Return home



After a few hours of dealing with the hospital bureaucracy (and a few trips up and down the stairs to the ninth floor), Ruthie was discharged and allowed to return home. Her condition is much improved, and she was brimming with joy!

Without detailing her exact condition, she may have died within months if left untreated. And if she had gone through with the procedure suggested by the first hospital to examine her, a fatal episode may have come even sooner.

And, before anyone gets the mistaken notion that I have done something heroic (I hope this isn’t the case!), I must reiterate that the first hospital was the one I unknowingly brought Ruth to a few weeks back. Thankfully, God works in unexpected ways, through good medicine, through serendipitous encounters; both good and bad decisions become the soil for the wonderful fruit of God’s grace.

Unfortunately, here is the greater challenge: Ruth likely will need to remain on medicine the rest of her life, a prescription that currently costs about $3.50/month, a sizable amount of money for Sukuma villagers. This will put untold strain on their family; additionally, when choosing between food and medicine, or between medicine and your children’s school fees, the more immediate need receives priority.

When we arrived in Lubuga, Ruth’s husband, Urbano, was anxious to show me the progress he had made in his garden. He is hard at work implementing the principles demonstrated at the agricultural conference in Zambia, and is already teaching others the principles of composting and soil enrichment. After playing around in the dirt and manure for a little while, we talked about Ruth’s medicine, why it is so important, and how much it costs. Urbano reminded me that his only income was selling off things, like his trees for firewood.

(It never ceases to be awkward living with one foot in the richest economy in the world, and one foot in one of the poorest. Conversations like this don’t help.)

Suddenly, the garden project ceased being a “project”. Perhaps the soil will yield more than one kind of fruit, a fruit we all will enjoy, regardless of where we are planted.



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We start housing construction tomorrow. And I am both excited and terrified. I hope to post some pictures soon, hopefully before the livestock is evicted from the house!!!

Small loans, crowded hospital rooms

Today, I had two distinct experiences, which I am hoping are not as distinct as I first thought.

In the morning, I traveled with Eric and Jason, two teammates, to a village where church leaders had assembled under a mango tree, surrounded by fields of cassava. While the setting—mango tree, vast horizon, slight breeze, searing sunshine, a generous meal, songs, prayers, scripture-reading, endless smiles and laughter—were just like any church meeting, the purpose today was different: to discuss money.

When the account book was opened, the discussions became intense. This group of Sukuma men and women, previously dominated by ancestral religion, jealousy, and fatalism, are hard at work forging a new future. The tool they are using today is microsavings and microloans.

The ifogong’ho, as such groups are called here, formed in 2004 as a response to needs such as medicine, transport, and other individual problems. Modest interest is charged on loans, the interest providing more capital for loans and also serves as potential funding for community projects.

The meeting was long, as all meetings here are (is this a universal cultural trait?), and on the surface the meeting was unspectacular (the largest loan discussed was equivalent to less than $10). But seeing this group struggle together, a group that never could have formed under the old worldview, was inspiring.

We left the meeting after lunch; Jason and Eric headed to a more remote village where people requested a showing of the Jesus Film. I traveled back by dala-dala to Bugando Hospital to check on Ruth. While Ruth was recovering nicely, my hour or so in the hospital looking for her and visiting with her was less than pleasant.

I view myself as pretty tough when it comes to hospitals. But I don’t even want to recollect what I saw and felt there, let alone retell it. But Ruthie is doing well, and will be discharged on Friday.

The two events—unrelated? Not exactly. It is my hope that the greater the impact the kingdom worldview has on communities, the more people are working together for the good of those around them, the greater amount of time will be spent enjoying company under mango trees, and the lesser time confined in crowded hospital wards.

At least, this is our hope.

good news, bad news...

Good news: Two consecutive days of strong downpours. Stronger, so I have heard, than has been seen in years. Surprisingly, the heavy rain makes driving safer, as the tens of thousands of pedestrians crowding the roadways disappear to huts and shelter.

Bad news: The shelters are better at protecting from rainfall than mudslides. And in a city full of squatters filling rocky hillsides, the results have been tragic. More than one area has experienced mudslides.

More news later.

We may finally have a house, but will we have power?

We have been house hunting since arriving in June. The problem is this: Western style houses are tailored for big-spending NGO's, businessmen, and people linked to the gold mining industry here (someone showed me a house the other day, and asked $1200/month with a straight face!). The vast majority of other houses are tiny, inaccessable by car, or in poor condition.

Or sitting unfinished.

In a place where it is nearly impossible to save money, those who desire to save for the future largely invest in cement (doesn't lose value, and can't be borrowed by family members). So Mwanza is filled with half-built houses, on a 20 year construction timeline.

We found one of these half-built houses, and have been in negotiations with the owner, a widowed school teacher, whose husband was building the house until his untimely death 7 years ago. No work has been done since that time. So, we are planning to finish this house, putting up our money in exchange for future rent, which will be half of the market value here. Also, we are free to put walls where we would like them, put in a reasonably sized kitchen, and so forth. Within a few years, she will begin making quite a bit of money from rent. It has been a pleasure working with her!

We will ink the deal tomorrow morning. Then I will learn more than I ever imagined about construction, African style (everything but the roof and most walls must be finished, built, or rebuilt!).

Unfortunately, the power situation continues to deteriorate here in Tanzania. As of today, we will now be without power for all daylight hours, every day of the week (instead of losing power 5 days, as we have become accustomed), as the government is trying to delay an imminent collapse of the power system. And there is talk that we will soon lose the evening hours as well. Goodbye hot water. Goodbye refrigeration. Hello kerosene. Hello hand-washing laundry. We are looking into some alternative power sources, like solar power, solar water heating, battery power storage (capturing extra power during the night to use in the daytime), and putting Josiah on a hamster wheel.



On another note, I am picking up Ruth for her surgery Tuesday morning. Hosting Ruth a couple weeks ago (in the Guild's small guesthouse) helped remind us what we were looking for in a house. Ruth was completely comfortable staying with us; the house was both comfortable and modest; a backdrop, not a focal point. We believe that this house will have a similar feel when finished. Please, come visit us and see for yourself...

But if coming soon, bring your tools. And your batteries.

Brothers...

In Sukuma:

"I am so happy you are here, I am going to start clapping!!!"

the boys...

The boys are great. Africa is one adventure after another, and Josiah is all about adventure. He loves being able to eat with his hands, and never tires of beans and rice, or ugali (stiff porridge made of maize—like corn but not sweet). Today we were served cow stomach and intestines. Josiah didn’t mind. Kinda grossed me out, though. Also, he loves the fish here (fresh tilapia for a quarter each!). He likes going to new churches that don’t have buildings yet, because when church is outside, it’s okay to play with sticks, right? He likes playing with the kids here, and is learning how they play their games. He thinks bumpy roads are the best (no shortage here!). And we occasionally see a monkey running around, which always makes his day (one was taking our clothes off the line last week!).

Elijah is growing up, too. He is trying to walk. He stands without holding on to anything, but to walk, he has to be holding something, like a mop or a hand towel. He loves being outside, playing in the dirt, and is learning to tolerate bumps on the road. Best of all, he is so receptive to new people; here, when you greet an older person, you say, “shikamo”, but, for babies, the mama says shikamo for the baby, then takes the baby’s hand to touch the top of the other person’s head… Elijah has learned this, so when we lean him a little bit, he will always reach out and touch the other person’s head, then just go to the other person. Everyone enjoys this!

I will try to post some pictures before the power goes out...

Losing myself.

It has not been since December, when Elijah was born, that I have felt so many emotions in a 24-hour period.

The background: I mentioned Ruth, the wife of Urbano, a couple posts ago. There was one part of the story I left out: Ruth has been suffering intermittently from severe abdominal pain for months. Some of the symptoms were especially worrisome, so we tried to get her into the hospital the next day, but unfortunately, we couldn’t get her in for a couple weeks.

Eric, our teammate and gracious host, volunteered his car, and his day, to drive to the village with me to transport Ruth to the public hospital here in Mwanza. The results: Ruth’s health problem required an operation, and we set a date (this last Tuesday) to pick her up and take her in for the surgery.

Another layer: While Ruth was having tests run, I hurried from the hospital down the street to my language class, where I had to defend why I was seven minutes late. The teacher inquired the next day about the prognoses. The following day, she shared Ruth’s prognosis with Dr. G___, one of her students, an Asian doctor who devotes most of his time to repairing the botched surgeries of the previously mentioned hospital. He was skeptical of the diagnosis, so he asked the teacher to arrange with me to bring Ruth to his language session this Tuesday, instead of to the hospital for surgery. I gladly obliged.

The stories converged this Tuesday, when I left the cybercafe to drive to the village to tell Ruthie about the change in plans. She was excited, and relieved, that she would get to see this other doctor. We welcomed her to our current house (the Guild’s small guest house) for supper and left to meet the doctor, who turned a small classroom into an examination room. He quickly, with much exasperation, determined that the original diagnosis was wrong, blatantly, unforgivably wrong. Dr. G___ invited us to visit him the next day at the surgical theatre at the Catholic Hospital, where he would find us between surgeries, order additional tests, and provide a new course of action.

After a late night spent visiting with Ruth over chai, we traveled to the Catholic hospital early in the morning. I phoned the doc, who answered during surgery to direct us to the theatre, where we unfortunately spent most of the day, seeing way too much (imagine MASH with cement walls), pieces of stories more tragic than I care to describe. At the end of the day, when there was no reliable test or labwork to derive information from, Dr. G___ (visibly shaken by the day in surgery) reverted to low-tech medicine—incisive questions and skilled touch—to form a diagnosis.

I don’t feel comfortable disclosing the exact diagnosis, but the Dr. found two problems, one obvious, the other obscured by the first. The first problem is easily operable (scheduled for Sept. 19th), the second is not—at least not here—but can be mitigated by medicine, hopefully reducing pain, and diminishing the risk of a serious, or fatal, complication.

Ruth’s response: Sheer thankfulness to all involved, especially God who orchestrated it all.

My response: Emotional wreckage. Two days on the verge of tears. Why? Because in rapid succession, I felt every possible emotion: I felt humbled, outraged, faithless, guilty, privileged, exorbitantly wealthy, insufficient, prideful, unprepared, thankful, sad, judgmental, annoyed, completely exhausted, taken for granted, overly depended on, in the wrong profession, in the best profession, blessed, yet so powerless. Truthfully, by African standards, there was no cause for this small experience to affect me so greatly.

But all these emotions, day after day, are gnawing away at something greater: my very identity

I am so used to controlling my own destiny, yet in spending so much time with people with no such illusion, I am losing my notion of control, I am losing my center. You could even say I am losing myself in the process, or at least redefining myself, as something other than the center, not primarily the actor, but increasingly the acted upon. People here understand this well, so they value their stability within their community over their long-term well-being. And, from Ruth’s perspective, the web of relationships provided her something her entire family together could not have afforded: access to a good doctor.

But… The final layer.

Aaron, in a previous team meeting, prayed specifically for Ruth. He prayed that God would provide her with a good, honest, skilled doctor, that would help her.

Perhaps this is the only layer that matters. And perhaps in this layer I will find the center, and find myself as well.

No news is good news...

hello, friends. Sorry we have been out of touch. The last three weeks have been a flurry of activity. And though my time in the cybercafe is limiting my ability to recap these weeks, let me assure you that all is well here. Though our frustration has been great at times, the support we have received has been greater, and we have never been more excited about living and working here.

But we also want a vacation.

Our internet access has been bad lately, because the power situation here is worsening. Also, our schedule has picked up considerably with the return of our teammates, Eric and Susan Guild. The choice has been to either help with the kids after being gone all day, or sneak away to the internet. The right choice is obvious.

Wow, I wish you all were here so we could all catch up over coffee. We miss you all immeasurably. Oh, and to those who have supported us, there are some people here whom you have helped that would want to thank you personally. And we thank you for allowing us to share your love with people here. It's great to be the middle man sometimes!

until next time...