Multiple Tanzania Visits and Hellsgate

I am starting another blog entry, so I must be on a plane... It is true, Rebecca and I are on Ethiopian Airlines flying from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, where we will have a week of meetings with MCC leadership and all the Africa Country Representatives. We do this every other year; on the off years, we meet by region only. It is actually nice to get together with others who share a similar role in another context. We were not off to the best start, though, as the flight left about an hour and a half late (with us sitting on the tarmac). Apparently because they were not able to “detach a piece of ground equipment” from the plane. I was imagining us flying through the air with a baggage cart dangling behind. But it finally did get sorted, and we are on our way.

The last month has been busy, as usual for this season. I think the last update ended with orientation of our volunteers. This month we have already travelled twice to Tanzania, and there is one more visit scheduled for me at the end of October.  

The first trip was for the purpose of dropping off our two volunteers, Kiersten and Thabiso, at ECHO, an agriculture partner based in Arusha. Rebecca and I drove them down on a Wednesday. The trip is one we are used to; even with the border crossing, it is not too long or difficult. We arrived in the afternoon that day and took our volunteers to ECHO to meet the partner staff. While the director was not in town that day, we did get a warm reception from the support staff. There is also a Peace Corps volunteer there who was very friendly and helpful.

From there, we drove together to the host families. We are lucky that these are the same host families we had for the last volunteers. I know the first visit and night are awkward. The volunteers have rudimentary Kiswahili, and the families have about the same level of English, so communication is difficult at first. But the families are both really kind and happy to host them.

Rebecca and I were happy to stay this time with our friends Erwin and Angelika, who live right near the ECHO compound. They were very hospitable and cooked fantastic vegan food! It was a gift to stay in their quiet green compound and share breakfasts with them.  

The next day, we took our new volunteers to get a tour of the ECHO compound and an introduction to their work. One fascinating aspect of the work involves the seed bank. I had always thought of a seed bank as a place where you just keep seeds in cold storage. But I learned that a viable seed bank also includes planting out seeds to make sure they are still viable and then collecting the next generation of seeds to store again. The seed bank is making an effort to collect and store indigenous vegetables that are not widely known, along with green manure cover crops and other more typical vegetables.

Next, we went on an orientation visit to Arusha town to show Thabiso and Kiersten how to find the shuttle bus, the clinic, several decent pharmacies, and a large supermarket for a few essential supplies in their rooms. We delivered them back to their host families in the late afternoon, with a plan that they would start work the next day by joining a field visit.

The second half of our Arusha agenda began later that evening. The Mennonite World Conference – a global koinonia of Anabaptist and Mennonite churches -- will be holding its General Assembly in Arusha in June 2028. The planning committee was in town for meetings with the co-hosting Tanzanian Mennonite Churches. It was a perfect opportunity for us to connect with them and find out the implications of an MWC assembly happening within our program area. We are planning to recruit at least 2-3 young adult volunteers to assist with the event preparation, and so we had a good opportunity to think through what that would look like. Then we joined the whole team, including the Tanzanian Mennonite Leaders we often relate to, for dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, Andrews. The grilled chicken is amazing, but unfortunately we ended up waiting for it until 9:30 pm! That was the longest restaurant wait we’ve experienced in a while – they are certainly pole pole in Tanzania!

We were scheduled to meet with church leaders again the next day, but halfway through the morning, they called to say that they were caught up in meetings with MWC. So we made the most of a quiet day catching up on email in the Kinseys’ pleasant home. We even took a nice midday walk up the slopes of Mt. Meru. In the evening, we met our good friends the Taylors for dinner. We are so grateful that our work keeps giving us the opportunity to be in touch with them.  

The second trip to Tanzania, only a week later, was a visit to the western part of the country, near Lake Victoria. We stayed in a town called Tarime, to be precise. We have a new partner, JBDI, which is a development arm of the Tanzania Mennonite Church. They are doing a food security and livelihoods project in a place called Nyarero. They have some land there and are in the process of setting up a demo farm to promote climate-smart agriculture as well as some livelihood activities like poultry and livestock raising.

They have also trained several dozen lead farmers who, in turn, work with a farmer’s group of about 20 members each to multiply the training they receive. They also have other livelihood groups which save together and do different kinds of livelihood projects—these have not really started as the project is just beginning.

The timing of this visit was predicated on a visit from one of our Food Security Coordinators from MCC Canada visiting Kenya for a conference. Immaculate arrived the night before our departure. Accompanying her were myself, James, one of our Program Officers, and Charles, our External Grants Manager. So there were four of us on the trip when we left very early on a Sunday morning for the 9-hour drive to Tarime. (This did not count the border crossing, which took an additional hour.)

The trip as a whole was uneventful except that Immaculate unfortunately got a bad flu on the plane and was quite sick on top of jet lag. Nonetheless, we arrived in the evening and settled into our hotel.

The next morning we met Wango, the director of the partner organization, and Alex, the project coordinator, who took us to a number of official visits that protocol required preceding our visit to the field.

Our first stop was to the KMT Diocese office, where we met Bishop Randa, the Bishop of Tarime, as the project falls within his jurisdiction. He actually accompanied us to the next visits. We stopped at the office of the District Commissioner, the Regional Commissioner, and then the Village Commissioner and local pastors when we got on site. These steps cannot be missed when we have an official visit, and as much as it seems to be a waste of time for those of us who are not used to a bureaucratic hierarchy, it is part of understanding the culture and the constraints under which our partners work. All in all, we were well received at all levels, although it took a half day all told.

On the ground in Nyarero, we had an update from the project team on the activities completed to date. We also had a tour of their indigenous seed bank where they are multiplying seeds for farmers to encourage better yields and experimentation.

From there, we proceeded to see the model farm site where some activities like one prepared field and composting had already begun. They also had areas marked off for other activities that had not begun. They have been stymied by a delay in the rainy season, so we did not see much in the way of growth in the prepared field.

We then went and visited a number of individual farmers in their fields, where they shared with us some examples of their planting methods before and after training. I could see changes in spacing, although they have been challenged to manage crop residue efficiently to allow for good mulching. This should be improved with more training on that.

We completed the first day with a debrief before heading back to the hotel in Tarime. The hotel restaurant was fine, especially if you wanted fish, since we were very close to Lake Victoria. The four of us played Bananagrams while waiting for dinner, which took a while.

The next day we visited one more government office, then headed to the field again. On this day, we did not visit individuals, but rather a series of groups. I was not sure what we would see but expected some farmers and savings groups. They have just started encouraging people to save together, and we did meet one farmers' group that seemed to be doing really well, with a lead farmer we saw in his fields the day before (Pastor Fire was his name).

The second group was a group of disabled people with different limitations, and most of them were quite old. The project is trying to help reach marginalized groups in the community, although I wondered whether it would be better to spread them among different groups. Their group had been doing a chicken project with limited success because they were not properly vaccinating them against Marek's disease.

The final group was a group of youth. They were actually quite successful to date, having received a youth loan from the government and bought a motorcycle that they used as a taxi. They had made enough money to purchase coffee seeds and were planning to grow coffee and sell to coffee buyers. It was great to see such an enthusiastic and motivated group.

We finished the day with some final meetings with the project team, then headed back to the hotel. The next morning, we left very early to get back to Nairobi before dark. We had a relatively easy time crossing the border and got back to Nairobi by about 3pm. It was good to be back. Rebecca was also away from home that week, and we had left David to fend for himself. Rebecca will add a section in the blog about what we did during this time.

Immaculate stayed with us over the weekend when we returned, and Rebecca, David, and I went bowling with her on Saturday evening, then had dinner together (pizza again!).

Life has not been all work and no play. We did have some time off the week prior to the second Tanzania trip. David had a long weekend at school, and we had worked over several weekends during orientation, so we took two days to go down to Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley. There is a camp beside the lake called Camp Carneleys. It is a place where people from Rosslyn like to go. It has bungalows as well as camping options (about 2.5 hours out of Nairobi). We drove down on a Thursday morning and got to the camp by early afternoon. The campgrounds are quite picturesque by the lake, and we walked around, tried some fishing, and observed the local wildlife. One of the most interesting animals we saw there was warthogs that have become very used to people, so they wander the grounds and often come within several meters of a person. They are quite humorous.

There are also monkeys who try to steal your food at the outdoor restaurant, and many birds, especially fish eagles, which look like bald eagles in the US. We had a relaxing afternoon, then had dinner. The food, especially the pizza, is fantastic. We also played some card games and met up with friends we know from Nairobi.

The next day we drove in the morning to a nearby park called Hell’s Gate. It is called that because of the rock features there, as well as the hot springs and geothermal activity in some of the gorges.

We had not been there before and were not sure what to expect. When we got there, a ranger convinced us to rent bicycles and do a 15 K round trip down to the lowest gorge and back. We took him up on the idea, and the 3 of us got bikes and started pedaling down the dirt road. I did notice that there was a slight downhill slope, so I knew coming back might be harder.

We passed a number of very cool rock features and cliffs. There were some technical climbers ascending them. We also saw animals like zebras and giraffes right off the road. We finally got to the gorge where we parked our bikes and got a guide to take us through. The place is a narrow-walled canyon that was creepy to go through because the walls were at least a hundred feet on the sides. If a flash flood happened, we would not have stood a chance. And that has happened a few times in the past. I was personally glad to get out when we did.

We pedaled back after the tour. The 7.5 Km back was significantly harder, and Rebecca, who was getting sick, really struggled to make it. But we all did! We felt we had accomplished something very challenging and drove back to Nairobi exhausted after one more meal at Carneleys. That was our little two-day vacation in September.

Rebecca here to fill out a few more details on the past month:

MCC is honored to partner with the National Council of Churches of Kenya on two different projects. One is a food security project in the north of Kenya. But NCCK is also a big player in terms of national advocacy for peace and justice. They connect thousands of congregations from most of the prominent Christian denominations in Kenya in every part of the country, and thus they have a broad reach. As general elections approach in mid-2027, most of us are worried about the potential for election-related violence. The typical move for a politician in this part of the world is to pay a group of unemployed youth to basically buy their votes and even to use them as political “goons” (trouble-makers who incite violence).

So, this is the moment to work on violence prevention, especially with young people. And so MCC has started up a new project with NCCK called Base Bila Noma (or Hang-out-spot without violence). They are reaching young adults in some of the most under-resourced neighborhoods in Nairobi in an effort to build up a grassroots movement of social media influencers to inoculate people against political manipulation, counseling them to use their votes wisely and not be bought off to be someone’s goons. NCCK also has a parallel project, supporting young people with career counseling and business development. Unemployment and despair are root causes of election violence, and so it’s important to be thinking about how to nurture young people to thrive in their spaces.

In mid-September, NCCK hosted their 4^th annual Youth Convening, a gathering of 500 strategic young adults. The theme was “Claiming Space, Transforming Kenya.”   I was very glad to attend the first and last days of the event, and to note how friendly and down-to-earth the top leaders of NCCK were. They also really communicated well with the young people, giving them a strong, empowering message, encouraging them to vote when they have the chance, and to call their leaders to account. The first day included several addresses from partner guests (I was one of them) and then a bunch of rowdy dancing, and a very spicy panel discussion about the generational divide in Kenya. Everyone was respectful and yet made excellent, challenging points. It was one of the healthier political discussions I’ve witnessed in a long while, and I was shocked by the candor shown by religious leaders in a public forum.

Unfortunately, I ended up catching David’s sickness that week and didn’t feel well enough to return to the gathering until the final day for the prize-giving and final speeches. It was genuinely uplifting to be part of a positive trend among young adults.

On the personal front, David has been doing a lot of hard swimming as part of the Rosslyn swim team. Unfortunately, he ended up getting some tendonitis in one of his ankles from overuse, but we have taken him for physiotherapy, and he’s trying to work on strengthening it at home. He’s taken it easy in practice for the past few weeks but still elected to swim in a couple of meets during the month. I’m so delighted to witness the camaraderie between David and his teammates, especially the Senior high boys relay teams. They are a very strong group of four right now, and have proven that they can finish the 200m freestyle relay in under 2:00 minutes, winning that race in a couple of meets. They also dominated in the medley relay, where each guy swims his strongest stroke, and they all have a different favorite. Backstroke is David’s niche – he swims fast and mostly wins those races, and somehow says it is easy for him. He’s pretty good in freestyle as well. It was fun to be there along with parents, catching up, cheering for each other’s kids, admiring the style. Rosslyn has an amazing head coach right now, and David is lucky to be trained well in this sport.

We also had a sweet reunion of friends whom we originally met in our Burundi days, now all settled in Nairobi. Somehow, we have a deep common connection and find it pretty easy to share deeply when we get together. One man has been working for the International Rescue Committee for twenty years, moving all around the region. For the past 10 years, he has led a team in Somalia, which involved traveling to Mogadishu every other week. His family has never been able to go there and meet his Somali colleagues because it is far too dangerous. He made the recent decision that he needed to retire from that kind of intense work for a while, and so our gathering was a celebration of his decision and end of contract. He offered quite sobering reflections on what he’s experienced for the past years, the near misses, the tragedies he’s processed with his team, and the challenge of now just stopping. He said the most fulfilling thing was that people on his team stayed. He had no turnover. People trusted him deeply. Devout Muslim colleagues asked him (a Christian infidel) to pray for them. The work was as deeply meaningful as it was dangerous. We were glad for the chance to honor him.

While Paul was off to Tarime, Tanzania, I had a couple of quiet evenings with David. We both were part of leading worship at church and had a nice game night. On another night, I picked up David from school and took him to have dinner at a very authentic Chinese restaurant to make sure I heard about his day. And then I headed off to spend the last week of September in another 4-day block of training in spiritual guidance. I am truly grateful to be given this opportunity for professional development here in Kenya with a lovely Jesuit community. And yet it always feels nearly impossible to step away from work and family concerns and focus.

Sure enough, I woke up Tuesday morning to a phone call from David, who told me he had woken up with his eyes nearly glued shut with discharge from a rapidly developing eye infection. I had been worried that he might be developing a sinus infection from cold symptoms that just wouldn’t clear up. Clearly, he needed to go to a clinic to be diagnosed and treated. I was more than an hour away, and he was required to be in class. David was not at all interested in interrupting his school routine and trying to go to the clinic by himself. But there was no way around it. I arranged for a taxi to take him to a very user-friendly clinic that he’d visited before. He was able to get himself checked in, and I listened on the phone while he had a consultation with the doctor. He had to do some tests and wait for a while. But we could handle payment for the visit and prescriptions via mobile money. It turned out to be a really good exercise in self-advocacy for David, and I’m glad he was brave enough to do it. Very soon, college life and the necessity to handle his own health care will be a reality for him. He conceded that he really was feeling unwell and needed to stay home for two sick days. There was a lot of maternal guilt about having him home sick by himself, but at least our housekeeper was around to check on him and cook for him. And Paul got back home on the evening of the second sick day, so there were more reinforcements.

Highlights of the week of training included learning about some interesting approaches to prayer that I hadn’t heard much about before (Prayers of Consideration, i.e., consider the lilies, and Praying with fantasy). We also went over material on human development, self-image, and how that impacts the spiritual life and our images of God. We take time each session to practice our listening skills in groups of three, with one person sharing, one serving as a guide, and one observer. I’ve learned a lot about my fellow participants as I listen to their stories. And I loved having one evening to reflect as I walked around the compound doing some birdwatching. My favorite moments were meeting each morning with my prayer partner Severine to debrief and encourage each other.

So now Paul and I are in Addis Ababa for the first time since we lived here. We will share more reflections after this meeting. We had to leave David behind on this trip: his school workload is pretty demanding with three AP classes, and he wasn’t willing to miss school and fall behind. We trust he will be fine, since he’s an organized guy. We left the freezer full of meat and look forward to seeing his photos of the gourmet meals he will likely cook for himself.