My Nemeses (written a few weeks ago)

At various points in days gone by, I have talked about how this person or that person was my “nemesis”, usually a person who I’d met recently and opposed me in some area of work or ministry.  Actually, as it turns out, I’ve been abusing the word for years.  I just looked it up in Oxford English Dictionary:

nemesis /’nεmisis/
n. (pl. nemeses /-si:z/) the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall, especially when this is deserved

So first let me offer an apology to both the English and Greek languages for my persistent misuse of this word (although it’s such a nice word – fun to say and more fun to pluralize).  I also owe an apology to those I labeled as a nemesis inappropriately.  In God’s funny way, though, I think every single one of those “nemeses” eventually became good friends!

Now let me introduce you to my actual nemeses, those things (not people) which are inescapably contributing to my downfall, whether such downfall is deserved or not.

1) A certain rat
I hate rodents, even guinea pigs and hamsters, but I especially hate rats.  The family who used to live in half of the large house that Fred and I live in were not particularly tidy or careful about storing food, hence attracting a whole troop of rats.  When they moved out, taking that messy food source with them, the rats began touring the house looking for my carefully stored and sealed food stuffs.  Fred won’t tell me how many he’s killed so far, but there is (at least) one intrepid creature which likes to climb up our stove at night looking for bits of something.  I not only hate, but fear rats, and on a recent late evening I sat in the kitchen reading by candlelight, the rat took advantage of the dark and quiet to pay a visit.  I began hurling empty water bottles in the general direction of the noises, hoping to frighten it away.  This rat has escaped Fred on a few occasions, and I am no help in the catching or killing, so the rat continues to imperil both my dignity and sanity as I sit with my feet tucked up in a chair praying for vengeance!

2) TANESCO
TANESCO is the nationalized power company in Tanzania, and I already hated them from my time in Dodoma, because a) the political science student in me recoils at the inefficiency and waste of a national utility company without private sector competition, and b) they tried to make me pay a gigantic power bill because they couldn’t check my meter (long story).  Anyway, it seems that since late last year Tanzania has been experiencing almost daily blackouts without explanation or warning.  This is particularly inconvenient for me because it brings into conflict my two main responsibilities.  I am most productive as an employee of Lahash if I have power for my computer, but I am most productive at home if there is no power to distract me (with, y’know, work).  I’m the kind of person who likes to have a plan and a routine for my day, but when I’m at the erratic mercies of TANESCO, I often end the day without feeling much sense of accomplishment.  (Plus, no electricity at night encourages the rat.)

Still, in spite of the worst these nemeses are throwing at me (the other night Fred killed a rat IN OUR BEDROOM), and the other difficult things of my current life, like being far from family and friends, I have a lot of peace now.  Although this isn’t a busy time of life for me, I’m learning to be content with that.  I think God might be teaching me that the “downfall” of my preferences and comforts and fears even, are for my good, and that there’s a lot to be said for the seed which falls into the ground and dies to produce new life.  It remains to be seen what that new life might look like, but it’ll be good…even if there are rats.

Living Room!

We have the beginnings of a living room! Many thanks to Imago Dei’s Global Mission fund for some extra money this month, enabling us to make the trip to Uganda we’d hoped to take in June and buy some living room furniture and a bed for Innocent, who’s coming to visit next month.  

(I had a photo of our furniture to put here, but I can't find the cord that connects the camera to the computer. Too bad...it was going to be a rare photographic insight into our life here!)

It may not seem like living room furniture is particularly missional, but I’ll tell you, in Africa, it is. Hospitality is such an important part of life here, and until now, we simply couldn’t have anyone to the house, even for a chat, because there was nowhere but the kitchen or bedroom to invite them into. Both these locations are problematic culturally. In Luo culture, it’s very much not done to invite a visitor to hang out in your kitchen, so my only visitor thus far has been a young co-worker of Fred’s named Goodluck. He’s from a different tribe which doesn’t have such stipulations against sitting in kitchens. Actually, his being from a different tribe and excellent English are two factors that have made us friend-ish. I think he often feels as much an outsider in Shirati as I do, since neither of us speaks the Luo language.

Our plans for the coming weeks are such:
21st July – Travel to Nairobi
22nd – 23rd July – Nairobi, visiting with some of Fred’s family and Edwin’s family
24th July – Travel to Kampala
25th – 26th July – Kampala, meeting up with Mama Susan, Tim Bata, and Jaclyn Konczal
27th July – Travel to Kisumu and Sindo
28th – 29th July – Sindo, picking up Innocent and Dadi (Inno’s cousin)
30th July – Return to Shirati with the two boys
Inno and Dadi are going to stay with us for several weeks in August, after we return them to Sindo, we’ll travel to Dodoma for a week or so.

The In-Laws!!

(First and foremost, thanks to many of you who commented or wrote me notes of encouragement after my last bummer of a blog post. Now back to your regularly scheduled slightly self-mocking observations on life in East Africa!)

We had been planning our visit to “Dani” (grandmother in Luo language) and Innocent, Fred’s nephew who is like his own son, ever since we returned to Africa, and as the time drew closer for the trip to Kenya, I began to get really nervous. I knew language would be a barrier, since Dani and Innocent only speak Luo, but I also had a sense of the weight of the occasion. Fred’s extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins and all, had been waiting for Fred to get married for a long, long time. Most of them had not even seen a photo of me, but they knew I was a white American, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to make a good impression.

As an example, trying to dress for the day we went to their home almost drove Fred crazy. I wanted to wear comfortable clothes for the long trip, but I also wanted to look nice to see them, and I definitely didn’t want to look too American. Trying to find the perfect traveling outfit that would also be the perfect “meet the in-laws” outfit, pairing practicality with themes of cultural integration…my appeals to Fred for feedback or guidance were useless, as I imagine the importance of a wardrobe decision of this magnitude is beyond most men. They could probably identify “wrong” if they saw it on your body, but otherwise, you’re on your own, lady! I finally landed on something that didn’t appall me, and we hit the road for the big event.



Remember the car ride I described where the driver shared a seat with the eighth passenger? Well, I have now realized that this is an extremely common scenario. I have amended my award of “Maximum Vehicular Capacity” so many times in the past few weeks that I have determined that it is only my naivety that would even consider that award worth thinking of. (Eight in the seats, with three to four children in laps, and three to four riding in the “boot” seems to be the absolute capacity for these vehicles, but I’m still expecting to be proved wrong on that front.) The trip to Sindo, Dani’s village, took us about 11 hours, in which we rode in three packed cars, two packed mini-buses, and another packed car. This final car was the one that took us from the tiny town of Homa Bay to the village of Sindo, and the two voluptuous mamas who shared the back seat with Fred and I had us wedged in so tightly that even the bumps of the “detours” off of the “currently being improved” road didn’t budge us.



When we finally arrived at the bottom of the path to Dani’s house, I was so beat I almost (almost) didn’t even care what I was wearing. Fred’s cousin, Beatrice, a lovely 30-something-year-old married mother of five, came running full-speed down the hill from the house. She basically fell on me, hugging me and welcoming me, and she took the bags from my hands, threw her arm around my shoulders and started up the hill. We had to stop and rearrange luggage when Fred’s aunt came from the road where she’d seen us pass, and insisted on also carrying something after her hugs and welcome. Then we stopped again (it’s not a very long path!) when Innocent came tearing down the hill yelling “Uncle! Uncle!” Eventually, we made it to where Dani was waiting for us, and she started crying when she saw us. Half a second of “is that good crying or bad crying?” crossed my mind before she started hugging me and wouldn’t let go!



Suffice it to say that I was very welcome, and as I got to know them better over the weekend, I was let in on the secret: they had been dreading our marriage, although they hadn’t told Fred. Their few observations of marriage between Luo men and white women were not encouraging, and I will summarize their fears in this list. They thought I would be old, wear only tight trousers, refuse to have children (or be too old to have children), take Fred to America forever, and/or dislike them and their home. The stories I heard behind those fears totally legitimize the worst opinion they might have had of me, but by the end of the first day, Fred assured me that they love me and only regretted the language barrier. (Big sigh of relief!)



Their home is on a remote little bay of Lake Victoria. The village is ringed by huge hills (like Chehalem Mountain), and Fred’s family homestead is part-way up one hill, about a 45-minute walk from the village. The lake is nearly empty during the day, since it’s been over-fished for tilapia and Nile perch, but the dagaa (small fish like sardines) are still plentiful. Dagaa have to be fished for at night, so around dusk about a hundred boats set out from the shore with lanterns in them. The dagaa come to the lights and are caught with nets, so it’s like a whole city on the bay each night. There is no electricity or running water up at the house, so they have donkeys that carry full jerrycans of lake water up the hill each morning and evening. Dani has a couple of small gardens close to her three-room house with a separate kitchen, and each garden has a high fence of poles around it to protect from the baboons. They live so remotely that there are a large number of wild animals that come out from the hills at night, including baboons and even the occasional leopard!



Fred has spent the past several years sending Dani part of his salary each month to make improvements on the house, including constructing the kitchen and a toilet, but they hadn’t quite gotten around to a bathroom yet. Our first night Fred told me, a bit shame-facedly, that we would have to bathe outside. I thought, “no problem! I’ve bathed in the outdoor bathrooms at the orphanages, and I enjoy it!” Then he corrected me by showing me the rock he’d found that would be our shower stall. I love being married, because it was not only appropriate, but necessary for him to stay there while I stripped naked on a random rock in the middle of the great-baboon-ridden-outdoors and splashed water on myself. The next day, the first thing he did in the morning was go out and hire two neighbors to help him construct a bathroom from sheets of tin roofing and poles and rocks for the floor. By afternoon he had built me a bathroom, so that I wouldn’t have to worry about glowing-in-the-dark for any passersby to see.



There were loads of other wonderful and funny moments throughout the weekend, like giving Dani the gifts we’d brought her, Innocent praying at meals, Dani dancing with joy when she saw our wedding photos, Innocent hanging from a tree screaming “Auntie, Auntie, look at me!”, Dani and Fred’s aunt laughing at my attempts at Luo/Swahili/English mix, and the look on Dani’s face when she saw me brushing my hair one morning: “Well, you won’t have to spend a fortune at the salon with hair like that!” It was a huge blessing, and they made me very welcome, no matter what I was wearing!

Back in the Saddle...and sad...

Well, I've been back here in Tanzania for almost a month, and all I've written about is my transportation woes!  Here's a little sketch of my life in Shirati:

Office/Compound - Shirati was the first place Mennonite missionaries settled in Tanzania, something like 60 years ago, so there's this large compound of Mennonite facilities.  There's the local church and their offices and nursery school and a huge playing field and playground equipment for the kids, which makes me jealous on behalf of the kids at Iringa Road Mennonite Church and their tiny dirt patch playing field/driveway/parking lot.  There's a hospital and a nursing school and a home for people with leprosy, and a ton of houses, some built by the diocese or church, and others left behind by former missionaries.  The diocesan offices are a pretty big one-story building with all the offices facing an inner courtyard and a guest house operating in the outward facing rooms at one end of the "community center".  This is where Fred works, and they've given me the outer part of his office to use as my office.  The first thing I did was put up something bright and colorful...it wouldn't be my office without some art by Spencer Reynolds on the wall!  My outer office location basically means that I'm like Fred's receptionist, but I'm grateful for an office so close to my husband's office.  He is the Planning Officer for the diocese, and a lot of his projects have to do with agriculture, so he's out of the office often working on his farm or garden or test garden.  There are so many new people in the offices that I'm having a difficult time sorting out who is who, let alone their names and jobs.  I do know David in the kitchen, though, because he is like Mama Neema Chiboni in Dodoma: the source of all that is good and edible.

Home - One of the perks of working for the diocese is rent-free housing on the compound, so we have a house not far from the office.  It's been passed over by a number of doctors and other administrators who wanted nicer houses, so they're just really happy that we're okay with living there.  When Fred first came and they put him in that house, it was no problem because he was a single man and insisted that he didn't mind that it was pretty old and run-down.  When they heard he was bringing a wife back with him (and a white woman, no less), they started worrying that I would refuse to live in that house.  I have to admit that it needs a fair bit of work, but it's got great potential.  It's large (10 rooms plus entryway and back porch), and it was designed by some former missionaries (which accounts for the size).  It is like the house I lived in in Dodoma in that it has electricity and water whenever the city permits them to be on, and in that there is only one working water tap at present, so we use a lot of buckets.  It is unlike the house in Dodoma in that it was not furnished, so we have a twin-sized bed that we share and a couple of tables for cooking surfaces and some chairs, all on loan from the diocese.  We can't have guests over, because we have no where for them to sit, which is not such a bad thing, since I'm the object of broad curiosity, and would have chai demanded of me on a regular basis if we had anywhere for people to sit while they demaded the chai.  We're trying to plan for furniture purchasing, but I have a lot of traveling to do in the next few months, so a sofa will have to wait a bit.  The thing I miss the most that we had in Dodoma is a toaster.  What I wouldn't give for a toaster!

Sounds good, right?  So why so sad?

A big part of my current ennui is just being physically tired and sick-ish.  I have been suffering from allergies which medicine does little to help, and it's keeping me awake at night sniffling and sneezing, leaving me weary all day.  I took a day and a half off work last week, but I can't seem to get my energy back.  As my sister-in-law advised, I probably just need to drink a bunch more water, so I'll work on that.

Another part of my general gloom is feeling kind of lonely.  I'm starting over, and knew only my husband when we arrived here, but it's becoming clear that people have already formed opinions about me.  Probably due to my weariness, this seems a much bigger deal to me than it would ordinarily, but some of the nursing students who maybe were trying to make a play for Fred before I came along, are making comments about me and just generally always watching me.  It makes me really self-conscious, whether at work or at home, it seems like I'm always on stage, so I end up spending a lot of time locked into the two rooms of our house that are occupiable.  There's one person who has made it clear that he's delighted with me, and that's a friend of Fred's named Sam.  He's an older man living with leprosy, and I'll write a whole post about him soon, but he's wonderful.

One difficulty has been that my Swahili has gotten rusty a bit, although it wouldn't matter too much, because the people I love talking to, the watchmen and cleaning ladies and little kids, mostly speak Luo, their tribal language.  I've tried learning a few greetings in Luo, but I need to put some work into both my Swahili and my Luo.  This was very apparent when I went on a home visit with a bunch of visitors from the States, and I couldn't even greet the palliative care patient we were visiting because he and his wife and son and mother only spoke Luo.  I felt pretty inept that I couldn't encourage them or pray with them or even thank them without translation, which is like stepping back to my first days in Tanzania.  This particular home visit was difficult because the man is dying of AIDS, the family is starving, and they didn't even have a home until the local volunteer social worker mobilized some neighbors to build them a simple house.  They're sleeping in the dirt, and we had brought nothing to give them.  Mennonite Central Committee had just sent hundreds of HIV care kits with things that would help this family, but due to reasons I can't get into without being disrespectful, this family is not receiving that aid.  I encouraged the American visitors we were with to contribute some money to buy food for the family, which they did.  A short term fix, but better than nothing.

Finally, my closing downer is this: I'm feeling pretty isolated from people in the States.  It's always hardest right after I've been there, just as it was hardest for me to be away from my friends in Tanzania right after I arrived in the States.  I could use some bolstering and frivolity, if anyone has the time to lift my spirits a bit.  Thanks for reading all this etcetera, but please don't feel too sorry for me.  I get to eat fresh-picked watermelon grown on Fred's farm in a few minutes, which will be great.

Safari Ndefu Part Two – Fred and Leisha hit the road!

In this post our intrepid hero and heroine strike out across the expanse of Tanzania, encountering and defeating boredom, discomfort, poor customer service, gawking lurkers and overzealous taxi drivers.

Our story begins where we left off last time, in the airport of Dar es Salaam.  A taxi delivered us to the bus stand in Dar es Salaam around 3:30am, leaving approximately 90 minutes before our bus to Mwanza would begin boarding.  Fred and his friends, Paul and Henry, sat catching up while I made a pillow of my jacket and took a nap on the abandoned bench seat of a taxi-van (dala dala).  When the time came to board the bus, the guys negotiated with the bus conductor the cost of transporting our two trunks, two suitcases and large backpack under the bus, leaving us with a small backpack and two computer bags to put under our feet for the 14 hour journey.  We boarded the bus which was scheduled to depart at 6am.  Tanzania has a law that commercial vehicles (like buses) cannot be on the road at night, so every bus that departs first thing in the morning from the main bus stage ALL try to leave the single driveway and cross three lanes of traffic at the exact same time.  What chaos!

Looking at a map of Tanzania, you might note that our origin (Dar es Salaam) and our destination (Mwanza) are about as far apart (latitudinal-ly) as one can get.  Both Fred and I were exhausted.  He had spent Monday and Tuesday traveling by air, then went straight to the bus stage to travel to Dar es Salaam from Nairobi (about a 12-14 hour journey in itself), then napped a bit, picked me up, and hopped on another bus.  We tried a variety of positions to get comfortable enough to sleep, but usually only dozed off for 20-30 minutes at a time.  The rest of the time we spent staring out the front of the bus.  The only point of interest in the whole ride was that we stopped in Dodoma mid-day for a lunch break, but, having had our phone stolen the day before, we couldn’t contact any of my friends there.  It was so strange to reach Dodoma and keep going, since, until this point, Dodoma was home.  However, keep going we did.

We reached Mwanza super late and checked into a guest house Fred had stayed at previously.  The night watchman put us in what turned out to be probably the smallest and worst room in the place.  We had to ask for sheets, soap, and a towel, and neither the lights nor the shower in the bathroom worked.  The only food available that late were some sketchy chips (fries) from a street vendor, but we were hungry, so we gave thanks. Sometime after midnight the watchman realized that he’d not taken a name to write in the register, so he came and knocked at the door to get Fred’s name.  Fred asked him why it couldn’t wait until morning, and finally just gave his name to end the discussion.  At 5am the buses in the nearby bus stage started revving their engines and hooting (honking horns).  Finally we got up and went into town to get breakfast and a new phone.  This was Fred’s first time out in public in Africa with me, and the leers and calls of the young men who are always standing around places like bus stages.  It bugged him, although I explained that hassling was not uncommon at all. 

Around 10am we boarded the bus from Mwanza to the Shirati junction, a trip of about 3 hours.  We were in the very front row of the bus with most of our bags nestled below the bus.  There were two cool things about this bus ride: it rained hard and we saw a herd of zebra on the right hand side of the bus.  I guess I’m not a typical white person, though, because I spent more time looking at the rain than the zebra.  I took photos of neither.  (In case you haven’t noticed, I take photos of almost nothing.)

Finally we reached…not Shirati itself, but the junction for the road to Shirati.  It’s pretty much a wide spot in the road where they off-loaded our luggage and we were immediately swarmed by drivers of the small sedans that ferry people to Shirati and the other small villages nearby.  Imagine, if you will, a Subaru Outback hatchback, but slightly smaller.  Imagine, if you will, watching your two trunks, two suitcases and large backpack shoved roughly into the back of this vehicle along with several giant bags of food and sundry other suitcases and bags belonging to the other passengers of the taxi.  Imagine, if you will, that the other passengers of the taxi number four, in addition to the driver and another random employee and you and your husband, total eight.  How would you put eight full-grown adults into a Subaru Outback in addition to probably 400 pounds of luggage?  They put Fred and me in the back seat with two other men, and we put our computer bags and small backpack on our laps.  Then they shoved a large bag and a plastic basin through the window onto the lap of the other men.  Then they put two men in the passenger seat and a woman in the driver seat, then, I kid you not, the driver sat ON the woman.  I have occasional mild claustrophobia, which set in as soon as we left the paved road and it started raining again, causing everyone to roll up their windows.  I put my head down on the computer bags I was clutching and asked Fred to talk to me about something…anything…to get my mind off my environment.  He was rather distraught to see his wife tearing up and fighting hyperventilation.  Not much further down the road the young man sitting next to me got out and we rearranged the bags, alleviating my rising panic.  Then we stopped again, and they went to push another passenger into the back seat, but Fred protested, so they rearranged the luggage in the back in order to put the employee in the back.  In such glorious manner we arrived in Shirati, earning the taxi driver the award for “Maximum Vehicular Capacity.”

The moral of the story is this: having a husband to fight your battles with luggage conductors and taxi drivers is so, so wonderful.

Safari Ndefu! (Long Journey) Part One - Sit on the floor for a change

Faithful readers of this blog will remember posts about some very long journeys I have taken, including the road trip that equaled roughly the breadth of the United States last July and the tour of eight airports on my way back to the States last November.  This past week’s trip wins the award for “Most time spent in airports” as well as the “Maximum vehicular capacity” award.  Interested?  Read on.
Beginning on Monday the 16^th, I took Fred to the airport in the morning and helped him get through the check-in process.  I watched him pass through security, then ran a few errands and returned home to weigh my luggage one last time.  I had a last late-night happy hour at the airport Stanford’s with my parents and a few friends, savoring my last Blue Moon until suddenly one of them mentioned that I had about ten minutes until my plane started boarding.  After a momentary panic, it actually worked out perfectly because security was fast and I didn’t have time to linger over goodbyes.  I was flying JetBlue to Dulles (since my flight to the States last spring was to the East Coast to visit my brother), and I had booked rather late on a crowded red eye flight, so I was relegated to the middle seat.  The flight stopped at JFK first, and I had a four hour layover.  The bit of carpet I chose for its strategic proximity to an outlet turned out to be an unofficial break area for airport employees.  One, a Southeast Asian Muslim man, explained to me that there was roof construction nearby, and a net over the open construction area was allowing small birds to enter the airport, three of which were sitting on the seats near us.  I know that this friendly employee was Muslim because he pulled out an Arabic prayer book and prayed quietly under his breath for most of his break.  There was a short hour-long flight to Dulles, during which I had a window and empty seat separating me from another really nice man, this one wearing skinny jeans instead of a uniform and reading a book titled Straight? instead of a prayer book. 

I spent most of the layover in Dulles on the linoleum floor of the ticketing area watching “The Biggest Loser” on my laptop (and updating this blog).  I got a meal (by that time I had already lost track of appropriate meal times) and, with an hour left until the earliest possible check-in time, I pulled a jigsaw puzzle out of my bag.  Disregarding the odd glances and tearful goodbyes of other waiting passengers, I got the border done just in time for check-in.  Once I got to the gate, I got my last meal on American soil (a turkey sandwich on a jalapeno-cheddar bagel), watched one last episode of “Bones”, and boarded my flight to Istanbul.

On the plane they fed us another meal at approximately midnight local time before turning out the lights.  Usually I am very strict about when I sleep while I’m flying internationally to prevent jetlag, but I had had only intermittent snatches of sleep in the previous 40 or so hours, so I hadn’t the energy to observe my sleep schedule.  Both my international flights were only about 40% full, so I had a few seats to stretch out in, and slept pretty well.  The rest of the flight was a confused jumble of movies, meals, and sleep.  We arrived in the Istanbul airport, kicking off a three hour layover, most of which I spent playing a game on my Kindle and stealthily staring at the other East African passengers waiting for the flight thinking “Swahili!  Vitenge dresses!  Bizarre hand luggage!”  (You’ll understand that last one if you’ve ever watched an African woman boarding with her open plastic tote full of her left-over food from the last flight and newspapers in languages she probably doesn’t understand.)

My excitement was building as I boarded that final flight.  I presented my hard-won Tanzanian work visa with a flourish to the boarding agent who was checking passports and visas, and quietly scoffed at the amateurism of the other Westerners who were planning to get tourist visas at the airport (naturally I chose to forget that the last time I was flying to Tanzania I almost got turned away for having that exact same plan).  At long, long last I boarded my last long flight from Turkey to Tanzania.  Again, it was a blur of movie, food, and sleep, this time with the very interesting diversion of trying to figure out the relationship between a group of middle-aged Turkish men and the handful of Tanzanian middle-school aged boys they were travelling with.  (My theories all had something to do with human trafficking until they were totally debunked by the boys’ families greeting them at the airport.)  My favorite moment of the entire journey so far was exiting the plane and smelling Africa.  I realized how bland and perfumed America smells compared to the humid odors of earth, vegetation, human body odor and waste.  Sounds disgusting, I’m sure, but to me it smelled like home.

Entering the airport, my excitement peaked as I had my passport stamped (I got to shortcut around all the Westerners applying for their tourist visas), retrieved my bags, defended the contents of my luggage briefly to the disinterested customs official, then I passed through into Tanzania and was met by my husband and two of his friends.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Safari Ndefu Part Two - Fred and Leisha hit the road!

One of those EPIC updates!

First off, we got married!  Fred arrived five days before the ceremony, and we rushed around getting all the last minute details sorted out.  Everything worked out, from license to suit to rings, and the day was really special for both of us.

We got a few days for a honeymoon, and spent the remaining three weeks having dinners, breakfasts, coffees, prayer meetings, Bible studies, road trips and sightseeing.  People kept asking us how we are settling into married life, but there's nothing settled about our life this past month! 

 As I write this, both Fred and I are in transit.  Our flights are on different airlines through and to different cities.  Fred left Portland for Nairobi via Amsterdam on Monday afternoon.  He'll arrive Tuesday evening, sleep, then jump on a bus down to Dar es Salaam.  I left Portland Monday night, stopped in New York City on the way to Washington, DC.  I am writing this from the ticketing lobby of the Dulles Airport.  I'll fly to Dar es Salaam via Istanbul, arriving really late Wednesday night/Thursday morning.  Fred will be there to meet me (God willing) and we'll immediately head to the bus park to catch a bus from Dar es Salaam (on the far central eastern coast of Tanzania) to Mwanza (on the far western border of Tanzania).  That will take all day, so we'll sleep in Mwanza, then carry on a few more hours to our home town of Shirati on Friday.  Whew!

Although this week will be a long, tough trek, after several rounds of goodbyes to family and friends, I feel much stronger than I did when I was making this trip in September 2009.  It was hard to say goodbye to everyone, but I have so much I'm looking forward to in Tanzania that it was much easier to leave this time.  I can't wait to see Fred on the other side of customs in Dar, and I can't wait to see our home in Shirati, but most of all, I can't wait to establish a home with my husband.  For the past several years, I've not been able to call any one place in this world home, but now Fred is my home, no matter where that may be, and that makes me happy.

So I'm almost back home...in the arms of my husband.  What a good gift from my Father!  A better home than I could have ever imagined.