Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

one of my favorite balboa trees with leaves.  valley in background This week was mixture of sad and joyous news.  Let’s get the sad out of the way.  The female puppy (Bonnie-the brown one) died overnight on Tuesday.  I noticed she was not eating that night and looked sort of frail.  The next morning she was discovered and buried.  Clyde is still doing well though they found him a new home on Friday so I did not even get to say bye.  He was doing well.  Sitting on the first command about 60% of the time and instinctively went to heel when walking to stay out from under my feet.  Hoping he is at a home that will love him.     On the better side we got some rain Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.   It was one of those nice slow rains well designed for the crops and grass.   It never really came down hard during the roughly 12 hours it rained off and on.   Thanks for the many prayers for rain in our area an...

Rain I have always loved rain for as long as I can remember.  There were a couple of times in the military where it rained so long and so hard you would think I would have learned to hate it but it only reinforced my love of  rain no matter how much or long I got it.                    Water is the most powerful thing I know of.  Any doubts look at the Grand Canyon and what water can do when given a chance.  Look at the massive structure that had to be built to hold water back at the Hoover Dam.  Here in Tanzania though it is much easier to see how powerful it can be.  For only five months a year do they get rain.  During this period it needs to rain regularly to fill up water cisterns, underground aquifers, help the crops grow.  When you go more than a week in rainy season without rain you get worried.  It affects everything.  Cat...

While this first week on site was not designed to be a lot of hands on work due to my need to re-acclimatize to ever present heat and life in the valley I thought you may want kind of a day by day account of what goes on here. After a long weekend in Singida meeting up with friends in the area as mentioned in my previous blog, I headed out to the valley on Monday morning. Monday, woke up at hotel around 6:30 am so I could cut the hot water heater on in time to get a warm shower before I needed to leave.  Spent about 45 minutes reading from one of my recently downloaded kindle books then went out to see if the ladies were at the hotel and I could get breakfast.  After breakfast I checked and the water was not completely warm yet but good enough for a shower to get the day started.  8 am I had to head into town to get some more money to pay for both the motel and my trip out to the valley. In addition I needed to buy some food items that go bad q...

Just over a week back in Tanzania and still have not made it all the way back to the village but have gotten back to work and fun.  The first couple of days were spent in Arusha with William and Martha Makali and getting back into the swing of things.  The first task was getting over a head cold I brought with me from the states that really got bad on the plane and then on the second day in country I decided to rest it out  barely crawling out of bed that Saturday.  I did however have to go into town on Friday before so I could get the operations phone Mpesa account unlocked.  Every four or five months I have to visit a Vodacom shop to prove I am still who I am with passport in hand or they lock my  Mpesa account.  That apparently happened while I was in the states so had to fix it my first day back.  William and I also had to test drive a vehicle that is going to be on the market some time soon from one of the Assemblies of God missionaries. ...