Africa Highlights

Hi Everyone! Just want to say a massive thank you to all your prayers and support at all stages of our African adventure. Thank you also for taking the time to read our blog and send us your encouraging words. We've really appreciated having friends like you supporting us.

We've compiled an "Africa Highlights" video clip of our adventures, just to finish off. The clip is a bit small, but you can watch it on YouTube using the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9aH88IB1gY

Enjoy!

Love from Hitesh, Lucy & Esther

Serengeti & Ngorongoro Crater

I have been wanting to do this for ages, to finally update the blog and "sign off" for now. It's taken us a long time to settle back into life at home and get organised again. That's been partly due to us packing out our diary (4 weddings in 8 weeks!) and also the reverse culture shock element. Finally things are calming down.

Anyway, wanted to show you guys some pics of our final few days in Tanzania, where we went to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. We had a wonderful relaxing time, and saw lots of animals. I think the only thing we didn't manage to see was leopard, but I've heard they're pretty elusive. However, one of the highlights was having a shower for the first time in about 2 months! That was great, plus it was hot too - bonus!! ;-)


Serengeti view



Elephants



Zebra


Cheetah 1


Cheetah 2

Simba 1


Mummy & Esther


Simba kabisa 1


Simba kabisa 2


Daddy & Esther



Esther sees giraffe


Sometimes it's all too much!


Hippos


Waiting for dinner!



Wildebeast migration 1


Wildebeast migration 2


Wildebeast migration 3


Zebra 2


Esther and Daddy at lunch


More giraffe



Sunset in Serengeti


Esther's new toy


Relaxing in the Serengeti lodge


Ngorongoro Crater 1


Ngorongoro Crater 2


Ngorongoro Crater 3

Ngorongoro Crater View



Esther



Injured Simba

Esther in Arusha

We're Home!

Hi! Just to let you know that we're back home now in Redhill. We've had a great final few days in Africa, especially in the national parks. We will post some pics from the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater in a few days time - probably next week when we get back from David's (Lucy's brother) wedding!

Cheers.

Interesting 24 Hours

Before I start going into details, I just want to assure you that we’re all fine, and have been amazed at God’s protection and His faithfulness.

Last night we got a call from Becky Helsby at around 9:00pm telling us that there were bandits in the Miller’s house. She told us to lock our doors, stay inside and pray. (We live in what’s known as the “plaster house” here at Mavuno, which is in the village, but only 5 mins walk from the Helsby’s. The Millers house is a further 10 mins walk from the Helsby’s). We locked up, switched off everything, and just prayed. We heard a lot of shouting, whistles going off, sirens, but still just prayed. This we did until Dave Helsby came round at around 10:15pm to tell us what had happened. (We have a “volunteer mobile” phone with us, but we don’t get very good reception here at the plaster house, so we didn’t get any news until Dave arrived. We’re extremely glad that the initial call from Becky did come through!)

Five armed men came by boat to rob the Millers and Mavuno. One of the men was dressed like a policeman and carried a police issue gun. They approached the Miller’s home and demanded to come inside saying they were police. Josh Miller didn’t believe them and didn’t let them in, so they fired 9 shots from a gun into the house (but only hitting the wall), then broke the door down. Josh managed to phone Dave as they were breaking the door down, who went over there in the car. Becky phoned us around this time.

Amy Miller managed to get their four kids (all under 7 years old) into the bathroom and locked it. Josh meanwhile was being beaten by the bandits with a stick. When Dave approached, they shot at him, and he had to run back to his house. The bandits then forced Josh to take them to the office safe at the Helsby’s house to steal the Mavuno money. They again shot at Dave at his home. The bandits took the money, then fled by boat.

The only person injured was Josh. He’s got a badly bruised arm that thankfully isn’t broken, bruising and cuts to his back and shoulders, plus a gash to his head. Josh was taken to hospital today to get checked over. Praise God that there was an American A&E specialist there to see him! None of the injuries are very serious.

The Miller’s house is pretty badly damaged, and the Helsby’s house has a broken door. We have been round the Helsby’s most of the day today. Lucy has also been helping tidy up the crime scene at the Miller’s house and I have been repairing the broken doors.

What has been amazing, is the response of the local villagers. There have been relationship issues between Kitongo village and Mavuno, but after the news got round, around 70 men turned up at the Helsbys place to go out and find the bandits. Then this morning, around 15-20 of the village women came over to offer their “pole sana”’s to Mavuno – saying they we’re very sorry. Everyone was genuinely shocked and sorry about what happened. God does say that all things happen for the good of those who love Him, and we’re already seeing some good!

Josh said that he really felt God’s peace with him when he was being beaten up. He knew that God was with Him in that situation. Josh also had a smile on him this morning, and seemed in good spirits. Others too have just testified God’s peace and God’s presence in what must have been a very scary situation.

We too were very scared while all the stuff was going on. We’re in a house in the middle of nowhere, lights off, doors locked, with loads of noise going on around us, scared that the bandits were targeting Mavuno or any Westerners, and that we might get a visit too. It’s amazing how fear and persecution really helps your prayer life! We were helpless here in our little home, but God has protected us and looked after us. We couldn’t do anything but pray, and God has been faithful.

We just wanted to let you know what's been happening and God's amazing protection over us all.

Forced / broken gate with rock used to break main door

Bullet Holes

Rock used to break internal door

The Final Furlong

Lucy - I am writing this whilst sitting on our small two-seater sofa with a storm going on outside. Every now and then the curtain to my left billows out with the amazingly gusty winds that we get out here whenever there’s a storm and then there’s the continuous pounding of rain on our tin roof. The rain comes and goes sometimes stopping altogether, then at other times sounding so loud that normal conversation is no longer possible. That coupled with the thunder means it pretty loud in the house at the moment, but Esther is managing to sleep through it – which is great. Just behind me the rain is starting to come in below our back door. This happens when we have very heavy rain, but as all the floors in the house are concrete, it doesn’t really matter.

Lucy blog writing and storm

Right, this week. This last week has been our penultimate week at Mavuno. We now only have 5 and a half days left as we’re leaving very early Saturday morning. I can’t believe our time out here is now so nearly over. Although, I think we’re both looking forward to seeing friends and family again and also to having a flush toilet!

This week has been a fairly quiet week. Esther and I spend most of the day on Monday pottering around the house. On Tuesday afternoon, as on every Tuesday afternoon, was the Mavuno staff meeting. So far I have only managed to attend this once (as Esther tends to refuse to sleep at the Helsbys and gets tired and grouchy), and Hitesh has never been. And so we thought we’d both try and go this week. Esther settled very quickly on a rug on the floor at the Helsbys, which was amazing, and so we both went. It was a good meeting and really interesting to hear about some of the things going on apart from what we are already aware of. At the moment they are planning their fourth parenting conference where existing and prospective foster parents are given training on the basics of parenting – which from the sounds of it, should be very good. Subjects such as health, discipline and nutrition are all to be covered.

On Wednesday we had the kids bible study, as usual. There were loads of kids there this week as children from Kitongo ‘centre’ are now also being invited along. I counted at least 30 kids there - which was great.

On Thursday morning, after the usual ‘kids praise’ session at the Helsby’s, I had my usual coffee morning with Milka (plus Manyashi, Mariam and Jona) and Baseki. Baseki wasn’t around for all that long so it was mainly Milka and I. It was really good just to get the chance to chat. We also both prayed for healing for Manyashi as his eyesight is really bad and he really struggles with seeing anything unless it is very close to his eyes.

On Thursday afternoon Becky popped around with Jake and Katy and asked if we fancied a trip to Kitongo centre. So off we went. I’m really glad we went in. It’s odd, we’re not that far from the centre of Kitongo (probably about 20 mins walk) but it’s the first time I’ve been there. Our walk there was interesting as we kind of got a bit lost and ended up walking through a lot of mud at various points, having to remove or rescue our shoes from the mud. Was good fun though! Once we got here, everyone stared at us, as is the norm! We had a look around the very small clothes market there and then went to visit a man whose little daughter had got burnt by some hot chai. I couldn’t believe it was just tea that had burnt her as the whole of her tummy area was really badly burnt. She’s got some penicillin injections from the hospital which her dad administers twice a day. Was a bit scary seeing these couple of needles just open to the elements which presumably will get used and re-used until her course is finished. We walked home quickly through some rice fields as a heavy storm was approaching fast!

On Friday Becky, Amy and I (and Esther and various other children!) all headed into Mwanza. We had the weekly visit to U-turn (a shop which sells a load of western food goods, some at exorbitant prices) and the food market. We then met up with Tammy, Lisa and Biata for ladies bible study. It was really good to meet up with these ladies again and get to know them a bit better. Unfortunately Esther was very over tired and was not a happy bunny, so my time involved in the bible study was a bit limited by her!

Esther and Kate tired after a long day in Mwanza

Saturday saw us at the Catholic Choir rehearsal again. This time however, it had been pre-arranged as the choir leader had asked us to make another recording of them singing… so rather than a rehearsal this turned into a full blown performance. The keyboard was there, the choir had been practising all week (and had even added some actions to their songs), and the choir leader was obviously very excited, and just a little stressed about the whole thing. They sung really well, as expected, but to me there seemed to be a bit less joy in their singing… I think I preferred it when they just sat around outside one of the houses and just sung completely unaccompanied. It seemed somehow more natural and spontaneous. Our enjoyment was also lessened a bit as we learnt from my conversation with the choir master, and via a subsequent conversation with the Helsbys, about some of the completely non-Christian ideas that are preached and believed throughout the country in the Catholic church. It’s really sad to hear of some of the things that have been added or taken away from what is the amazingly good news of the bible. It kind of opened our eyes a bit to some of the beliefs that are held by those living around us.

The Choir

Hitesh – A quick reflection at the week, it doesn’t seem as though all that much has happened. But we have managed to get quite a bit work done on the staff house. It took about a day to transport the nine roof trusses to the site from the Mavuno compound (about a mile), and by the end of the week, we had managed to put six of them in position. The house is now starting to take shape, and we’ll hopefully be able to get the remaining trusses on this week before we leave.

When I’ve had some down time this week, I’ve been doing some tiling at the team house – the Helsby’s current house. There were some tiles missing at the tops of the showers that I’ve now done, but still have to grout. Not sure why they were missing. Plus I’ve been working on tiling the kitchen walls, immediately above the work top. The kitchen tiling has proved to be a bit of challenge in that the walls are all over the place. The kitchen worktop has a gap between it and the wall of as much as an inch in some places, and nothing in others. So I’ve had to make some shutters, build out the wall with cement to close the gap, then tile on that. Bit of a mission really, but almost done with that.

I would have finished the tiling on Saturday, but was frustratingly delayed by the Catholic Church Choir. The choir leader is called Peter, and he desperately wanted us to film them. I spoke to him on Friday, and he said they’d be there at 2pm, and said my “presence was requested” at that time. I’d worked on the tiling in the morning, and had hoped to go back after the singing in the afternoon. We had lunch at our place, and by 2pm, we couldn’t hear anything (we can hear them singing from our house). We hung around for about half an hour, and then went there at 2:30pm to see what was going on. There was no-one there. So I went on back to the Helsby’s to carry on tiling. Lucy stayed with Esther and waited around. At 4:15pm, Lucy came over saying they were now ready to go. So we rushed off, assuming they were waiting for me to get going. I set up the camera, but was told not to start as they were just warming up! We sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Then about 5pm, it kicked off. I was then filming for over and hour! It finally finished at about 6:15pm. The singing was great, but it was just very frustrating to wait so long, especially as I was working and had to literally drop everything to come and start filming. I know the Africans hold their timings very loosely, but starting 3 hours late, when you’re working is a bit trying. If we’d had been just hanging around at home, then it would have been fine as we could have just waited till we heard them start practicing!

We’ve had a really lovely day today. Today was our final Sunday at church, as next week we’ll be in the Serengeti! We went to the Baptist church in Kisesa, which is about 45min drive away. The service was in Swahili, so I just read my bible during the sermon, and alternated looking after Esther with Lucy. After the service, we all went out to Mwanza for lunch. We went to this hotel that has a really good Indian restaurant. It was the same restaurant we went to when we first came to Mavuno. It was a really good afternoon, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

Musa and I at the restaurant

So we’re now in to our final week at Mavuno. We actually catch our flight home on a week Wednesday (28^th). We leave Mavuno on Saturday morning, being picked up at 7am to start our three-day tour of the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater National Parks. We will be dropped off at Arusha on Monday 26^th, staying the night there. We travel to Nairobi by bus on the 27^th, staying at Mayfield Guesthouse again that night, then fly out on the 28^th, landing in the morning of the 29^th. I am looking forward to coming home, but will certainly miss this place. Hopefully, God willing, we will come here again soon.

Oh Forgot to mention, that Barack Obama is very popular out here. He is on everything including, T-shirts, buses, posters, and even bubblegum! Take a look at this:

Obama bubblegum

We may not be quite as prompt with our next blog post due to our travels. But may try and post a quick update on Friday.

Esther – Hi! Hi! I have learnt to say Hi! this week. Also God was looking after me as I got knocked over by a moo-cow on Wednesday! I is ok though.

Esther after mango

Posho

Just want to make a quick apology if you notice any “T’s” missing! The “T” came off the laptop keyboard, we put it back on, but it still doesn’t always fire!

Lucy – Greetings from a very hot Africa. I am writing this sitting at our dining table with both doors wide open, wearing a strappy top (which is very culturally wrong so will have to change if I leave the house), and it I am still feeling very hot. We haven’t had any decent rain for a few days now and the days just seem to be getting hotter. Three cows just trotted past our door. The cows here are all looked after by small boys (about 10 years old or younger) and one in particular has decided that he likes watching how these Mazungu’s live and so allows his cows to graze right in front of our door. The cows are extremely docile so it’s fine just quite amusing when you turn around to see a cow looking in at your door!

This week we’ve done a fair bit of visiting or being visited. On Tuesday afternoon I went with Esther to visit Milka. It’s currently the school Easter holidays and so all the children are around. So when I went around Milka was there with Esther, Manyashi, Mariam and Jona, and the Miller children were also visiting so there was Hannah, Abi, Naomi, Ezekiel (known as Zeke). So there were a lot of children around! Manyashi was the first child that John and Milka looked after. He is currently at boarding school and so we’ve only recently met him. He is an albino and is therefore very ‘at risk’ in a country like Tanzania. This is part of the reason he is at boarding school. In Tanzania, and particularly in rural villages like ours, albinos are viewed as cursed and their body parts are often called for by witchdoctors. Manyashi’s story is heartbreaking as his younger sister, who was also an albino, was killed in front of him following a demand by a witchdoctor. It is horrible and sickening to think that this practise is still happening today. Despite of all this Manyashi is a very happy and proving to be very clever, young man.

Milka and I did manage to chat a bit despite of all the children around and she showed me her wedding photos. Was lovely to see them and was interesting to see some of the differences, but also the surprising number of similarities, between a British and Kenyan wedding. Milka and John had a lot of bridesmaids and flower girls, all dressed the same way, which surprised me. One of the odd differences was the fact that in all the group shots of family members etc, no-one is smiling. It appears that smiling is not the done thing!

On Thursday I had invited Milka and the kids, together with Baseki and her sister-in-law, Gole (who is about 6) and her brother-in-law, Kahabe (who’s about 10), around to ours to watch a film on our laptop. I also invited Velo, our house-help, to join us. I wanted to do it during the Easter holidays so that all the kids could join in. I was thinking that it would be a nice and fun way for everyone to spend time together and that the kids would enjoy the treat. However, I’m not sure it worked that well culturally!! We all watched Wallace and Grommit – “A Close Shave”… which may have been the first wrong decision. I thought this would be good as there is not all that much dialogue, it’s pretty visual, and a lot of the humour is visual. But in reality I’m not sure the kids knew quite what to do when they were watching it. The sat down and watched it but there were no smiles at all. Milka seemed to be the only one who got any of the jokes! Maybe the humour didn’t translate well, but I think the main issue was that some of these children may never have watched a film, or anything on TV before and therefore just didn’t know how to respond. I also made some chocolate-cornflake-cakes (with oats rather than cornflakes)… but again the kids weren’t that fussed. Chocolate is rarely eaten out here, and is not really seen as a treat. In fact quite a few of the African women I’ve met out here don’t even like it.. which is almost unheard of in our culture!

Watching Wallace and Grommit

(L-R Velo, Manyashi, Mariam, Baseki, Milka

on floor Jona, Esther, Gole and Kahabe)

However, despite all of this, I think everyone enjoyed themselves in the end. After the film the kids went outside to play and Milka, Baseki, Velo and I just talked. It’s great having Milka around as she speaks fluent Swahili (albeit Kenyan and not Tanzanian Swahili – there is a difference!) and fluent English, so she does a lot of translating. We talked about how long it would take to fly to London, and America, and some of the differences between British and Tanzanian culture. They were surprised when I talked about the diversity of people and cultures in London. They were very surprised when I said there were a lot of Africans living in London! Was really good to chat and just find out a bit more about each other’s cultures.

Chatting after film

(L-R Velo, Baseki, Gole and Kahabe)

On Saturday a pikipiki (motorbike) arrived to pick us up and drive us to Lugaye. Lugaye is only about 20 mins away on a bike along empty dirt track. Originally 2 pikipiki’s were meant to pick us up but only one turned up so the 3 of us got on (whilst praying for God’s protection!). I was behind the driver with Hitesh behind me and then Esther on his back in her carrier. Was good fun although I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to travel like that along a main road.

We were going to visit Musa, the main site foreman at Mavuno, who lives in Lugaye. Hitesh had asked him earlier in the week if we could visit him. He was really pleased that we had asked and said he would love us to come and visit. The culture here towards people visiting you is so different to back home .Here people really do feel truly honoured if you visit them, and it’s very much no-holds-barred on doing what they can to make you feel welcome. It is incredibly humbling. Musa welcomed us into his little bachelor pad! He lives in a room which is part of a fairly large mud-brick, tin-roofed house, together with 4 other families, each family occupying a separate room. There is also a large open area where food is prepared. As we walked in, there was a recently killed chicken sitting in a pot. I was pretty sure this wasn’t for us as it was 10 in the morning and we thought we’d just pop around for a couple of hours to say hi, and then leave. How wrong I was! Musa had arranged for a lady to make a lovely chicken stew for us, with rice and mchicha (a green vegetable a bit like spinach) for lunch. Before lunch we sat with Musa (and some sodas that he had bought for us) and just chatted about life here and life at home and found out more about how he came to be at Mavuno and his family. It was lovely just to have the time to find out more about the local people involved in this project. Whilst we were talking, Esther wandered off and spent most of the time playing outside with the local kids, just coming in to see us every now and then. Musa is a lovely guy (and a big Manchester United fan!), and really made us feel so welcome. We ended up leaving his house around 1:30pm.

In the afternoon we heard the choir practising again, this time with the keyboard, and so we went over to listen to them for about an hour. Although we’ve now heard them a number of times we never cease to be amazed at their singing and the beauty of their voices, always in perfect harmony!

In the evening we were invited over to the Helsbys for a barbecue, which was lovely! We eat meat very rarely at the moment so this was a real treat. After we had eaten, Esther kept everyone entertained with her standing up then falling over in the bath, laughing lots, then doing it all over again! Was a really good end to a very good day.

Hitesh – Thinking back at this week, it has been fairly eventful, but it did start slowly. I have been doing various things round Mavuno. Monday was spent marking out the walls and rooms for the first staff house. Now that the concrete slab has been poured, the walls are constructed using steel posts bolted in the concrete, with steel angle sections used to brace and “square” the building. Then steel mesh is suspended between the posts, and cement placed on the mesh to form the walls. Monday afternoon, we started putting in a few posts and welding steel angle sections together to start to form the frame of the house. Dave and I worked together.

Dave was busy on Tuesday, so I did a bit of plumbing connecting a new 5000 litre water storage tank to the existing one at the first family house. John and Milka will have up to 10 kids living in the house with them, so they will use lots of water! Hence the extra storage tank will help to save the pump from being run every few days. The job was fine, though I did manage to get stuck inside the new water tank! A new tank doesn’t come with any fittings. So you have to drill a hole at the bottom of the tank and fit an outlet coupler to it. This involves using a nut on the inside of the tank. (You can see where this is going!) Anyway, I was told that when I go in to tighten the nut, to take a bucket with me, so that I can stand on the bucket to get back out. I went in, fixed the nut, but couldn’t get back out again! The tanks are over 7 feet tall, and the bucket was too short! For the first time out here, I used a mobile phone! I had been given the volunteer phone by Dave about a week ago after Wayne left. I nearly left it at home that morning, but remembered thankfully to take it with me, and phoned Dave. Dave was actually in Mwanza, so he phoned Josh, who literally came running with another bucket (and lid) for me to get out of the tank. I was probably in there for about half an hour in total, and it was roasting hot. The tanks are black, and heat up very quickly in the African sun. I was very relieved to get out!

Family house water tanks - got stuck in the right hand one!

Wednesday, I went to Mwanza with Dave to pick up some supplies and do the weekly market shop. We picked up some steel angle sections, rebar, and other bits and bobs. It was a good day out, and I was very pleased to see the market for the first time.

Thursday was a quiet and frustrating day. There are a lot of bad rumours about Mavuno, all created by one or two corrupt individuals, who also happen to be chairmen of the Kitongo village. In order to clear up any of the rumours, as well as to build relationships with the chairmen (I think there are 25 in total for Kitongo – a village of about 2000!), they were invited to come and see Mavuno, have some lunch and ask any questions they had. They were supposed to come on Tuesday, but it got moved to Thursday. Come Thursday, they were supposed to arrive at 10:00am, food was being prepared and everyone was waiting in anticipation. Dave got a call about 12:30pm saying that they weren’t coming. We don’t know the real reason why. There are now more rumours and second guessing as to why they didn’t come. All of which is really frustrating, especially when Mavuno is desperately trying to be open and encouraging.

I think one of the reasons they didn’t show is an issue with “posho”. Posho in its purest Swahili sense is recompense. The village chairmen are responsible for making decisions on behalf of the village, and are supposed to look after the best interests of the village. If a decision needs to be made about a particular matter, they are supposed to meet, discuss the matter and make a decision. Due to their position and power as village chairmen, they ask for a sum of money to help them out called “posho”. If you’re like me, it can sound like a bribe. But, apparently you need this money to help “build relationships” (quote from Tanzanian Mavuno staff, trying to explain “posho” to us Wazungu). Giving money to a person of power that is making a decision concerning you or something you’re involved with sounds like a bribe to me, however which way you put it! Or is that just my prejudiced Western mindset?? But here in Tanzania, it’s to “build relationships”!

In my very limited experience with Tanzanian culture and life here in Kitongo, it seems that the idea of “posho” has become twisted. I’m really sorry that I’m giving my rather bias viewpoint on such limited experience! I feel quite frustrated that the good name of Mavuno can get dirtied and muddied by a few greedy and untrustworthy individuals! Even the locals that work for Mavuno have said that Kitongo is very “special” and they have not seen anything like it. A fair price for posho is around 2000 Tsh (Tanzanian Shillings) per chairman. That’s equivalent to about £1, but when you consider that the minimum daily wage is 3000Tsh, it’s not a bad amount for an hour or two worth of “work”. When Mavuno first came to Kitongo, that was the amount stipulated. Before any buildings were built on site, the Tanners and Helsbys were based in Mwanza – an hour’s drive away. They had a local guy called Malachi working for them, and he came for a meeting with the chairmen with enough money for 2000Tsh for each one. Anyway, right at the start of the meeting they demanded 10000Tsh each for posho! And for 3 hours the discussion was only about posho. Malachi said that there’s no way he could get that sort of money, but they kept on pressing him. Anyway, after 3 hours, when it was time to go, they just did the decision making business in a few minutes right at the end. They weren’t really bothered about the decision making, they just wanted as much money as possible from a Western organisation.

Anyway, because Thursday’s visit was just a tour for them to see Mavuno, they heard that they weren’t going to get any posho, and didn’t show up. We had a massive lunch prepared, including meat and sodas, they didn’t have to make any decisions, but just have a look and get a free feed. From what I’ve heard, most of the chairmen actually wanted to come, but one or two of the high-up chairmen (that have also been responsible for the bad rumours) persuaded the other not to come. It was a very frustrating day.

By the way, while all the politics were unfolding, I spend the day putting together a wheel barrow, and painting the rafters to our choo (toilet) with used engine oil to stop the bugs from eating the wood.

Friday was a very productive day. Dave and I, plus a couple of other guys got on with putting up the steel posts to the staff house. We got loads done, and I also had a go at some welding! It was my first time and harder than I thought, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. Don’t worry, I’m only doing the non-critical welds!

Posts being put up at Staff House 1

Me welding

Here's a picture of some locals "busting rocks"! They're busy making gravel.

Esther – I has had a fun week playing with lots of children. I like going to the Helsby’s and playing with Kate. She is my friend. I also have learnt to put things on my head!

Esther's new hat!

Kids, Easter and Concrete

Lucy - On Monday this week we got the opportunity to visit some of the off-campus children. These are orphans who are currently under Mavuno’s care but are living off-campus with families until the houses here are built and they can move on-site. There are currently around 30 off-campus Mavuno children. Malucha, one of the local workers for Mavuno, visits all the children once a month to check on their progress and to see how things are going. The children are spread over quite a wide area and so the visiting takes a few days. We had asked to accompany him on one of these visits and so we went with him to visit three families on Monday in a place called Bunda. We left Esther with the Helsbys as we knew it could end up being quite a long day. Bunda was just under a 3 hour bus journey away, near the entrance to the Serengeti. We travelled on one of the small local buses which was quite an experience. Originally built to carry about 30 people we often ended up with at least another 10 standing in any gap available.

Once we arrived in Bunda we each got on the back of a pikipiki (a motorbike) – which was a lot of fun and a great way to travel- and went first to the local clinic. Each month Malucha goes to the clinic to pay, on behalf of Mavuno, any medical bills that the children have incurred during the month. Once the bills had been paid it was off to the first family house, again on the back of a pikipiki.

When we arrived we were greeted very warmly by Lucia (aka Mama-Richard), shortly joined by her husband Pastor Jeremiah Motomoto – fantastic surname! They have 3 of their own children, another child who they care for after Jeremiah’s brother died, and 3 Mavuno children. They are a lovely family and made us feel incredibly welcomed. By African village standards they seemed to have a fairly large house. The living room was full of armchairs with many photos on the walls together with calendars, a very big picture of Mary and Jesus and a large number of Christmas-type decorations hanging from the ceiling. It was definitely a very colourful and cheery place! Pastor Jeremiah spoke fairly good English and so we spent quite a bit of time talking to him and learning more about the problems and challenges that he as a pastor faces.

As we had to wait until the second family we were due to visit had got home we ended up staying a little longer than intended at the Motomoto house. So long in fact, that I got called out to help cook the rice! At first I hadn’t realised that I was helping cook lunch for us, I thought I was just being taught how to cook rice, the African way (which is actually fairly different from the English way!). It was good fun helping out, and I definitely proved to be a source of entertainment for the kids!

Lucy Cooking Rice

Lunch was served to us (at around 2:30, after having arrived at theirs around 11ish) and consisted of rice and meat, together with a bottle of soda each. We found out later that this was an extremely special lunch which they had treated us to as their visitors. Hitesh was told the next day that this is the sort of lunch you’d be given if you were going to meet your future Father-in-Law for the first time!

The next 2 families we visited ended up being very short visits indeed as we had to ensure we got the bus back home before it got dark. It was good to meet some of the kids though and to see the families that they are living with. All the families made us feel very welcome and it was such a privilege to be invited into their homes and meet them. We ended up catching the bus from Bunda at around 5, although this time it was a bigger and much quicker bus. We finally got back to Lugaye (the village closest to Kitongo on the main road) around 6:30 and after waiting around for a pikipiki Hitesh and I both squeezed on the back of one, back to Mavuno. It was a beautiful evening and was such a nice way to travel home… although it probably was more comfortable for me than Hitesh as I think he was kind of having to hold me onto the bike!

Esther was very excited to see us when we got to the Helsbys which was lovely to come back to… although I think we had missed her probably more than she missed us!

On Wednesday afternoon we had the kids Bible Club at the Helsbys, as usual. I managed to get some video footage this time of all the kids singing, see below. They were in good voice this week and there were a fair amount of kids there as it’s currently the Easter school holidays.

Kids Club

Hitesh didn’t have to work on Good Friday and so we ended up having a very chilled out day. Esther slept til 9:00… which was fantastic as so did we. We went over to the Helsby’s to pick up our weekly shop and catch up with them a bit. Then we went for a very, very short walk as a heavy storm was approaching. It was great to watch it coming towards us and then to run home as it started to rain – which Esther loved!

Saturday was a lovely day! We had a very chilled out morning reading and then I made us a bit of a packed lunch before the 3 of us headed off to explore our local area. Just behind our house there is a fantastic place to walk which we had kind of missed and not explored. The walk kind of runs in a ‘valley’ between two kopjes (big ‘hills’ of granite). It was pretty hot so we walked for a bit, then found some rocks to sit on and eat lunch. We then decided to climb one of the kopjes, which was harder work than we imagined, particularly as Hitesh was carrying Esther on his back the whole time. The view though was fantastic and well worth it! We then followed the ‘cowherders’ footpath down, which was a lot less steep a gradient (we had been trying to work our how the cows got up the Kopjes!)

Lunch Stop

View from the top

Later in the afternoon I heard the choir practising again and so went to watch. They had a keyboard this time together with 2 large amps powered by a generator stored between two large piles of grass! They were practising for their Easter service. There were more of them than usual and as soon as they say me they welcomed me in and one of the older ladies insisted I sat on her chair whilst she went and got another one. I filmed a few of their songs, partly because I love listening to them and wanted a record of it, and also partly because we had promised the choir leader last time that we would get some footage of them singing when they next had the keyboard there. We will post some clips of the singing later in the week.

Easter Sunday was definitely an experience! The Baptist church that the Helsby’s usually go to joined with 2 ‘sister’ churches to celebrate Easter. This, apparently, is fairly common and is often done on Easter and Christmas. This meant that the church service was in a different building, a very long way off the main road about 30 mins along a pretty pot-holed and bumpy dirt track. We arrived a bit late (which is culturally acceptable!) and the service had already started. We got there about 11:45am to find the whole church singing, which was very cool. There were probably around 500 people there, all singing together! The singing was then followed by about 45 mins of choir singing (with one choir from each of the 3 churches singing for about 15 mins each)! However, the singing was awesome! There was then some very impressive memory verses recited by the kids from the Helsby’s church. The kids were probably between 5 and 8 years old and managed to recite various verses from the bible for about 15 mins! After this there was a bit more singing and then the sermon. This meant that the church service itself didn’t finish until about 1:45 pm. We knew that lunch was to be served after the service and to be honest we were getting a bit hungry! However, after the service there were a whole series of baptisms. The baptisms were cool, including a few old ladies who were probably in their 60/70s. Apparently baptisms only take place about twice a year because getting hold of enough water to fill up the baptistery pool is such hard work. The baptisms lasted for about an hour! Esther, by this point, was becoming a little bit moody and was not a happy bunny. However, after a little more singing from the choir it was time to eat. We could not believe the size of portions that were given out to each and every one of the 500 people who had gathered there. There was a mountain of rice and some meat. For those of you who know us well, you’ll know that we eat a lot. But I couldn’t finish my portion and Hitesh struggled to finish his. The rice was served with what must have been a least a couple of cow’s worth of meat and beans. We couldn’t get over how much food there was. Easter day is such a big event over here that they seem to go all out to celebrate. However, I guess it must be remembered that this may well have been people’s only meal of the day. They would not go home to eat more, and from talking to locals here, most people don’t have breakfast either.

Easter Service

Easter Baptisms

Once food was over people began to go their separate ways. A truck came to pick up those from ‘our’ church. And it was quite literally a truck, see below! We then headed home. It had been a very long day but I’m so glad we did it as it was great to experience Easter in a completely different culture. It was quite all in all quite a humbling experience.

The "Coach" from Our Church (the words on the back say 'God Help Us' - indeed!)

Hitesh – Lucy’s already mentioned what we did at the beginning and end of the week. But during the middle of the week it was business as usual with the work at Mavuno. I spent Tuesday and Thursday working on the shelves for the store room for the first family house. I went well and I got them finished on Thursday afternoon. However on Wednesday, we were able to carry on with and finish pouring and casting the concrete slab to staff house 1. The ladies had been busy at the beginning of the week bashing stones to make more gravel! Below is a video clip of the concrete mixing and pouring. If you’re an engineer, or just like watching paint dry, you’ll find it interesting! ;-) I was helping place the concrete – working with the guy in the red top seen in the background. It was a hard day’s work, but we got a lot done.

Concreting

I’ve really enjoyed this week. I’m definitely feeling more settled here in our home. I’m beginning to get to know the locals, and am finding myself relaxing more and more. Though it’s a shame that we’ve only got another 3 weeks left here at Mavuno. I’ve especially enjoyed visiting the off-campus kids, and being welcomed into an African home. Plus the Easter celebrations today were great to witness and be a part of. Easter is big out here, and so it should be as Easter Sunday is the biggest day in the Christian calendar. It’s worth celebrating that we are forgiven and free “in Christ”, our relationship with God has been restored and we are God’s children. Amen.

Esther – I have had fun this week doing more exploring. I really enjoyed the walks I did with Mummy and Daddy, and liked playing with the water outside our house when the big storm happened.

Esther Watching the Rain Storm