'Home Stay'

4th post- dated Sat, Aug 11th, 2007.

'Home Stay'

Just got back from the Tanner's home, where we all gathered for lunch and homestay debrief (joke's on them, I wasn't wearing briefs!) after a week living with a local family, and what a time it was! We were all in different situations- for example: Jeremy stayed with a local carpenter, the Couches stayed with a local dukka-owner and witch-doctor, the Kerr's stayed with a respected member of the village council who also owns some land, the girls stuck together and stayed with a lady who's very respectable and one of the political leaders in the village, but whose main source of income is the manufacture of moonshine. She makes beer out of millet (I think) and sells it to the local bar. Interestingly enough, not only is there a bar around the corner from her place, but a new bar had also opened right accross from her home the night before the girls moved in (in a muslim village no less!), but they were troopers and stuck it out while their host used a machette to keep the drunken men away (when I say bar, what I mean is it's a structure made of sticks splattered with mud upto waist-height, with a tatch roof and a board listing the prices of moonshine per glass, half-litre and litre. It has no other purpose).

My homestay host was Abdullahi Somethingsomething (i forget his last name, I just called him Dulla). He's a tiny little guy, maybe 5'2'', who's as jovial as they get and quite the social butterfly. Unfortunately, he's also Timo's main worker/helper, so through this week, as Timo was busy checking up on everyone and making sure they were all well, all Dulla and I did was lie around and shoot the breeze (he literally had nothing else to do, poor chap).

Homestay was great though- living a in home that consisted of two tiny rooms and the corridor between them (Dulla and his family slept in one room, I slept in the other), where the floor was made of packed dirt and the roof was made of tatch, where you didn't need a window cos you could see the outside through the myriad cracks and holes in the wall, where you could hear the white-ants (termites) eat at the beams in the night, and where you had to walk 20 metres to the outhouse, which was basically a 4-foot-deep hole covered over and fenced in, crawling with maggots at the bottom; it sure made me homesick for my white-washed mud-house with the (amazingly engineered) bathroom built in!

For all that though I really had fun, and learned a lot about the Zaramo culture. I'm afraid I might have done Dulla an injustice in suggesting in an earlier post that he was a polygamist. In fact, he's kinda more like a serial monogamist (with some unofficial polygamy on the side) - he was kinda married but not quite to this one lady (traditional village wedding), had two children with her, but now they're no longer together. Now he is actually married (muslim ceremony) to this other lady with whom he has a little boy. However, his two other children were often over, had many meals with us and spent the night several times. I guess custody battles don't get quite so heated when both parents live in a village one can walk over in less than half an hour.

Dulla was an amazing host though- he basically stayed with me the whole time, and as a result of our time spent talking, drawing on the dirt, and playing charades, he increased my vocabulary to around 250 Zaramo words (written down, out of which I know maybe around half). The week for the most part went thusly- we'd wake up around 6:30am (the roosters started crowing around 5:30, sometimes earlier) and hang around in the cool morning air (it's the cold season right now, so the temperature has gotten as low as 17 C in the mornings, but when your body adjusts to the 30 C during the day, 17 can be quite chilly). We often spent time discussing KiZaramo and English co-relations during this time (he wanted to learn some English words too). Around 8:30/9 we'd eat breakfast - usually boiled sweet potatoes, or boiled Cassava root, or white bread, with very sweet tea (Dulla's policy on sugar seemed to be- if it's in the serving dish, it's to be finished - so he'd basically divide all the sugar he had between the cups to be used and buy more in the morning). Then, if we had any work to get accomplished (Dulla wasn't actually working -with Tim- this week, and his wife basically did all the house-work - sweeping, cooking, buying, etc, etc, so all we had to do was get firewood, split firewood, and go to the well to get water) we'd do that. Having to walk two kilometres to the well and then carry several buckets back gave me a whole new appreciation for our rainwater tanks!

So once our 'man-work' for the day was done, we'd sit around and talk some more, or possibly head over to the local dukka and play some checkers. Then we'd get back around 1ish for lunch, which was a huge mound of Ugali (corn- or cassava flour cooked with water to a firm, mashed-potatoey consistency) eaten with a little bit some kind of sauce - usually involving dessicated seafood - for flavouring.

Next we'd lie outside on a mat (mkeka) and shoot the breeze again (basically the only time spent indoors was when you're sleeping or changing, we did our eating outside on the mat as well- Dulla and I from the same plate, his kids somewhere around, and his wife alone in the kitchen, poor thing). I often did some reading at this time, which encouraged Dulla, by the end of the week, to bring out a dusty Swahili school-textbook and start reading as well. By the late afternoon we'd go on 'roundy-round', walk around the villages talking to people, playing draftees here and there, basically keeping up the social niceties- got to know a lot of people this way, and I'm sure I brought them much joy (they all laughed at me anyways).

We'd then head back, 'shower' (bucket-and-mug style) and sit around for a little while till dinner around 8:00. Dinner, again, consisted of a mound of ugali and a little bit of flavouring sauce. Honestly, by volume, if Dulla's family was any indication, the Zaramo eat around 95% straight carbs with no other nutritional value (and unless they're eating the cassava, no fiber either!), 5% everything else (micro and macro-nutrients included, they hardly get any fat or protein, let alone vitamins and minerals)(although, their well-water is quite opaque, they might be getting some minerals from there). Seriously though, there's a lot of malnutrition and malnourishment among the Zaramo- especially among the kids- pot-bellies everywhere (the bloated kind, not the fat kind). Anyways, we'd finish eating by lamp-light and then head to bed almost right after, they'd fall asleep and I'd usually read by head-torch light (thank you Andi! That was one great suggestion- I use it everynight and the LED makes the batteries last forever!) till around 10:30, and then go to bed.

So that's been my last week then, which has certainly been fun. Besides the routine, this time's also taught me a lot about Zaramo family relationships (like for example, how parents are affectionate to their children up to the age of 2-3, but after that almost not at all); about the tight-knitness of the village community (children are often raised not by their parents but literally by the whole village- they get fed, and disciplined, wherever they may happen to be when they need feeding or disciplining, and by whomever may happen to be around to feed or discipline them); about hospitality (any guest that happens to walk by at mealtime is always welcomed and asked to join in the meal); etc, and all this on top of the vocabulary help- a very useful time, all in all.

Well, that's about it for this last week. We worship together tomorrow, and then head out to Dar es Salaam on Monday for home-stuff-and-supply shopping, meeting other missionaries, and a day at the beach! This is when I hope to upload these emails and get them off (in Dar, but not at the beach).

Last but by far not least, let me share something I've been reading about: I just finished reading a book called 'On Being a Missionary' by Thomas Hale (who I believe is Chris Hale's father- the Chris Hale from Aradhna, a band that's played at BBC several times. The Hales were missionaries to Nepal for a few decades) which has a chapter on prayer and the Holy Spirit- a chapter that covers 5% of the book, but which, Mr Hale says, 95% of missions is dependent on. On speaking about what sending-churches could pray for, Mr Hale writes: "So, what should the home folks pray for? The same kind of things they pray for each other- except with a cross-cultural twist. They should pray for their missionaries' health, for their facility in language learning, for their ability to adapt to the people and to new ways, for love for people so different from themselves, for protection from the evil forces that surround them, for their children who weren't caled to Nepal (or Tanzania) but landed there anyways, for unity and love in the missionary team, for the national church and for the people of the countries where the missionaries work- all these prayers and many, many more - prayers for specific needs and projects, for safety in travel, for wisdom and guidance. And above all, they should pray for those things we mentioned a few pages back: that their missionary might be filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, that he or she might burn with a passion for souls, that he or she might be conformed to the likeness of Christ.

If those at home knew how often their missionaries were running on 'spiritual empty', they'd pray harder. The last thing we need is to be put on pedestals. Every time I hear someone say to me: 'My, how dedicated you are!', I want to turn around and tell that person: 'I wish you'd pray that I become as dedicated as you think I am'.

You ask: 'You mean you want even young and inexperienced Christians to pray for the spiritual health of mature missionary veterans who have been on the field 20 or 30 years.'

You bet I do. Personally, I covet the prayers of a new Christian. I want him or her to pray that I might know the joy and freedom of the Lord in the fresh way a new believer does. I want those struggling with spiritual dryness to add me to their prayers. I want those suffering with temptation to add me to their prayers. I want those who suffer, who know the fellowship of Jesus' suffering and the power of His resurrection, to add me to their prayers. I want those whose first love has not dimmed to add me to their prayers. I want people to pray that I might surrender every area of my life to the Lordship of Christ; that I might have the mind and the love of Christ; that people might more clearly see Christ in me, including my wife. Everything you pray for yourself, pray for your missionaries too."

Pray for us! But God is good. We're generally feeling a lot more at home. I personally have gotten to know people better, and can now catch a word or two of conversation, so that I generally know why people are laughing at us. I haven't been sick yet, and none of us have been seriously sick yet (Duane Couch had a stomach thing, but it just lasted a couple of days. The kids've had minor things. Two of them lost teeth, but they're both 7). I haven't done laundry yet! But I run out of clothes tomorrow, so tomorrow morning I will! You can praise God with us for all His goodness.

And pray for us some more!