Adventures in Dar es Salaam and Maasai Land Part III

We’re on the way back to Pamoja from Lerumo (Maasai land) in the diesel Safari. It’s about a five hour drive back and I’m exhausted because I had just gone straight from Dar es Salaam (where I spent a week) to Lerumo to help survey for water. Jacob is driving and I’m in the passenger seat, while Paul and Emmanuel (the water hydrologist) are in the back. I’m noticing Jacob keeping one eye on the temperature gage, and that there is a white smoke coming from the back of the car, and the next thing I know, we’re stranded on the side of the road outside of a little town called Hedaru. Awesome…

On the way back from Dar es Salaam, I got off the bus about halfway between Arusha and Dar in a place called Hedaru. I was meeting Jacob, Paul and Emmanuel to head up to Lerumo to visit a group of Maasai that are very close to the people at Pamoja. In fact, most of them are in the En-kata Choir that Pamoja takes on tour throughout North America. Although we were going to visit with them, the main reason for us going was to survey for a location to dig a water well. After eating a quick bite in Hedaru, we headed into the bush in the Safari vehicle. When I say the bush, I mean the bush. I’m talking the middle of nowhere. It was like something out of the Lion King. I feel like it’s the image that people from America see when they try to picture what Africa is like. Anyway, Lerumo is basically on a step, and you pretty much have to gradually drive up a mountain to get there. The roads are rough and the terrain is pretty dry, and there are thorns in just about everything that you can find. Once we arrived, we were immediately welcomed and greeted by Yona’s wife and family and the other villagers in his boma (basically a small community of houses). Yona’s wife made us some Maasai chai, so we relaxed and drank it before we got to work. The chai was very bitter because she put some Maasai medicine (which I’m told will put hair on your chest) in it, but it was still good. After chai, we unpacked our bags and got the tent set up. Once Yona arrived, we set off to look for water.

After walking around and looking for a place to measure for water, Emmanuel found a spot that he said he was sure there would be water. Once we got the equipment unpacked, we started measuring. Just to let you know, there had been several surveyors and hydrologists that had surveyed for water in this area in the past and were unsuccessful, so we weren’t going to be shocked if we didn’t find any. It took a little over an hour to do the measuring, but with help from some of the Maasai, we got it done. Did we find water? Wait for it….. Yes we did! I was so impressed with Emmanuel. He knew exactly where a good spot to survey for water was, and he found water! It was so awesome, especially after so many people in the past couldn’t find any. Now we are expecting to send a drilling crew within the next week or two to go drill for the water. God really does some awesome things!

After we surveyed, we went back up to Yona’s boma to rest and have dinner. We brought our own dinner for them to cook for us just to be safe because you never know what kind of food the Maasai will serve you. It was really cool to hang out with Yona, his family, and children from the surrounding bomas, though. The kids were so interested in my camera and wanted to see all of my pictures. They were kind of shy when I tried to take pictures with them at first, but by the end of the night they were pretty much posing for them. It was such an awesome experience just to see how welcoming they were. They all know Jacob very well and are good friends with him, but it was cool to see how welcoming they were to Paul and I. The experience is something I’ll never forget. Maasai land is some of the most beautiful country you will ever see and I really want to go back. It is so peaceful up there and the Maasai are the most humble and happy people you will meet. They don’t have anything, but they feel that they have enough and that they are blessed for what they do have. Just spending time with them was a life-changing experience.

I only got like two hours of sleep in the tent because of all the donkeys and cows making noise, and on top of that some loud snoring from someone I won’t mention. In the morning, we ate some breakfast and surveyed for water in another location. We found water there as well, but the first site was much better. After saying our goodbyes to Yona and his family, we headed out of Lerumo and back to Arusha. The drive out of Lerumo was pretty awesome. It was like a mini safari! While driving, we saw baboons, spider monkeys, impala, warthogs and even a snake. It was pretty awesome to see all of that because I really wasn’t expecting it. Once we got to Hedaru, we stopped and got some lunch and then started to head back to Arusha, which brings me to the beginning of the story.

It turns out that the radiator in the Safari had a hole in it and that’s why the car was overheating. We were about four hours away from home and it didn’t seem like there was any way of getting it fixed. Jacob called Jeremy, who was back at Pamoja, to tell him the bad news and that he would probably have to come tow us. They talked it over and Jeremy decided to call a mechanic in Hedaru to try to fix the radiator. After about 45 minutes, the mechanic and his partner arrived. They took the radiator out and looked it over, and then one of the guys started picking cigarette butts off the ground. I had no idea what he was doing. Then, he started stuffing the cigarette butts into the hole in the radiator! After that, he took some super glue and some kind of white powder and put it over the hole to seal it. To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to work. I mean who would think that fixing a hole in a radiator with cigarette butts would be a good idea? Despite my doubts, though, it somehow worked and we drove home safely. God brought us a handyman that knew exactly what he was doing and we were able to get home. It was pretty awesome to say the least.

The whole trip to Dar and Maasai land was full of awesome experiences that I will never forget and I’m so glad that I’m able to share them with you guys. Thank you so much for reading and I will try to have another post up in less than a week. 

Adventures in Dar es Salaam and Maasailand Part II

It takes about a 10 hour bus drive to get from Arusha to Dar es Salaam, and let me tell you, that bus ride is not what I would call a fun time. Hey, at least they have TV screens inside the bus, right? Wrong… Instead of showing a nice movie or something, or just leaving the TV’s off for that matter, they decide to play a cycle of African gospel music videos over and over and over again until they’ve been engraved into your brain. These songs were in Swahili by the way, so it took a lot of repetition for me to learn the songs, and believe me, there was a lot of repetition... By the end of the 10 hour journey, I pretty much knew the songs by heart. It was kind of like a cruel and unusual punishment to experience that for 10 hours straight and I didn’t think that we were ever going to get to Dar, but finally we made it.

As I said in my previous blog post, I was in Dar to shadow a guy named Felis Mubibya, and take pictures while he promoted Kahawa Records on the radio and television. So I basically spent every minute of every day with Felis as he did his job, and I loved every minute of it. It’s impossible to describe a guy like Felis in one word, so I’m gonna give it a shot in three words: intentional, passionate and hilarious. Felis is so much more than that, but those are some key things that I feel describe his personality. He’s just so much fun to be around, and there is never a dull moment when you’re with him. Felis is Congolese, but has been living in Tanzania and Arusha for a while now. I failed to mention in my first blog post that he and his wife Lis and eight month old daughter Destiny, also live on base here at Pamoja.

You see, Felis is not only the general manager of Kahawa Records, but he is also a musician himself. He sings and has his own CD and music videos, and he’s also an accomplished drummer. Felis isn’t using his musical talents for his own personal gain, though; he’s using them to benefit the Kingdom. He has an amazing goal that he is working towards with his music. He wants his music and his teachings to impact and influence the African Christian music scene by introducing aspects such as quality video recording for music videos and biblically supported lyrics. He wants to transform the scene so that the results will reflect the Kingdom, and that’s an awesome goal to have if you ask me. And to be honest, I couldn’t think of a better person to make it happen.

Felis and I definitely had some good times in Dar that I will never forget. He introduced me to eating ugali with fish (a whole fish by the way, eyes and everything), which I now love, and showed me so many other things, like how to drive in the crazy Dar traffic, while still managing to keep me laughing. One day, we were eating some fish at an Oceanside restaurant, and some guy came up that was selling CD’s. Felis started looking through them, and pulled out the gem that was the two-disc set of Boyz II Men Hits. He of course bought the disc set, and now I’d be fine if I never heard another Boyz II Men song again. I mean we wore that CD out because most of our time in Dar was spent in the car and we had nothing else to listen to. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty fun belting out some smooth R&B with Felis and it’s something that I will never forget.

Spending a whole week in Dar es Salaam was exhausting to put it mildly. It was hot, the traffic was horrendous and it seemed like the only time Felis and I stopped was when we went to sleep at night. Although Dar was certainly an adventure, I am so glad that I was able to go and experience the city, while learning about radio and television promotion, and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to spend it with. I was really glad that I was able to spend time with Felis and get to know him better. By the end of the week, we became pretty good buddies. We constantly gave each other a hard time and we didn’t stop laughing during the whole trip. And hey, now I have another brother in Christ, and that’s pretty awesome.

I hope to have my next blog post out within the next couple of days, and this next one will cover my experiences in Maasai land. Thank you so much for reading!

Adventures in Dar es Salaam and Maasailand Part I

I’m in this small rental car with Felis and we’re on our way back to Julius and Jade’s house from Miriam’s house. It’s around 5:00 pm and we are in the city of Dar es Salaam, and it’s been a really long day for Felis and me. We were really tired and just wanted to get back to Julius and Jade’s to rest. As we are driving on the crowded street during rush hour, a motorcycle tries to pass us on our right in a really tight space, causing Felis to swerve left. All of a sudden, BOOM!

Dar es Salaam is a crazy place. I spent a whole week in Dar (from Monday the 10^th to the 17^th) with Felis, Jacob and Wilfredi, and our mission was to promote Kahawa Records (Pamoja’s record label) by appearing on television stations and radios, talking about Kahawa Records and the Maasai choir that Pamoja supports called the En-Kata Choir. Felis and I were graciously hosted by Julius, a Kenyan who is a missionary out of Canada, and his wife Jade, who is a Canadian-born missionary. They opened up there house for us and were great hosts and I am so thankful for their hospitality. Since Julius and Jade only had room for two people, Jacob and Wilfredi stayed at a hotel downtown. Anyways, I was in Dar to shadow Felis, the general manager of Kahawa Records, and take pictures as he talked to different radio stations and television stations about the record label and his vision for it. While we were on more of the promotion side, Jacob and Wilfredi were on the distribution side. They were trying to distribute the En-Kata Photo Book and the En-Kata CD and DVD to different bookstores and music stores across Dar. It was a really awesome and successful trip because Felis was able to appear on a national Tanzanian radio station called Clouds FM to talk about Kahawa Records and the En-Kata Choir, as well as a local gospel television station called Sibuka Television. The distribution side was also very successful. Jacob and Wilfredi were able to sell several copies of the En-Kata Photo Book and the CD’s and DVD’s to different stores around Dar. It was really cool because one of the stores that ended up buying some of the Maasai CD’s originally told Jacob that Maasai music would never sell in Tanzania. That really discouraged Jacob, but God provided and the store ended up buying several CD’s, and just a couple of days later, the store had already sold four copies! God is truly amazing. This trip was such an awesome experience for me and I am so glad that I went.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about Dar es Salaam the city, and what makes it so crazy. First off, after spending a week in Dar, I have no right to complain about crazy drivers ever again. It seems like there are just no rules on the road in Dar and it’s pretty chaotic. Not to mention, all of the traffic. Dar es Salaam is not technically the capital of Tanzania, but it might as well be because pretty much everything is in Dar. This means that the city is like a constant traffic jam. Needless to say, Felis and I spent a lot of our time in the car trying to get to wherever we had to go. That brings me to the beginning of the post. As we were driving, a motorcycle tried to pass us and Felis, who was driving, had to swerve left to avoid a collision. However, to our left was a boy on a bicycle riding down the street, and as we swerved, our mirror collided with the boy’s bike handle causing the passenger side mirror to shatter, and throwing the boy off the bike and into a ditch. As we hit him, I honestly thought that there was no way the boy could be alive. We hit him hard and he flew off of his bike into the ditch on the side of the road. We slowed down and tried to find a place to pull over on the side of the road to make sure that the boy was ok and as we were doing that, some random guy came up on a bike and started yelling at us in Swahili, and telling us that we need to check on the boy. Once we found a place to pull over, we got out of the car and Felis calmly explained to him that we couldn’t just stop in the middle of the road, and that we were going to check on the boy. I looked back and saw the boy getting up and walking toward us. That in itself was such a relief to me, but we saw that he was holding his arm weird; making us think that he had broken it. When he got to us, we looked at his arm and saw that it was a little scraped and bruised, but not that bad. He was tough and wasn’t complaining at all. We drove him and the guy that was telling us to check on him to the hospital just to make sure that he was okay, and it turned out that he didn’t get hurt at all other than a minor abrasion, and he told that he didn’t even need to go to the hospital. I couldn’t believe it. It was such a God moment. I thought that the boy was going to be dead, and he didn’t even get hurt! It was a very stressful situation, and Felis and I prayed a lot, but once we found out the boy was okay, we were so relieved and thankful. Even though the mirror was broken on the rental car, it could’ve been so much worse and we were so thankful that God had control over the whole situation.

So that is just a tidbit of what Dar is like, and have plenty more to talk about with my experiences in Dar, and my trip to Maasai land, but those will have to come in my next couple of blog posts. Until then, thank you so much for reading!

Week 2!

It’s been well over a week since I've been in Tanzania working with Pamoja, and I already feel like I’m at home. It’s like one big family here. This isn't a regular family, though; it’s a family that puts Christ at the center of everything. I think that’s what I like most about being here.

I also love the conversations that we have here at Pamoja. We are all pretty opinionated, so it usually leads to great discussion. Jeremy and I talked for like two hours, while the power was out, about how the Orthodox Church hasn't changed a single thing about them for 2,000 years, and how they see certain issues like women in the church and the role of the pastor. It was an awesome discussion and I learned a lot from it. I find that I've been learning a lot since I got here, and I’m happy about that. Paul, Adam, and I, the volunteers, and Natasha, a long-term missionary, will sometimes just sit and talk about life. It’s really cool. We also go on runs. Adam and Natasha somehow got me to go on a run with them a couple of days ago, and it kicked my butt. It was more like a run and a hike combined because we were going up hills and doing all sorts of crazy stuff, and it must have been over four miles! It was really rewarding though because we ended the run stopping to look up at the gigantic and beautiful Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, the tallest peak in all of Africa. Now that’s a way to end a run!

Last Sunday we went to a church called Vineyard Church, an English speaking church that a lot of missionaries attend. It was really cool to see missionaries from different countries worshiping together. I really liked the worship. It was contemporary, which I prefer, but that wasn't even it. I could really feel God’s presence when we were singing. It was an amazing feeling and I can’t wait to go back tomorrow.

I've been working on the Pamoja Magazine, as I said in the last blog post, and I've also been working on constructing a five to seven part newsletter to send to students who went to the Urbana Missions Conference this past winter that showed interest in volunteering with Pamoja. I am the first Urbana alumni to volunteer with Pamoja, so I was asked to write this newsletter so that more Urbana alum would come to volunteer. I’m really excited to get the newsletter written and sent out, so I can communicate with these college students. One of my main messages in this newsletter is going to be that there is a big difference in accepting the call to missions and actually making it happen. I accepted the call to long-term missions when I was at Urbana, and right when I got home, I made the decision to contact Pamoja and tell them that I was interested in volunteering. God calls us all to be missionaries, whether it is serving in Tanzania, or in your own home, but it’s our job to act upon that call. I’m praying that God speaks to these students through the newsletter, and that they will make the decision to serve Him.

We just finished doing a huge project that will affect a lot of people. A missionary that is leaving Tanzania wrote out a daily devotional in Swahili, and asked Pamoja if they would construct them and send them out. It was a very tedious and time-consuming process, but I knew it was going to impact a lot of people. We made 150 copies, and each copy was around 250 pages. This meant that we had to fold, cut and correlate each page so that they could be bound and glued. Folding and correlating took a long time, but we all worked together and were able to get it done. We even had fun while doing it. Thinking about the people that were going to read the devotion is what really kept me going, though.

There have been some awesome things that have happened to Pamoja, even since I arrived, including a whopping $35,000 donation from a family that has supported Pamoja in the past. The cool thing about it was that Pamoja was just praying for money to buy a piece of land just off the property that day, and then they found out about the donation. It’s really awe-inspiring to see what God can do and I continue to be amazed by his love and power every day.

I’m leaving bright and early on Monday morning (6:00 a.m.) to go to Dar es Salaam, which is a 10 hour bus drive from Arusha (where I am), for a whole week to help promote Kahawa Records, basically Pamoja’s record label. I’m going with three other guys, Jacob, Wilfred and Felis, and I will be shadowing Felis as he gets on different radio stations and promotes for Kahawa Records by playing music by the En-Kata Choir, a Maasai choir that Pamoja goes on tour with, and records music for, as well as other things. I’m really excited for this experience, even though I’m told it is going to be super-hot in Dar es Salaam, and I’m sure that I will have a ton of new stories for my next blog post. Until then, thanks for reading! 

First week in Tanzania

I was hoping to start on this sooner, but it took me a while to get internet. It was a frustrating process, but we got it done! It’s going to be hard to explain what my first couple of days in Tanzania was like in a blog post, and it was impossible to make it short, but here it goes anyway!

It’s 8:00 at night and I am outside of an open-air church in a village in the middle of nowhere in Arusha, surrounded by Tanzanian kids. It’s very dark. What the heck am I doing there? Well, I am with a group of four people and we are showing to whoever decides to show up from the village a two-hour Swahili musical called “Nipe Jibu” that preaches the message of hope through Jesus Christ. Over the sounds of the movie, I hear fruit bats chirping, monkeys making whatever sound they make and dogs barking, all while a gentle rain falls from the dark sky. This is not how I was expecting to spend the night of my first full day interning with Pamoja Ministries…

This is not my first time on a mission trip out of the country. It is, however, the first time that I traveled alone. I have to say that I was very nervous about the whole airport situation with going through customs and making sure that I got my bags, but surprisingly to me, everything went smoothly. After several poor excuses of “meals” that KLM provided on the plane and watching movie after movie, I finally arrived at my destination, Kilimanjaro Airport. I was in Africa, specifically Arusha, Tanzania. I couldn’t believe it. I made it. It was my dream to go back to Africa, and it finally happened.

Pamoja is a Christian media organization that disciples cultures through media. “Nipe Jibu” is Pamoja’s first feature film, written and directed by staff at Pamoja, and it was shown at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2010. To promote the film and to spread the word of God, Pamoja sends a group of usually around three to four people to show it at different churches, schools and villages, where anyone who is interested will show up and watch. This is what I was doing on my first full day.

I was invited to go along with Paul, a volunteer from Louisiana, Natasha, a missionary from Australia and a Tanzanian volunteer named Wilfred to show the movie. Paul and Natasha are both around my age so that was nice. We all packed into a safari car, with Paul driving, and left the base and headed to the church. I was pretty nervous because I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting in to and I didn’t really know the people I was with yet since it was my first full day. In the car with us we had a projector, a screen, a portable DVD player, speakers, a generator and a gas tank, as well as two wooden stands tied to the top of the car that are used to hold up the projector screen. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the church, driving on a road that could compare to the Devil’s Marble Yard. It wasn’t my first experience with rough roads and I wasn’t expecting the roads to be good at all, but it still surprised me.

 We got to the church around 6:00 p.m., and the pastor was outside waiting for us. Paul, Natasha and I started unpacking, while Wilfred began to talk to the pastor. We were worried about rain, since we were showing the movie outside, so we stopped and prayed. We were also having problems with getting the generator started, so we asked the pastor, who doesn’t know English, if would pray over it, and he did. The coolest thing happened after that. Right when the pastor finished his prayer, the generator began to work. It was a small, but amazing miracle. I saw how powerful and effective prayer can be and it was astounding to me.

 Once everything was set up, we started playing music videos on the screen and kids from the surrounding village began to show up. They sat on the benches that we brought outside from the church.  Since it was my first day, I was in charge of taking pictures. The pastor gave me permission to take pictures of the people that showed up to watch the movie and of the surrounding area. After the showing “Nipe Jibu,” the pastor gave a short message to the people who watched the movie, summing it up and preaching the power of Christ. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I could tell it was powerful. In the end, around 80 people showed up to watch the film. Then, we packed everything up and headed back to the base. It was after 11:00 at night and I was tired. Remember I am still pretty jetlagged! It was definitely an amazing experience for me, though and it was only my second day in Tanzania. I knew that living in Tanzania for two months would be life changing, but I was not expecting to be impacted so quickly.

Life on base is pretty awesome. The base consists of three families: Sig and Joy Feser, the founders of Pamoja Ministries, their son Jeremy Feser, the Director of Operations, along with his wife Christine and four rambunctious and adorable children, Jacob, Natasha, Paul and Benjamin, who are seven, five, three and two, and then Jacob Mills, the Director of Ministries, and his wife Kim, along with their precious two-year-old son James. Natasha, the missionary, is here for long-term missions. I’m not the only volunteer at Pamoja. Paul, who I mentioned before, has been here for about a month, and so has Adam, a 30-year-old from Canada. We each live in triplexes on the base which each include a hot shower and a nice bed, whereas the two Feser families and the Mills family each have houses of their own on base. Along with everyone who lives on base, there are almost always people visiting, so the atmosphere is very hectic. I love Jeremy and Christine’s kids already. They are so energetic and are always doing something. It didn’t take long for them to warm up to me, and now they won’t leave me alone (I love it though). Little Natasha even made me a schedule yesterday consisting of 10 things that I had to do with her, which included playing with Legos, playing I Spy and swinging on the swing set. I already feel very welcomed by everybody and I feel a part of the family. 

My first few days at Pamoja have been full of so much, but I have loved every second of it so far. Since Thursday, I have been working with Jeremy to help update the Pamoja Magazine by editing it and making it more eye-catching and appealing to the reader. Its purpose is to attract volunteers to come and work, and to entice possible supporters to donate to Pamoja, so it is very important for the magazine to be entertaining and readable, while also doing its job of displaying a message that makes people want to volunteer or support Pamoja. I am really excited to see how the finished product turns out.

That is all for now, but in a week from Monday, I will be traveling to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania to do some work, and I’m sure that I will have a lot of new experiences to share. Until then, thank you for reading!