The In-Between

Thunder roars, lightning crackles across an angry purple sky. A man named Jesus takes one final breath and His disciples descend into grief. The long hours stretch before them without their Saviour. They don’t know what is yet to come.

Simon Peter, having cut the ear off the servant Malchus in an act of rage and defiance; and denying he knew Jesus again and again, weeps bitterly. Hadn’t it only been hours earlier that he had declared that he would die for and with his Master?

Thomas questions. Doubts creep into his mind, unbidden. Doesn’t tradition say that the Messiah would come as a warrior, riding in to free the Jews? Perhaps he’s wondering whether it was a sham all along.

John kneels in front of the cross, his arms around the grieving women, hands clasped tight with Mary. He is beloved by Jesus, but even he cannot remember the words he heard so often. “They will kill Him, but after three days He will rise.” (Mark 9:31).

And there, outside Jerusalem, a body hangs from a tree. Judas. He has realised that he has sinned by betraying Him who is innocent.

It’s Friday evening. Then Sabbath morning. Time stretches and warps. What did the disciples do that day? Did they go to synagogue? Did they celebrate the Passover as they always had, knowing then in the fullness of their hearts that the true Lamb was lying cold and still, sealed inside a tomb intended for another man?

That surely must have been the longest, strangest Sabbath. The word on everyone’s lips was about the man known as Jesus. Crowds came to the priests and rulers, questioning the prophecies of the Old Testament. Could it be real? Were we so busy waiting for a warrior that we didn’t see Jesus for who He really was? How could we have been so mistaken? And what do we do now? What comes next?

We are there now without doubt. The whole world lingers somewhere in the long day between Friday and Sunday, the Resurrection Day. The resurrection that the disciples did not remember was coming. In this time of social isolation, the world waits, locked inside our bubbles, breath held for news of loved ones. Uncertainty reigns. Panic heightens. Grocery store lines lengthen. Hands crack from endless washings. Loneliness finds it’s way into our homes, and slowly, inside of each of us.

It’s Saturday night now. Darkness deepens. Hope fades. But the story isn’t over yet.

I remember the words of one of my favourite songs:

“His body bound and drenched in tears

They laid Him down in Joseph’s tomb.

The entrance sealed with heavy stone

Messiah still and all alone.

Then on the third at break of dawn

The Son of heaven rose again.

Oh trampled death, where is your sting?

The angels roar for Christ the King.”

So rest now in the in-between. On this long uncertain Sabbath. During this time of waiting.

And then rejoice.

Resurrection morning is coming.

  

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

And Then...

.... I drank local medicine meant to cure all manner of maladies out of an ancient gin bottle.

.... I saw a bus driver pull over to the side of the road, open the cargo hold and forcibly remove a very startled looking goat.

.... Our car overheated at the top of the mountain and I volunteered to go with the local men to find water to put in the radiator, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t about to be married off to a Maasai warrior.

.... We found a mouse in the toaster.

.... A motorcycle drove past us on the highway, the passenger on the back sitting sidesaddle, calmly reading a newspaper.

.... A lizard fell on my head when I was closing the curtains.

.... As I sat in the District Commissioner's office I saw two men side by side – one wearing a traditional Maasai shuka, the other wearing a silk Armani suit.

.... They named me Mama Mchungaji, “the pastor’s wife”.

.... A goat chased me in circles around a bush while the local children screamed with laughter.

.... Tizo asked if we could stop the car so he could tie a donkey that had been half eaten by wild dogs onto the roof.

.... And then I ate too much and made a lot of new friends and had a thousand hugs from dozens of children and I played a game made up by six year old Dorry which involved a handful of pebbles and nothing else. And I held my sweet friend’s newborn baby and watched as he opened his eyes and looked at the new world around him for the first time.

.... And then I laughed until I cried and my stomach ached and my cheeks hurt and then little Millen called me “mama mdogo” (my young aunt) and I felt my heart constrict and then open even further.

.... And then I realised that my life is crazy and busy and I love it and that God is so good and I am so blessed and I wouldn’t change any of this. Not for anything. Not for the world.

xoxo,

-Hannah

Long Journey Home

February 27, 2014

"I am finally in a place where people look like me, they talk like me. Their skin is the same colour, their voices round over their vowels, just like mine does. It sounds strange. Is this really what I sound like, look like? Are these really my people? They don't feel like it. My people have dark skin and big smiles. They speak another language - a beautiful language which my head is constantly full of. Every time I open my mouth I have to remember that it's English words that need to come out. In Africa I forget that I am white. Here, I am reminded of it constantly - my reflection in stranger's faces, my voice echoed in theirs. I feel like an imposter in my own country, in my own skin.

I know I am from this country. New Zealand. I know that I grew up here. That I love it. But it feels so strange. So unlike home.

Home is far away, in a hot country in East Africa. Home is where a dozen tiny arms reach out to me for hugs, who love me simply because I love them. Home is a group of children singing in the twilight, a bunch of boisterous nannies laughing. All the time I was in Tanzania I kept thinking about home - how far away it was. Turns out it was right there all along."


Fast forward 18 months and I am back in Tanzania, back in my other home. I arrived here two weeks ago today. Tanzania is a long way from New Zealand whichever way you look at it - it's long through the Middle East, long through Asia and long through Europe. It's just really far away.

It wasn't just the distance that was long though - the journey here this time was not an easy one. There were many setbacks and delays, even right up until I tried to check in at the airport. I cried there and said, as I had a dozen times in the previous week, that I had changed my mind and didn't want to go anymore. All the problems had left me thinking that maybe I wasn't meant to come. My mother said the opposite, "Perhaps you're meant to be there and something is trying to stop you."

Either way, I'm back. I know I will always be torn between New Zealand and Tanzania. When I was there, all the time a part of me wished I was here. Now I'm in Tanzania, a bit of my heart longs for NZ. I can't see there ever being a solution for that. I have a home in both places. And I don't know how long I will be here, whether it will be one year or ten. All I can do is trust that I am here for a reason, that God has a plan and that I will be useful to His work in this place.

And to put it briefly - despite everything, I'm glad to be back. I'm happy to be home once again.

xoxo,
-Hannah

One Year Later

Earlier this month it was one year since I left Tanzania to come back to my other home in New Zealand. The past year has not been an easy one. It has been a year of being broken, of watching life fall apart, of nothing making sense, of intense loneliness and insecurity, of depression and questioning. Tanzania wrecked me.

It is only now, 12 months later, that healing is beginning and I’m starting to make sense of the things that I learned there.

A year ago, I left my heart in the hands of 28 babies, of three beautiful triplets and a set of twins who I will always love. I have thought about those babies, prayed for them, cried for them, loved them from afar for all these months. I learned a lot about love in Tanzania. The kind of love that I imagine a mother has for her child. A love that will cross oceans and cultures and bloodlines to be made real.

I had a much harder time re-adjusting to the culture that I grew up in than I ever had experiencing Tanzania for the first time. I didn’t really have culture shock there. I was introduced to the country slowly, discovered the culture over time. When I came back to New Zealand though I struggled for a long time. People seemed to take so many things for granted. At first I couldn’t justify a lot of things. I had a problem with spending money. Say I bought my lunch two or three times a week, perhaps I would spend $50 in a fortnight. That’s half a month’s wages for the nannies I worked with at the baby home. How could I justify it?

I saw people absorbed in things that seemed shallow to me after the things that I had seen. I couldn’t fathom spending thousands of dollars traveling around the world simply for your own pleasure. I couldn’t understand how updating to the newest gadgets, when your old ones worked perfectly fine, was okay. All the time I was thinking of the children, of my babies. I thought about Maria who though she was only 51, a lifetime of hardship had made her look closer to 70. I thought about her children who went to bed hungry every night and about her poor dead husband whose starved body had so easily succumbed to typhoid and malaria. I thought about the look in Maria’s eyes, vacant and hopeless that still haunts me now. I thought about how all that money would help them, of how many lives could be changed and made better; how many wouldn’t have to die of preventable and treatable diseases; how many people could be reached with that money. The guilt of living here, of being a part of this culture ate me up inside.

And yet, I had to live in my own country again. I had to learn to be happy here. I could not feel miserable constantly; guilty of the money I was spending. So I cried some more and prayed some more and spent hours talking to my long-suffering family. Yes, there is poverty there. Yes, horrible things are happening all over the world. I cannot turn a blind eye to it. I cannot (and will not ever) ignore it. But I also cannot, must not, let it ruin me. I must be here now. Enjoy life for what it is at the moment and bide my time, waiting to be sent back to the front lines.

And so I learned to live here. To buy my lunch now and then or to enjoy a movie with my friends. I learned that people’s lives lead them in different directions. Their choices are just as valid as mine are and I cannot judge them, just because their path has taken them a completely different way to mine. I learned slowly to live in New Zealand instead of inside my memories.

Tanzania wrecked me. There is no other way to say it. Everything I thought I knew about life and the world and about who I was, it was all gone. It changed me completely. I saw more in that eight months than many people experience in years, perhaps even a lifetime. And over this past year, as the pieces of my heart got put back together, God showed me what’s next in His plan for my life. He knew that Tanzania is in my blood, that it calls to me and that I cannot resist it. I think that’s God calling. So I said yes. I’m going back.

Homesick for Africa

I have been back in New Zealand for four weeks and away from Africa for seven. Being home is strange. Everything looks familiar and feels familiar, but it also feels strange at the same time. It was odd to think that I had been away for so long and yet virtually nothing had changed. Sure there were little things - the road that I have driven most days for years had a change in layout and was almost unrecognisable in parts, and my little brother had grown to be almost as tall as me. But really? Not much was different.

It's still strange to be honest. My family is the same. Church is the same. My house is the same. I have the same bed and my closet is filled with clothes that are familiar but that I haven't seen for months. Now that I have started work again, that too is the same. I wear the same uniform as I did before, I drive the same roads, I have the same colleagues, I do the exact same work. Sometimes it feels as if the last nine months of my life were just deleted, they didn't exist or I imagined them somehow.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed.

While I was in Africa, my world here went on without me. I don't know what I expected it to be like when I got home, but it wasn't like this. I am different now. I might be looking at the world with the same eyes as I was before, touching it with the same hands, but it feels different, and as kind as people are, nobody really understands that.

And all the time I am thinking about Africa. About Tanzania. About the babies. About Angel and Angelous. I miss Africa with every part of my being and there's not a time in the day that I don't wish that I was there. I think about them all the time. I wonder how much Maxine weighs now, if Riziki can walk yet, if Ibrahim is still a biter, if anybody calls Gian "Baby Gi" anymore.

Everything I see and do and hear is covered in Africa. Swahili words slip into my head uninvited, when English words are what I need. Several times I've accidentally referred to Tanzania as, "back home." Some days even ugali and mboga sound appetising.

I knew I would miss it when I left, but I didn't realise how deeply. I didn't realise that Tanzania would become a part of me, something that I'm constantly longing for. I didn't realise that 23 years of life in New Zealand would give way to eight months on the other side of the world. I didn't realise that your heart could have a different home to your head, to your history.

And the longer I'm away the worse it gets. The more often I cry. The more I sleep, hoping that I'll dream of it. Even if it's only a dream, I can still feel their little arms around my neck, kiss them before they go to sleep. And more and more I struggle, sinking into myself, unsure of anything anymore.

Most nights I cry. Every night I pray. For the children. For my babies. For the African mamas and my local friends. The only thing I can hold onto at the moment is that God is here. He's just as much in the mundane routine of daily life, as He was there in the big things in Africa. He's just as near to me when I'm driving to work as He was when I was feeding orphans. That's what comforts me most right now.

xoxo,
-Hannah

Traveling Days

I left Africa, Neema House and my life with the babies behind on Saturday, February 8. While it was incredibly hard to leave, I hold on to the thought that I will be back some day. 

While I might have left Africa almost two weeks ago, I am not home yet. My first stop was Dubai, where I stayed three days with my friend Shermaine. When I first got to Neema House last June, Shermaine was my roommate and we made friends quickly. Shermaine is originally from the Philippines, but is currently living in Dubai with her Belgian husband. One of the other volunteers commented how funny it was that two people from completely differently places in the world, who had completely different lives, could somehow find such a good friend in a little orphanage in Africa. 

My first day in Dubai I experienced extreme reverse culture-shock. I had gone from witnessing abject poverty, to extravagant wealth in the space of a few hours. I hadn't even had the more average experience of my home in New Zealand in between. That first day, Shermaine took me to the Dubai Mall, which was an interesting experience. I hadn't seen a mall in eight months and suddenly I was in the biggest one in the world. I hadn't even seen clothes shops really as almost everything I bought in Tanzania came from a market. It wasn't uncommon there to see clothes stacked in a pile, taller than I was. The first shop in the mall we went into, I didn't even want to touch anything. I'm too used to the African thing where you never touch anything unless you want to buy it. If you do touch something, the shopkeeper or stall owner will usually harass you to make a purchase, so you learn quickly to look with your eyes only. However, I got used to it relatively quickly thankfully, so I was able to enjoy it!

Inside the Dubai Mall is several "world's biggest" this or that. There's the largest candy store, the largest aquarium viewing panel and nearby is the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.

The aquarium inside the Dubai Mall.

This is one of the reasons I felt so culture-shocked. The day before I had been standing in a schoolroom with thirty children, mud covering my feet, their clothes barely adequate to cover their bodies, all of them hungry. 24 hours later I was standing in front of shops like Burberry for children, Armani Junior and Gucci baby.

I couldn't stop thinking about how even the very cheapest item from a shop like this would be more than what the average Tanzanian would earn in a month. 

The Burj Khalifa - tallest building in the world at 828m.

On the first night I was in Dubai we had dinner at a restaurant on a balcony overlooking the Dubai Fountain. Every thirty minutes there is a show with lights and music.

Shermaine and I spent a day at the silk and spice souqs (markets).

To get to the silk souq we had to take a boat, like this one, to get to the other side of the river. In most places Dubai is modern and extravagant, but down by the river, where the markets are, feels like taking a step back in time.

Shermaine and I on the boat.

Dubai was absolutely amazing to see and experience, but I don't think it is somewhere that I would care to live. A couple of the things I liked best were very simple - a shower with good pressure and as much hot water as I wanted, and a comfortable bed to sleep in! It was also really nice to eat good food - we had everything from French to Pakistani to Polynesian. Even though it was a shock to go straight there from Tanzania, I'm so glad I went as it was lovely to explore a new place and to see my sweet friend Shermaine again.

From Dubai it was on to the Philippines. With my flight leaving Dubai at 4am and only getting one hour of sleep on the plane, I was pretty tired by the time I arrived in the Philippines eight hours later. In the Philippines I am visiting and staying with my lovely friend Jill and her very kind family. Jill is a paediatric nurse who I have known for the past five years - it's been really nice to spend some time with her!

Mostly in the Philippines I haven't been doing much besides resting. I was very tired because since the beginning of January, I have been working 7 days a week as I was spending time at both Neema and Havilah. I have also been sick on and off since the beginning of December, with one thing after another, which has been tiring. Jill has been working, so I've been staying at home and not doing a lot for the most part. Something I have done a lot of here is trying of new foods! It's been very interesting and there have been quite a few things that I have really liked.

The local transport here is known as a "jeepney" and, in terms of looks at least, is even more interesting than a dala dala!

On one day we went to Tagatay to do some sightseeing. We left at 4am so that we would miss the traffic (Manila traffic is crazy busy) and we got there about 6:30. It was up in the mountains and after spending the past almost-year in sunny Africa, the cold was a bit of a shock!

We stopped at a local restaurant for breakfast (rice, poached eggs and whole fried fish) and this was the beautiful view from the roof as the sun was coming up.

I probably only wore this jacket half a dozen times since I left home, but I was very grateful for it that morning! 

Edith (Jill's mother), Jill and I.

Valentine's Day with Edith and Annie (Edith's friend) at a small botanical gardens in Tagaytay.

We went to Sky Ranch, a small amusement park, so that we could ride on the ferris wheel overlooking Taal Lake, in the middle of which is the smallest volcano in the world.

The view from the top of the ferris wheel. It was a bit hazy, but you could clearly see the volcano, which has a crater lake.

At the top.

Jill.

Tomorrow afternoon I leave the Philippines, which will be sad as I have had a lovely time here. It has been really interesting to visit some new places and I have absolutely loved catching up with and meeting some new friends. As for now though - onward to Singapore!

xoxo,

-Hannah