The Steffensens World

Greg, Charlotte, and I went to Kibaya yesterday and returned today after a very successful trip. (Leslie and Henry stayed at Msalato because the college talent show was last night and Leslie was obligated to attend. Henry wanted to stay home and read instead of sitting in the car.)

The trip didn’t start off very well, though. We had a spectacular blowout about 20 km after we turned off the paved road. A rock cut up the side of the tire and dented the rim. Within about 20 yards I could tell that there was a problem because the tire was making a loud noise. I pulled over within 100 yards, and the tire was absolutely shredded. I’ve seen tires like that at the side of the road, but never had one do it myself. To make matters worse, the last time those particular lug nuts were put on, it was with a pneumatic wrench and they were too tight to get off with the little lug wrench that came with the car. After about an hour, a minibus came by and a big guy helped me get the nuts off. I drove very slowly the remaining 70 km in fear of having another flat/blowout with no remaining spare tire. Fortunately, there was a guy in Kibaya that was able to replace the tire with a decent used tire, so we had a spare for the return trip.

The whole reason for the trip was to help the Kiteto Christian College with their computers. When they came to our house on Wednesday night, they had 2 of 9 computers working. Following my directions, Emily was able to get 2 more working, but was stuck on the other 5. So, I went to look in person. Fortunately, we were able to get them all working by this morning. We also had a great time having dinner with them last night, going to church at the Cathedral this morning, and having lunch with them and a German family who are long-term missionaries in Kibaya. Overall, it was a great trip. 100% success on the computers and also on making new friends.

Leslie doesn’t like it if I get too technical on here, so I started a separate Tech Diary Blog. It’s really a place for me to keep notes on what I’ve done, so that I can remember what and why two months later. I try to put in good comments as I go, but it’s hard to remember each file that I had to modify when I’m making further modifications later.

So, I’ll keep my geek rants out of here from now on and put them there. (OK, a short rant here: This was inspired by a total failure of an update on Edubuntu from version 6.06 to 6.10. I’ve spent hours on what should have been a 10 minute job. Some of that has been trying to recreate what I did in the past, but most of it was due to a bungled upgrade path by the Ubuntu team. It seems that they don’t spend enough time testing distribution upgrades…)

I was answering e-mail this afternoon when one of the Msalato students, Erasto, came to the door and said that there were visitors to see me outside our house. It was a English woman named Emily and a Tanzanian named Peter. They had traveled from Kiteto Christian School in Kibaya, Tanzania, to Dodoma at the direction of their Bishop in search of Elizabeth, another missionary in town, to try to get their computers fixed. But Elizabeth was out of town, so they heard that I know computers and drove out here to Msalato. Emily said she had two of their computers in the car, so I said, “Bring them in and let’s take a look.”

Emily and Peter had traveled with Chris and Karen, both from England. While Emily and I worked on the computers, Leslie talked to Chris and Karen. We all had tea together, and it took long enough that we ended up having them all stay for dinner. It was great to talk to them and get to know them. We’re probably going to go to Kibaya this Saturday so that I can work on more of their computers. Seven of their nine computers are dead and it sounds like each computer may have a different problem.

At one point we were all laughing about how things seem to work like that here. Everyone is very flexible, which makes it possible for four people to drive three hours and end up eating dinner at a brand-new friend’s home, even if you hadn’t originally even known that person existed. You learn quickly to go with the flow and see where it is taking you. The missionary community is fairly small, and you eventually get to know many people through friends of friends.

Over the weekend, we got great news that the grant we applied for was approved by the Mustard Seed committee of the Diocese of Virginia. We got about 80% of the car paid for. So, we’ll leave the car behind as a Diocese of Central Tanganyika vehicle, specially designated for use by Virginia or American missionaries. (If there are no US missionaries here, the Diocese will be able to use it as a Diocese car. Our one fear is that it will then be forgotten to be a missionary car when the next set of missionaries do arrive…) We’ll have some paperwork to coordinate between the Diocese of Virginia and the Diocese of Central Tanganyika when we leave to make sure that all of this is clearly spelled out in a binding agreement (or at least as binding as any agreement can be in Tanzania).

Thank you to all of you who wrote with get-well messages and prayers in response to Leslie’s message that I came down with malaria on Friday. It hit me really hard, but I’m much better after taking Coartem for the prescribed three-day regimen. The malaria test actually came back negative, but our doctor neighbor told me to take the malaria cure medicine anyway because I had all of the classic symptoms and there hasn’t been a stomach flu going around here.

On Friday morning, I threw up after getting up, but really didn’t feel that bad. Leslie had been up until 4 in the morning hunting, and she couldn’t drive; so I drove to school with the idea I’d go get a malaria test at the Diocese Medical Lab during second period at school. But during first period, while Henry’s class was watching a video, I threw up again and got much worse. I realized that I couldn’t drive, so I called Leslie. She got our neighbor, Robyn from New Zealand, to drive her to school to get me. Our other neighbor, George from Musoma by Lake Victoria, came with them to help get me to the Laboratory. Leslie drove me home and put me to bed. I slept the rest of the day, too weak to read or do anything other than get up a few times to throw up.

By Saturday morning I was feeling much better. I was able to keep some water and bread down. Sunday I was able to eat a little more, and today I’m almost all better. The only symptoms left are fatigue and a headache. I took today off. Leslie and our neighbor, Kate, are trying to talk me into taking tomorrow off, too. One of the things everyone has said is that people try to go back to work too soon and then relapse. The real problem is that the malaria parasite basically make your blood cells explode after they’ve multiplied in the cells and give you anemia. It takes some time to rebuild your blood supply.

We’ve heard that it’s not a matter of “if” you get malaria, but “when” you get malaria. We’ve had the first “when” for the family. Hopefully, we’ll be able to avoid other times. I probably got it while we were in Bagamoyo with side trips to Dar Es Salaam. We haven’t been taking preventative medicine because it’s the dry season in Dodoma, but it’s always wet on the the coast. The rainy season is approaching here in Dodoma, so we’re going to start taking preventatives this week. Wish us luck.

Today is Greg’s 13th birthday!!! We can’t believe we have a teenager, but we do. Congratulations to both him and us for making it this far. Only 7 years of teenagerdom to go until he’s a twenty-something. Wow.

We went to the Chinese restaraunt at the New Dodoma Hotel. It’s one of two good restaraunts in town. We special ordered Peking Duck the day before, and Greg really liked it.

I didn’t realize that Halloween is not celebrated outside the US. (I don’t know about Canada. I assume it is celebrated there since we’re neighbors. But the other English-speaking countries, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, don’t celebrate it. The churches there view it as an evil holiday that celebrates witchcraft and other evils…) OK, so it does have witches and bats as part of the theme, but it’s still fun to watch the kids dress up and go door-to-door for candy (or to dress up and go to a costume party.) I think some of the other countries take themselves too seriously…

So, we had our own private Halloween at home. We had gotten some candy from friends and family at home that we saved for Halloween and we bought some in town this afternoon. (The stuff we bough in town was all stale, but the kids and I ate it anyway because it was chocolate.) Charlotte was the only one that made an attempt at a costume. She put on a dress and a tiara and was a princess. I made them come to the kitchen door and knock. Either Leslie or I would answer and make them tell us what they were dressed up as. They had to have a different answer each time. It was entertaining for a few minutes. We couldn’t go door-to-door for an hour, but the kids were happy.

The kids and I had two weeks of break from school. Leslie took a long weekend and went to Ruaha with us, but she couldn’t take the whole two weeks off. So the kids and I went to Bagamoyo (70 km north of Dar Es Salaam) by ourselves. We stayed at the Bagamoyo Beach Resort and had a great time on the beach. It’s really neat, because there’s a coral wall about 100 yards from the high-tide line that forms a huge tide pool at low tide. We saw lots of crabs, jelly fish, sea cucumbers, feather worms, and fish. The kids really enjoyed making sand castles, because the sand was saturated with water and made fun canals, dams, and lakes.

We went on our first safari (Swahili for “trip”) to Ruaha National Park, southwest of Dodoma. It’s about 240 kilometers (150 miles) by plane, but it’s about 750 kilometers (460 miles) by car. The road is paved from Dodoma to Morogoro to Iringa, but then it’s dirt from Iringa to Ruaha. The total trip is about 9 hours (6.5 on paved road, 2.5 on dirt road).

The photos in the album, are in chronological order. I’ve reduced them all to 800×600 pixels for the web. If you’d like any full-sized originals, please e-mail and I’ll be happy to send them to you.

Before I launch into the story, here are some photos of us:

And here are some of my favorite photos from the trip:

Since Leslie had to finish teaching on Wednesday morning before we went, we drove to Iringa via Morogoro and stayed at the Riverside Campsite, and had a great night there. The tented bandas are very comfortable, and the food is great. Best of all, the price is very reasonable. Here are some photos of the dining banda, our tented bandas, and the shower banda:

On Thursday morning we drove through Iringa and then to Ruaha National Park, where we stayed at The Ruaha River Lodge. This was a great place. Nice riverside bandas with an awe-inspiring view of the Great Ruaha River and a great Tea/Dining Banda that also overlooked the river. The Foxes gave us a nice discount since we’re missionaries. Thanks, Foxes! Here are some pictures from the porch of our banda:

Well, that’s enough for now. Between a slow internet connection, power outages, and my malaria, this post has already taken two weeks to write. I’ll post more of the specific stories about various animals later.

The power has been out every other day for the past two weeks, and it looks like it will be the same for quite a while…

Lake Mtera, the main power source for most of Tanzania, is running out of water. The government and power company (a government entity) officially blame this on recent drought, but all of the papers and most people you talk to blame mismanagement of upstream water on the Great Ruaha River. There are huge rice fields upstream that divert millions of gallons of water every year. What’s worse is that the official diversion numbers are way low because local corruption allows many “leaks” in the levies to flood fields that were never supposed to be irrigated.

You might be asking yourself, “Why are they trying to grow rice in a semi-arid environment?” Or making a note like, “We don’t try to grow rice in West Texas, even though we irrigate there.” If you did, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Apparently this is not a short term problem, it’s one that’s been building for years. Even though the government and lots of people know about it, and the economy is taking a huge hit from every-other-day power outages, the rice fields are still there. Amazing and frustrating.

The corruption here is supposedly not as bad as it is in Kenya. We haven’t personally seen any. All of the government officials we’ve dealt with, including police and bureaucrats, have been polite and have not hinted at “rushwa” (Swahili for bribe money). But we’ve heard stories that Tanzanians have to pay bribes to get driver’s licenses and passports and even money at the bank. For example, if someone gets money wired to them, the bank teller will say “Oh, no it’s not here yet.” But it magically appears with some rushwa. My impression is that larger corruption is the real problem. Like the corruption that allowed a huge rice production to go into place upstream of the main dam. Like the corruption that allows officially-sanctioned monopolies to companies that have the “winning bid” in a given industry. I don’t have anything to base this on other than the press. It is a free press, but it does tend to be a little sensationalist. To be fair, the press does point out that the government is taking active steps to reduce corruption, but it seems to be aimed at the small-scale corruption. I’m not sure about what is happening at the top.

In the meantime, we only have power every other day…