Accident Involvement

As I've written before, driving here is tricky - to say the least. When we get in the car, we pray beforehand, even for a short trip.

On Saturday while Dusty was in Dar Es Salaam, I was driving home from a birthday party in another town with the kids and two Australian friends (Nigel and Rose) and their two daughters. He is a paramedic, and she is an ER doctor.

As we were driving through Musoma we came upon a motorcycle accident that had happened a minute or two before. I asked our friends if they wanted me to pull over, and they did.

They immediately jumped out and ran over while I found the latex gloves in our car's medical kit and briefed the 4 kids on what was happening, instructing them to stay in the car and not to look. The crowd was forming, but I pushed through with the gloves and gave them to Rose and Nigel. The site that met my eyes was really horrifying - there were three men down with a lot of blood. I really thought two of them were dead because they were lifeless and so bloody. But Rose said, "this one has a pulse," and I could faintly see Nigel's guy breathing.

Anyway, I barely did a thing other than calming the kids, asking how I could help, and doing a bit of crowd control. Nigel and his guy got into a dala dala (14 passenger public van), Rose's guy went into a passing car, and she couldn't find the 3rd guy (who later ended up in an ambulance). They smelled alcohol on the breath of the victims.

Meanwhile the crowd was getting angry at her since she wouldn't let them put one of the men in our car. Although I had offered, there were other options, and it wouldn't have worked well with so many kids in the car. So Rose suggested we get out of there before the crowd got too worked up. Someone actually told her, "if you won't let them in your car, what use are you?" Appalling. She was helping to save their lives!

We went to the hospital where Rose and Nigel turned the victims over to the hospital docs, and then we went home. I talked to a Tanzanian friend about it today who had heard of the accident. She said she heard that wazungu (white people) had helped the victims, and that everyone was thankful. I was relieved as I had been worried about driving our recognizable car if people were mad about the transportation of the victims.

It has taken me some time to process what I saw there, and it's given me all the more inspiration to keep praying for our safety and to be thankful for how the Lord has provided for us. And I'm thankful to have had doctors in our car who were able to help those men.

Costume Day at the Hill House

The other day the kids pulled out the costumes they got from my mom for Christmas and ran around the house.
Jack got a new Thomas outfit, but we already had one from a good friend, so now we have two live trains in the house, and no fighting!

Superman also came to visit, but he forgot his trousers. It lightened his load so he could fly faster.

Jack is very serious about being an engineer and listening to sir Topam Hat's instructions on his walkie talkie.

The princess royale with accessories.

Visiting a Tea Farm in Kenya

While we were in Kenya, Tessa and I had a mother-daughter date to walk to and visit the Kiambethu Tea Farm.
Before we left we split a strawberry milkshake, which Tessa had been craving. It was not what she or I would call quality, but it was special anyway.

Here is Tessa walking the path through the tea fields.

In the background you can see the Kenyans plucking the new bright green tea leaves, which are the only leaves used to make tea.

Many tea pluckers live in employee housing. The employee houses here recently got new roofs.

Simply beautiful views as we walked

The house was built by the current owner's grandfather in the 1920s. It is now also a B&B with beautiful gardens. They also raise British Jersey cows here and sell the milk. It's a good combination - tea with milk!

Another visitor to the tea farm was this funny little "zebra rat."

The view from the Ngong Hills from front porch of the house, although it's a bit too cloudy here to see the hills. Yes, these are the hills of which you have heard in "Out of Africa."

Rules of the Road

a bus piled typically high and named "California Special Annointed"

During our recent road trip to Kenya I was inspired to share with you some of our road conditions out here, many of which never cease to amaze me. For instance it seems there are no firm rules of driving here, but mere flexible guidelines instead such as:

* Drive on the left side, but driving on the middle is a fine idea and driving on the right is also acceptable every now and then.
* Drive the speed limit, which may or may not be posted, but by all means exceed at any opportunity!
* Two lanes are standard, but feel free to make that into four if it suits you. Bumpy dirt shoulders are fabulous substitutes when the real lanes are in even worse condition.

Did you know Ferrari has buses? With "Allah be praised" written on them?

* Might makes right, therefore a bus speeding toward us in our lane will often force us to get off the road even though the bus has ample room on its side of the road.

* Use your right blinker to tell a vehicle behind you not to pass you because there is oncoming traffic or to indicate you will turn right. Don't turn on your lights till it is seriously dark.

A very common traffic jam

* Motorcycle riders should wear helmets, but let's face it, who can find or afford one? Most don't wear them, but we've spotted some wearing helmets backwards and at least two wearing equestrian helmets though we've never seen a horse in Tanzania!

* Look both ways before crossing the road. Really, this is the least known rule of the road, and sadly is the cause of many fatal accidents.

The road in the middle of our town on a calm day, taxi on the left, daladala in the middle named "Give me the report."

* Daladalas (public service minivans) have specific places to pull over to pick up and drop off passengers, but hey - why not stop almost in the middle of the road in town or on the highway?

* Daladalas may carry only 14 passengers, but our friends recently counted 32 people getting off of one! Hanging out of the door and windows works just fine.

The 4km road from town to our house has taken a new pock-marked face with recent rains.

Road Conditions:
* We have tons of potholes and speed bumps and even potholes IN speed bumps.
* Speed bumps on the highway are almost never marked and therefore catch us frequently by surprise while we drive at high speeds, the children are napping and our car is loaded with fragile recently purchased items.
* We share for road space with animals, bicyclists, pedestrians, motorbikes, and most frightening - unattended children.
* Recent badly-designed repairs to roads, made in concrete and rocks, were quickly washed away in fast moving rains.

Local drive-thru Walmart

* There are always so many things/people/vehicles/animals in front of and beside the car that I rarely have a moment to glance in the rear-view mirror unless I'm passing another vehicle. Using the rear-view mirror in the States felt like a luxury.

Women carrying loads of grass on their heads. Notice how closely the pedestrians are walking to where our car and the oncoming car will be. We are driving about 100km/hr.

Although I write some of this tongue-in-cheek, driving here is very difficult and confusing, and frequently dangerous, and we are therefore very thankful that the Lord has kept us safe so far. We do always appreciate your prayers for our transportation - be it on a trip or just daily driving in our own town.

The Recent House Critter Dispatch

We've photographed enough recent visitors to our house and yard that I am now able to make a blog entry about them. However, the most exciting/disgusting one is at the end so be sure to read on to get the best story!
This is definitely not the first mouse we've caught; just the first I've photographed. We busted this guy right before Dusty went to work. He was residing in our cloth napkin drawer, and thinking of all the times we've wiped our faces with his bedding about put us over the edge. The kids stayed and watched while Dusty dispatched him; it didn't seem to bother them, nor did they make the connection between him and all the cute mice in their children's books. I don't mind mice - I don't lift my feet and screech when I see them (although I may have uttered a certain sudden unpleasant word or two when I nearly touched him while lifting up the napkins). However, I hate the scent of their pee and poop lingering around the kitchen, and I despise it when they find my food or say, chew the valve off my Camelback water container.

This visitor was dispatched in an entirely different way - we gave him to our dear friend Ezekiel at his 5th birthday party the day after he wandered into our yard.. We placed him (yes, I checked online for his gender) in our bathtub, which is still useless and outside prior to it's being moved into our bathroom, so that we wouldn't lose him in our big green yard overnight. We made two discoveries: 1)tortoise poop is gross; and 2)tortoises say a breathy "hhhaaaa" when you pick them up, kind of like Darth Vader.

We haven't seen these lovely critters in a while, but this one appeared INSIDE our screened porch, which is sort of like our family room. It was lurking right behind the kids' rocking horse. I trapped it in a plastic container and saved it for Dusty's disposal techniques. Turns out, Dusty thought the best technique was to put the top on the container and see how long it takes for a scorpion to starve or suffocate. Although I have no fondness for scorpions, that sounded cruel and mostly, I did not want a scorpion rotting in a perfectly good and hard-to-come-by container. Even Dusty had to agree with that argument, and this more likely cousin of Darth Vader was taken outside and dispatched in Dusty's own special unknown way. I don't ask questions but maybe he used his light saber.

Isn't this a cool frog? I found it beside our back door while the kids were sleeping. He/she looked too wet and possibly too poisonous to touch so I just let the frog go with no dispatching. I have nothing to report because I couldn't find this dude online. Can you?

And now the final fabulous critter dispatch story: Occasionally, for unknown reasons, swarms of kumbikumbi (huge termites) fly to our outdoor houselights, buzz around for a while, shed their wings, and then die in piles on the floor. Maybe mating is involved in this odd process. The wings often float under the doors and into the house. Today I found a wing stuck to Jack's thigh as he was scooting around the floor with no shorts (potty training) playing with his trains. Anyway, some people here in Tanzania collect, fry, and eat them.

SO, Dusty goes to work yesterday and discovers that the lady who makes chai and lunch for everyone at the office has pulled off remaining wings and fried the kumbikumbi and is serving them like popcorn at chai time (10:30am tea and snacks). Apparently everyone - Tanzanians and missionaries - tried them, and LIKED THEM!! Dusty remarked that he should have brought some home for us to try, but when I reminded him of our ongoing tummy issues, he agreed it would not have been a stellar idea. Again, I'm happy that Dusty kept his dispatch techniques (oral this time) to himself! Phew.

I have no photo of my own, but found this one on www.matthewtodd.org.

Dedication Ceremony for Luke 1 and 2!

After five years of being in Africa, we had the great pleasure of seeing the first portions of Scripture printed and dedicated to the Lord this past Saturday! It was a beautiful morning filled with singing, praying, and listening to translators read portions of Luke 1 and 2 in their mother tongues publicly for the first time. We're thankful that the Christmas story will be brought to many for the first time this year. We would like to share some photos of this joyful celebration with you. Thanks for supporting the work we are doing here so that this can happen!

The tent Dusty helped set up to host the dedication ceremony and for daily use at the office as well.

Dusty giving the introductions (in Swahili) of the various people and teams who made it possible to bring God's Word to the speakers of these nine languages.

Bringing in the gift-wrapped boxes containing 1,800 editions of Luke 1 and 2 in nine languages. We were all singing praise to the Lord in accompaniment to the joyful delivery of the boxes. It was a beautiful sight and sound!

The guest speaker pastors praying over and dedicating the boxes of Luke 1 and 2 booklets.


Pastor Lukafuba, the pastor of the small local church we attend, reading aloud from the Kizinza edition of Luke 1 and 2.


Paul Meja and Pastor Futakamba were excited about their new booklets.

Dusty sharing a laugh with Pastor Waynse after the ceremony.

Holidays at the Hill House

The table set for Thanksgiving before the food and guests arrived. We had two of our American friends join us for a chicken lunch with all the typical side dishes except sweet potatoes.
The bouquet centerpiece. I cut these flowers from our garden earlier that morning and was pleased to find so many with fall colors. Below the vase I placed some flowers from our very tropical looking ornamental bananas - they're so heavy, and hang upside down, that I haven't figured out how to put them in a vase.
The kids decorated turkeys for each person's plate. Tessa insisted that I draw her turkey with a bow, eyelashes, and a skirt, but would not let me put on a beak! Instead she drew in a nose and smile - nothing quite like a cute turkey!
The pumpkin pie. We had extra dough that the kids wanted to play with. I had no Thanksgiving cookie cutters, but we figured that apples and chickens would do fine. I think they were the favorite part of the pie for the kids.
Apparently chicken does indeed have tryptophan because we all became quite drowsy after our lovely meal. Here are Dusty and Tessa napping on the back porch. It seems that only Tessa was pretending.
We are celebrating Advent in our home for the first time this year. I was thrilled to find a juniper bush next door that needed clipping, and three purple candles in our drawer. The green one has to substitute for the pink candle since we didn't have one. Before dinner we sing a Christmas carol and light the candle and talk about a Scripture passage leading up to the need for and birth of Jesus. The candle came in useful tonight when the electricity was shut off. Because we lack all the Christmas season broo-ha-ha that comes with the holidays in the States, it's nice to choose some elements we can still practice here that are festive but also instill a spiritual understanding of the season in our kids, and keep our focus on the Lord as well.
The Christmas wreath currently has frangipani blossoms on it which I will cycle out when they wither. I was very excited to find pine trees and pine cones on my walk today in one of the neighboring convents. The gardener happily let me take some cones home, although I'm sure he thought I was odd in spite of my effort to explain. I placed them on the Advent wreath and will follow suite with the door wreath when I can figure out how to attach them or when I run out of frangipani blossoms from my one little tree.