Happy New Year from the Mongers!

Yes! We are still here! It has been a ridiculously long time since we posted anything. Our apologies for this and we hope regular service will resume now for 2017!

I write this now on the eve of entering my forties. With this coinciding with the start of 2017 and all those "new season" thoughts, I thought I should write something on reflections or resolutions. But although 2016 has been a difficult year in which we have also seen many good things happen, at the moment I don't feel particularly reflective or specifically resolute. I see all those posts on "Things To Do Before You Are 40" but don't have any regrets on what I might have missed! So I will just contentedly enter my next decade and have more adventures! I also see all the posts on what to do when you turn 40. I won't be having a weekend getaway to New York, an over-the-hill bash, a West-End show or a cruise somewhere exotic. But I will take a cake to the Mamas Group and come home to a wonderful roast chicken lunch cooked by my wonderful husband and lovely daughters. And there is great contentment in celebrating life meaningfully with love! (that isn't to say I would not still enjoy the above, but I am nonetheless content!)

So with reflections and resolutions to rest, here are some photos with some brief updates to give you a picture of life over the December we've been blogless.

Andy and Angela and Kome Island

It was wonderful to have our good friends, Andy and Angela visiting at the end of November! Tim and Andy went to Kome Island with Dr Makori, where they were making preparations for fundraising for the Rural Island Health project. We are really excited about this project moving forward! Tim and Andy were able to visit the new site for the clinic as well as the existing clinic which was getting a paint job!

Coffee time with Andy and Angela! We miss living by this couple!

Kome Island

Tim with Pastor Peter outside the Anglican Church on Kome Is.

With Dr. Makori and Dr Isaac outside the freshly painted clinic

Meeting with village leaders discussing the health situation on the island

Meeting with pastors about their involvement in the health project

Tree planting at the new site for the clinic!

Farming News ...  Drought

The following photos were taken in early December; the situation has changed since then. Tim and I went to check on the beehives at the Demonstration Farm in Kisesa. All was well, although not enough honey to harvest. The farm was doing well; so much improved since we started! With so little rain, there was huge uncertainty about when to plant this year. We did plant and were encouraged to see the mulch doing its job to conserve as much of the limited moisture as possible in the soil.

Beekeeper Tim

The pigeon peas and beans (and beehive) at the Kisesa Farm in December

However the situation here in Mwanza now is not good. With the unusually high temperatures and serious lack of rain, farmers everywhere are really struggling. With the drought, the price of food is soaring. For example, a bucket of maize (used to make the staple food, ugali) which used to cost 8000 TSh now costs 20,000 TSh. People are obviously very concerned and we will need to think how we approach this issue with the church through the agricultural project. We personally feel the pinch, (added on to the Brexit pound drop which has rather drastically reduced our monthly allowance); this just makes us more acutely aware of the situation that people living so dependently on the land are in. It is really tough, yet leaves a place for trust and perseverance that I might never understand.

May I introduce you to "Calgary," our new goat.

Mr Calgary is now good friends with our other goat "Miss Vancouver"

and we are looking forward to some baby goats in the near future!

Happy with a good bunch of bananas from the trees we planted!

And happy with these awesome cobs of sweetcorn from our garden!

(we were able to water our plants)

Upendo wa Mama

Before Christmas, with hopes of rains coming, the Mamas group got busy planting beans and mchicha (like spinach). Joseph came to help us and teach a little on how to make the most of mulch and compost. We hope to be able to harvest food to eat while we work and to help supplement meals at home. We also planted lemongrass and rosella plants to use in some of the products for income-generating. Sadly with the lack of rain, we have lost most of our beans. But in time we hope to be working more and benefiting more from this garden project!

Hot, hard work!

Hibiscus (Rosella)

Lemongrass

Christmas Fun!

We enjoyed some fun times over Christmas! It was good to spend time with other friends here we don't often get to see! It was great to have Katrina and Chris Williams (from Tadley) with us for some fun over Christmas! We had a sunset lake boat excursion, carol singing, games nights, and even a trip to the cinema! Yes, on Christmas Eve, the first-ever movie theatre opened in Mwanza!

A great laugh when the waves crashed over!

Christmas preparations with Katrina and Chris

Christmas Day Breakfast

Amisadai Becomes a Teenager!

On December 30th, we celebrated Amisadai's 13th birthday! It is hard to believe we actually have a teenager now! We decided to go to a new ice cream parlour for ice cream. But when we arrived we were told they were all out of ice cream, but we could have some juice instead! She also had a fun party with the Youth Group she is now a part of!

And if you made it all the way to the end of this rather long post... thanks for following along! Thank you so much to those who sent Christmas cards and greetings - it is always exciting to hear from you! We thank you for your support throughout 2016 and look forward to sharing more with you in 2017!

Happy New Year!

Christmas on a Gas Burner

We have just said goodbye to the wonderful Andy and Angela Sharpe who came up from Iringa to spend some time with us over Christmas holidays. We do so miss them and it was great to be back together again! They arrived on the 28th and we seemed to have a different celebration of some kind every day!

Christmas on a gas burner
On the 29th we decided to have a second "Christmas" together, crackers and party hats, roast chicken, roast potatoes, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, red cabbage and carrots... etc.! We went out for coffee in the morning planning to come back for a late lunch after which we would later enjoy afternoon tea and start the Christmas cake. Well, that was Plan A.

Morning coffee out

To my great chagrin, the power went out just after I put the chicken and potatoes in the oven. We were all hopeful, positive and convinced it was just a minor blip and would come back on. So we left the oven door shut while waiting for the power to come back on. That was Plan B. We had some snacks and waited. And waited. We played some games. We decided to reverse the order and start with afternoon tea so went ahead with tea and Christmas cake. After 5pm, with the kitchen getting dark and the chicken and potatoes now cold in the oven, I gave up and lit the gas ring. This was Plan C. It was time to try Christmas dinner on a single gas burner ... one thing at a time! Andy sliced up the chicken (it had done fairly well on a very long, decreasing heat) which I fried. I scooped out the stuffing from the dish and shaped it into little pancakes and fried them. The potatoes were sliced up and sautéed. The veggies were cooked, the sauces were heated and the gravy was made. Crackers were pulled with a bang and it was finally a lovely candlelight Christmas lunch at 7pm! I figure I should write a book on Christmas Cooking when Camping.



"Roasties" on the gas

Amisadai did a great job icing the cake this year!

A Birthday
After our first two attempts at main meals were frustrated by electricity cuts (we'd had a pizza palava with power cuts on the first evening) it was good to take the opportunity of Amisadai's birthday to go out for a meal on the third night. Surely now we would all eat according to Plan A at the right time. But even that was a bit of laugh as both Andy and Tim's meals were forgotten ... they ended up eating well after the rest of us, but with hunger enjoyed it all the more!

Birthday pizza

It was a great end to a great day celebrating our lovely 11 year old daughter! As well as a Narnia Risk game, we went swimming in ridiculously chilly weather for Mwanza ... a great sacrifice of love on mine and Angela's part! But exciting (for me) that day was the HOT water shower at home afterwards! A guy had been working on getting an instant heater shower installed ... (slowed somewhat by the power cuts!) and we are so thankful now to have a hot shower!

New Year's Eve
Next we were celebrating New Year's Eve ... we managed to convince Tim and Andy to stay up till midnight ... does it get more exciting than Canasta? We had numerous efforts with varying degrees of success to Skype various family and friends. This can be fairly entertaining if you don't get frustrated. The delays and constant "hello ... hello ... are you there?..." make for strange conversation! But we all have such great family and friends and we are so thankful! It was great to start 2015 with Andy and Angela ... and Joseph, who joined us outside to pop poppers and laugh with us at the sparklers which failed to sparkle!

 

Happy New Year!

2015 New Year's Day

We celebrated the start of the New Year with BMCC church. We love this church which is so incredibly active in sharing the love of God with everyone, and it was an honour to share this time with them and for Tim to preach. They had invited the kids with albinism, the street kids and also new pastors planting churches in unreached areas for a special service and lunch. After the tragic news this week in Mwanza about yet another child with albinism assumed murdered for body parts, it was both moving and encouraging to see all the kids up at the front singing, many with smiles! It was a long 5 hour service so we were more than ready for the big lunch afterwards at 2:30pm! Such huge pots of rice pilau!

Children from Lakeview School singing

Full Monty
Andy and Angela left on Friday, but not until Louisa and Tim had cooked up their favourite ... a full English breakfast (or Full Monty as we like to call it!). This is a real treat here as we don't normally get things like bacon and sausages and baked beans, but with all the stops pulled out, we enjoyed it!

It has been a good week of fun and treats! We are so thankful for Andy and Angela ... in more ways than one! Andy also came with his water engineer hat on to check out our basement flooding situation. With more rather large rains over Christmas, the water levels are now worse than before. So we paddle, slosh and mop. And have now moved out Tim's books which were starting to curl with the damp on the shelves!


Andy and the girls investigate the water problem


We are thankful for the past year of 2014. We are thankful for good friends. And thankful for a year ahead of us, for the joy and challenge it is to serve a God with Plan A.