Nashukuru Sana

I've written this blog in my head a dozen times over the last few months and yet it's only now, on the eve of a new year, that I'm finally writing it all down.

The year I spent in Tanzania was not at all what I expected it to be and for many reasons I stopped blogging about it some months ago now. Yet there is much to say and despite all that happened in that place, there are so many people that I am grateful for.

Some of you might know that in March I fell ill and in May I came home to New Zealand for a few weeks to recover. While I was home there were many generous people who donated money to help with the projects I was working on in Tanzania. Others gave things - clothes and blankets, books and toys and swaddles for newborn babies.

I won't name these people. Some of them don't want to be named. Others gave anonymously and I don't even know who they were. What I will tell you though is that the people who gave came from all different walks of life. These were primary school children only five years old, co-workers and relatives of mine, young couples, grandparents, couples with children who had left home, families, elderly people on a pension and strangers who approached me after I spoke in their church. Many of these were people who couldn't afford to give much, but who gave anyway. They followed the example of the widow with the two mites and gave what they could with love, knowing that God would bless and multiply it.

If you were one of these people - thank you. While words will never be enough to explain how many lives you touched with your generosity, I will try.

These are some of the things your money provided:

• Warm blankets for NINE families with young children or babies
• THREE treadle sewing machines to be given to three young women when they graduate from vocational school where they are currently completing a two year tailoring course
• Clothes, food parcels, kitchen utensils including charcoal or kerosene burners and medicines for struggling young mothers and babies in the community
• SEVEN new wooden tables and FOURTEEN benches for the lunch room of the local Emburis Primary School
• THREE new wooden bedsteads and mattresses for families in need
• FOUR loans for women to start small businesses in areas of their choice (selling avocados in the market, green vegetables door to door, handmade beaded sandals and staple foods from a shop in the woman's front yard) and a basic cell phone each for TWO of the women to help with their business
• Salary for ONE year for a home helper to live with a young disabled woman and her baby
• Medical bills for a young pregnant mother
• Toys for the children of the young women in a residential home for vulnerable women and their babies
• New clothes, socks, pyjamas and underwear for these FOUR young women
• A special outing for the young women in the residential program, their children and house mothers to the local snake park where they enjoyed a tour of the park, holding a snake for the first time, riding a camel and morning tea

When I left Tanzania three months ago, with no plans to return in the immediate future, I received a letter from one of the young women that I worked with. One of my girls. In broken English she wrote that I had changed her life. She said she never could have imagined going back to school and yet there she is now, studying to be a teacher. She said she loved me and that she couldn't thank me enough for helping her.

That thanks was for you too - for all the people who gave. For all the people who trusted me with their money, who believed that I would use it for God's glory. I don't think we will ever know exactly what a difference it made until that wonderful day when we all meet in heaven.

The thanks is also for the people in Tanzania who gave of themselves and supported me in every capacity - physically, mentally, emotionally and so on. Who helped me get through the best and worst and craziest year of my life. Sometimes you made life fun, other times you simply helped it to be bearable.

So here's to you:

• Amy and Malcolm - who are everything that friends should be; who came when I said I needed help, who kept me sane with homemade dinners and evening walks and movies and chocolate pudding and who let me talk and vent and cry for two whole months. The help you were to the NGO was incredible. The help you were to me meant even more.
• Ashley - for the good times at language school, our week in Zanzibar and all the days we spent driving around Arusha doing errands and eating snacks.
• Hope - thank you for your help teaching the health program at the girl's high school, for coming to stay in Monduli, for lunch at the Veggie Garden and for, quite simply, being one of the sweetest people I've ever met.
• Peninah - for being my sounding board, for your advice on all things cultural and for being the biggest help of anyone in the day to day running of the NGO. I will always be grateful to you and Oju for getting my car out of the mud not just once, but twice. Thank you for letting me find my own way, for letting me speak Swahili even when you could have said the same thing twice as fast and for knowing when to step in and translate for me.
• Violeth - my sweet Violeth. There are no words for how much I love you. Thank you for being my family, for all the evenings spent talking and laughing and eating chips and ugali and vegetables and banana stew and watching Mazu. Thank you for the market trips and expeditions out to the village, your baby strapped to my back whenever you were too tired to carry him. Thank you for sharing your life with me. Thank you for making your family my own.
• My other Tanzanian friends - Rose, Upendo, Judy, Rehema, Esther, Rozi, Tumaini, Mama Vi, Monica, Bibi Anande, Mama Junior and all the others. Thank you for all the meals and the hugs and the dance lessons and for never making me feel like an mzungu. Thank you for showing you love me by trying to marry me off to your sons/brothers/cousins so that we could be related. Thank you for letting me love your children.
• All the children - you came from all over the place and found a place in my heart. From Western orphanages to the barefoot neighbours who greeted me every day... amongst the sadness of everyday life, you made me happy. There is little in the world that baby kisses and small brown hands in mine cannot fix.
• My girls and your babies - Ruth and baby Daniel, Saumu and little Hadijah, Debora and baby Karen, Esta and baby Shabani, Felista and baby Upendo and Theresia, whose sweet baby Abiudi we will meet again on that glorious resurrection morning. I would have given up long ago, had you not needed me.

I could keep going. The thanks I received from that one girl extends to many people. From my parents at home, to the strangers who said they would pray for me and to everyone in between.

Saumu's gratitude is the same as mine. You blessed her life and you blessed mine.

Nashukuru sana. Mungu akubariki. Thank you so much. God bless you.

-Hannah

Yet Will I Praise Him

Thursday afternoon I stood in the office with five-month-old Abiudi in my arms, laughing with his mother about how big and healthy he had gotten.

Friday afternoon I stood at his bedside in the local hospital. I held his mother’s hand and prayed with her as we watched him slip away from us.

Today I stood beside his grave, the tiny coffin lying in the black mud of the hillside. I pulled my kanga over my head to cover my tears as the soil thudded down. The sound was so final. My kanga couldn’t hide the fact that I was shaking.

He was buried in the same hat as he was wearing the first time I saw him back in January, not yet two months old and weighing barely two kilos. He’d been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. His young mother too was malnourished and generally unwell, so shy that she wouldn’t speak more than two or three words in a row, all in a whisper. Her sister had been looking after her baby previously and she was yet to bond with him. I visited them at least twice a day for the month they were in hospital with food and medicine, formula for the baby and safe water to drink. The day they were discharged was a happy one. We made the half-hour drive to her sister’s house along a narrow mountain road, Theresia fairly flying down the steep hill to the house when we arrived.

I watched over the last few months as they grew, rejoicing with them over every kilo that both Theresia and her baby gained and delighting in the bond that was growing between them. Early last month Abiudi smiled at me for the first time and I was so surprised that his mother laughed. It was a milestone for them both.

I have struggled these past two days. Guilt and grief and shock and questioning and wondering and sorrow and tears and most of all, hurt for a mother with a full heart but empty arms.

And yet will I praise Him.

As we left the burial on the mountain the sun was low in the sky and we could see all of Monduli District spread out before us. Hills and fields, crops of maize and golden wheat and to the left of us, a valley filled with mist and sunlight. Oh what beauty in the midst of such pain. The sound of the family singing as they filled the grave echoed in my heart. “Haleluya. Tutaonana.” Hallelujah. We will see each other again.

Oh how I long for that day.

xoxo,

-Hannah

Today Was Hard

Today was hard. Tonight my heart is heavy. 

We opened Amani House, a residential program for pregnant girls and young mothers, at the end of February. In the past few weeks I have become sister, friend and mother to these three twenty-year-old girls. We have laughed together as they practiced their English on me and I practised my Swahili on them. We have sung and prayed and eaten together most days. We have become a family.

Today Social Welfare decided that we must return one of them and her two-month-old baby to the abusive home that they came from. I held this woman-child close to me after she read the letter, her head on my chest, her weight resting on me as she cried.

When it was time to say goodbye, the five of us stood together, arms around each other, baby Shabani pressed between us as we prayed. I couldn’t understand all the words, but I knew what Upendo was saying through her tears because my heart had the same cry. Watch over Esta and Shabani. Keep them safe. Give them Your protection. We all cried. I didn’t want to let go.

I didn’t want to give Esta back to her abuser. I wrestled all day with it, despite the letter saying that I had to; despite advice from people older and wiser than me who assured me it would be okay.  And all day I tried to ignore the quiet voice saying, ‘Give her to Me instead.’ Oh but I didn’t want to! I didn’t want to give her to anyone. She was safe with me. She was loved and taken care of. For the first time in years, she had a family and a home. Upendo and I would be the mothers that this orphaned girl so desperately needed.

But I had to do it. While this situation is bigger than I am, it is not bigger than God. And so with my heart breaking and tears streaming down my face, I kissed Esta goodbye and left her in God’s hands.

Pray for Esta. And for the rest of us – for the two girls who lost a sister today; for Ruth whose fatherless baby grows steadily in her womb; for Saumu, who misses her family every day; for Upendo whose soft heart hurts for Esta even now; and for me, that I will trust God to keep the people I love safe, now and always.

xoxo,

-Hannah

A Day in the Life

Several people have asked me what a normal day for me here in Tanzania looks like. The reality is that there is no “normal” here but I thought I would record one of my days anyway. It turned out kind of crazy...

Thursday, March 24 2016 

7.00am: I wake up, pray and read from a devotional book called Battlefield of the Mind. Afterwards I write out a list of jobs for Tizo, the facilitator of one of our projects, to do today.

           

7.45am: It’s a holiday so there are no children to pick up and take to school like usual, but I go to Emburis Primary School anyway to pick up two-year-old Samweli and bring him to our daycare. On the way back I stop at Tumaini shop to buy bread for morning tea and Samweli and I go to get chapati at a local restaurant. It’s too hot and Samweli screams and jumps around the car all the way back to the daycare (not unusual, even taking the chapati out of the equation).

8.45am: Peninah, the manager of our daycare, arrives and we discuss options for the two girls in our Amani House program which helps at-risk pregnant girls and young mothers. We decide on finding a school for one of our girls so she can finish her high school education. I also talk to Olivia, our cook, about finding something different to make for lunch. She usually cooks chicken for the children on Thursdays, but because the power has been off for more than 24 hours all the chickens in the shop have gone off (although worryingly they were still for sale).

9.00am I go to the market with our driver, Mohamed, to pick up greens for lunch. When we get back Tizo is waiting to talk about his list of jobs for the day. I help him arrange to go to Monduli Juu, the village at the top of the mountain, next Tuesday to take food, water filters and to do a workshop on jewelry making.

10.00am: Lita rings and says she’s coming over to bring some lengths of fabric that need washing before they’re made into quilts at our community centre. I go home to meet her – there’s 110 metres of fabric and thankfully the power comes on shortly after she leaves so I can start the first of 10 loads in the washing machine. Jessica, my cleaning girl, arrives to clean the house and I work on finances and write a chart of loan repayments for the next hour or so.

11.00am:  I go back to the daycare in time to help out with the two to four-year-old children’s sensory playtime. Today it’s yellow play dough that I made last night. After the children have lunch and are put to bed, we send one of the nannies into Arusha to change her employer at the social security office. Every half hour I go home to switch out the washing and hang another load on the line. It’s a beautiful sunny day.

12.30pm: I find time to have a few bites of ugali and vegetable stew before I go to do my home visits. Thursday and Friday are my home visit days, but as tomorrow is a holiday I plan on doing all three today. I send Tizo to do the first of them as there is too much mud to take a motorbike and I don’t have the time or energy to drive and then climb 45 minutes up the mountain once the road ends.

1.30pm: Peninah and I write grocery lists for the daycare and Amani House. Tizo takes Olivia to buy them and I go home to pay Jessica for cleaning and do a couple of little jobs – mostly organising receipts and scanning and photocopying social security cards.

2.30pm: I head back to the daycare and wake Samweli so I can take him home by 3pm. On the way Peninah and I stop and pick up a young woman who we are interviewing for a home help position for one of our daycare families. We interview her in the car on the way to drop off Samweli as we don’t have much time.

3.00pm: We head off to our first home visit – Theresia is a young woman who recently spent five weeks in the hospital with her two month old baby Abiudi. I visited her twice daily for that month she was in hospital and have committed to visiting her at her sister’s home once a week to provide food and formula for the baby, until such a time as she can get employment. They live over half an hour away on a windy mountain road. The recent rain has washed out a lot of the road and it's a little scary to drive on. I think it will only be a couple more rains and we won’t be able to drive here again – we will have to take a motorbike. When the road ends we have to walk down the steep hill into the valley to Theresia’s house carrying the bags of food. We realize we forgot to bring some medicine that they need so I arrange to bring it on the weekend.

4.30pm: We go to the pharmacy to buy Theresia’s medicine but they don’t have any. They say they will order some and I can come pick it up tomorrow. Peninah and I head to Felista’s house for our second home visit. Felista is a young mother with a month old baby and a four-year-old. Her husband left her and ran away after he could not pay the debts he had accrued in the local community. The first time we visited her, the baby was one week old and there was not a scrap of food in the house – Felista was boiling water to give the four-year-old something to fill her tummy. They had a bed, but no mattress so were sleeping on the bare slats and were about to be evicted from their house – her rent for three months costs only 15,000 shillings (about $10NZD). We currently help her with food and charcoal for her stove. We are in the process of setting up classes at our community centre where women will be able to come and learn a trade which will help them earn money to support their families. I’m eager for Felista to take part in that program.

 5.15pm: We get back to the daycare to find a young woman, Esta, with a two-month-old baby waiting to talk to us. She says she has nowhere to live so Peninah decides to take her home with her for the weekend.

5.45pm: I drop one of our nannies and her daughter at home and then go to the market where Peninah buys vegetables and charcoal for the weekend. I wait in the car with Peninah’s four children. I’m a bit nervous about driving out to her house after getting stuck in the mud going there yesterday but she shows me a different way. I help Peninah carry the twins and groceries to the house (getting charcoal all over myself in the process). Esta refuses to go with Peninah so I take her back home with me. At our community centre we have room for emergency housing so I decide to let her stay there for the weekend. On Tuesday we will go to the village elders and police to see if they can help with her situation.

6.45pm: I get Esta settled in and run home to get some blankets and pick out some clothes, nappies and wipes for her baby. When I get back I spend some time with my friend Violeth and check on how tailor Grace is doing with making quilts. These will eventually be sold in the U.S. and the proceeds will go back into supporting our projects here.

7.30pm It’s dark when I leave the community centre and run into town for some things. I told the Amani House girls that I would bring them juice and cookies tomorrow so I go into Tumaini shop to buy ingredients. Afterwards I run across the road (almost getting hit twice by motorbikes with their lights off) to buy some roast maize on the cob. It’s been a long time since the three bites of ugali at lunchtime! I go to the post office quickly to check my mailbox and then go to one of the small bulk food shops to pay the tab from the groceries Olivia bought earlier today.

8.00pm: When I get home I find I’m not hungry after all and have a big glass of orange juice instead while watching an episode of Bones. My corn will keep until tomorrow.

9.30pm: I get a phone call from our house mother saying that there is a problem with the girls sleeping arrangements so I head back over to the community centre and sort things out. Our new girl is afraid to sleep alone so one of the others swaps beds with her so she can have a shared room.

It’s almost 10 when I get back. There’s just enough time for a quick shower and to look at today’s reading from Youth Week of Prayer before I fall into bed, exhausted. Thank goodness that it’s Friday tomorrow!

 Every day here is different. As I said before, there's no such thing as normal, but also not every day is crazy like this! You just never know what will happen. I'm learning to be flexible as I quickly realised that nothing is ever going to go quite the way that I planned it to.

xoxo,

-Hannah

The Valley and the Mountain

January 26, 2016

“Silence. Three months tick by, slowly at first and then faster as time goes on. Some days are so long I feel I’ve done enough work for a whole week. Other times a week passes and I don’t even notice. I have avoided writing because I haven’t felt like there was anything good to say.

This is hard. Much harder than I expected. And I don’t know what to do about it.

November and December passed in some sort of strange time warp. Days lasted weeks and yet all of them blurred into one. Every day I wanted to go home – my home in New Zealand, a place where for the most part my life ran smoothly. I began to wonder what normal was anymore. I struggled daily with the fact that I love the people here, the children, the language, the culture, but I didn’t like my job. I must have said I wanted to give up a dozen times and I know there were weeks where I looked at flights home every single day.

People say “everything that could go wrong, did go wrong” and that was very much true for those two months. I was in a car accident, the other car broke down, another was impounded and I spent a terrifying few hours alone at the police station in the middle of the night. I witnessed two horrific beatings, the burning alive of a thief and two accidents that resulted in violent deaths. There were visa problems, staffing problems, friends who turned out not to be friends, half a dozen burst pipes (on half a dozen different occasions), rainstorms so big that all the windows leaked and the whole house flooded and many, many more things. Time has made some of them seem funny now, but they weren’t at the time. I could have dealt with it if they came one at a time – but they didn’t. It was day after day followed by week after week of more disaster.

And for the most part nobody understood. “Don’t worry, you’re just not in your groove yet.” “Oh all of those things have happened to me at some point or other.” “Haven’t you put all the dead bodies behind you yet?” “You’ll just have to get over it – that’s just what Tanzania is like.”

Being here is hard and I don't know what to do. I know that everyone has their problems, but sometimes it seems like life is easier in New Zealand. I want to give up and I only pray that God will give me the strength to stay."

It’s true. It is hard. Being in Tanzania this time has been a lot different to last time, a lot more difficult. There have been more questions and more doubts, more tears and heartache. I have found it hard, do continue to find it hard, to be on call to everybody all the time, no matter what time of the day or night it is. There’s never a time when somebody isn’t asking me to pick them up or drive them around or needing money or wanting a job interview or asking to talk to me about this or that. There’s never a time when somebody doesn’t need me. At times more than anything I have wanted to go home, simply to be surrounded by the people who love me for who I am, not what I do for them.

It felt like people were pecking away at me constantly, like I was giving, giving, giving all the time and that soon nothing of myself would be left. Some days it still feels like that. Other days I take it for the gift that it is. I am loved here. I am needed. I have purpose. I am blessed to have found something that I am passionate about. I feel like some people could live a whole lifetime and never find that.

Even in the midst of the difficult times here there have always been bright moments. We have a daycare that is completely chaotic, but also amazingly fun. There are babies to cuddle and toddlers to read to and nannies to joke with. I can eat as much chapatti and beans and plantains as my heart desires. Our manager is wonderful. Two-year-old Godfrey is the sweetest, smartest child, “Why are you wearing a hat inside Hannah? There’s no sun here.” Smiley little Ismail is almost five months old now and knows who “his people” are. I feel lucky to be one of them.

There’s my friends Amy and Malcolm who came to help for two months, who cooked dinner so that’s one less thing I needed to think about and who listened without complaining to my venting.

There are amazing thunderstorms in the late afternoons, cold watermelon straight out of the fridge and fresh hot bread out of the oven, evenings where I slosh through the mud in my new gumboots with a baby on my back and stolen moments to read a good book.  There are long motorbike rides through the mountains, sandwiches at TanzHands and weekends where Ashley comes to stay and we watch TV and eat pizza and talk about everything and nothing. There are early morning phone calls home and funny text messages from my sunshine girl Jill.

I’m learning to focus on those things, to cherish the mountain top experiences when I have them and to lean on God during the valley. Coming here has probably been the hardest experience in my life. It’s also probably been one of the best. God is so good.

xoxo,

Hannah