One of those days

Not every day is like this, but neither are such days so very unusual!

It was a Friday. The day started well, with an early-morning run with a Swiss man who occasionally visits Mbeya as part of a clean water project. While his pace was somewhat slower than my norm, it made a pleasant change to have company while running. A shower and some breakfast later, I headed to the office. It was there that things started to feel like ‘one of those days’. It started with the risograph – the machine we use for printing books in local languages. On Thursday it refused to work, so Baraka, who does all our book printing, called out the mechanic who duly arrived and carefully inspected the machine. It turned out that a mouse had made its home in the machine for a while, where some foam in the machine must have made a cosy place to sleep. But when it was time to leave its home and head out into the big wide world, it had chewed its way through numerous wires. The mechanic duly took the risograph away to repair. Did this have to happen while we were in the process of trying to print calendars for distribution before the end of the year?!

Then it turned out that one of my department had seen a mouse in his corner of the office, but hadn’t done anything about it. I was somewhat annoyed to discover this. On hearing of the damage the mouse had done, he cleared and swept his corner of the office, only to discover a dead bird behind a small cabinet! I wondered how long that had been there!

This Friday was also the day to say goodbye to a colleague, Stephen – he and his family had been close friends of mine in recent years. Although I already knew that they had decided not to return to Tanzania, having an official little goodbye for him at the office brought to the surface the sadness I felt over their decision, especially because I had no idea when I would get to see them again. His wife and children hadn’t come with him – they had all evacuated to their home in the States due to Corona and he had come back alone to close up their house. When we all evacuated, I didn’t know that they wouldn’t be coming back.

And then there was the music (if it could be called that) coming from the college next door to our offices. They were celebrating the end of term, and the extra loud base made the windows of our office vibrate and made it very hard for me to focus on my work. And there was the heat – the rains still hadn’t started, the thunder rumbled and the skies looked ominous, but no rain came and so the air remained heavy.

One of those days.

But on the bright side (and thankfully there were plenty of bright spots in the day), there were lovely chats with colleagues at coffee break and lunch time and while watching colleagues play volleyball (in case you were wondering, they don’t play volleyball every day – but Stephen had chosen this way to say goodbye, so people were given some time off work to play together). Also, having a lunchtime at all, with time to chat, was a pleasant change from three weeks of short, late lunch-breaks, due to teaching at Moorlands College. (With the time difference between England and Tanzania, I would take my lunch breaks while they had their coffee breaks, giving me about 15 minutes to have a breather from Zoom and eat my sandwiches.) And then there was shopping at the market, where I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that I could buy a good pile of carrots and tomatoes and a few lemons, all for less than a pound.

Whatever a day has been like, there’s always tomorrow, a new day, and this truth will remain unchanged:

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22