Chips Mayai!

This is Chips Mayai. Everybody say "Hello!" and make him feel at home. This is a little Tanzanian treat that I hae grown to love. It's preparation is pretty complex: first you make some chips (FRIES!), then you throw them in a frying pan and fry some eggs with them.

Try it at home, if you can.

Tammi and I went to a pub near our home and got two cold sodas (mbili soda baridi, tafadhali), a plate of plain chips and a chips mayai for 700/= (that is seventy cents in American Dollars).

Good stuff!

Ps. I also started that podcast I had been talking about. You can subcribe to it by clicking here. If you have iTunes, this link should open automatically and begin updating.

Have fun!

It's Tammi!

1/23/07

So we have been here in Mwanza for a little over 2 weeks and we are feeling right at home. I feel like the three of us could not be in safer hands. The three nuns here are such a blessing. I never in a million years thought I would be such good friends with nuns. They are inspiring every day. Michael one day looked at me when we were visiting the nuns in Nairobi and said “you wish you were a nun don’t you”. For a split moment I thought, hey it is like a slumber party all the time. I am sure it can be hard at times however they are always laughing and having a good time and really understand what it means to live in community. I love it! While we have been here we have also met some Franciscan monks from Italy and they are so cool. One is a Mac owner and was so excited to find Michael, they talked for hours about Macs, it was really cute. Michael said that if I became a nun he would become a monk. The nuns here however wanted the baby. Either way we are being humbled by all of our preconceived notions of the Catholic Church.
Speaking of the Catholic Church we have found one that we have been going to for the last three services. The first Sunday was coming around and Sister Jennifer told us that we were free to go to any Church we wanted to go and she began to tell us where some were in the area. We asked where she and sister Denise went and she said they do not go to the same church all the time. We live on some property that was given to Sister Denise by the Diocese so that means that a Church is very close and Sister Jennifer goes to that church most Sundays and Sister Denise goes to a church called St. Francis Xavier. The church is a few minutes away and the service we go to is in English. So from the first time there we felt like it was a very nice community. We have met other Americans in the area that I think will be nice friends. We have also been able to take communion for the first time in five months and it is beautiful. I know what you are all thinking, “I did not think you could take communion in a Catholic church if you were not a Catholic”… however we felt like we completely understood what it meant and that is what was important so we take it with out a second thought. Also the Priest is from America and he is great and we enjoy his sermons very much, many people here have a hard time with his accent however we think he sounds like us, so sometimes I think he is preaching just for us. The music is amazing, I have thought about being home the words to some songs but then I realize it is not he words to the song, it is the sound, and you can’t have that sound anywhere else but here. The music comes from one of the pews, where there is a Tazaninan women who plays an acoustic guitar and sings and her voice is so different and beautiful and then you have a drum and shakers and sometimes a keyboard. It does not sound that impressive however it is and I can’t bottle the sound up for you and that makes me sad. Speaking of singing, the two nuns here at the house come from a community in Nairobi that sings before and after a meal.
Whenever we would go to visit the nuns in Nairobi and we ate with them they would sing and I loved it. So now I have asked the two nuns here if they would sing after the meals and they have and it sounds like angels singing. I have asked them if they were required to sing well before they could become a nun and they just laughed. I love meal times here, everyone works together to prepare the food and to clean up and we all eat at a large table and we pass the food around and we eat and eat and laugh and talk about the day and just enjoy each other and it makes me what to have a big family. Also the food is always a little crazy and you never really know what we are going to eat. Tonight for example we have left over spaghetti, rice, beans, potatoes, green beans, beets, bananas, oranges, cucumber, carrots, and a random mango. So you can see every meal is kind of a buffet of sorts. We call them crazy meals.
So how am I doing you might ask? I am doing very well. We are very excited about the little person that will join us in another 6 mo. I think I am already getting a belly (or it could be the crazy food) however I feel like it is harder to hold in my gut. I have found a very nice Tanzanian Doctor that I will see every month until we leave that seems very nice. I feel ok most of the time except a little tired, but every day has a few hours in it for me to take a nap, so I am very grateful for my naps. All the women here are very excited for us and could not be anymore supportive. Some days it is still hard for Michael and I to really wrap our minds around the idea that we will be a mom and dad but it is getting easier as time goes on. One of our only worries is Malaria, I am not taking any drugs against it and I am just using creams and spays and a net at night however it has rained every day since we have been here and the mosquitoes are crazy bad here. Already Sister Jennifer and Isabella, one of the little girls here, have gotten Malaria and we are just trusting God that if I get it I will be fine and if I don’t then that is more then ok too. Please keep this in your prayers.
I am sure there is much more that I am forgetting to talk about however it will let us have stories for you all when we get home. Love you all.

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Also, I have been uploading the few pictures we have taken here in Mwanza after about a month of not uploading any pictures. Enjoy them!

I Knew This Would Happen...

People thought I was being paranoid, but it happened: my iPod is dead. On the flight to Mwanza it started having troubles and stopped working, but I was able to restore the factory settings and it worked fine for about two weeks. Now, all of a sudden, a few days ago, it stopped working again. Now it is making funny noises like the disc is warped or something. Oh well, no personal music for three and half months...I should be fine, right?

I'm not even surprised, really. It feels like the iPod has been with me for a long time, but then I keep remembering that this is my third one (God bless Apple's Customer Service! Take it in with a problem and they replace it with minimal hassle). So I have only had this current one for about a year.

So long friend!

New Address, a Tornado, and a Toilet

Here is our address in Mwanza:

Montessori Training Center/Sister Denise Mattle
PO BOX 6428
Mwanza, Tanzania

Phone Number: +255786682425

Sister Denise told us we needed to put her name because the post office has never made her pay for a parcel, which sounds really nice after paying close to $300 in customs fees in December.

Also, earlier this week we had a tornado in Mwanza. This is extremely rare in this region. We saw it while we were in the city, it touched down near the Sister's Primary School, about twenty minutes away from where we live. People died. I kept thinking "I wonder if they will hear about this stateside?" But then I realized that we don't hear about genocide happening here stateside, so a few Africans dying in a tornado probably wouldn't get much attention. So it goes.

Also, on a much lighter note, we have had some questions about our toilet conditions so I thought I would include a picture:



Definetly not conducive for bathroom reading. How will I ever finish A People's History of the United Statets now?

Our Little Bundle of Molecules...

I know a lot of you may have already received an e-mail about our little person, so I thought I would go ahead and make it official (because a blog entry is like notarizing a document): Tammi and I are expecting our first child this August. This is one of the main reasons that persuaded us to return home in May rather than the intended August. We are really excited. Our little person is almost eight weeks along! Thank you for all of your prayers! We look forward to seeing you all!

In other news we have made it Mwanza and are fitting right in! There is stable internet where we are staying, which is an incredible blessing, if I do say so myself. It is almost worth not having a Western toilet and hot water (we'll see if I am still saying that in four months!).

I hope you all like the new look of the site. I think the new banner looks like a wacky 1970's East African sitcom. I like it.

Talk to all of you soon!

From Tammi...

Date: Unknown

I would like to be sorry about not really writing much, I think I am just really numb these days. God has more in store for us and that has left me in His whirlwind as usual. I am left just standing back in awe of who He is and what he wants with me. We came here with the hopes of this being our new family and what we have found out is our real family is amazing! Our Church family back home is still our Community. Don’t get me wrong we have found amazing people and we have seen God here without us ever doing anything. We really did come to love these children and how everyone back home responded to that has still left me pointing to God because He is the only one that could make their response possible. So now we have to say our good-byes, when we thought we would never say good-bye. I am left with peace, I have cried, I have talked to God about it over and over again. He has not told me everything and I doubt He ever will, He has just told me that it is okay and that House of Hope is okay and that it is not worth fighting for anymore. So I surrender to Him and we leave. I have no idea what is in store for us in Mwanza. At first I was not looking forward to it. I thought I have been a nomad for years it seems. We lived with Michael’s parents and then we moved into an empty condo for 7 weeks and then we have been in Africa trying to make a home where we would never have a home, and now a new place to try to create a sense of belonging. All the places we have squatted at has made us grow into better people so we have no regrets, however it does make each move a little harder. I know that following God may mean never having a place to lay our head again, but our flesh wants to lay our head down somewhere.
So going to yet a new place, a new country, someone elses home…. all sounds and feels so tiring. However we have been in prayer about this for a while and when we bought our airfare yesterday (because the 17 hour bus ride might have killed us) I felt excited for the first time. I felt like everything was going to be okay and we were going where God wanted us to go. So our tickets are to leave on January 5th and return to House of Hope on May 1st and stay and visit for 1 week and then off to Houston on May 8th (get home on May 9th). When we talk it sounds so close however when we calculate we still find it ends up being 4 months and well on Jan. 7th we will have been in Africa for 5 mo. so we are just a little over half way their. I feel humbled by this, humbled about all I said before I came, humbled in my perspective towards the world, humbled when I think of how much our family has sacrificed for us, humbled at how many people are praying for us, and I know the list could go on. You know if God brought me all the away across the world to humble me I would say it was more than worth it. I wish I could tell all of you how truly blessed you have made me. It just seems that THANK YOU would never do it. Never be enough to show you how much you have done for me, given me and been for me. I love you and not just the ‘thank you’ kind of Love, but a real love that is from God for you, the love that makes you weep at night because I miss you. Thank you for that.

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From Michael:

The next blog entry from me will be from Mwanza, Tanzania! The place we are staying has an internet connection from what I hear, so who knows what craziness might ensue? I love music, and sharing it, so maybe a podcast, for those internet savvy people...stay tuned.