Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

This week is my couple of days off in Arusha to recharge, eat up the almost American style food, have no troubles finding diet soda and so on.  It is rare to get a day off during the work week/weekend as there are so many things to be taken care of especially on weekends.   So I wanted to take a weekend and half a week in Arusha to relax and do some things I enjoy.  Oh what a great plan if only it worked.  The weekends before I went to Arusha the internet was so horrible in town I was having trouble taking my continuing education tests.  I have to have my 30 PDHs for my engineering license by the end of June.  I started going through the online courses and taking the tests about a month ago so I would have no problem.  So far I have completed the studying for 5 of the courses but have only been able to complete one test.  So that got added to the Arusha weekend only the internet only lasts 15 minutes and I have to restart the test each time it re...

These last couple of weeks have been full of adventures for myself, Barnabas Bear and my family visiting from the states.  I met up with them in Istanbul, Turkey for a couple of days before we flew over to Nairobi, Kenya then drove to Arusha taking in a Safari along the way.  In Arusha, we picked up the truck I use and I drove to Singida, then out to our site in the Iramba Valley before journeying through Dodoma, Morogoro and Dar Es Salaam to Ferry over and visit Zanzibar for a couple of days.  This wall all about two weeks in length.  And like most Hendrix vacations there was no sleeping past 7 AM so we could fit as much into every day as possible. In Istanbul we had my parents, oldest brother and two friends from Germany. We spent a good chunk of our first day walking to visit some of the mosques which have beautiful architecture and tile work as well as one of the more historical church to mosque buildings in the area. We also visited the cisterns under the city...

I am going to start out by letting you know this is not a story about the troubles of having vehicle trouble on the way to Arusha, this is a story about the blessings that can come through such an adventure.  I am going to take a break from Tiny House Tanzania episodes to tell you this story. So this weekend I am headed to Arusha, which is one of the bigger cities and a jumping off location for many of the safari adventures and Kilimanjaro hikes.  This means the city has some heavy influence from outside sources for food.  I look forward to trips to Arusha since I have found a good hamburger joint, good pizza place, good pasta and decent Mexican.  It took me many trips to find those but I have them now along with a break from my diabetic diet to enjoy a milkshake.  So as I leave the valley to Singida so I can clean the truck and pick up some friends who want a ride I realize I have no real power going up the hill out of the valley.  There is no safe pla...

It has been some happening weeks here in Tanzania since my return or more importantly the return of my laptop from Nairobi.  After getting a week behind in my work with the repair of my laptop and then the trials and tribulations in getting it back in my hands, I had to spend a large amount of time working to prepare for visitors from the States and several issues we had to deal with on the site.  So I am a little late again getting to the blog and when this happens I normally sit at my computer with conflicting ideas and topics to cover and never really sure what should be talked about first.  So I am doing a little bit of a combo here. Let's start with the video I prepared for the FDM USA banquet which can be seen on youtube: To answer the number one question I am hearing about this video-yes I have lost some weight while I have been here.  Walking everywhere tends to help with that and I have been very good about my sugar as I cannot get medicine here so I w...

Before I actually get started this week I am going to deviate-I know I do that a lot- and make a request for assistance. Rev. William Makali and his wife Martha would like to come stateside to see their daughter graduate college.  This is not an FDM USA sponsored trip so he has to raise his money for the tickets.  He currently has raised $1200 and needs $1800 more.  If you can assist, please arrange to give your money or check to William while he is in the USA from May 12 to Jun 10.  Thank you in advance for your generosity.  Just because they are not on an official FDM USA trip they would still love to meet with friends and groups that have supported them in the past, just contact me to see what we can arrange.   One of the fun parts of my life here in Tanzania is the visa process.  You cannot get a residence work permit in the USA, you have to apply for it in Dar Es Salaam which is no where near where I am.  I have found out recently you can h...

As I am two days late with this blog and part of that is due to falling sick to some very small sardine like fish in a soup that was absolutely no fun while traveling from Yulansoni to Singida and then a day later to Arusha, I am not doing a normal blog but instead a couple of small items I thought were interesting.  Please feel free to comment if you run into similar situations. First a note about traveling while having a stomach problem-they don't stop for bathroom breaks or at least nothing that would help.  It used to be they stopped at a midway point for a significant amount of time but since they finished paving the roads they no longer do that on the 6 hour trip to Arusha.  They did make one very quick stop-not nearly long enough for me to risk getting off the bus for.  The second travel day while not pleasant was much better than the first that was at the height of my problems. Speaking of traveling on buses:  It was interesting that a policewoman ca...

One of the many questions I was asked before coming here is what will you eat.  So I thought I would like to share a little about what I have been eating here, but please understand this is what I am eating at William and Martha's house and around town in Arusha, it may change some later and I will let you in on that if it happens. For Breakfast I have a variety of meals that include scrambled eggs, breakfast sausages, a piece of bread with jam, or porridge.  Scrambled eggs and the bread with jam is pretty much what you expect.  But the breakfast sausage is actually just a hot dog wiener and the porridge is difficult to explain.  It is somewhat like cream of wheat but just a little.  It is much more fine ground and I believe it is made of corn or maize flour.  It is normally served very runny and allowed to thicken as you eat it.  There is very little actual taste or texture to the meal itself and it is dark in color unlike cream of wheat.  Like...

It is hard to believe I am already a week in and as promised I am not going to let too much time get by without giving an update.  The biggest problem this first full week is what I should include because there is so much to tell everyone about.  I hope not to bore those who have been here or other parts of the world on mission trips because some of this will seem old hand maybe but for those whose ministry is the support of those who go to these locations I feel called to share some of my life here.  First for everyone asking:  Barnabas is fine, his hibernation state is over and he is out and about in town.  We will start with him as a matter of fact.  He was worried because bears are not native to Africa (look up why Paddington Bear had to come from Peru-because the author first wanted him to be from Africa until they learned Bears are not native to Africa so poor Paddington got an address change). At William and Martha's trying to work the deve...

I am not one to normally write about everything that happens in my life-hence the reason I am not a great blogger.  I have made a commitment to do better both on Facebook and here on the blog to "talk" more.  That being noted I have been here in Arusha, Tanzania with William and Martha Makali for three days now and am getting into the swing of things.  Normally when I make these trips it is go, go and more go because we only have two weeks to accomplish a lot of tasks.  This trip is slower from the perspective that I am not working on tasks as much as a way of life change and that does take time. When I first got here after a full 24 hours of flights and layovers I was welcomed by 80 degree F temperatures at night after having a daily high of 40 at home.  The first day I spent getting adjusted to the heat and getting on the right time schedule which really meant falling asleep throughout the day as I tried to study my Swahili text.  Needless to say my n...