Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

This is the third installment talking about the Mauldin UMC mission trip to Tumaini Evangelistic Pre & Primary School in Kiruani, Tanzania.   This installment I want to talk about some of the bigger changes we planned for this mission trip from some at my previous site. First the biggest change in location is the tribe we deal with.   My new area is mainly a Maasai Tribe area and the majority of people our team comes into contact with at the site are Maasai.   So, I thought a prepared presentation on their culture would be a good thing.   We had Lucas who donated the land to the school and is one of the most respected Maasai men in the area along with our Headmaster Fredy talk about Maasai culture and then take them on a tour of traditional Maasai homes from the days they were nomadic.   They also talked about why the feel the school is important to the future of their tribe.   I was not sure what I was going to get as Fredy continued to a...

To view almost all the photos I took you can go to  Steve's photo album The team arrived Saturday, June 17 at the Kilimanjaro International Airport which is about 1 hour away from Arusha where they would be staying their first night in Tanzania.  Normally we use the safari vehicles to pick everyone up at the airport, but this time our safari company (called Cheeky Monkey) used what is called a coasta.  A coasta is a medium sized bus which was perfect for everyone to get a comfortable seat and the luggage.  It took a rather long time for the team to get through immigration.  About an hour and a half but this is normal in Tanzania.  Also, normal in Tanzania is to have every bagged checked at the customs stop and when you bring in items for VBS they want to tax it.  This year it was the bears they wanted to tax.  It took me about half an hour to convince them they did not need to tax the bears and get them loaded up on the coasta.  ...