Church and "Habari"

Written on May 12, 2008 from Dodoma, Tanzania
By Anne Olson

Yesterday I attended services at Richard's church. It is a big beautiful church that has been 6-7 years in the making. All of the labor has been supplied by volunteers from the congregation. It isn't finished yet but is far enough along to be used. They moved in since I was here in April 2007. The service is long with lots of singing; I do love the music, especially the children's choir. Richard's daughter Naomi has such a nice voice and is one of the lead singers. She's about 12-13 years old. Margreth, the VEF Office Manager, is also active in the choirs. She was my "host" at services, so I sat with her and she'd tell me what was going on (especially when it was time for me to introduce myself and she translated to Swahili). When she was up front singing, her first-born son who is about 7 came to sit with me. It was so cute. He is in the children's choir and his dad is the bass player in the band. A musical family! The baby who is not yet 2, would also get with the rhythm of the music.

The rest of the day was relaxing. I sat out on the porch and read for much of the afternoon. Thank God for good books and the time to read them.
On Saturday, Richard's children were playing outside, chasing each other and hiding behind a bush. As they ran down the side of the house, I heard Baraka scream (Baraka is Richard's last-born and is about 7-8 years old; his name means blessings in Swahili). Richard told me later that he'd been stung near his left eye. When I saw him yesterday, the whole left side of his face was swollen and his eye was just a slit. Poor kid! I hadn't given the children the book or other things I'd brought for them so I took the opportunity to give them to him. I haven't seen him today so don't know if the swelling has gone down yet.

The phone line has not been fixed yet so still no internet. Richard is going to "do battle" today to get things going. He's got an email backlog in everything that he does since it has been almost 3 weeks without connection. Just a reminder for me as an American – I take so many things for granted when I should be grateful.

The drugs are working and my throat is much better. Still a bit red and glands still a bit swollen but getting better. I am very grateful to be able to swallow without pain! A few more days to finish the meds that I have. Health – another thing to be grateful for.

I continue to walk most mornings. I've learned to greet people with "habari" which means "how are you?. Most people reply "nzuri" or "salama" which means "good" or "fine". However, some reply with more and if they are asking me anything, I have no idea what they are saying! People are very friendly and greet me with smiles especially if I smile first. In Kenya, I learned that the morning greeting was habari because no matter what I said to people (good morning, hello), the response was always "fine" or "nzuri".

Today there were a couple of VBMs in the office to fill out grant forms. I'd been reviewing forms from the last grant cycle and identified some data that was missing so I took the opportunity to review their forms and give some feedback. Then we got into income and expenses for some of the businesses. We worked through it with me asking questions but I am not sure that they really got it. Lyndsay and I had been working on a worksheet that would help a VFC work through that with the beneficiaries and I think we need to get back to that. Then we'll need to do some training, especially here in Tanzania. Could that mean another trip to Africa for me in the future?????