Boats and Baking, Painting and Pumpkin Pie

Out on the Lake

Last Sunday some of our team went together to BMCC Church. It was great to be back with Pastor Mbuke and this wonderful church and also good to introduce the new members of the team to them! After the service, we went on to have lunch together at a nearby restaurant on the lake. Often here, you can wait for rather a long time after ordering before your food arrives. The great thing at this restaurant, is that while you wait, you can go for a boat ride on the lake! It's a hard life!

Ukerewe Island

Tim was back on the lake on Thursday and Friday; this time for the four hour journey to Ukerewe Island with Joel. They were pretty chuffed to discover that a new boat had been launched which had a VIP lounge! Complimentary drinks included! Again... it's a hard life! On the island, they were meeting with local churches to discuss how the entrepreneurship project would run and could be shaped - particularly the upcoming training. It is not without its challenges, but exciting to be seeing this project move forward!

 Joel travelling VIP

At their hotel with Palapala (Director of Development) and various pastors

Baking Classes for Girls

While Tim was away, I had the privilege of going with Carol Nzogere to the home she has set up with others from MICC to help girls off the street. About 20 girls are staying there, from as young as twelve years old. These girls have been abandoned, rejected, orphaned and the life they have lived on the streets is horrendous. Three girls have their young babies with them. This home is offered to them for a set period of time in which they have a safe place to live, the opportunity to learn new skills, continue with some education and most importantly, be loved. Here they are shown the true love of Jesus. I went to start teaching a series of baking classes. We started with bread rolls and banana cakes. While I loved being with them all, the actual lesson was rather a disaster! The rains have started (which is a very good thing!) but with that comes an unreliable power supply. As the oven in the house was electric, it was on and off, then on and off again so baking proved disastrous! But it meant we had plenty of time to chat, while cooking (on the open fire outside) and eating lunch together. We also read the Bible together reflecting on verses in Deuteronomy 8 about a land in which bread is not scarce, about a life which is given by our Creator who can take us out of whatever wilderness we are in.

Upendo wa Mama Workshop

The painting and cleaning up of our workshop is now finished! Standing Voice have given us sole use of the garage, which with a bit of fixing up, is going to be good! On Wednesday, we moved all our materials and supplies in and can now focus on getting tables and chairs and also an oven and kitchen cupboard. Our only set-back was arriving to find the floor under water ... the rains come in (yes, a familiar problem!). But we have every hope this can be fixed! We set up the sewing machine and soon hope to start some sewing projects. Yesterday we got back to work, making African tie-dye again. Again the rains (which we want so much!) created havoc as we had the fire boiling a huge pot of water outside ... and the line outside ready to dry the fabric, when the heavens opened! We hung the twelve wet pieces of fabric up on criss-crossing strings in the garage and then sat in and under them to keep out of the rain! But there, all crouched on the floor in between diagonal walls of dripping fabric, we had a long and good discussion of hopes and plans for where to go from here and how the group can be a blessing in our wider community. It's great how God works things out when things don't seem to be working out!

The painting begins

Clean-up after the painters!

Back to work! Making African tie-dye!

A new skirt made from the last batch of fabric! 

Canadian Thanksgiving

Today, we had the joy of celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with friends - old and new! We truly have so much to be thankful for and there is nothing like a delicious feast of turkey and trimmings and pumpkin pie to remind us to reflect on this!

Carving the turkey with Jannetta and Jade

The Canadians (plus a few others!)

The girls are particularly thankful for half term now! I hope they will have a bit of time this week to start up their blog again ... they have their own news of new bunnies and our first efforts at milking our goat! We head off later this week to Dar es Salaam for time with our good friends at Victory Christian Centre I will then stay on to work with a group of Albinism Mamas there which is new and exciting!

Dad and Daughter Time: Island Community Work

Louisa and I (Tim) were up early last Friday morning and walked down to catch the daladala (local bus) so as to make the ferry to Ukerewe Island on time as foot passengers (we’ve learned our lesson not to take the car ... see here!). We had been looking forward to this time (Louisa had special permission from her teacher to miss a day of school) and part of the excitement is the ferry trip. We booked ourselves and Joel Newby into the top cabin, splashing out with the extra 2000tsh (72p) each. And so we were ready for 3+ hour ferry trip and only 20 minutes past the scheduled departure time, we were off.

We settled into our “deluxe” seats, and Louisa tucked into a second breakfast of sweet tea and chappatis. Once she was finished she went outside and Joel and I continued chatting. After a while it occurred to me I should check on Louisa. But where was she? Nowhere to be seen! Had she fallen over board? I went up to the Bridge and asked if they’d seen her. “Oh yes, she’s up top!” Eventually I spotted her, happily playing on the top level, having climbed past the no admittance sign...

We reached Ukerewe in good time and docked at Nansio. And we were ready for work. We had been invited some time ago by the churches there to help them with entrepreneurship in the community. Since then a couple of things had come together to make this possible. My Dad’s company, the Isle of Wight County Press, had kindly donated some money for this project in his memory. Secondly, we have been joined by our new missionary, Joel who has business training. So our purpose was to introduce Joel to the leaders there so he could make preparations with them to begin a project that could impact the local community.

On the Friday and Saturday we visited different parts of the Island to view possible sites for new businesses and we held meetings with church leaders, dealing with plans, goals and expectations, as well as hearing their thoughts on potential opportunities.

Louisa as scribe for Joel as leaders rate their strengths in different areas

Meeting Pastor Ibrahim and family at his church

Their initial ideas for businesses ranged from chicken, goat and pig-rearing (they already have a small goat project), to providing a village community with cheaper water, to operating a machine to mill rice and maize, to even running a ferry to a neighbouring smaller island. We’ll see how many of these Joel will be able to help get going!

And remembering World Water Day today, here are a number of photos taken as we looked at and thought about getting clean water to communities ...

Pastor Ibrahim's church have already dug a well

Potential site for a community water project

Louisa pulling hard to draw water from the church's well

Success!

On Sunday we were privileged to go to Nansio Revival Centre, joining the church for worship. Joel preached superbly on Lydia, the Godly Entrepreneur (Acts 16:12-15). They were so delighted to have some support, and are expectant that those living in difficult circumstances can be helped to start businesses which also will in turn bless their local communities. 

As Louisa assessed the weekend, "it was a lot of fun!" I think part of the fun for her was being able to use different forms of transport across the island, but don’t tell her mum!

There’s a long way to go for this project – please pray for Joel as he makes another visit shortly and continues to make preparations – but as Louisa and I walked back up the hill to our home, with our shoulders aching from carrying our backpacks, we were very thankful for a productive and enjoyable trip!

Fish and chips!

Time to relax!

Cow on a Ferry

Yes, that is a cow on the ferry. We had chickens sitting behind us. We had climbed up the rickety ladder, backpacks on backs to board the ferry for the 3.5 hour ride to Ukerewe Island (the largest Tanzanian island on Lake Victoria). We went on Friday with Samuel and Megan from the UK and after our previous experience with Phil Norris, (see "A Squeeze on Ukerewe Island") decided against taking a vehicle on the boat. There is something rather special about going somewhere on a boat. Even a small ferry boat with cows and chickens.

 



 



This was a long-awaited visit for us to meet with church leaders from across the island to discuss how we could work together on some Christian entrepreneurship teaching for the island. We are all thinking about how income-generating projects could be started that would benefit not only the main island but also the smaller, more rural islands. We were pleased to hear about their plans for a Mission Centre in the main southern part of the island; this would be a training centre for training pastors to plant churches and take with them skills and teaching in things like business, agriculture and health to the villages they go to. We are excited that they are taking the initiative in working with what they have in order to bring about change in their communities!

Tim teaching on Church and Transformation

We were interested to see how these pastors saw the role of the church in their communities. And to find out, we started our session by using an activity we learned about from Andrew in Iringa over Christmas. We had pictures of activities the church could be involved in from preaching and praying to building projects, helping others and politics. Each person was given  fifteen beans and was asked to place beans on what they saw as most important. The more important the role, the more beans should be placed on that photo. When all the beans were down, the pastors themselves were surprised at how unbalanced the results were. Prayer ranked very high, but other things surprisingly low! It was a good start to a discussion on how churches can be planted in communities and bring transformation to those places.

Deciding where to place their beans!

While on the island we also had the opportunity to visit the Umoja ("unity") Training Centre, an amazing new community centre designed by Standing Voice UK to "exist as a counterforce to the isolation and exclusion of people with albinism by creating opportunities for all community members to interact in positive and mutually enriching ways."

The Umoja Training Centre

Louisa tries out the water pump at the new centre

With a second seminar in the northern part of the island on the second day, all in Swahili, Samuel and Megan and the girls took the time to get some games going with loads of children! Lots of "Paka paka panya" ("cat, cat, mouse" otherwise known as "Duck, duck, Goose")! As the morning went on, the number of children from the surrounding area grew!



Fun with the kids at the water pump outside the church

On Sunday, (which was Megan's birthday), we joined Pastor Veron and his church in Nasio. Samuel and Megan did a great job sharing what God has been doing in their lives, we had some great lively dancing and also celebrated in thanksgiving the birth of a long-awaited baby!

 

Members of the Church in Nasio

A Sunday lunch feast of fish, rice and bananas! A good birthday feast for Megan!

Birthday Chapatti Breakfast!

It was a full and busy time. A good time. Lots of time squashed up together, bumping along terrible roads. Heaps and heaps of rice and goat to eat. An encouraging time. We were all rather sad to leave. And all rather tired arriving home on Sunday evening on the squashed dala dala to our house; Megan counted almost thirty people on a bus designed for eighteen ... but no cows or chickens on board!