand with a few others, luggage at my feet, needing the toilet but not wanting to risk going in case the bus comes while I’m away. It arrives. We get on board. I realise my ticket is for a seat right near the back and I slowly make my way up the aisle, not relishing the prospect of a rear seat on roads liberally spattered with speed bumps. The back of my seat proves to be somewhat unfixed, freely moving from upright to relaxed and back, adding further interest to the ride, and there is no way to reduce the length of the seat belt, which would have been enough to strap in two my size! Not a promising start.

And we’re off. We’ve gone but a few hundred yards when we pull into a service station and are told we have five minutes to use the facilities. With a sigh of relief I make my way back down the bus and hurry to the toilets – a short row of long-drops, with doors that don’t shut and buckets of water available for flushing. Not quite the ‘Welcome Break’ service stations of England, with sparkling sinks, mirrors and powerful Dyson hand dryers, but I return to bus feeling more comfortable and ready for the trip ahead.

We stop again. This time officials board the bus to check everyone’s ID. Not satisfied with my Tanzanian ID card, they ask to see my passport and they notice that my residence permit is out of date. I whip out a copy of my new work permit, which satisfies them, and the inspection is soon over. I estimate that the bus journey will be about eleven hours. I have some sleep to catch up on, a book to read, a sermon and a couple of podcasts to listen to and a puzzle book. It is hard to imagine that these will keep me entertained for all eleven hours. But then there’s the scenery! Most of the country has been blessed with rain in recent weeks, so we travel through a lush green landscape, some parts devoid of any human life while others are a hive of activity. I spot some people hard at work making bricks from the local soil. I see ladies balancing buckets on their head as they go to fetch water, elegantly holding their poise even as they walk along an uneven dirt path. I see others busy in their fields.

A lady boards the bus to sell a random selection of health products and socks. She launches into her sales pitch, making remarkable claims as to the unique qualities of the various products she has on offer. For the first time ever, I buy something – a mosquito repellant cream that I have used before and found to be at least partially effective. This costs me the exorbitant price of 35p. I doze until speed bumps jerk me awake. We’ve entered Mikumi National Park. I keep my eyes peeled and am rewarded by seeing two zebra, then a wildebeest, then impala after impala, some storks, baboons, giraffes and even a waterbuck.

Shortly afterwards we stop again. Lunchtime. We are given eight minutes to use the facilities. I quickly make myself comfy and buy myself some food and get back on the bus. Lukewarm chips finished, I swig a few sips of Mirinda (akin in flavour to fizzy Vimto), cautious of drinking too much because I have no idea when the next comfort break might be, and return to my various forms of entertainment. We pass by beautiful mountains, vast tracts of wilderness, fields, small hills dotted with huge boulders as if thrown there by God himself, rice paddies, rivers, villages and towns. We are given a final opportunity to ‘chimba dawa’ (literally, ‘dig medicine/roots’, a euphemism for going to the toilet), this time in the bush, men on one side of the bus and women on the other. I try to hide as much as possible, embarrassed to be seen squatting by the side of the road, but there is little time to force one’s way through the thorny bushes to find a secluded spot.

The evening skies are breathtaking with golden clouds behind the hills, later turning to soft pinks. It gets dark. The conductor announces that we are approaching Mbeya, where there will be three drop-off points. I will alight at the last one, the main bus stand in town, just a few minutes from my house. We arrive, 8pm on the dot; we have made good time and I thank God for bringing us here safely, as the swaying of the bus at times indicated some dangerously fast driving.

I fend off the taxi drivers trying to offer their services as I claim my luggage from under the bus and lug it across the bus station to the road outside, where my housemate awaits in my car to pick me up. She is a very welcome sight and I again thank God for His care.

I’m home. I’ve enjoyed a bowl of crunchy salad and a fruit smoothie to make up for the somewhat less healthy snacks I consumed on the bus, and a good chat with my housemate and the chance to put up my swollen feet. Unpack. Shower. Bed. Sleep.

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What precipitated taking the bus? After an inspiring week in Cameroon at a Scripture Engagement conference for SE workers from across sub-Saharan Africa (deserving of another blogpost), I was heading back to Mbeya. I was scheduled to fly with Ethiopian Airlines to Dar es Salaam, via Addis Ababa, followed by an Air Tanzania flight down to Mbeya. Ethiopia Airlines decided to change the time of the Addis to Dar flight, meaning an overnight stay in Addis. While I enjoyed a chance to sleep in a nice hotel and eat some delicious Ethiopian food (injera with a very spicy beef dish), all courtesy of Ethiopia Airlines, it meant that I arrived in Dar with less than half an hour to spare before my next flight departed. Despite getting through customs and reclaiming my baggage with incredible speed, they were not able to get me on the Air Tanzania flight as they had sold my seat to someone waiting on stand-by, and the plane was now closed to boarding. Disappointed, I headed to the airline’s office to rebook for the following day (there is only one flight a day to Mbeya), only to find the flights were fully booked until Tuesday. Not wanting to wait this long to get home, I decided to go on an adventure by travelling by bus, as I always used to do in pre-Mbeya-airport days. To break the journey up a bit I set straight off on an afternoon bus that took five hours to get me to Morogoro, where a kind missionary, who I had not seen since Bible college days over twelve years ago, picked me up at the bus station and took me to a guest house. The next morning, after a breakfast of boiled eggs, yam, chapatti and bananas, I walked to the bus station just a couple of hundred yards from the guest house. And the rest is history.