The Steffensens World

(Please read yesterday’s post first, if you haven’t.)  Well, after two days of toothpaste on my arm, I’m convinced it’s working.  I now realize that I had another Nairobi Fly sore on my wrist last month that I thought was a bacterial infection.  That sore was oozing plasma for a week, but the new one that I treated with toothpaste is already dry and well on it’s way toward healing.  I don’t think the scar will be nearly as bad as I was afraid it would be.

Who would have thought of putting toothpaste on a sore caused by smashing a black and orange beetle?  But it seems to work well.  The pain is much less and I think I’ll only have a 1-inch by 1/4-inch scar instead of a 3-inch by 1-inch scar like I originally thought it would be.

This week I accidentally discovered yet another previously unknown hazard in East Africa, the Nairobi Fly. Good info and a photo are at this link.

I have definitely killed several of these. I must have either killed one on my arm or killed one and then rubbed my arm. Either way, I have a big sore on my left arm. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but several students in my Form III Physics class saw the sore and said, “You’ve been bitten by a Nairobi Fly!” After some research, I realized that it’s not really a fly, it’s a beetle; and that they don’t bite, they get revenge for their death by spreading their acidic poison over your skin. Two weeks of itch and probably a scar. Now we all know not to mash any bugs other than mosquitoes…

The local remedy recommended by several students and a couple of websites is toothpaste. It kind of makes sense. The alkaline in the toothpaste should neutralize the acid in the poison, and then act as a poultice to pull out the poison. I’ve tried it for a day now (under a bandage) and it does seem to have reduced the welts. I’ll try it for another day and see if it keeps helping.

I’m just glad that I didn’t accidentally rub it in my eye. It can cause temporary blindness and lots of pain in the eye. Thank goodness for small miracles.

It’s interesting what you get used to.  It’s even more interesting when you realize you’ve gotten used to it.  There are big geckos on the wall here.  Not little two-inch ones like we had in college in Austin, but big five-inch ones.  The bugs they eat are big enough that you can hear them crunching on them.  So, they’re a great thing.  They just sit quietly on the wall and after a while, they just become part of the rooms decoration.  That is, until it dawns on you that you’ve gotten used to them.  Although the one that lives in our pantry still startles me every once in a while, because when you open the door, he darts into the attic through a hole in the ceiling and the movement still catches me by surprise sometimes.  Charlotte has a big one that lives in her closet, so she makes me close her closet at night because she doesn’t like it when the gecko walks around the room in the dark.

The other thing is herds of cows and goats either being herded down the road or just grazing (apparently unattended) by/in the road.  When we first got here, I noticed them all, but now they’re just like the trees or bicyclists on the side of the road.

There are a lot of other things that we’ve gotten used to, but these are two good examples.

This evening Rev. David Copley and Mary Brennan from the headquarters of the Episcopal Church, USA, visited Msalato. Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo, our bishop in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, spoke at the end of our meal and summarized how Leslie is helping the Diocese very well. He said that when mission partners come from overseas, it frees a Tanzanian on the staff at the college to go abroad for further education, which in turn helps to improve the quality of the Tanzanian Staff. It also helps the students by “bringing the world” to Tanzania, but the biggest help is in freeing the staff to go on for further studies.

I hadn’t thought of it this way before. I had only thought of Leslie’s direct contribution to teaching the students, which is a real benefit to the diocese, but I hadn’t really thought about the member of staff that is studying in South Africa right now because Leslie is here in his place.

Then the Bishop told David that the Diocese needs computer people like me to help them run the newly forming computer suites here at the college and in town.  I had no idea when I came here that there is almost no indigenous computer expertise here.  Most of the few Tanzanians that have gotten computer training go to Dar Es Salaam because the pay is better.  Also, because the school system teaches rote memorization instead of problem-solving skills, there are few Tanzanians who have been brought up with the mindset to do proper troubleshooting.  The diocese currently has two good IT guys (me and Mark from New Zealand), but we’re both leaving in a few months.  I really hope that David can find at least one person with a good computer background to fill in behind me.  I came here to teach, but while I’ve been here, I’ve come to realize that many people can teach (especially among the types who come to Africa as missionaries), but there are very few missionaries who can set up a network.  The Diocese of Central Tanganyika really needs a few more good IT people to keep the systems running for the other missionaries who use them.

Hi All,

Sorry for the long delay in writing. I got out of the habit while we were traveling over the holidays, and between a terrible internet connection and every-other day power outages, it’s been hard to get going again… Enough excuses. The power is now fairly stable (unless it rains, but the rains are getting less frequent as the rainy season ends) and we finally have a decent internet connection again after a couple of bad months. So, I’m going to try to get back in the habit.

Our biggest news is that after much consideration, we’re going to return to Virginia in July instead of staying for the optional second year. The two biggest reasons are money and the boys’ education. We’ve been happy with Charlotte’s class, but secondary education in Dodoma is just not very good. One year of a “cultural experience” has been worth a year of poor academic education, but we can’t justify a second year. Also, we’re running out of savings/home equity to finance the trip. We’ve gotten a lot of help from a lot of people, but the reality is that we’re still paying a lot out of our ever-shrinking pockets.

About the title of this post: 4 of the 5 of us have now gotten malaria. Charlotte and I have had it twice each, Henry once, and Leslie had one case that wouldn’t go away after the first treatment. All of us are well now, but it really knocks you down for a couple of weeks and isn’t much fun. Since the rainy season is ending, the mosquito population should decline over the next month or two. Everyone says that it can still rain in April and May, but that it’s usually not as frequent.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll post updates about what we did over Christmas (trips to Lake Victoria and Zanzibar) and some observations now that we’ve been here for a while.

Peace,
Kirk