The midpoint of January has come and gone. The holiday season, which ended just over a week ago, seems a distant memory. We sent Oren packing back to Goshen on January 4th. We had a really good time with him, and honestly, it was hard to say goodbye.
Our last week of holiday after Christmas was particularly meaningful because we continued in a ritual that we have been participating in since at least 2019. "Renew' is a spiritual retreat that has been meeting for over 40 years. It spans 5 days between Christmas and New Year's. It has historically been attended by missionaries and Christian development workers from all over East and Central Africa. Since COVID, it has diminished significantly in attendance, and sadly, 2 years ago, we lost our beloved Brackenhurst venue, where it had always been held, amid tea plantations and lush gardens. We started meeting at a new location outside of Nairobi, which has nice facilities but is not nearly as picturesque.
Nonetheless, we had about 40 adults and children who came this year. The programming usually includes inspiring teaching, fellowship, music, games, sports, and recreation to rejuvenate all ages. It ends on Jan 1 after we have a kind of vigil on New Year's Eve with a vesper service and then a bonfire.
The reason we continue to go is that we have very dear friends, the Taylor family, who we have been close to since our time we were living in Arusha. They have 4 kids around the ages of our 2, and they are all very close friends. Their Harry and our Oren have both left for college, so we are feeling in similar places. Mike and I both really enjoy golf, and Katie is one of Rebecca's close friends. We have fellowshipped in a small group and through many challenges in life, so it is always good to be with them.
Mike was actually the inspirational speaker this time, and we helped Katie with music leading. Harry led the youth devotionals, which Oren and David attended intently. I enjoyed getting to play the banjo for worship, and even led an evening of line and folk dancing that was a lot of fun. Probably the most challenging event was a Trivia Night organized by our Gen Z youth! A lot of us struggled to know the music, celebrities, and even the Bible trivia, which included questions like: "How many judges were in the Bible?" or "How old was Enoch when he died?" Not stuff you know off the top of your head.
The other interesting part of the event was being joined by our 4 young adult volunteers working in Kenya, who were off for most of Christmas break. They happily agreed to lead the children's programming and did a stellar job! It was really good to be with them as well, because when we were not having sessions, they joined in with games like Capture The Flag, dancing, frisbee, trivia night, etc. On the last day, they were honored for their work, and I think the parents of young children really appreciated them. (Lainie, Esther, Eyasu, and Selam were the 4 who helped out.)
Among the difficult discussions was the future of Renew. It has been dwindling each year, and we barely had a quorum this year to cover all the leadership positions to keep it running. After some deliberation in an informal general meeting, we decided to take a hiatus next year and not try to convene and rethink its viability. It was a hard decision because of how good we have seen it in the past, but we are realizing it just can't be sustained. The big change is one of demographics. Historically, there were large numbers of expatriate missionaries and workers in East Africa who felt a need to have a time of renewal annually. Now, most of the work done by these people is handled aptly by members and leaders of local churches in each country. There really is no need anymore to have foreigners coming for the purpose of evangelical mission work.
Despite the bleak future for Renew, the event as a whole this year lived up to its name. Our whole family left feeling refreshed, renewed, and satisfied to have reconnected to our deep friendships. I was glad to send Oren back with a new sense of purpose. (Climbing Mt. Kenya was not his idea of inspiration!) But being with his best friend Harry gave him a renewed sense of purpose.
When we returned to our house on Jan 1st (we did stay at the place even though it was not too far from our house, so we could be part of the evening events), we found the cat and all things in good order. (Our neighbors looked in on Charlie the cat.) We had about 2 days with Oren, but we did go back to work for one day to start to get on top of 2 weeks of email we had not really looked at. We did get one more chance at a walk in Karura forest with Oren, then took him to the airport on Monday night. I felt a bit sorry for him because he was booked on Emirates, which flies to Dubai, then does a 14-hour flight to Chicago direct. I watched his progress on my flight app and told him later that he flew over all of America's enemies. Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Greenland, and Canada! He got back on schedule and made all his train connections in Chicago to get back to South Bend by about 10pm the night before classes restarted.
For us, there was really no rest from travel as we transitioned from vacation travel to work travel. David had one more week of holiday before his school started, and we needed to visit some partners and our volunteers in Arusha. Our Area Directors also needed to do a Tanzania visit, so we decided to combine all of these into a one-week field visit to Arusha, which started early the next morning after we dropped off Oren.
I will admit, I have been out of the office on most weeks since mid-October. That did include some personal travel to the US in November, but I won't lie, I am sick of traveling and was looking forward to getting this last trip over with. There were some good elements to it, though: 1) Arusha is our old stomping ground, and we knew we could see some old friends (The Taylors) and visit some places we had not been in a while. 2) Also, our ADs are good friends who have 4 kids younger than David, who think he is awesome. We do enjoy spending time with them, so we had that to look forward to as well.
We took two separate vehicles since there were a total of 9 of us. Although we headed out separately, we did meet up at the Namanga border and crossed into Tanzania without a hitch. Our first stop was in a town close to the border called Longido, where our partner TEMBO has a project. TEMBO is a Maasai organization that focuses on helping girls get higher education. They do a lot of sensitization and advocacy around preventing early marriage and FGM. They sponsor girls to succeed in national exams and attend secondary school and University. They have an excellent track record.
Wawa and Kristen are our ADs, and this was Kristen's first visit to TEMBO. For me, going reminds me of at least a dozen other visits since we lived and worked here from 2017. Longido is dry and dusty, but features a very high volcanic crater that sits behind it. TEMBO has a simple guesthouse where we usually meet. Paulina, the director, and Simon, the accountant, met us, and we had lunch together while they gave us an update on activities. The kids did a good job of amusing themselves.
After lunch, we met several groups of project participants, including community advocates, some of whom had been female circumcisers and traditional midwives themselves, but were now strongly pro-girls' education. There were some male community chiefs as well who were girls' advocates as well.
We talked to a group of girls as well. They ranged in age from about 9 to 18. Listening to their stories was shocking and inspiring. Hearing that some of the youngest had already been promised in marriage to men, even before puberty, was appalling to our ears, but all of them talked about how TEMBO advocates had stepped in on their behalf. All of them were doing very well in school and wanted to go on to professional careers. When I asked what they wanted to study, half wanted to be doctors and the other half, pilots! (I hear that often. I think seeing planes flying over and imagining where they go must lead many kids in rural settings here to aspire to fly a plane.)
After spending the day until late afternoon there, we drove the next 1.5 hours to Arusha and arrived at dusk. It was a very clear evening, and we could see Mt. Meru, even the edge of the crater, quite clearly. We stopped at ECHO, a partner where our 2 volunteers work, which has a neighboring guesthouse, checked in, then picked up our volunteers and took them out to eat at a restaurant. It was good to see Zoe and Sheila since they were not able to join the other 4 volunteers in Kenya at 'Renew'.
They had really good reports about their assignments, and we had a good meal together, all 11 of us. We went back to the guesthouse and had a decent night. It was a very simple Norwegian kind of place, but very comfortable. The next morning, we did a tour of the ECHO campus, which is basically a large demonstration farm with many gardens showing different kinds of indigenous plants, as well as ways to improve harvests and food security. There is also a seed bank and technology innovation center made for small-holder farmers. Zoe and Sheila showed us around proudly. We also had an extended visit with their host families to be sure that everything was going right in their homestay situations. I am happy to report they are doing very well on all fronts.
After our visit to ECHO, we went to a mall for lunch, then next door to a place called Arusha Cultural Heritage Center. This is actually a place I always loved to go. It has a lot high end shops for tourists, but mainly features a huge 5-story art gallery that is shaped like an enormous drum! (Imagine an African Guggenheim). It has some really cool artwork there, and everyone really loved to look at it. (all ages). There is also a cool shop that sells Tanzanite (a gem that is only found in Tanzania). From there, we left our volunteers and went on to our second venue, where we were going to stay a few nights. This was in some luxury tents at the Joshua Foundation, where our family used to live when we were in Arusha. We had many great memories from there, and it is a good place for kids to run around in, too. We had a nice evening and dinner there (at our old dining room table).
The next day, Rebecca, Wawa, and I spent the day with our partner, KMT (Tanzania Mennonite Church). They had developed a Peace curriculum with a grant from us, and wanted to show us. It is a syllabus to be used in schools, churches, etc. to promote peace and social cohesion. We had a long visit with them, about half the day. They are developing some new livelihood concepts and had a lot of questions for us. We ended after lunch, in the afternoon.
Kristen took all the kids to a kind of waterpark where David helped entertain them. It seems like the most fun activity was 'bumper boats', seen in the picture.
On our third day, we visited our partner OWSL, a food security partner that has its headquarters and a demonstration farm in Arusha. Our old MCC TZ colleagues, Chrispin and Lucia, work there, and it is always good to see them. We had another thorough visit, hearing the updates on their project, and saw some of their demo. projects. They do fish raising and stingless beekeeping. If you have never tasted stingless bee honey, you are in for a surprise. It is supposed to be extremely healthy and has a kind of tart taste, not like regular bee honey at all.
When we were done with field visits that day, we went our separate ways from the ADs. They went on to a short family safari adventure, and Rebecca, David, and I went to the Kilimanjaro golf course, where we met the Taylors. Some of us played 9 holes of golf and had a great time.
The next morning, we headed back to Nairobi and got back around lunch time. I was glad to be home and hope not to travel again for several months.
One of the reasons I don't want to be out of town much is so I can put in some afternoons to work on choreography for David's school musical. I think I said before that it is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it is a lot of fun to be helping out with.
Work has been full as always, although Rebecca has been able to take a much-needed 5-day silent retreat, like she did last year, to de-stress and work on finding a sustainable way to keep going as Reps here.
That should cover a lot of what we have been doing in the past 3 weeks. I will add as a postscript that we are currently hosting our friends Erwin and Angelika from Tanzania, who are here for some medical treatment. We have been enjoying playing music with them as Erwin is a really good guitarist and we used to sing in choir together in our Arusha days.
