Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I thought you might like to hear some of the stories from my travel home during the middle of a global pandemic.  Some of you may have seen some of the photos on my facebook feed, but I have some more that did not make that feed.  I am also going to talk about what I am doing now that I am at home and in self imposed quarantine before I go to stay at my folks home.  I am also going to ask for your help to decide what I should be doing on the blog during what will be an extended break. Let's start with what was happening in Tanzania before I left.  The government had encouraged people not to gather in large groups and given some basic guidance along those lines.  They closed all school and  universities.  They required everyone coming in to Tanzania to go into a 14 day quarantine at a place the government set up.  This meant expensive type hotels that many of the Tanzanians returning after being overseas could not afford.  The government howev...

I started this week with one blog topic in mind since it would be around Thanksgiving when I would post it.  I worked on it when I got enough power to the computer I could type it up.  I planned to pen a blog on being thankful for the use of the house at the site and all the things that made it so nice compared to the tiny house I used to live in. But as I walked to the bus stand today I felt I should change the story for which I am giving thanks.  Those who know me well, know I like a good place to live and running water but I am comfortable living on the ground in a tent somewhere.  So giving thanks for the creature comforts is great it just is not me so to speak.  Like I said I am thankful for them, but there are things I find more important in this life. When I used to walk at my other site, I had locations where kids would run out to greet me and ask I take their picture so they could see themselves on the view screen (they were not big on getting the...

My pardons to Was (Not Was) on the use of their song phrase but I really wanted a song title to talk about walking here.  There were many to choose from Ronettes' Walking In The Rain; Katrina and the Wave's Walking On Sunshine; Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line to the Bangles Walk Like an Egyptian and about fifty others.  I choose this one because it was fun and a little cheesy.  Look it up on Youtube for a laugh. I have written blogs in the past about walking and will most likely do it again in the future.  Why?  Because I walk a lot here.  To quote Hippocrates, "Walking is Man's best medicine."  Not sure how true that it is but I have dropped many a pound due to the walking regimen that is the way things are here.   I embrace the walking lifestyle most of the time.  There are times when it tires me out.  Some days you just don't want to walk into town but if you want some food you have to.  Even at my previous site, when I ha...

As it has been over a month since my last blog posting, I have been thinking a lot about habits.  There are good habits such as regular prayer as I have been reading about in the book "Confessions of a Prayer Slacker" by Diane Moody. There are bad habits such as smoking.  Trying to write this blog has been a study of habits for me.  When I am doing the blog weekly it is an easy habit to keep up, but when I am home and there is little to talk about since I am actually talking to most of you I don't do it and when I try to start back up it is a struggle to find my blog voice again.  Also many of you have pointed out that I have not been in the habit of doing the Barnabas Bear newsletters or stories after the first year. So I pledge to do a better job of keeping in the habit of my blogs and including Barnabas this year. The trip home this year was again a great joy and chance to recharge my batteries as I commit to another two years (the max allowed through the ...

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...

Sorry for the play on the TV show name but it seemed appropriate for today's discussion.  As I have talked about some in past blogs, one of the things I get to do a lot of is walk.  I normally walk 5 miles (total-3 at the site and 2 in town to the bus station) one way each time I go to the site.  I normally get to walk 2-4 hours around town depending on where all I have to go and that is a trip I make every day when the Doctor does not have me on restrictions.  All this walking has had some really great benefits.  I have lost a significant amount of weight-how much I have no clue as I have not looked for or seen any scales to weigh myself with.  I can tell you my current blue jeans have about a 3 inch gap in the front from jeans to stomach. One of the things I was not expecting to happen as quickly as it did, was that all this walking has worn out my shoe treads.  Both shoes have some pretty heavy damage but my hikers were showing the worst of it. ...