Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

So I promised some follow up to items mentioned in my last blog but unfortunately the internet service has been very weak lately and I have not been able to follow up  on that.  So here is the first one and I will get the second one out when I return from this trip to the village probably end of this week.  This trip is dedicated to double checking all measurements for screening the windows and our first attempt to seal up the building attic spaces against bat intrusions.   During one of my last visits I talked about repairing the playground equipment and hauling sand up from the riverbed to place around concrete footings and hard soil to make the playground area a little safer.  I expect this will be something that has to be done on a regular basis as sand will disperse from the area rather quickly. Zachariah helping by carrying the shovel selfie carrying the sand First a quick primer on the project.  The playground equipment was installed be...

I got back in Singida around noon on Thursday local time and meant to get right on a blog entry that afternoon.  But have you ever stared at a blank  page with so much to say at one moment and no clue how to condense it all down to one writing or where to start.  That has been me these last two days.  After being restricted to town by the doctor for two weeks after just getting back to the village from the same injury, I was running out of stuff to talk about but now I still look at this page with unease to come up with some way of getting it all out.  So here is what I am going to do.  A list of all the things that have made this past week (maybe week and half) good and I will limit discussion on the major topics in hopes I will cover them in the coming blogs.  So here goes: Getting back on the road again and not having to get wrapped all the time from the rib injury.  Seeing the crochet work done by those I was teaching to do it. ( www.they...

My favorite Sunset photo of week. It is unfortunate but I have to say my second visit to the hospital in a month is not a record.  I wish it was but let's be honest I led a life that leads to hospital visits.  Never thought I would be doing it in the mission field though.  My apologies up front if this one rambles or has a lot of errors, they gave me some good pain meds last night to make me sleep. For those that don't do Facebook, I had some really good news Tuesday-my rib went back into place.  I wrapped it up and was feeling good for the first time in two weeks.  Normally you don't do anything to risk popping one back out for a week after you get it back in.  Unfortunately, a meeting with contractors who had done some repair work on the site last year had been set up by the USA board.  Since I was going to have to explain the problems with the work they had done, I was headed out again.  Wednesday afternoon, after spending a day looking fo...

Had a second visitor from the USA this weekend.  Rob Schadt with www.pommernvillagechoir.org and www.soul-lit.com (spiritual poetry) came for a quick visit (arrived Saturday and left Monday morning).  This was interesting for me because William is stateside for his daughter's graduation from Wofford, so this was the first visit I was responsible for.  Fortunately almost everything went as planned.  He got in about 11:30 AM on Saturday to Singida and took him to his hotel.  They of course had not cleaned the room yet even though I had a reservation.  So we went over to the KBH for lunch and took a little walk to see the lake.  KBH lunch was normal-only about one item on the menu they actually had and it did not look much like a hamburger at all actually nothing like a hamburger.  After that took back to the hotel then a trip into town to see Singida in all its glory.  That took about four or five minutes. Dinner that night was at his hotel...

I am going to cover two parts of this out of context because I want to bring in the positive items first then we will deal with the less fun activities.  The first good activity for me is that my blood sugar was really low this morning-low enough I treated myself to a chocolate bar today.  The second is my cough finally started to go away on Saturday and is finally gone completely now.   I want to say a big congratulations to the MUMC youth being confirmed as church members, Barnabas and I are really proud of you.   Also best wishes to Travis as he preaches his first sermon at LIVE Worship this Sunday, remember to relax and breath. Now to the rest of the story (my apologies to the late great Paul Harvey).  I am going to tell this part in chronological order in hopes not to miss anything.  Let me also say this is not a big sympathy call but simply doing what I normally do in this blog-telling the story of life here and what folks deal with on a regular bas...

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...

Ok this was a blog I was holding off on as long as possible hoping that God would answer my prayers in an overwhelming positive (for me) fashion.  But apparently He really wants me to work to learn this-Kiswahili.  I have spent hours every day working through my grammar books and dictionaries.  I have created flash cards and rewritten words I feel will be important to me to the point I have filled up two notebooks.  This is all after my time with a tutor for several weeks. Let’s start with the history of the language.  Kiswahili is what is referred to as a Bantu language meaning that it was formed by combining several languages into a new language typically for specific types of work or trade.  In this case the Spice trade which ran through Zanzibar during pre-colonialism started the creation of Kiswahili along the coastal region of Tanzania and Kenya and was first influenced heavily by Arabic languages.  During the colonial period, Germany took c...

Before I get started on this week's blog entry, let me thank everyone who helped make the first Barnabas Bear Newsletter a huge success.  I am hearing stories of a Chick-Fil-A in New York that printed the newsletter at their cost and gave it to customers purchasing a kid's meal.  Another story from California is a church kindergarten that sent printed copies home with all the kids.  Thanks to all the folks who sent encouraging words concerning the newsletter.  We will continue to do them and I will look at doing them more frequently if we continue to get such great feedback.  Those events happened because you, my friends, shared the newsletter with others and shared it with others, but it started with you. Now to this week's blog.  Yes Communication and Banking do go hand in hand here in Tanzania.  You see while there are real banks here, they charge for everything.  The reason is that unlike more developed countries, where people get loans for ...

This one is going to be very different.  Because Blogger will not allow me to post a PDF file, I had to do this kind of weird.  So Barnabas' newsletter is on Facebook in two image files.  I am posting the main article here but if you would like the count in Kiswahili, games and other fun items you will need to follow the link to download the two images.  The answer to the crossword puzzle is also there in image file and I have given a link below. Page 1 of Newsletter Page 2 of Newsletter Answers to Crossword Puzzle A Kid's Life in Tanzania-School Since I spend more of my time with the kids in Tanzania than I do with adults, I thought it would be good to tell you a little about what their life is like.   Let’s start with school.   Pre-Primary is similar to kindergarten and is for children 5-6 years of age and normally lasts 2 years.   However it is normal in rural (outside the city) areas for there to be no pre-primary type school and i...