Brian and Nicole Hickory along with Barbara Lundquist, returned Monday from their trip to Tanzania, hoping to spend two week's time working with building relationships with the village of Chamweno, and discerning their call to global presence work as a couple. What was it like? Read on for their blog posts on the experience, and welcome them back this Sunday at the 5pm.
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First off if I am to ever fly international again, I would choose Emirates over any other airline. Besides
the endless amount of movies, TV shows, games and music to choose from
they treat the economy class like first class on American airlines. They serve a lot of great food and you can have complimentary alcoholic drinks. So if you can’t handle the 19 hour flight just drink, play Tetris and you will be happier than Mr. Rogers. Enough about the plane, I have fallen in love with Tanzania. The country has amazing landscape and the most welcoming and happy people I have ever met. When we landed in Dar Es Salam we were picked up by an American man and a Tanzanian college student. I can’t mention their names for privacy reasons. Our
first experience in Africa was kind of what many people could expect,
the electricity was out so we had no lights or running water. This
is actually unusual in Dar Es Salam, but something serious must have
happened to the power grid because it was out for 6 hours or so. Not that it mattered; we met some other African college students staying in the American man’s house. We played many games of Uno which everybody won several games except for me; I did not win until that last game played. Everyone
could speak English very well so we had were always laughing at each
other, telling stories and sharing differences between our countries. Both
Nicole and I have become very good friends with the students, they made
it very clear that they care about us deeply and Nicole and I have
tried to reciprocate that to them as well.
On our second day, we headed out to the village of Chamwino which is six hours away from Dar Es Salam. The drive was so beautiful, Tanzania is full of rolling hills, mountains, trees and vegetation. It is also full of people and they all walk or ride their bikes on the side of the road. For the entire six hour trip, there were constantly people just off of the highway. We could be in the middle of nowhere and there still would be people. We
could not figure out where they were going or what they were doing,
even the college student from Tanzania could not tell us why they were
there. That is how it was and it is like that everywhere we have gone in Tanzania. We
were pulled over by a police office on the way to Chamwino, we had four
violations which he said would cost us 80,000 schillings (about 80 USD). Fortunately,
our college friend negotiated with the police officer saying we had no
money because we were all students, so in the end we were fined 10 USD
which went strait into the police officers pocket. Finally we arrived in Chamwino and I can tell you it is a beautiful village. There are about 10,000 people in the village so as you can see it is really like a small town. We met our host who is a very good friend of Barbara’s and who grew up in Chamwino. He
introduced us to his wife, the priest and many other friends and
family; everyone immediately welcomed us and was so happy to see us. We felt like we were coming home after being away for a long time, but we had never met these people. They kept saying “Karibu, Karibu asana” which means “welcome, you are very welcome here”. We
heard this probably more than a hundred times a day; every person we
met and in every conversation they were always saying Karibu. I can say that I have honestly never felt so welcome in my entire life, they made us feel as if we were their family. People envited us in their homes, introduced to their families, showed us their kitchen, bed, etc. The
worst part is that all we could pretty much say was thank you which is
“asante” in Swahili, so we had to also show this expression through our
face so they could see how much we appreciated their hospitality and
kindness.
The
next day, we ate a delicious breakfast which was made up of boiled
eggs, bananas, chipati bread, Tuboa root and Cassava rolls and the best
instant coffee I have ever tasted. I will buy as many cans of this
instant coffee as I can to bring back to the U.S., I don’t care how
inconvenient it will be. Anyways, we pretty much had this exact same breakfast everyday. Then we headed off to a secondary school for a dedication of science and mathematic books to the schools library and classrooms. Our
church partnered with a rotary club in Seattle to donate six thousand
dollars worth of books and book shelves to the secondary school. The
head master of the school wanted to wait to give these books to the
school until we arrived because he needed to get a point across to us
how much this meant to them and to show the students who donated these
books. Now Nicole and I were not the ones who did any of
the planning, fund raising or hard work to get these books to this
school, but because we came on this trip we needed to come to this
ceremony and accept the dedication on behalf of the rotary club and
church. So when we arrived all the hundreds of students came out and surrounded us in a circle. The head master gave a speech saying how appreciative they are for this gift. He told the students how important these books will be for their education and to study them hard. He said that education is key to the development of their minds and prosperity in life. Once he was done speaking, our host spoke to the students. We could tell all the students knew who he was and respected him; he also knows how to get a crowed excited and riled up. He yelled to them “Chamwino We” and they yelled the same words back. He did this time and time again until they were all screaming at the top of their lungs. Then our American friend stepped up and said the same thing and all the students starting cracking up in laughter. They
thought it was hilarious that an Mzungo (someone who is not from Africa
or otherwise black) was saying those words; we all thought it was
pretty funny too. Needless to say, it was an amazing
experience and I video tapes the hour long ceremony for people at our
church and rotary club to watch. I think I have written
way to much and don’t even feel like I have scratched the surface of
what we have experienced here so far, but it is a good start. Hopefully
I can send another blog in the next few days and share what has
happened in the village so far and what we have learned. We
have learned some amazing things while hear, I only hope to be able to
share that through words and actions when we come home.
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