Fire!

On top of everything else going on right now with the corona crisis and the flooding in the area, one of our partner churches on Kome Island is suddenly dealing with another challenge. Emmanuel, our hygiene and sanitation trainer who is currently working on the island, told us the news yesterday of a devastating fire in Mchangani village on the island.

Fire sweeps though the wooden village

You may remember this village from previous blog posts, read here more about the village. It is a fishing village in a conservation area where permanent structures are prohibited, thus it is a village built of wooden shacks.

Leaving Mchangani for Ito Island during our visit in July last year.

It has been a very difficult time for this community. The lake is now at its highest in living memory (at least the 1960's) and access to the island is no longer accessible by vehicle since the roads are broken and underwater. The high lake water has flooded the church building.

Outside the church building

Inside the church building

And now this large fire has swept across the village, reducing a large proportion of the settlement to ashes. The fire missed the area where the flooded church is and where many of the church members live. Please remember this community in your prayers and also Emmanuel as he is there right now. We pray that Pastor Charles and the church could reach out to help their community at this time. The Ewing family are also seeking to raise some funds to help the church rebuild in a new dry location.

Photo credit: Global Publishers Tz

This was a heavily populated market area

Photo credit: Global Publishers Tz

The Hive Bee-gins!

It is so exciting to finally share this news! For several years now, it has been a dream of the Upendo wa Mama group to have a place to sell their beeswax products. We have come close several times but things kept falling apart at the last minute! Five attempted houses later … and with the amazing support of Under the Same Sun, we are so thankful to have this house which is being transformed into The Hive! As well as being a shop for the Upendo wa Mama, The Hive will also serve as a local honey centre where village beekeepers can bring their honey and wax to process and sell. We hope it will serve the community… and in particular, the albinism community and beekeeping community! And it will be a base for orders further afield. We hope people will not only enjoy coming to shop but also come to understand more about living with albinism and find out more about where their delicious honey comes from! My prayer is that however this house is used in the future it will be for blessing!

The house is in a great location, near to the mamas workshop and easy for customers to find on the main road between the airport and town. It is easy for beekeepers to bring their honey to from the villages as it is right on the Mission bus stop. It was quite a dreary building covered in grey cement, but now it is bright and very far from dreary! We hope we can get some fun "bee" murals painted on and everyone will know where it is!

Before

The Hive work in progress!

I think I was in a state of denial about the amount of work involved in this building project! It has been an insanely busy week and I am now certain I was not cut out to be a building contractor and overseer! I was so relieved to have today to rest … or simply collapse with exhaustion and sunburn! But very thankful for teamwork! Elisha has been fantastic helping through all the hurdles of agreeing a rental contract and the building work that needed to be done. Peter is helping now with some outside shrubs and trees. And I have a fabulous global advisory WhatsApp team helping with interior decorating and design ideas!

Looking around the front room checking the work that needs to be done

Pulling the ceiling down after fixing the roof outside

The week has had its share of challenges! Friday was particularly frustrating as the carpenter was a day late finishing the door, where we already had a hole in the wall. I arrived in the morning to find that the new fence had been vandalised and the gate had not been put in well. I went with our workman (who arrived 2 hours late) to pick up the door and we discovered it was 4cm too long for the hole and the matching iron gate. It took two attempts of sawing to get the measurements right! It was a huge relief to get the door in the hole by the end of the day. 

Knocking a door out for the beekeepers to enter the Honey Centre

Sawing the door back down to size

Moment of truth!

The next challenge was buying the paint … after long agonizing over colours and how to decorate the house! After finally committing to a decision and buying the paint, we then had to wait ages for the shop network to work in order for them to be able to give us a receipt and by the time I came out to the car, I was well blocked in by another car and a man setting up a shoe stall!

Decisions?????

Blocked in by cars and a shoe stall!

White walls and "escapment 34"

Yesterday we started work outside. We ordered five loads of soil to be dropped off and added some reeds to hide the wire fence and the messy area outside. Tomorrow we plant some trees and shrubs!

Coming together!

I will try to post more photos as the work progresses! Once all this hard work on the building finishes, the real work will begin! Please follow along and support us as we work to advertise and promote the new venture soon! It won't be easy, particularly with all that COVID-19 now throws at us. But we have some resilient and excited mamas who are trusting God that they can take hold of this opportunity and run with it! I pray for this with them! 

Is COVID-19 All We Talk About?

So what is happening in Tanzania? Again, it always seems to come back to talking about COVID-19! And it is hard to say here … for several reasons!

But basically, official reports show that the virus has spread from Dar es Salaam into almost all the regions of the country (and unfortunately from here into other neighbouring countries). Tanzania announced last week they would not report on cases and deaths (in order to "focus on the positive" recoveries) but did recently then publish some numbers and it seems evident that numbers of both cases and deaths are rising rapidly. There are rumours and stories abounding which I dare not mention here for obvious reasons! Even without a lockdown, the economic effects are becoming more widespread as small businesses close and prices of certain goods rise. We notice here in Mwanza (apart from the obvious loss to hospitality and tourism industries), those catering to students have been hit hard. Mwanza is home to St Augustine University, which along with all schools and colleges in the country, has closed. But increasingly now, as more and more people avoid town, more and more businesses are struggling.

In the surrounding villages, we are very aware of the lack of information reaching people about COVID-19. And so we continue to do all we can to help prevent the spread of coronavirus in these more rural areas, which have such limited access to healthcare. Our team has been working hard with the generous funds people have donated, to get handwashing buckets with posters and soaps distributed through our partner churches. We have also put together a pamphlet on "Corona and Faith" and have distributed 10,000 copies to 350 churches in this area. You can watch a little video on all the action here!



It is such a privilege to partner with the church and at difficult times like this, particularly so! The pastors we work with have been thrilled to get the materials and keen to play their part in safely sharing the teaching and materials with others. To see the church at the forefront serving their communities is fantastic. Missional living! The fact is that little is known about COVID-19 in many of these places, and there is a lot of misguided information confusing things as well! But look at Theopister in the video, teaching in Igombe (where she and Laura have been working with the Girls Health Project)! They are making sure everyone social distances and washes hands and that all get a thorough teaching on COVID and prevention!

Please pray for us as the situation unfolds here in Tanzania. We want to help and serve in the safest and most effective way we can, supporting the groups and villages we are already working with and helping our partner churches to reach out to local communities. Peter remains in contact with our farmers groups; with the terribly heavy rains and floods ongoing, many farmers who recently planted, have lost that harvest. Bhatendi remains in contact with all our beekeepers and we are a little worried about how the long heavy rains will have affected the honey harvest, scheduled around now. The Kayenze group is hoping to harvest some honey this week … they are on their own and we pray they will be successful.

Meanwhile, in town, it is now mandatory in many places to wear a face mask, so demand stays high for masks! I have been persevering with mass mask production with Laurensia, Jeni and Saidati! They are making a variety of colours with a choice of elastic or adjustable ties. As well as keeping up with local orders, we are trying to share the skills of making them with others and also now sewing many for all those in Standing Voice's albinism program.

Saidati models a mask!

Masks freshly washed and hanging to dry in the sun before packaging

To be very honest, I am feeling like a lot of this all looks great in a blog .. (and yes, there are many great things to be thankful for!) but actually I must confess that it has not been an easy time... and it doesn't all revolve around coronavirus! It has been rather a stressful and busy time trying to secure a rental property for The Hive, which has involved jumping numerous hurdles and crying over numerous setbacks; it has been both time consuming and super discouraging over recent weeks. But we are praying for all to be agreed in time for the Kayenze beekeepers to process their honey! I have been working with Aikande on the handover for the Mamas group, which is difficult as we are not able to meet as a group. And all this happening as we thought we were leaving the country in just under 2 months! How does one even begin to think about reducing the whole contents of a house into 8 bags at a time like this? There is literally no time ... or head space right now. And no one likes the thought of leaving without being able to say goodbye. There are just so many unknowns…  I think I may be rambling into another post here! But all to say, it's a lesson in faith... and patience!

And so to finish (…and to prove that we don't only talk about COVID19!) here are some photos of the 14th birthday celebrations for Louisa last week! It was without cards and gifts and friends in person, but we had so much fun at home, enjoying yummy food and fun games! Amisadai put a video together of friends from all over the world wishing her a happy birthday and I was crying, listening to all the lovely kind words from special friends! What a delight this girl is! We are so thankful for her! She has been busy recently… helping the mamas businesses by riding her bike around the neighbourhood taking deliveries of sales of face masks, moringa powder and soaps!

Cinnamon buns for breakfast!

Yummy bites for tea

By special request: "Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake"

Happy Birthday Louisa!