An African Odyssey, Part 4

Dennis Landwehr recently completed a month long mission trip to Tanzania, sponsored by the Northern Great Lakes Synod. Over the next several months a “journal” of Dennis’ trip and ministry will be shared with you.

Wednesday – A driver from the school died last night. He had been sick for a month. Seems like at least once a week a friend or relative of someone I had met died. The whole school was in mourning this AM. We went to work on the house. Something was bothering me about the septic tank so I wandered around out in the weeds and tripped over the real septic tank. After clearing the weeds off, Dulah (the watchman) and I pulled the covers of the two tanks and discovered the trench we dug on Monday was to the wrong tank! Spent the whole day digging a new trench and chiseling a hole in the wall of the septic tank to make the pipe connection to the house. The rest of the crew painted ceiling boards and sanded and painted in the house. Dulah cut his finger with the chisel today. It was a pretty deep cut and he was a little scared. In a land where almost no one has health insurance or band aids, Dulah was worried. Fortunately we had a first aid kit and Dolores and I cleaned and bandaged his finger. Played Frisbee with Dulah and Jesca after work. Jesca is a student at the seminary. We talked and I told her I wanted to learn more Swahili. While working on the house with us, she and Dulah have tried to teach me more words. After dinner and devotions Jesca and I talked. She asked me how well I knew the prophets of the Old Testament. I know the Bible pretty well, but she ended up giving me a chapter-by-chapter summary of Isaiah and then summarized several of the lesser prophets as well. I was impressed.

Thursday – Funeral day. We worked on the house for a couple of hours before the funeral. Bob and I built scaffolding out of scrap lumber, and we figured out the brackets for the ceiling fans. Joyce and Dolores painted. We had morning tea and then cleaned up for the funeral. Tanzanian funerals start with the body passing though the dead persons house. At the house a wake was held and food was served. The women sat on one side of the yard and sang songs. The men sat on the other side and talked. Food was served. The family members stayed inside the house. After the meal and brief prayer the body was moved to the church. The women sat on one side and the men on the other. Bob preached a great funeral service. After the service the casket was opened and all of the people filed past it. I have never seen grief and mourning as intense as I saw during this viewing. Rather than have pallbearers carry the casket out of the church, all of the men lined up in two rows and handed the casket down the line to the waiting vehicle parked about 100 feet away from the church. In this way all of the men got to participate in saying goodbye.

After the funeral Bob, Abdulah, and I tried to hang a 4 by 8 foot piece of ceiling board. During this process we made an important discovery, the framework for the ceiling board was not straight. In fact, the framework in every room was crooked and would require straightening before we could hang any ceiling board. I was beginning to see why the contractor walked off this job five years ago! After dinner I did my first batch of laundry in 5 gallon buckets. It took me 2 hours and I hung the wet clothes in my room to dry overnight. The next morning I hung my clothes outside to dry.

              

Friday June 20. A large crew showed up for work at the house today. The period of mourning was over. Bob and I prayed before we started work today, asking that the work go better today than on previous days. Today we truly worked “kwa baga kwa baga” or shoulder to shoulder with the Tanzanians. The house was crowded but we all stayed busy. We finished installing the ceiling in one bedroom. When we quit work at 2 PM to get cleaned up to go town for the weekend I noticed my shirts were gone. I wasn’t worried but wondered what happened to them. Then Jesca came walking across the yard with my shirts. She had ironed them! This was a very unexpected act of kindness. My shirts were in shock; they almost never get ironed at home. We traveled to Dar for the weekend with our host families.

Saturday. This was our second weekend in town and I wanted to get out, sightsee and go shopping for African shirts and ebony. The Diocese was very protective of us and they made sure we had an escort everywhere we went. Today I had three escorts: Gilbert Marissa the evangelist from my host congregation, Autopele was the diocese representative, and Jesca. We walked around downtown and stopped at the fish market where I bought some beautiful seashells. Bought some great African shirts, a soccer ball for my host family kids, and a few pieces of ebony. Back at my host family’s house by early afternoon. Played soccer and Frisbee with the kids, wrote some postcards, and read. This evening Pastor and I attended an ecumenical women’s group meeting in a garage. I have to tell you, I don’t much care for bananas but tonight the women’s group fed us a traditional meal from the northern part of the country. It started with banana soup. I thought that is all there would be and it was quite good so I had two bowls. Then the main dish came out, bananas, meat and rice. This was served with a dried banana on the side. I ate it all.

click here to go to Part V