Slow-cooked Stoves

Once again, as I sit to update the blog, it is encouraging to look back at a week and see all those positive threads holding things together! We had a major rainstorm on Tuesday. Torrential hard rain for a significantly long time. The power cut out yet again and Tim couldn't get home on the flooded roads; he saw two cars carried off in the torrents and so had to wait it out! But amazingly, none of all this water came up in our house! Very thankful!

Managing the girls schedule recently has been rather a full-on task! They have been busy with school events (Thursday night was the "50/50 Africa Meets Asia" Fashion Show), extra rehearsals, and preparing for Amisadai's 4-day school trip to Ngorogoro Crater and Oldapai Gorge. (She left very early this morning, so hopefully you will hear all about it soon, on her blog!). Organising pick-ups and drop-offs for everything in the midst of a busy week with Andrew from Iringa staying with us and many village visits and a planned two day trip to Malya has been complicated! But I am so thankful for good friends here! Friends who help to fill the gaps, switch a car pool drive; friends who are willing to have the girls overnight in a school week. And friends who a few weeks ago, dropped off a whole meal with amazing treats in a huge basket just because they know that things are difficult and they care. Very thankful.

And another thing to be thankful for ... we have finally been able to secure tax exception for our new landcruiser! This has been a 5 month complicated process! Again ... very thankful!

Fuel-Efficient Stoves

Remember these? These are the stoves that we made in training many, many months ago with the help of Mendriad and Hosea from Magozi. Well, finally, after such a long time of waiting (for people, for money, for firewood, for the rain to stop, for the kiln to be rebuilt ....!), the stoves were fired last week in Tambukereli! It is hard sometimes for us not to jump in and rescue things and get things moving at a faster pace, but that is simply what suits us and our personal "goals" and not usually what works best for the people actually involved in the project. It's worth the wait in the end! Forty four stoves were successfully fired, many lessons learned, and it was great to have Andrew there when they were all unloaded from the kiln! We are encouraged to see this project moving slowly forward once again and hope these stoves will be sold and become known for their benefits! We are hoping that Daudi and Medard who are carrying on the work, will become good stoves trainers for future village projects.

The loaded kiln

Unloading the stoves from the kiln

 

Conservation Agriculture

Things continue to grow amidst the weather difficulties on the Conservation Agriculture front. We checked up on some of the farms in Kayenze when we were there last week. William planted his maize last month and we were impressed with his amazing mulching! When we went with Andrew last week to have a look, we could see the shoots appearing through the mulch, and despite the dry weather, there was excellent moisture levels in the soil under the mulch! Good lessons learned! Tim is returning to Kayenze on Monday with Esther, who will taking on more responsibility for the work while we are back in the UK.

At William's shamba

You can see the moisture of the soil underneath!

 

A beautiful sight!

Beekeeping

And finally what about those bees? Well, while Andrew was with us, we had a trip to the hives in both Kisesa and Kayenze. The bad news first. The hive in Kisesa had fallen yet again from the tree in the huge storm on Tuesday. The bees had scattered, the beautiful honeycomb lay ruined on the ground, eaten by maggots. But we were able to get the hive cleaned, baited and then rehung with wire in the tree and now pray those bees come back! The good news: we added two more hives on the demonstration farm plot there.


Container Hives! These two bring the hive total in Kisesa to three!

In Kayenze, it was good to get all the beekeepers together for our first meeting since training began! Unfortunately the carpenter wasn't ready with the hives, so that delayed things rather. But we were able to hang two more hives at Mama Meriziana's farm, under the shade of a mango tree. Two more have since been hung at Amos' farm, bringing the total number of Kayenze hives now to seven!


Tim tries on the stylish sack-and-net bee hat that women have started making 

In Malya we again had carpenter problems, and due to the poor state of the hive made, were unable to hang it. We arrived in Malya planning to stay two days doing two meetings (one with beekeepers, one later with the Mamas Group). However when we arrived, both groups were there in the morning wanting to start. So I started with the mamas while Tim worked out things for the hives and then we ended up teaching simultaneously in the same room! Not ideal, as some of the mamas were also in the beekeeper group, but both went well nonetheless! We both began in our respective groups with reflection on Ps. 119:97-105 which likens the Word of God to honey. What a sweet gift we have in the Word of God! A word which gives joy, which satisfies and feeds, which is also a light (candle) to our path and a balm for our soul. 

Hanging two hives in the mango tree at Mama Meriziana's in Kayenze

As original plans go out the window, as entire sets of top bars have to be remade, as cold water is mistakenly poured into boiling wax ready for candles, as we are continually faced with needs we cannot meet, my inclination is to be frustrated because of what I cannot control. But if I am here to serve and empower others, being in control is not what I am to be about at all! Living a grace-filled, patient life, loving and serving is what is needed! That might mean doing, it might mean saying, but most often it will mean being and listening ... and letting things go!

And on another note ... If you haven't already done so, (thank you to those who already have!) we would love it if you could take a quick moment to complete this short survey to help the Women's Group decide which products to start selling! As well as a local Tanzanian market, we are looking at the tourist market, so your opinion will help us! Thank you so much!
 

Create your own user feedback survey

Avocado Oil and Grainsacks

There seems so many things I could write about, but my head just doesn't quite know where to start or how to make sense of it all! While there are plenty of good things at the moment to be encouraged about, there are also things that are discouraging, frustrating or sad. This isn't unusual, I know! Life is like this. And it usually all overlaps and intertwines and even in the sadness we find joy and in the discouragements we are encouraged!

Turn my Avacados into Oil

The old motto "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again!" has been my mantra with parachichi's this week! Parachichi is the Swahili word for avocado. With the mamas groups eager to get making their beeswax products, I have been working on how we supply our own oils. A good place to start was avocado oil ... we have lots of big avocados here and they benefit hugely from bee pollination. And so I tried extracting oil. With Joseph's help... pounding, crushing every part of the avocados, drying for days. And then with my homemade press of cloth and spoons, I squeezed and squeezed. For nothing. So then I started again, trying just the flesh. Pounding and drying. Days later, I squeezed again. I ended up with beautifully oiled and moisturized hands and an oily cloth, but absolutely none in the jug. Not a drop! Now designs are in place for Tim to make me an oil press and I need to find myself a whole heap of parachichi. There is something here about anointing my head with oil that surely my cup will overflow, but I'm too tired to formulate that right now. And sorry, I have no photos of this whole episode. I was too crushed!

Turn my Grain Sacks into Bee Hats

I carried the mantra on into protective beekeeper-wear made out of grain sacks. If you have ever thought about working with this material in your sewing or craft projects ... don't. It's horrible stuff. Scratchy and rough and it shreds by the second. I have given up on the first design for a combined hat/shirt. Amisadai refused to be my model any more based on the fact that she couldn't breathe in it without an air hole. I didn't want to cut the window for the face until I had the rest right. That never happened. She couldn't breathe. So not succeeding there, I tried again with a simpler design; a hat/shoulders design to go under overalls. And this, despite all the fraying, worked better. We have a Mamas Sewing Bee (yes, sorry, pun intended!) in Kayenze next week and I hope we can copy this and get enough made for the beekeepers there. And then another Sewing Bee in Malya the following week. That will be enough of sewing grain sacks for me.

First attempt

Second Attempt

Fuel-Efficient Stoves

I repeated the mantra as Tim and I sat in an empty church building for well over an hour and a half this morning, waiting with 18 mandaazi (donuts) for a stoves group to arrive. We were joined by one man, Daudi, who worked with his machete outside to find the kiln buried in the undergrowth. After much waiting (and another man arriving) we discovered that most of the stoves group has actually now left, with just three remaining. With the two men there, we had a lot of mandaazi to eat. But reflecting afterwards, we realised we can actually be encouraged. We are left with the three best workers from the group. We do hope that they will stay keen and interested, be willing to learn, willing to serve and able to train and teach. There is something deep and meaningful hidden in the undergrowth surrounding this buried kiln as well!

The buried kiln

Earrings and Necklaces!

On an encouraging note, the Upendo wa Mama group has been busy. With more beeswax activity planned for this Saturday, last Saturday they finished lots of cards and earrings and necklaces to sell. Jeni, the new young mother, joined us for the second time and there is another woman with albinism named Angelina, who would like to join as well. She had planned to come on Saturday, but was nervous and didn't come. I hope she joins us this week. Tim has been super helpful sorting out their bank account which has had lots of loose ends to tie up which involved numerous trips to the bank! Again sometimes with all the hoops to jump, all the waiting alone early on Saturday morning in a school playground for any mamas to arrive, it is tempting to think about giving up and going home. But at the end of the day, these women are so special and at the end of the day, it is they that encourage me.

Much about Mulch!

After a discouraging visit to some of the farmers in Kayenze we are working with, we were a little concerned about what we should do. Not only has the weather been extreme and damaging for the crops, also a couple of the farmers have not followed the principles well. It was frustrating and disappointing. But this week, Tim returned with Pastor Amon and was very encouraged by good preparation of farmers who had previously not been at all keen to try the new ideas! One of the most difficult things to teach is covering the soil with mulch, a difficult and time-consuming job! But look (in the photo) at what this farmer had prepared when Tim got there! Tim and Amon (yes, we are really missing Peter at the moment!) also met two potential participants, one of whom had observed the work at Amon's farm and started to implement some of the ideas himself already! Encouraging!

Look at all this mulch!

I have looked at some of the rather more light-hearted frustrations we have seen this week. But it isn't all light-hearted. There has been nothing light-hearted about Peter waiting all week in pain in that hospital for his leg to be set. (He has been told today that he will go for surgery on Friday.) There was nothing light-hearted about the young girl hit to the ground outside our gate at dinner-time yesterday as her phone was stolen from her. There is nothing light-hearted about waiting to go back to England to be with Tim's dad battling cancer.

And while the mantra to try and try again is a good one, there are better ones out there! Sometimes just realising we alone cannot succeed is the best place to be. Sometimes just receiving the anointing of oil on our heads as our cup overflows (abundantly more than out of my avocado) is a reminder that surely goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life. And as for sewing clothes out of grain sacks ... we can be reminded that He has turned our mourning into dancing, taken off our sackcloth and clothed us with gladness!

Plagues and Treasures

What's blue and fuzzy and grows all over?
Mould.

I think we have a plague here. Mould is everywhere! We arrived home from Iringa to find that the house is still flooded. Water and mud outside and water within. Still the basement is filling with water. Now the doors down there are rotting so badly that they are falling off their hinges. But while we were away, the damp was rising. We had a damp disaster upstairs and down. Mould had spread over books, clothes, bedding, furniture, kitchen drawers and cupboards. Not on everything, but a very considerable amount to require a very considerable amount of clean-up. The smell of the damp and mould has permeated the house and you could brush the dampness with your fingertips.

It's not only the house, but also our car. Left in the shelter of the house while we were away, moisture entered and now the interior is a ripe green and blue fuzz. The steering wheel looked like it just gained one of those fancy fluffy covers. Unbelievable.

And so Operation Clean-Up begins. And as this already busy season begins, this wasn't on my list of things to do.

Someone recently posted that they admire our perseverance and endurance. Don't. I am trying hard not to grumble, and wish I could say I was succeeding. I'm not. And perseverance is running out! I googled mould and it said to first identify the source of the moisture (!), fix it and then get rid of the mould. Source identified. We've been mopping it numerous times a day for two months now. Fix it? Work in progress; live in hope. As for getting rid of the mould... wearing my hankerchief mask and marigolds, I boil water on the stove and slosh in vinegar solutions. Surrounded by heaps of washing, I wipe the blue and fuzzy mould from books and furniture. And forget about the fact that there is no food in the house!

So in my lamenting, I am now momentarily fleeing the rubber gloves and vinegar solutions of the clean-up operation to sit and write gratefully on positive highlights, in confidence of ending in praise.

With Ezekiel and Mendriad

While we were in Iringa, it was so wonderful to go back to Magozi and Kimande. These are the villages where we started the stove project. We met up with Ezekiel and Mendriad first. After all the happy initial greetings there was a lull and a big sigh and Mendriad broke the brief silence, "this is good. We are back together. We eat together again. The team is back together." And it was so good to be together again.

A few days later, we spent the day visiting the two stoves projects, and we laughed together at happy memories as we travelled about. Some of you who visited us there may remember Ezekiel's  "POPPPP-corn!" or our typical end of meal "Asante Sana Squashed Banana; Asante Sana Squashed Lice!" We laughed at the spot where Jesca "destroyed" a tree in our quest to plant trees when she was learning how to drive! We laughed about the guinea fowl that got tangled in the roof rack before we were mobbed by passengers from the daladala behind us keen to take it home for dinner. We remembered endless games of cards in which Mendriad fell asleep...

But these memories and so many more are far more than just fond happy memories. We are left with the sense of such a deep deposit left from our times together. Reading back on the blog posts of those days (like "Sharing Life" in particular), I see we had plenty of struggles, but now looking back, out of it all, what remains is a treasure. It is like a large bar of gold settling firmly on the dust of what once was trials.

We enjoyed a meal at Mendriad's home. We visited Ezekiel's wife, Bora who two days previously had given birth to their second child! We caught up with Hosea and Yuda and many others. 

In Ezekiel's new house with their new baby girl!

In Mendriad's home (now with plastered walls)

In the morning, we met with the Kimande/Itunundu Stoves Group. They welcomed us back so warmly and it was wonderful to see so many of them there, still working! Within minutes, the girls were surrounded by the children of the village amid the excited cries of "Amisadai! Louisa!"

The children come running to find Amisadai and Louisa!

Amisadai greets the group



The Kimande/Itunundu Stoves Group

In the afternoon we met with the Magozi Stoves Group. These people and this place holds a special place in our hearts. It was the first village in Tanzania that we lived and worked as we started the Stoves Project, and these gracious people befriended us in a special way as we learned how to live and talk! We all met in the church and sang and talked and prayed together. They sent us on our way with huge gifts of rice.


The Ebenezer Group in Magozi

The project that started with this village is growing! Jesca, who worked with us in Kimande is now the Stoves Project Manager and she is running projects in 8 villages now! They have their struggles, but it is exciting to see the progress and especially to see Jesca in action in her new role!

Such a priceless treasure we have stored with these friends. More than any riches. More than any house. And so I am reminded that our house is only a building. Things destroyed by mould or stolen or broken are only things. Yes, I need to do all the cleaning up, but I need not let my focus waver. What is important here? Where is my treasure to be found? When the struggle is past, what will be left? I pray there will be a treasure safe, and not just eroded emptiness!

 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.  Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be." Matthew 6:19-20

Jiko Progress

I think there is a name for it. It is that thing when you have so much to do and don't know where to start so you end up doing something that isn't important but makes you feel busy. Procrastination ... in a kind of justifiable way. I can be quite good at it. And I am doing it now by sitting down to blog a bit!

Super Seed Sort-out Session

But to my credit (or rather, my excuse is...), we have just finished a super seed sort-out session. With planting season approaching now that the rains are starting again and Tim leaving us all to be in England with his Dad on Wednesday, we had to sort it all out. So we had seeds all over the living room floor: lablab, jackbean, sunflower, pigeon pea, maize, beans, sorghum and the extra special canavalia brasilicus! It felt like Christmas as we packaged the seeds up and labelled and grouped and bagged them all for different people. Sorting a season of planting multiple crops for five farms in one evening! Brilliant!

 

Recent blogs of ours have been rather serious. But that is because things like murders and attacks, missing children, deaths and brain tumours are some seriously sad stuff. But this time, I'm happy to blog something positively encouraging!

Tree Nursery

We had a very good, (albeit very long) day last Sunday. We took Joseph (our guard and now also a project worker) and Esther (our agricultural trainer) with us to Nyegezi Corner church where Tim was preaching (and did a great job). Afterwards, we met with Bahati Daudi (who attends this church) and he showed us his progress in the tree nursery outside. There is still a long way to go, but he is doing well and next week I hope to take him, Joseph and a load of his trees to go tree-planting at the Kisesa farm.

Tim preaching in the newly enlarged church building! Always amazingly decorated!

Amisadai and Louisa check out some of the trees

Tim with Daudi (centre) and Joseph (right)

At this point, after a long service and tree nursery chat, we were getting rather hungry. Esther had invited us all to her house having arranged lunch preparations for us. But the pastor was also expecting us all to eat at his house. So we went there first! It was past 3pm when we were treated to an amazing spread of food at Pastor Isaac's house. But then, rather than go straight to Esther's for lunch number two, we thought it best to go first to Tambukareli Church where the stove group meets. I must confess that Tim and I were both prepared at this point for disappointment. We have not had the time we wanted to invest in this group since the initial training last November. And factoring in the fact that the kiln had collapsed in the heavy rains of December, expectations were not high. But we were so positively surprised!



Clay Stove Group Surprise

The group had fixed and rebuilt the kiln. It was brilliant! And they had continued to make stoves. And they were brilliant! We were thrilled with the way they had taken on the project and worked together and worked things out. The good quality clay and careful work produced some excellent quality stoves. No cracks!


The group shows us the stoves



A good meeting with the Tambukareli Stoves Group

And so to our great surprise they were talking about firing these stoves very soon and starting to sell! We had a good meeting discussing the way forward. Unfortunately with Tim leaving for the UK, this leaves me a little in the lurch and a little out of my comfort zone ... I will need to return in a few weeks to oversee the firing (a first for this group) and also do the training on marketing and demonstrating the stove. We have always done this together in the past ... a whole family effort with Tim doing the main chunk of the teaching, me doing the cooking demo, and the girls ably helping with dramas to teach the marketing aspect! So I will miss Tim in England and the girls at school ... and no Ezekiel or Mendriad to help either! But we are excited to be moving ahead with this group. We hope to get some group T-shirts made as soon as possible and are talking about how the group will move out to do village training when we return to Tanzania in August. And this will be a very good thing this year ...

As you have probably already read in the previous post, there is increased risk at the moment for older women accused of being witches. This is a result of the increase in attacks and killings of children with albinism and people using soothsayers to "discover" the cause of the murders or misfortune. But the women accused are often targeted simply because of their red eyes, a result of the smoke from cooking in unventilated spaces over a three stone fire. A village stove project run by a local church is a good platform from which to address some of the issues involved here. May the churches here shine light and truth into the darkness and wickedness of the witchcraft that is so prevalent.

From Pastor Isaac's, we went to Esther's home for lunch number 2 which by now was easily more like dinner, approaching 5pm! I just love the hospitality here ... No one really minds when it all happens, as long as the guests are served food. Or sodas. We had so many offers of sodas that day. As Amisadai said just before we got to Esther's house, "I am just so fizzed up inside, I don't think I can drink another soda!" Esther was probably pretty fizzed up herself and kindly served us mango juice!


Louisa LOVES Esther, and particularly loves her shoe collection!
I seriously don't know how Esther manages to walk in them around here!



To Do or not to Do? Is that the Question?

I love that life here is never dull. But every now and then, I just get a little overwhelmed and crave a little bit of a "normal" ... although, what really is that anyway?  I'm not sure there is such a thing, but it exists in my head as all the "good" bits of the life that once was normal (for the majority of my existence thus far), and I think that I want it. I'm sorry to say it often revolves around incredibly selfish and unimportant things ... things like relaxing in the evening watching TV and eating chocolate or going shopping for quick and ready food in a big supermarket or shopping for new clothes (which I never used to like doing anyway!!) and doing it all without power cuts.

The reality is I'm far happier here doing what we are meant to be doing, or I should say being who we are meant to be here. I naturally gravitate to (and thrive on) doing and constantly need to be reminded just to "be." Sometimes it is easy to get carried away by the doing, and forget to just be. I think this is when getting overwhelmed comes into play! Sometimes the frustration of trying to "do" just gets too hard. Especially when the power is out, when the bricks don't arrive again and again, when there are no bees in the hive, when I just don't have enough Swahili or there is no money for the "good" things I want to do! Then I have to remember to be. Be who I am. Be a wife and mother. Be a good host. Be a servant and friend ... being these things not based on what I do but who I am!

Sometimes I struggle with the tension as I write this blog! The purpose in writing is to let you know what we are doing ... particularly for you friends and family that we are far away from, those of you who are supporting us, encouraging us and praying for us! We want you to feel involved in what we are doing as you are such a big part of it. But at the same time, sometimes I feel I am just writing a long report of things we are doing which doesn't really relate to anything in your life (and doesn't seem particularly "normal"). It really isn't all about doing here, but that is what often seems to come across!

That said I am now going to tell you more about what we have been doing ... oh dear!

Everything (in terms of projects etc.) we are doing here suddenly seemed to all happen at once this week (which probably explains my inner turmoil and overwhelmed reaction!). On Friday night I arrived back from the Bee symposium, my head full of all things bees and all the things possible to do. Saturday morning was a quick change of gear as after getting the girls off to early morning football, I was with the Upendo wa Mama group. We chatted and made beads. We continued with our reading through Genesis, finishing chapter one while talking about how we are all made in God's image, whatever colour, tribe, size, background ... It was lovely to welcome a new mama, Fatuma (who has albinism herself) to the group. Then another gear shift. Later in the day (after the school fair) we had a very good meeting with Dr Makori and it was exciting to talk about the potential health projects on the islands.

After meeting with a great church group on Sunday, on Monday, our good friends Hosea and Mendriad arrived from Magozi, the village where we first started the fuel-efficient stoves project. On Tuesday we took them to Kisesa to see Pastor Baraka's family and see how the agriculture project is doing (see the good progress with the new methods, particularly in comparison with the old method maize in the photos below). And on Wednesday with Mendriad and Hosea, we started the training for the new fuel-efficient stoves group in Tambukareli. See the great stoves they are making in the photos below! (I will explain more about what we are doing here later when things are a little quieter!) Everything is very interesting and exciting, and after each day I was left wanting to focus all my thoughts and energy on that one thing ... but in the end with time so short, found I had to focus any spare thoughts on just having rooms and meals prepared for guests and clean school uniforms and packed book bags with completed homework. What to do?

At the end of the day, I can rest in the fact that what I do comes out of who I am in Christ. Doing is still important. But I know that who I am does not depend on what I do. In fact, not a lot depends on what I do! Even being a mother! And there is rest in that. There is no need to be overwhelmed and no need to crave anything else.

Farming Photo Update


With Mendriad and Hosea sorting out the trees to plant with Pastor Amon

It is easy to see the difference that the new techniques make when you compare the maize
in the background with the foreground maize which was planted at the same time!

Training for the Fuel-Efficient Stoves Group

Day One: prepare the clay, make the body of stove and turn out


Mendriad teaches our Mwanza trainees come trainers!

The clay is the best we have ever worked with!
Click here to see the source in the Toilet Seat Tale!

 

Tim recaps after Day One

Day Two: Cut handles and pot rests

 



 

 



Finishing touches after Day Two

Day Three: Cut the door and finish with smoothing and decorating

Beautifully decorated!

Making the kiln (yes, the bricks finally arrived!)