Tanzania: Meshack and Arusha

We left Kenya on Wednesday, May 8 and arrived Arusha, Tanzania after a 6 hour drive.  We have driven through a good portion of northern Tanzania the past few days and it is really a beautiful part of the world!

Lake Manyara...

2000 year old tree.  For perspective on how large the trunk is, the road is on the far left edge of the picture.  This tree would cover the entire road.

On Friday we headed out to Karatu, Tanzania which is where a child we have sponsored for 10 years through Compassion International lives.  His name is Meshack, and we have always LOVED his written letters to us.

Our guide, Elisante, told us on the drive to Karatu that 55,000 kids are sponsored in Tanzania covering 272 centers like the one we would be visiting.  Similar to what we heard in Nicaragua when we visited Darlin, only about 1% of the kids have a sponsor visit in a given year.  We were the first sponsors to visit this particular center in over 2 years.

Once we arrived in Karatu, we started at the Compassion International center, and AJ made fast friends with some of the kids who were there.

The complex is a simple set of buildings with some office space and the rest classroom space...

Painting on the wall in the background of the classroom photo above...

At the Center they had put together all of Meshack's files.  When you sponsor a child through Compassion International, you are paying for their school fees, for any medical expenses they have, and for their participation in classes (spiritual, physical, and economic) at the Center itself.

In his file they had copies of all the letters he had ever written to us including these pictures.  One of our favorite letters was when he mentioned that they took the family gift we had given one year and bought a cow.  They did the same thing another year and got another cow....and those cows had a baby.

Another letter he wrote about a large sack of grain he got...

This is the main road in Karatu....it is a fairly small town.  Our driver for the day does a lot of safaris,  and he said this town is 30 minutes from one of his favorite safari spots, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.  

Meshack was in school on this day so after touring the Compassion Center, we headed out to his school to finally meet him.  He is now 16 years old and has enrolled in a technical school to learn carpentry and welding.  When we told the missionary we are working with next week (Holly Freitas) about what he is learning, she said that was very good as these skills are very marketable skills in this part of the world.

The wood shop....

They wouldn't tell us who Meshack was as they wanted to see if we could pick him out.  We finally did, but Rachel was SO SHOCKED at how tall he was.  Whenever we get pictures of him (at least recently) there was never any frame of reference at how tall he was.  I think it is really because we still think of him as the little boy we sponsored so many years ago....but he's not a little boy anymore!  He is 16 and frankly looks 16!

With the family on a stool that he had just completed as a part of his carpentry class...

 Welding class area...they were working on an order for a school for 200 desks and chairs.

 The school principle showed us around the entire property including the sewing class area (which is where the picture above with Rachel and Meshack was taken) and the small kitchen outside where they were cooking up some corn.

This is our driver, Che Cho and his sidekick AJ (Che Cho jokingly called AJ 'Cha Cho')

The carpentry and welding school building...

Next we headed to Meshack's home.  His mom was just precious as she bounded down the path while singing a song to meet us at the car.  She nearly jumped through the window of the car to hug Rachel.

The car couldn't make it back to where Meshack lives so we hiked a little bit to get to the home.  Once there, we sat in a small living room and learned about their lives.  They had lived with his grandparents until 4 years ago.  At that time they took the cows that they had (one had died but they had 2 remaining) and sold them in order to buy this land and build their home.  2 cows in Tanzania are worth about $350 USD....so for that amount of money they now own the land (very important) and the home.

The home is basically a simple mud hut with no electricity and very dark inside.  Our missionary friend, Holly, said that unlike the USA where people LIVE in their homes, people in this part of the world really just SLEEP in their homes.  They cook outside.  They work outside.  They socialize outside.  And as I looked around the home what Holly said made sense.

In front of the home is a corn field that measures about 30 meters by 10 meters.  Not huge but enough to provide for the family.  The far door near where the people are standing is an extra room that currently houses a homeless woman who has a little baby only a few weeks old.  Meshack's mom came upon her on the main road and simply took her in out of compassion.

Hearing that story really hit me as here is a woman who literally has SO little giving someone else a place to live and asking her kids to sleep a bit on top of one another as a result.  Something to think about the next time I'm feeling selfish!

Meshack's family includes his mother Margaret, Meshack (age 16), sister Pendaeli (age 15), and brother Elifuarhi (age 10).  His father left his mother when his youngest brother was just 3 months old.  She was depressed and went into the wood one day where she felt the presence of Jesus and committed her life to Him.  That is also when she approached Compassion International, and we started sponsoring Meshack when he was 6 years old.

We gave each family member a gift and they returned the favor with gifts for us (you can see Rachel wrapped in her gift in the picture below).

In picture from left to right Margaret, sister Pendaeli, Meshack, and brother Elefuarhi (and then our family)...

 We headed back to the car through the corn field...

 And off to lunch where clearly AJ had done something silly when I snapped the picture below (but I don't remember what it was!).  We didn't eat until 3pm and we were STARVING!!!!

Happy after eating....

Next we headed to Meshack's grandparents house.  They raised 10 kids!  The grandfather was HILARIOUS.  Even though he didn't speak a lot of English, his eyes just danced and you could tell he had such a mischievous sense of humor.

We were a little surprised at how nice of a place the grandparents live in but our friend Holly said 'That's the way it is here.  In America, you buy a place on credit and live in it while you pay it off....and after 30 years you own the home.  But here there is no such thing as a 30 year mortgage.  Here you build your house bit by bit over many years because it is such a social society that if you have money & someone needs help then you are obligated to help them if they are in your circle of friends or family.  If you don't help financially then you can be ostracized.

Holly asked us "Did you notice all the incomplete houses all over the place?"   And we definitely had noticed that and found it extremely odd.  She said "that is the way they protect their wealth here.  When they have money they will hire someone to put up more of the house they eventually will live in when they are old.  They are building their retirement home that they will own outright in 20 or 30 years (or however long it takes to build) plus they are protecting their wealth because if someone asks them for money they can legitimately say that their money has gone into their home.

We had such a great time at the grandparents house and finished our time with Meshack's family teaching them the card game 'Uno' (which we left with them).  It was hilarious, and we hope they have much fun with it in the years to come + think back to our time together on this day whenever they play. Our guide, Elisante, is standing in the black and gray shirt.  He did a fine job interpreting throughout the day.

Visiting 2 of our sponsored kids from Compassion International have been significant highlights of this trip.  Each visit started with a lot of shyness but ended with smiles and warmth.  It is a wonderful program and we would recommend it to anyone.

www.Compassion.com

There are over 2200 kids currently listed on the website waiting to be sponsored.  The cost is well worth every penny....

Matthew 25:40

New International Version (NIV)

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Our time in Arusha

Our first night in Arusha at the Outpost Lodge had us playing Uno and AJ taking this picture when he was about to win the game (fair and square).  Very cute...

Our new friend Holly lived in Arusha for many years and hopes to live here again someday.  She told us an amazing story about the power of prayer and specifically the power of a wife's prayer when we asked about how she and her husband ended up as missionaries in Tanzania.

She had heard missionaries talk when she was 9 years old and those missionaries asked the kids at that church to just pray about being open to answering God's call if He called them to be missionaries.  At that young age, she got a very strong image that she was going to teach African women about health issues specifically from pregnancy through early childhood.

She became a nurse and spent quite a bit of time working with women who were pregnant or had recently had babies.  But her husband really had no interest in doing mission work.  There was a mission trip their church was planning, and she felt if she went it would not be a positive thing for their marriage, so if anyone was going to go it needed to be her husband.  But he wasn't interested.

So, she just stopped talking to him about it and prayed.  She would wake up at 2am or 3am in the morning feeling like she was supposed to pray about things in the book of Romans, and she did that over and over.  As the time for the mission trip approached her husband said to her "There are so many reasons why I shouldn't go on this trip, but I just feel like God is calling me to go, so I'm going to be obedient and go."  I don't remember the exact words she used but what he said to her that night were literally the exact words she had been praying for months.  God hears and answers prayers!

Once he got back from the mission trip, he said he was ready to put the house up for sale and go.  So, that is how they became missionaries and you can tell she really loves this place.  Holly is on the far right hand side in the picture below.  She and Tony have 2 kids Lauren (age 20 getting married this summer) and Devin (age 17 still in high school).

She took us to one of her favorite places to eat in Arusha.  It is a place that we never would have gone to in 1000 years if she hadn't taken us there.  By day, this place is an auto parts store.  By night, a restaurant.  Quite a combination and their business card is hilarious as both businesses are listed.  Yes, it  was tasty!

Today (Saturday) we took a tour of the city.  There is a clock tower in the middle of town...

And this is a statue of the unity torch.  In 1979 a socialist president came to power and while his economic policies ruined the country (it started back into a market economy in the 1990s), his policy of eliminating tribes has actually engendered more peace in the country versus what is seen in Kenya or other places where tribal warfare can flare up from time to time.  The only tribe that refused to give up their name and culture was the Massi.  As a result they got no schools, no roads, no services and are now looked upon as the 'rednecks' of Tanzania.

We headed to the market and AJ loved playing with various toys there.

And we finally found a playground for him to play on at a restaurant near our hotel...

The rest of our time in Arusha has been devoted to planning our VBS for the Massi who will be working with next week and living in their remote community as well.  Since we don't have the Joska teenagers with us, we have been learning various skits that we will be performing as we modify the 'Children of the Son' VBS program we did in Kenya.

We learned that there will not be nearly as many kids at this VBS which will allow us to do each activity individually versus having 4 stations going at the same time.  We are all really looking forward to seeing what everyone did in their respective VBS classes!

We leave Sunday for Massi land.  We will be stopping overnight in Moshi which is east of Arusha near Mt. Kilimanjaro (tallest mountain in Africa).  We learned as well that Sunday afternoon we will be working at an orphanage run by friends of Holly.  When the girls heard this they literally squealed with delight.

Monday morning we start working with the Massi.  We will have no internet connection or electricity of any kind while we are out there, and we will be living in a tent.  So, my next post will be about a week from now.  Please pray for good health for all of us and strength to make it through this week.

Until then, God bless

Other Favorite pictures / stories....

Our guides (to the right) on our Compassion trip...Chee-Cho and Elisante

V and H tried to high 5 each other and kind of missed.....LOL

H and AJ, sweet

Our goodbye to interns Megan and Zach who have been working with MOHI in Nairobi Kenya for many months.  By the time we return to Kenya to deliver the shoes (May 19 and 20), Zach and Megan will be back in the States.

Zach will be going to med school, and I'm sure he will use his skills as a doctor at some point in the future to help those who are poor and less fortunate.  Megan is getting married to Mr White in July.  These two picked us up at the airport when we arrived and saw us off as we headed to Tanzania. God bless each of these wonderful young people....