Diary of a trip to the Manda language area

Tuesday 10^th June

I'm in Lituhi, in the Manda language area. I arrived here this morning together with my colleague, a young Tanzanian man called Faraja (meaning ‘Comfort’). Our journey began at 6am yesterday morning with the 4.5 hour bus ride to Njombe, where we had hoped to catch the morning bus to Ludewa, but it was full, so we had to wait 5 hours in a very cold bus stand for the afternoon bus. It was grey, windy and wet – despite my thick cardigan and scarf I couldn’t stop shivering. At 3.30pm we finally headed off, arriving 5 hours later in Ludewa. I was very ready to get off that bus! I was tired of the loud music, I’d had enough of podcasts and the road was too rough for me to be able to read a book. In the darkness we headed towards a guest house. No room at the inn! Or the next one. Third time lucky.

Left: My first bus, early on Monday morning. Right: Later in the day at another bus stand, vendors sell their wares, holding them up to the bus windows.

This morning it was another 6am bus and another 5 or so hours on the road. Faraja paid one of the young men, who was waiting to give people rides on his motorbike, to take our luggage and the box of workshop materials up to the guest house, while we made our way on foot. I’m in the same room I was in last time, which is a nice size and peaceful, but catches the sun in the late afternoon, making it rather sticky.

After unpacking I started sellotaping Bible timelines together, ready to give out at the workshop, where we will be doing an Old Testament overview and looking at how it points to Jesus. As Genesis is foundational to understanding the big story of the Bible, we will be able to use the recently published book of Genesis in the Manda language, alongside the Swahili Scriptures and a little book I wrote in Swahili called ‘Habari nzima ya Biblia’ (literally ‘News whole of Bible’, i.e. the big story of the Bible).

Kanyaga Guesthouse in Lituhi, my bedroom

For lunch I had ugali, greens and fish, with a delicious local orange for dessert given to me by a kind gentleman in the café. He even carefully peeled it for me, using the common method here of paring the skin off with a knife to just leave a thin layer of clean pith, you then suck the orange off the pith. On a less happy note, I was sad to hear from Faraja that people had complained to the café owner that last time we came here to do a workshop we didn’t provide people with the food they expected. (The café had helped with the catering, bringing up morning tea to the church, while another café had provided lunch.) This was because when people see a white person, and know you’re with a big organisation, they expect to be wined and dined (which here would mean they expect to receive meat or fish and a soda with every meal) and even be paid to attend. From my perspective, this feels topsy-turvy – if a big organisation has organised a seminar in the UK, participants would expect to pay to attend rather than get training and food for free. However, it’s an attitude we have frequently faced in our ministry, caused in part by how some other NGOs have operated. We try to explain our ministry and how we want to work with the church and often over time they come to understand, but it can be hard at first. Our Tanzanian colleagues get the brunt of it, with people even accusing them of not providing better food or not paying people’s travel expenses because they are pocketing money for themselves.

What else have I done today? Rested, attempted to deal with emails but network was too poor, took a wee stroll with Faraja, ate my usual light tea while doing a crossword, and now I’m writing this.

View from the guesthouse

Wednesday 11^th June

Day one of the workshop. We’re holding it in a classroom belonging to the Catholic church, so before starting we tried to get a brief audience with the priest to greet and thank him. He was busy meeting with different people, so while we waited we chatted with others who were also waiting their turn, explaining to them about our work and listening to the audio version of Jonah in the Manda language. After a good half hour we couldn’t wait any longer, it was time to be meeting and greeting the workshop participants, so we headed to the classroom.

Faraja and I were both somewhat disappointed. We only had half the number of people we’d hoped for and they all, bar one, came from the same church denomination and seemed to be regular church members rather than those with leadership and teaching responsibilities. However, we were at least encouraged to see everyone engaging well and asking questions, as well as making good progress with reading Manda. They particularly enjoyed learning the children’s song, “He made the stars to shine”, which is one I translated some time ago into Swahili and use with children in Sunday school.

Above: Faraja introduces participants to how we write the two vowels that exist in Manda, but don't exist in Swahili. (If you look closely you can see them, a ʉ and an ɨ.) Below: Participants learn to read Manda.

Went for a good brisk walk with Faraja in the evening as the sun set. In the distance we could see the mountains of Malawi on the other side of Lake Nyasa, though the lake itself wasn’t visible. Apparently we’re about a one hour walk from the lake.

Thursday 12^th June

Day two. Expectations of starting more promptly, and with more people, were quickly dashed. A few turned up on time, but most trickled in later, and some people didn’t turn up at all (apparently this was due to a funeral somewhere). Once again, despite the disappointment over numbers, it was great to see them engaged and seemingly enjoying the teaching. Yesterday very few came with Bibles, so I’d asked them to bring them today. But still very few came with Bibles, so apparently the problem wasn’t forgetting to bring one, but simply that they don’t own one. More than half of the participants have bought the three main books we are using in the seminar (Genesis, The Life of Moses (a compilation of verses taken from Exodus to Deuteronomy) and The Big Story of the Bible), so at least they now have some Scriptures, and I pray that this workshop gets them excited about reading them! We have put an offer on, that if they buy all three books they pay just 2000 shillings (about 60p), instead of the total price of 3500 shillings. An offer is always attractive!

Today we had invited children to come to a little class just for them. Their catechism teacher let them all know, and they turned up promptly. Over 80 children! I played ‘Simon says’ with them and taught them ‘He made the stars to shine’ and then handed over to Faraja to read them a short Bible story in Manda and give them a brief introduction to reading their language. It was good to see that all the children understood and spoke Manda (in other places we find children are no longer using the local language), though some of the words in the story they didn’t know as Swahili has got mixed in with Manda, so certain words are no longer understood by this new generation. It was so fun to see the children’s upturned faces catching the late afternoon light, watching and listening intently and laughing and enjoying what we did, with their rosary beads dangling around their necks. May these precious children come to know Jesus as their Saviour and friend.

Faraja checks that the children know the names of body parts in Manda

After teaching Faraja was still game for a short walk despite the long day, so we stepped it out once again, returning as the trees became black silhouettes against the red sky. Time for a quick wash. Thankfully there’s been a good breeze and some cloud cover both days, preventing it from getting too hot, but teaching and walking leave me a bit sticky, so a cool wash is refreshing. The bathroom is nicely tiled and there’s a tap and a pipe just waiting for a shower head. But there’s no water in the pipes and there’s no sink. Bucket bathing only, with water draining away down the long-drop toilet. Basic, maybe, but it does the job! And when the water gets low I just ask the resident guest house staff (a friendly young lady called Catherine!) to refill the water butt.

Evening walk

Friday 13^th June

Last day of the workshop. I was very touched by a gift of bananas from an elderly gentleman who attended. It was great to see participants doing an excellent job of putting a set of Bible story pictures in order, as they had made many mistakes on their first attempt on day one. At the end it was good to hear people saying what they had learnt like, “I’ve come to see that our redemption through Jesus stems back to Abraham, there is a whole plan of salvation” and “I used to just read the Bible any old how, but now I see I need to follow the flow of the Bible” and “If we read the Bible it brings us close to God” and “I believe Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour, I believe in Jesus personally, not just believe in what my church denomination says” and “I will explain to others that when we want to repent we can talk directly to God” (i.e. we don’t have to go to a priest).

Participants put Bible story pictures in order

Saturday 14^th June

We had hoped to get the morning bus to Nsungu, where we would be doing the second workshop, but it turned out that the morning bus wasn’t running. As we wanted to get to Nsungu early enough to prepare for the days ahead, we decided to travel by motorbike rather than wait for the late afternoon bus. This is something I usually avoid, as there are so many motorbike accidents in Tanzania, but the driver drove carefully, I enjoyed a nice chat with him as we went, and just over an hour later we arrived safely. Safely, BUT under police escort, and what followed was an experience I hope never to repeat. In brief it involved being suspected of illegal imports and being made to empty out all our luggage, with Faraja barely escaping being locked up. If you want to know more, I’ll fill you in, but I don’t feel I should post the whole story publicly. The experience also included a very random encounter with a man from Belarus who was there as a tourist! We met him in Lituhi, and then again at the police station, just going from here to there on public transport, with his backpack and tent, and with no Swahili and limited English. He’d run out of cash for his bus ride to the next town, where he’ll be able to restock his wallet at an ATM, so I interpreted between him and the immigration officers and gave him money for his bus fare to Ludewa (about £3). Despite remonstrations he insisted on paying me back for the only way he could – in Euros! I think my German colleague will benefit from those!

With relief I finally left the police station, with Faraja being released a bit later. I was desperate for a drink and was very glad to arrive in the centre of the village, buy a big bottle of cold water, get a late lunch with Faraja (chips and chunks of roasted meat) and head to the guest house by the lake. Most of the day was now gone. I spent some time in quiet preparing to teach at Faraja’s church the next day (Faraja grew up in Nsungu, and his pastor helped us at the police station and had invited me to teach at his church on Sunday morning), before going for a short walk with Faraja.

Evening walk

Sunday 15^th June

I’m sitting in my room and the smell of beer is floating through the window. Just outside my room they are stacking up packs of soda and crates of beer ready for the wedding reception that will be taking place here this evening. The guest house courtyard has been decked with fairy lights and the guests are expected to arrive about 7pm. In anticipation of very loud music and crowds of people right outside my door until past midnight, I have decided to retreat to a different guest house for the night! I’ve made my reservation and will head over there later.

Left: My room with drinks stacked up outside, though many have already been bagged ready for guests, which you can see in the far left of the picture. Right: Ready for the wedding guests!

At church the pastor had tweaked the order of service to give me much longer to teach than I had expected! I spent well over an hour teaching about the importance of meditating daily on God’s Word and how we can do that – amazingly everyone stayed engaged. I wasn’t preaching, rather using visuals, examples and questions to help them understand and remember.

There’s always so much more I could write about, like the conversations with Faraja on everything from the games they played as children to how his mum would make beer and he would be given the juice to drink before it was fermented. Or little things like the beautiful red and orange butterfly I saw, or the very broken toilet seat and dribble of a shower at the guesthouse, or the gorgeous sunset over the lake. But right now I think it’s time to attempt a swim, if the lake isn’t too rough and if I can pluck up the courage to walk through all the men outside my door still counting and organising the drinks!

…

The lake was quite choppy, so I couldn’t swim far, but it was beautiful, and the best part was sitting on some steps on the beach afterwards watching the sun set behind the mountains of Malawi. I’m now at the other guest house, which could do with bit of maintenance (peeling paint and windows that don’t shut), and finding the music from the wedding reception still intrusively loud despite being a few hundred metres away. I’m glad I’m not still there; if I’d stayed I think I’d be crying by now – I don’t cope well with noise!

Lake Nyasa (aka Lake Malawi)

Monday 16^th June

I walked back to the other guesthouse only to find the gate locked and no-one up yet. About twenty minutes later (during which time I stood praying on the beach in the cool morning air) I was finally let in, and I was able to continue with my morning rituals.

Left: My bedroom at the other guesthouse. Right: Wedding reception aftermath.

[I’m writing this in the evening. Just been plunged into darkness. Power cut. I always carry a little solar light with me, which comes in very handy. They’ve now turned on a generator – the fumes are wafting in through my window, so I’d better shut that!]

Day one of the second workshop. We climbed the hill to where the church is located behind some army barracks (we are using the same church I was at yesterday). It was an encouraging first day, with an almost full quota of participants from several different denominations, many of whom have attended previous workshops and could already read quite well and a good number are people with leadership roles in church. So it felt very different from last week.

The church

How would you answer questions like, “What does it mean that Adam and Eve knew good and bad after eating the fruit? If they were made in the image of God, didn’t they already know good and bad?” or “Should Adam have used his authority as a man to prevent Eve from eating the fruit?” or “If God wanted to wipe out mankind due to their evil ways, why did he let Noah and his family live? And if Noah was righteous why do things go wrong again after the flood?” Often when people ask questions, I send a quick silent request to God for wisdom in how to answer – I don’t want to lead people astray by erring from the truth or miscommunicate as I struggle to express a particular concept in Swahili. It was great to hear one elderly lady say at the end of the day that she mostly just read the New Testament, thinking that the Old Testament is just about the Israelites, but now she’s realised that the whole Bible is about Jesus.

A short reminder of how to read Manda - several participants were already proficient readers

Enjoyed a good 1.5 hour walk with Faraja, with some lovely views across an inlet of the lake to the hills beyond. He introduced me to the fruit of the tamarind tree, which was very sharp but tangy – they weren’t quite ripe yet but were still edible. As we walked, we met a number of his old classmates from school days and on our way back we also met some of the workshop participants on their way home. I hadn’t realised just how far some of them had come – one lady we met, who was getting on in years and unable to walk very fast, pointed out the area she lives in which looked to be at least another mile or two further on, making it 4-5 miles from the church. I shouldn’t complain about people being late when they are walking such distances to attend and I should be more careful about finishing early enough for people to get home at a reasonable time!

One or two interesting things I learned, or relearned, today:

• You can eat the leaves of the cassava plant – a common meal is ugali made from cassava and served with greens made from the leaves, Faraja says this meal is called a ‘suit’ as it’s a complete outfit all from one plant!
• Monkeys might look cute to us, but they are a pest for farmers, destroying maize crops.
• The Manda word for father is ‘dadi’, it sounds like our English ‘daddy’ (except for the implosive ‘d’), unlike the Swahili ‘baba’.

Tuesday 17^th June

Went for a short swim in the calm waters of the lake this morning. Beautiful. Day two of the workshop seemed to go well, though I felt quite tired and wondered if the participants felt the same – too much information and not enough time for the brain to rest? It didn’t help that lunch arrived late. Unfortunately it wasn’t the most appetising of meals for me because I can’t eat beans and there were no greens, so it was just ugali and a smallish fish full of fiddly bones that were hard to pick out. I was very touched by the kindness of one of the participants, who noticed my limited meal and insisted on giving me her fish as she had beans she could eat instead.

Group work - learning about the Passover

Once again we had invited children to come for some fun. We had a smaller group this time, but we still enjoyed playing various games, singing a couple of songs and having a little literacy lesson. In Nsungu there has been more immigration of people from different people groups, so not all of the children spoke Manda, but those who did really enjoyed the story Faraja read to them.

Back at the guest house familiar faces greeted me. Colleagues had arrived from our office in Mbeya, plus a couple of guests who I have also met before – our new SIL Tanzania director, who is Cameroonian and will continue to live in Cameroon with occasional trips to Tanzania, and someone who works with one of our financial partners, Wycliffe Netherlands. They have come to Tanzania for a short visit to see with their own eyes how things are going. They’d driven here in the project’s Land Cruiser, and tomorrow, after meeting with some of the workshop participants, they’ll continue with their journey to the Kisi language area. I joked that us ‘normal’ workers have to take buses, while the big wigs get to take the Land Cruiser, as it’s too expensive for us to use it for all of our trips. It does feel a bit ridiculous that a vehicle that is there to make our work easier is sometimes left unused because the cost of using it exceeds our budgets. Mind you, in some ways I prefer buses because then you have no responsibilities – I don’t have to worry about traffic police or punctures or other things going wrong! I can just sit back and relax, though maybe ‘relax’ is overstating things, as the journeys are rarely comfortable and have a distinct lack of toilet stops.

Another sunset over the lake

Wednesday 18^th June

Another swim, enjoying the beauty around me and the swallows flitting up and down over the water. Later, as I walked up to the church with one of the visitors, he commented that I was like a mountain goat going up the path – I guess I’ve got used to skipping over the steep rocky path up to the church! I translated for our new director, so that he could follow what was going on in the meeting. The community were asked to respond to various questions about the project’s impact and their vision for the future. After over an hour of discussion we said our goodbyes, had our morning cup of tea (black and very sweet) and mandazi (which faintly resembles a doughnut in taste, though not in shape) and got stuck into day three of the teaching.

It felt like something of a marathon, but then we were trying to cover several thousand years of history over three days! Doing actions to represent the different events in the Old Testament, singing occasional songs, and a little bit of dramatisation of the story, all helped to break things up.

[Just killed a mosquito, third one this evening, but another one escaped my grasp. Oooh, got it!]

At the end, many of the participants expressed how they now realised that the Old and New Testaments are part of one story. That was one of the key goals of the seminar, so praise God for that! Other encouraging feedback included, “I’ve come to know that salvation is through faith” and “I want to find a Bible!” (this participant didn’t own a Bible – I pray her enthusiasm won’t grow cold before she’s able to get one) and “In the Old Testament they gave burnt offerings, but Jesus was our perfect sacrifice, he’s the offering we need. I will teach this in church.”

Today’s evening walk was to Faraja’s home, to visit his mum. We didn’t stay long, and most of the time they spoke Manda, but it was nice to have met her. On the way back we passed by the home of the pastor whose church we’d been using – he had been an active participant in the workshop, despite not being Manda. He’d asked us to pop in – it turned out he wanted to give me a gift, a colourful woven basket!

Thursday 21^st June

Homeward bound. Up at a painfully early hour to catch the bus, which we’d been told could leave anytime between 5-6am. It left about 5.30am. The windows rattled away as we made our way along the dirt road. Always considerate, Faraja had let me take the window seat so that I wouldn’t be inconvenienced by the people standing in the aisle. On a crowded bus, you inevitably end up with someone leaning into your personal space, or their bag swinging onto your head or having to lean out the way as people squeeze round each other to get off the bus. At every opportunity to get off the bus, I did. Whether or not I needed the toilet, I would go anyhow, as I wasn’t sure when the next opportunity would be. Each stopping place had some kind of toilet option – long drops of varying degrees of cleanliness, a 50:50 chance of the door lock working and always costing 300 shillings (just under 10p).

About 3 hours later we pulled into the district town of Ludewa. After a short break, we continued to the regional town of Njombe. Throughout the 5 hour journey a woman was lying down in the aisle, obviously not feeling well enough to sit! In Njombe, we bought tickets for our next bus and had an hour to get some food and stretch our legs before continuing. We arrived back in Mbeya about 8.30pm. Phew! Tired and dehydrated, but safely home at last. As always, despite the challenges, I have enjoyed the opportunity to be out in the community instead of in the office, teaching and interacting with people and delighting in God’s creation in a different part of the country.