PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

the next person to make uninvited insinuations, leading inquiries, comments, hints, suggestions, or snide remarks about the present or future prospects in significant relationships with the opposite sex will recieve a rude, swift, painful yet just kick to the mapumbu. It's none of your kitomba business. Thank you for your time.

So, in contrast with the last spate of lengthy, thoughtful blogs, I will now indulge in verbal brain vomit. Life is good. I just got my Tanzania pictures yesterday, and they are worlds better than I had anticipated. As soon as possible, I will be putting together an online album. Until then...here's a little photodocumentary on my hair.


short. smooth. suave. shiekh.


still well-trimmed... (why are his eyes glowing red?)


hmmm...that's a lot of hair...


and.....BUSH-TESTOSTERONE-MADNESS!


with a deft trim...balance regained!

ummm...that was really random. Toodleoo!

630 alarm clock
631 bleary response: snooze
636 snooze again
642 snooze again
644 shorts, shirt, accumulated sweat from a week's running.
645 bandaids over blisters, socks, running shoes.
650 the morning air is cold
655 centerville road. i am at the head of the pack. barely. heart bubbles with glee.
700 still centerville road. still uphill. still at the head of the pack. adjust to longer strides. pulling away from the pack. i love this.
710 downhill; finally, joyfully, playfully.
720 walk. stretch. shower. stretch again. apologize to calves.
800 wait for breakfast.
830 feeling lean, mean, hungry and very impatient for breakfast
900 Breakfast! appease the empty stomach!

and so the day begins. it will end at seven, or eight. we will teach each other new group games. we will sing camp songs. we will talk: group dynamics, alpha males, scapegoats, runaways, medical emergencies, blister care, bear bags and favorite trail recipies and 101 ways to make tuna helper and pasta taste different the 42nd time around. then the ropes course: setup, tear down, gear rescues, cutaway rescues, emotional rescues, debriefing techniques, framing by isomorphs, alternative scenarios, spotting, belaying, and playing.

lunch. dinner. cocoa puff bars and mezo-tech bars and why salsa is God's gift to the backpacking chef. Leave No Trace camping, the toilet talk, keeping order on the trail, building shelters, lightening safety, bear safety, solos, maps, compasses, fitting backpacks and chosing menus. exhaustion.

night falls. staff bonding. risk, settlers of catan, rook, xbox, master and commander. olympic diving. laughter.

1000 open the climbing wall. music. ropes and knots and ATCs and crash mats. give kids the harness talk and the helmet talk and set them loose on the wall. watch and laugh and remember what it was like to be in high school. make obstacle courses with chairs and ropes and tennis balls and crash mats when the kids leave.

midnight. close up. drive home. sink deeply into sleep, with a smile for wonderful days that leave you tired enough to sleep wonderful nights.

So. Houghton has been so kind to place their classroom computers in lockdown so that no one can install and play games on them. Fair enough. But I can browse the internet, and watch slideshows of Tanzania pictures* roll by on the projection screen. Good enough. The hunt for a massively powerful, unsecured computer suitable for my gaming whims continues.

It has been almost two weeks since returning to the Untied States, and I almost feel normal. Almost. To be candid, I wonder if I will ever feel normal again. I'm stuck somewhere between a vanished (and probably illusory) carefree childhood and a one-year countdown to the very scary reality of...freedom. It suddenly, irrevocably, becomes my turn. Choose and go and make something of your life and I, for one, am not ready.

Thankfully, this worry will soon be drowned out by other, more pressing stressors, and then I will get tired of stressors and get on to the more important task of enjoying the good labor and good leisure in front of me. Sunday STEP training begins, and I am, as usual, timid, overwhelmed, and about to bolt, but holding on and gritting teeth.

For the uniformed (aka...those who were not lucky recipients of my support letter) STEP is a summer ministry of Houghton College. We take groups of 10 local children who otherwise would never be able to dream of affording an outdoor adventure program and go on a backpacking trip that includes rock climbing, a solo reflection experience, ropes/challenge course and cooperative games experience, and an emphasis on personal growth and maturity. I get to lead these groups all summer; it's a great opportunity to do my favorite thing: help people talk through and deal with personal/social problems and grow. If the kids get to see Christ in me or my co-leader...so awesomely much the better. For many kids, we will be the only Christians they get to know beyond the stereotype.

So...I'm excited. If you are, or want to be, email daniel.holcomb@houghton.edu and I'll attempt to tell you more. We rely heavily on the support of generous people, through encouragement, donations, and prayer, so feel free to write and join in.

That's all for now; for those of you expecting or demanding letters, they are coming, especially after watching the Tanzania slideshow. For those of you not...maybe there'll be a surprise...

Dan



* password: tanzania

Just for the record, I am home. Here are a few short thoughts from the road:

-There is nothing more amazing than the Sahara desert from a window seat, 39,000 feet up. That's over 7 miles, which would be an incredibly sweet freefall. Flying over the mountains of Southwestern Europe was pretty incredible, too. But nothing beats the sheer blinding intensity of a perpetual field of ever-varying clouds. I'm awestruck just thinking of it.

-In a moment of reverse culture shock: the world out there often looks at America and sees the attitude reflected in Detroit Metro: we are big, we are powerful, we are the only ones around; any problems that you have with inefficiency, incompetence, poor design or sheer ugliness are not very important to us because we don't give a damn. Comparing Heathrow and Detroit Metro...I kind of agree with them at the moment.

-To balance: all that must be stated is one oxymoron--British cuisine. Fair 'nuf; very good to be back in my homeland.

-I used to think jet lag was for wimps. I have now discovered that I am, in fact, a wimp, and I have no problem going at being tucked into bed at eight o'clock, same time as my little sister.

-Worcestershire (pronounced "Woostersure") Sauce flavored airline pretzels are the tastiest treats ever. I can still taste them.

-Whoever thought up the Yorkie Chocolate Bar's amazing slogan, "Yorkie: It's Not For Girls," and subsequent teasers ("Not Available in Pink," "Not for Handbags" and "Don't Feed the Birds") is brilliant. Ever girl I know, upon seeing one, buys it. Just to spite. Except, of course, for this one. The world is chock full of stupid people; thankfully most of them are not only harmless, but downright hilarious.

-The world is really, really big, and there is so little time to explore it all...

-Speaking of little time; I arrived Tuesday and I'm leaving Monday and I want to spend it with family and friend, not on the internet.

-Tanzania people: Nilifika salaama Marecani, baada ya safari bora na njema kabisa! Nilienda Rukwa bonde, nikasafari Bongo, nikakaa Iringa mjini na niliwasalimia wanafunzi wapya katika Masumbo. Nampenda ninyi, na nakukumbuka kila moja mwenzangu. Upenda na neema na salaama!

I leave you all with this wonderful sentence which I myself constructed out of Kiswahili:
"Naombe kuku kukukumbuka."

Cheers!
Dan

Alive!

For real this time. As London appeared before us, from the lofty vantage point of BA Flight 046, the confident Scottish voice of our pilot informed us that one of the landing gear tires was reading...well...flat. No worries, he informed us, there are three other tires on that landing gear, but, just as a precaution...

The cabin crew pulled out their little orange emergency hats with CREW written on them in big letters. Maybe so we could identify and stone them for their wrongdoings once safely on the ground. We went through a few safety drills and shuffled around for more convenient access to the doors upon "landing" (more vivid scenarios were flashing through my head, filled with such words as "pile-up", "fireball", "shredded", etc.). Naturally, the quick thinking and clever BA flight attendent chose me (such a fine judge of character) to sit near the door at the back of the plane and take her place just in case, in a worst scenario of worst scenarios, we actually did have a "problem" landing and in that "problem", the plane needed to be evacuated, and in that problem the flight attendant had been incapacitated to the point where she could not open the door, activate the slide, etc. ("If I'm unconscious or have broken arms or something, just unbuckle me and kick me down the slide." Sure Leslie, sure...I'll abort my dive for the door long enough to give your broken body a good, swift kick...)

Naturally the volunteer fireman in me was jumping up and down at the thought of real "excitement" (read: disaster, fire, traumatic injuries, CPR (my mask is in my carry-on bag! Yes!). And, just as naturally, with our heads between our legs and flight attendants screaming over and over again "BRACE! BRACE!" and the roar of the engines and the air brakes thundering and the tires screeching...

we landed sweetly and peacefully with a barely perceptible bump and swerve. Everyone sighed cheerfully, and the captain recieved the heartfealt applause of his crew, and they handed us little preprepared letters of apology for the inconvenience that they had prepackaged on the airplane just for emergencies such as these ones. On a side note, I couldn't help but laugh (a little morbidly) at the thought of hundreds of little, burning "We would like to apologise...You have chosen to fly with British Airways and we are deeply concerned we may not have met your expectations on this occasion..." letters wafting accross the runway through smoke and pall and destruction and the little, itty bitty charred tail of a Boeing 767-300 sticking our of the ground in the background. There's a contingency plan for everything...

At any rate, we had an exciting landing, and we didn't have to circle at all, waiting for permission to land. So if you were flying into London yesterday evening and got delayed...HA HA! I got there first :)

So here I am safely, sitting in Helmut's flat and wondering what to do today in London. I think I'll go grab some fish and chips, and maybe visit the Imperial War Museum. Or go play rugby in a park somewhere...

Tomorrow will be another plane ride, hopefully uneventful because it is a nice, large, new Boeing 777 and we are over all that water...it's all right though, because I know how to swim. In other news, it'll be terrifically difficult to decide which movies to watch; Kill Bill Vol. 1 is the obvious choice for the first, but then it's between Return of the King, Mystic River, the Last Samurai...it's a tough choice! On the other hand, I have my own screen, so I could just go and channel surf between all of them...

At any rate, I will be home tomorrow eve...and that is as good as anyone could ask for.

Cheers!
Dan

Wow...
I just spent a dollar bill. In Iringa! Which is good because I'm almost out of shillings :)

This is, oddly enough, my last week in Tanzania. Actually, my last few days. Fittingly, I am sick. I just started taking antimalarial medication today. I almost got away...

I had a very touching reunion last night: I snuck up on the night guards at Masumbo, Hassan and Madenge; they were my Swahili teachers and friends during my studies. We would sit around the cooling heat of the stove and stumble through conversations and word definitions and talk about life and religion and girls. Wonderful guys; I'm so glad to finally be able to converse well in their language. Okay...maybe not well. But now there are no awkward pauses, searches for simple conversational topics...and they're not always struggling to figure out how to explain complex Swahili words to someone with the vocabulary of a two-year old.

Then we drove to town with Edjidi, the world's greatest driver and car mechanic, and another one of my swahili teachers. Edjidi...anaweza. We had a great time laughing and talking and remembering the times he was teaching me swahili AND how to change tires on a ten-ton vehicle at the same time. I surprised him by waiting for him up front in the truck and mimicking his gravelly voice: "Habari za leo, wanafunzi?" His face was priceless.

I like being in a world where facial emotional expression is encouraged. The looks on all three of my friends faces were priceless: grinning from ear to ear, stepping back in surprise...seeing me again made their day, and they stopped everything to whoop and holler and laugh and hold my hand and just let me know that they were happy to see me. That's really cool...I will miss those guys.

I also like being in Masumbo again when students are here. It's odd though. I lived at Masumbo with twenty-five other young white people...so I don't really look for particulars to identify them. So I look over to Dave's old tent and see a tallish guy with dark hair and think, oh, Dave! But it's not...so far I've "seen" Jess, Erica, Tegan, Michelle, Pascoe...the list keeps growing. It's kind of sad. I miss my old Masumbo family...

That said, what could be more fun that seeing old friends from school coming to Masumbo, for the first time! Their enthusaism is so awesome, and their naivete is fun too! I remember the first time I stepped out of the Green Bomber into Iringa town to be besieged by all sorts of vendors. Most of them know me by face now, and I can slide right through them with a few reflexive lines of kiswahili...but not the first time. What fun! And to swap news of Tanzania with news of the states: so much fun. I'm glad I stayed to greet the newbies!

So joy mixes with sadness and satisfaction with regret. Today or tomorrow I will say goodbye to Iringa town, and the Tanzania adventure (for that is truly what the last five weeks have been) will be over. As the cast comes out for the final curtain call, I think of every one of them with the fondest of smiles and gales of sidecracking laughter: Mike the incredible tentmate, Dave and Dave and Christian and Tim, the coolest travelling roadshow ever, the supportive friends and family back home, Andy and Suzie, Teddy and Kim and family, Abel, Doc and Mom Arensen, Eli and Linda, the Amazing Adkins(es), the Danes, Moyers and Phillipses, the crazy Moyer children, all the womenses in all their amazingness, the thoughtful and kind senders-of-valentines and birthdaycards, Edjidi, Abbas, Joseph, Tumaini, Hassan, Mzee Madenge, the How People Growers with all their opennes and caring and wisdom...

the applause swells and swells and swells. cheers to you!

I'm alive!

(I write this all the time in the subject lines of emails home. Sometimes mommy worries...oddly enough, my host-"mom" here, Suzie, tends to worry quite a bit when it's been dark for hours and I'm not back yet because I made some fascinating new friends in the marketplace...)

(This is the same Suzie who is singing something lovely and classical and soprano-y in Italian or Latin in the living room right now. It really is the random things in life that are the most enjoyable. Like the game of Risk with the Danes last night.)

(I swear they were working together! Stinking Vikings and their incomprehensible language! Sure, right, just "discussing the weather," uh huh! Hah! I won anyway!)

(Okay, so enough with the parenthetical comments...)

I really am alive, and I feel it, too. Today I walked into town with three deaf-mute Tanzanians, ordered lumber cut to size, and got a discount after complaining that the finished products looked more like spaghetti than building materials--in Swahili. Picked up a hand-powered drill and some screws, and spent the afternoon working with my hands. Suzie needs some large, durable wooden boxes for the craft shop; I have loved building things since my first Lego castle. I scrounged up a screwdriver, handsaw, an old file, a ruler, and a pencil, pulled out my handy-dandy Leatherman multitool, and set to trying to make squares and rectangles that don't look like kindergarten drawings.

Lets say that I feel rather proud of my accomplishments, yet simulateously very awed at the work of real carpenters. My hands are pleasantly weathered, my arms are happy and tired, and I have been creative today!

By far the most enjoyable: eight months of language and culture study have finally paid off. The locals now laugh at my jokes instead of my linguistic blunders. Instead of being a helpless child in this culture, I am now a potty-mouthed twelve-year old. :) I'm actually semi-functional! It's really a thrill beyond all thrills to realize that, as long as nothing really disastrous happens, you are capable of living in a completely different country (not Canada) and even relating to the people there.

By far the least enjoyable: having to explain really embarassing aspects of American culture and politics and foreign policy to bemused Brits and Tanzanian taxi drivers (Oh! You come from America? I saw a picture on the internet of an American woman soldier torturing a naked Iraqi man! Why do the Americans hate the Arabs?)

And then MTV was on during lunch at the Hasty Tasty Too...sigh. It's easy to understand all those vehemently self-righteous "No, I'm Canadian!" people.

Cheers!
Dan

Dear [you],
I'm very sorry for the last post. It's very long. It might not make sense...just one of those epiphanies inspired by an amazing lecturer/writer with a wildly cool British accent.

Speaking of wildly cool British accents, I'm currently staying in the home of Andy and Suzie Hart; Andy's a veterinarian doing all sorts of interesting animal- and non-animal-related projects with the Anglican church of Tanzania. Suzie is charming mother who is running an amazing arts and crafts workshop where disabled people are finding meaningful employment and Christ while making really cool things with beads, recycled cardboard, elephant dung, and plant fibers. I've spent a lot of time with their friends, Philip and Fiona. Philip is a theology professor with permanently off-balance glasses who is unmistakeably the British reincarnation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Very soon I shall be unrecognizeably shaved, dressed in clean, unrumpelled clothing, and speaking with a culturally refined accent in a compelling and confident tone of voice about world politics and rugby. I shall not tackle cricket as the natives themselves do not understand it either...

Yesterday we built a solar cooker. Hoping against hope that it will catch on: the use of charcoal and wood fires for cooking is ruining the forests of this beautiful country, and the lungs of the beautiful and industrious women who cook in it. The cookfire smoke they inhale is the equivalent of smoking two to three packs of cigarettes. Per day. And charcoal is expensive...the sun is cheap.

We doubt: will people want this new technology? We laughed yesterday; in our frustration with people who refuse new technologies and techniques, we forgot ourselves. The water we drink is filtered and boiled, much like all the other expatriates in Iringa. The difference with our house is that we set our water out in clear plastic bottles on a sheet of bati (roofing metal) and let it sit in the sun for a day or two, depending on cloud cover. It's scientifically proven to be more effective at killing harmful organisms than boiling water for ten minutes. And, it saves over ten dollars a month on the electric bill. And, it my opinion, it's easier than taking care of pots and pots of boiling water.

How many people in the expat community have copied this? After months of watching this new technique, and visiting and drinking the water with no ill effects? None. We enlightened, change-loving Wazungu, just like the frustrating Tanzanians, refuse to adopt something new until it catches our eye, or necessity forces change...irony is wonderful. We had a good laugh. Human nature is amazing sometime in the ways it absolutely defies logic.

In other news, Philip, Andy, Fiona, Suzie and I sat down the other night to watch an absolutely charming (British, of course) movie: Love Actually. Basically, it's ten different, interwoven stories following people as they approach Christmas and deal with...well...as little Sam says, "What could be worse than the total agony of being in love?" Love is so many different lights: a man chosing between his wife and his secretary. A widower and his lovesick stepson. A jaded old rocker without friends. The Prime Minister and his househelp. A writer who speaks no Portuguese and a maid who speaks no English. Two body doubles. The lonely best man. Not all of the endings are happy...but they are all amazing.

The best part of watching, of course, was the setting: London. The Brits were all very amused every time I shouted, "Oooh! I've been there." But I have!

Cheers!
Dan

"...Rights and duties, it might be argued, are simply corollaries of one another, so it does not much matter which system we propound. One may teach that 'you must not rob Mary as she walks down the street' or that 'Mary has a right to walk down the street without being robbed.' Whichever code is followed, the same result: Mary may conduct her business safely.

"I should counter that this is by no means the end of the story, for the two systems of moral catechizing produce very different states of mind in those who imbibe them. But let us meet this objection (that rights and duties are virtual equivalents) on its own terms by looking also at more immediate results. As a test case, let us consider the debate about the moral status of abortion.

"Supporters of the permissability of abortion deploy many arguements, but central to them all is that of a 'woman's right to choose what to do with her body'. Christians and other moral conservatives who standardly oppose abortion counter with their own slogan: 'the child's right to life.' Whose right will win?

"In the world of politics and moral debate around us, the victor in this argument is pre-ordained. The women who wish to 'choose'--to say nothing of the feckless boyfriends and anxious parents who wish to urge them on, and the much larger numbers of people with an interest in the availability of abortion to underwrite their 'sexual freedom'--are with us, voting and articulating their opinions. The unborn children are unable to speak and are reliant only on those who care about them and are unencumbered by anticipating a need to dispose of the consequences of their own sexual indiscretions. Hedonism wins: the child dies.

"Now let us recast the debate in the language of obligations and duties. Who, in this circumstance of an undesired pregnancy, has an obligation to whom? Again, the winner is pre-ordained. It is the child. For clearly the woman and her sexual partner--and perhaps others too--have a duty to nurture and protect it. To argue otherwise, it would be necessary to say that the child has a duty to die so that the mother and her partner (or relatives, or society) are not inconvenienced.

"Now it is not completely ridiculous to insist that, in certain circumstances, a person does indeed have a duty to die. Such a duty is implied, for example, when a war criminal who pleads that he was 'only following orders' while under a threat to his own life is sentenced anyway. The person who finds himself in such an extreme situation has a duty to die rather than to participate in such foul actions as constitute a war crime.

"But the situation of an (unknowingly) unwanted baby in the womb is not such a circumstance. In any case, the baby is unable to fulfil such an obligation in his or her own person--only to have it imposed from outside by the surgeon's knife. To speak of a 'duty to die' in such a case is presumably nonsensical.

"If we frame the question in terms of human rights, abortion wins. If we ask instead about moral obligations, the child lives. In both cases, the 'answer' was already present in the question.
--Meic Pearse, Why the Rest Hates the West

The man is brilliant. I wish I had the wherewithal to type the entire chapter, but there is neither space not gumption for such a copyright infringement. One of the reasons, according to Mr. Pearse, that there is such a divide between Westernized and non-Westernized cultures is that in the massive shift to modernity and modern thinking, the West has left behind any sense of innate moral obligation and replaced it with innate moral rights. The language of morality and philosophy then focuses on the rights of the individual rather than his duties; any sense of duty is shifted to the larger, amorphous whole of 'society' or 'government' or...anyone else, at any rate. So we speak in a hilariously contorted language of passive verbs: children ought to be cared for, the sick and the elderly ought to be given provision, the wronged ought to be given justice, the poor ought to be provided for...

And never once do we say, 'We ought to care for our children. You ought to be an honest businessman. I should provide for the poor, the widowed, and fatherless.' In Meic's words,

"Support without supporters, care without carers, provision without providers; to relapse into normal, active verbs would be to highlight the obvious: that moral action requires moral actors--an so to revert to personal obligations. To avoid this uncomfortable reality, public discourse through the Babel of the media adopts a curious duck-speak on moral questions, as if it is all a matter of better 'systems' and bureaucracy without any of us having to accept that we have duties...and that we have failed them.

"But people with no sense of obligations are people with no sense of personal sin. It is no wonder that Christians are quite unable to evangelize effectively in this environment--without, that is, resorting to shallow emotionalism or blandishments about the 'benefits' of 'coming to know Jesus.' If I have no obligations...I cannot envisage myself as a sinner, not even before a holy God. The central thrust of Chrisitan evangelism is thereby rendered ridiculous.

"Little wonder that the sense of personal sinfulness, even among Christians, is largely superficial...We see ourselves overwhelmingly as sinned against, not as sinning; as standing in need of a little therapy, more self-esteem and some assertiveness training, not of forgiveness."

I hope this makes as much sense to you, out of context, as it did to me. We live in a world where people are taught that they have rights that ought to be met. Where problems are not my problems, but the problems of a society or system that doesn't make it easy or profitable for me to love my neighbor. Here there is a tragic imbalance: I am owed (by whom?) whatever I have a right to; but what do I owe? Nothing.

If I owe nothing, than the dirt and smoke, the pall of destruction that wreaths our world is not my fault; it's your fault, and if not yours then someone else's: that amorphous system, those powerful people, the circumstances that made me who I am. I have a right to something better than this...not an obligation to make the world better than it is, an duty, a stewardship that I have failed.

Dar Es Salaam is know as the Bongo (brain) of Tanzania because you need your brain to survive here. Abel and I came, really, for two reasons: a break from living in the bush, and to watch the Passion of Christ. Mission accomplished. First night in town: we ate at Shooter's Grill, a little place with plenty of flava and one-kilo t-bone steaks. While the larger guys worked on expanding their kitambi's, I opted for the more refined meal: prawns served up portuguese style. I have never been so satisfied: spice blended with the tastiest meat in three months. We sat back and thumped our "kabuli ya kuku" (na ngombe, na samaki, na anyama wengine wote) and chatted happily about the church in Tanzania. We even got interviewed for Tanzanian TV!

The next day we tackled mission #2. After wandering around the city doing business, we headed north to the New World Cinema (emblazoned on the outside with the slogan, "Let's Go Movies!"). The Passion of Christ had been extended for another week, and we caught it on the last day. We were the only three people in the theater. Sure, I could quibble on a few of the emphases or details, especially after Life of Christ with Dr. Paige last semester...but who can argue that this is the most awesome story ever. There were only six eyes in the audience, but every one of them, Tanzanian and American, was crying by the end.

There is so much to think about: about sacrifice, about living a noble life, about living for something greater than the mundane or self. But, being an intercultural studies student, two things stick out particularly well. One...Jesus was a carpenter in a "Two-Thirds World" country. He lived in a simple brick house, worked with his hands, had no doctors or nurses or hospitals. There were no movies or TVs or Walmarts. He lived a life much like the one we saw in homestay villages; he can truly say, "Life is more than posessions." One of the things I have struggled with the most in Tanzania is the utter disparity in what Dr. Perkins (the elder) calls "Life Chances." I had the chance for so much more than anyone else: Western Education, Western freedom, movies, music, an awesome house and household, a stay-at-home mom...how does that work? How is it fair? What makes life good, and meaningful, especially when there is so much disparity?

Jesus, too, didn't have those chances. Jesus lived a third world life, and not as a king or a merchant, but a tradesman. Life is more than things, it is more than opportunities...

The other thing I noticed was that Jesus looked a lot like Aragorn. And there is not a lot of time to say much more except that I kept expecting him to whip out a sword and kill people, or fight...but he didn't. He's a different kind of hero than we're used to.

Death Toll:
One Goat
Five Ducks (three by the hand of Dan...but one got away!)
One Cow
Two Vultures
Myriads of Mosquitoes
An Unidentified Bird (cut down midair by piki piki)

And so Dan leaves the Rukwa Valley...

Today Abel the Victorious (can anyone tell I've been hanging out with a certain Lord of Destruction, Colton "Coltonius" Rabenold?) and I mounted our trusty Honda XL125S and piki piki'd our way up several thousand feet of "escrapment" and out of the Rukwa Valley. It was a harrowing journey over massively rutted "roads" complete with mudholes, large rocks, washboarding, and suicidal cows. To say we drove, or perhaps rode, out would be overly generous to the Tanzanian road system. I think bounced and slid and whined would do better credit to the road and the pretentious little mutt of a dirtbike that brought us all those dusty miles. One of the hairiest, and most exhilirating rides of my life. That I have no (new) wounds is a testament to the white-knuckled panache of good man Abel, who put in a good six hours of intense riding to haul my butt out of the valley.

So here I sit in an Internet Cafe, serenaded by trashy American rap as usual, thinking "How can a valley become a home so quickly?" It's sad to pack up and leave another familiar place, especially the Rukwa. It's a rough and ready and rollicking place, like that grizzled uncle you never thought you'd warm to until you finally lived with him for a while. Sure it's burning hot in the day, but a quick plunge into the swimming pool and an exhilirating starlit open-air shower, powered by all the pressure of a clear mountain waterfall, and it's totally worth it. The roads are bad, and for it all the more enjoyable on dirt bikes.

I think what really got me was the people. First, the Rabenolds, with intensity and joy for any guests that dare apply. Then Abel and Samara and Bryan and the other guests, joining in enthusiastically. Then the locals, as ready to laugh with you as at you, to offer their hospitality and then pull you aside and ask for your shoes. They really made Rukwa happen for me, challenging me to stop maintaining the distance of a student, passing through, looking for information and good experiences. To open up and try to connect even a little with people I will never see after this week. To learn people's names anyway. I gave the people of Rukwa a chance to be people...and they gave me a chance to feel at home.

So, Rukwa: I'll miss you and your friendly, forward people. We watched the Jesus movie, together this time, and it was new for both of us. My one prayer is that someone will come and tell that story for the first time to the Wasukuma, for whom it is still a story of the Wafipa and the Europeans. That someone will come to sit under a tree and wave a stick and tell it so it hits your heart and becomes your story, just like it is becoming mine.

In the meantime...the main events, for the people at home:
-helped clear and airstrip; watched an AIM Air puddle jumped come into our wilderness valley
-went babboon hunting. couldn't find any babboons. headed off to the lakes. killed ducks with shotguns.
-killed and ate a cow. and a goat. ate the ducks too. except for the one that flew away...after being shot and having his neck wrung by one very inexperienced young man and two very seasoned hunters. chased unsuccessfully by one angry young man.
-showed the Jesus film in Kiswahili, while conversing with lauging wasukuma and drunk village people.
-was told by said village people that I do not know how to play the drums. or dance. or speak kiswahili. but had fun at the outreach anyway.

So...plan change. I'm not really sure what I'm going to be doing for the next few weeks. But it should be interesting. I'll probably end up mucking along in the Rukwa Valley. We'll see. In the meantime, I'll probably be out of touch for a while...

In the meantime, celebrate Easter: not just a day, but a season of remembering. Lent is a season to reflect on sorrow, suffering, death, and our fallen state. Easter is a season to meditate on resurrection, on being saved from the very things which haunted us through Lent. Easter is a season of joy.

See you in a few!

"I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

I think Easter is the most sacred and awe-inspiring and joyous holidays I have ever experienced.

And....I'm back. The last two blogs were lost to technical difficulties :( hamna shidha, it's happened two times before that. Something like 5000 TZ Shillings and four hours of work lost. It works all right though, because I pretty much hated those entries anyway. Trying to say too much too well. So, here's what you all missed:

Homestays. Fun. Stressful. Tiring. Learned lots of Kiswahili...but I don't ever want to speak to another Kiswahili speaker again. Lots of really awesome food (Mom, you would be so proud...I loved anytime they put cabbage, peas, beans, or spinach in front of me...but, they made it really easy. Mama Lugano does, after all, pick these things straight out of a garden, and they are amazing...). But, lots of pork (the pork part is optional...you might just get a nice cube of fat and skin, maybe with a little artery running through....mmmmmmmmmhmmmmmm) and iffy chicken. It's not the taste that's a problem...it's just realizing what you're eating :)

Oh...and we played the most intense game of soccer ever. I think three entire villages showed up to watch as we played Team "Mzee" (that's old man in Kiswahili). The field was a mixture of gravel, dirt, scrubgrass, thorns and cow mavi, with a nice valley running through one corner. Many played barefoot. The intensity was so palpable that no one wanted to sub in...so we played two full forty-five minute halves, at an nice elevation of several thousand feet, against a local team. On the plus side, the women and children watching made us feel like action heroes. Every time Eli used his lanky frame and fancy footwork to put on a show, they roared. Rugby Bryan, with the hundred mile an hour powerhouse kick, earned his share of oohs and aaahs, and every header generated a heartfelt "Safi!". Houghton soccer star Mike would head it upfield to Eli, who'd head it to Brian, who'd head it back to Mike or Eli in front of the goal, and each consecutive hit would earn a louder "Safi!" (literally, "clean," but basically, "cool!"). Everyone loved soccer phenom Lisa, who not only was a girl and red headed, but also put on an amazing display of leaping, diving, catching, and kicking. And, of course, they rushed the field yelling and screaming for every goal...including the first of the game, sent home by an opportunistic rookie hailing from the great state Michigan :) And yes, I have a picture for proof...

Post Homestay, we suffered for God in Matema, a missionary resort on the shores of Lake Malawi. Sugar sand beach, water that was cool in the day and warm at night, volleyball, cheap soda from glass bottles, tubing, and an amazing trek up a mountain stream, clambering gollum-style over rocks and swimming through pools, backpacks over heads, to a one-hundred foot cataract with a massive, cold pool at the bottom. We swam and played like little children, then splashed our way downstream again. Eventually we had to leave, so we headed off to the bush, hiking through a lush nontropical rainforest to a crater lake. We crashed down a basically vertical slope, whooping and hollering all the way, to plunge into the freezing sulfur water. Then it was up and out, and down the outside. Kayaking buddy Tim, Tender Nurse Bryan and Gangly Ornithologist Eli led out, running full steam downhill on these muddy mountain paths. Crashing through banana leaves, slipping, sliding, leaping over small ledges and desperately trying not to fall off bigger ones, piling through lines of siafu ants, clinging to trees around corners and laughing uncontrollably, I think we set a new speed record for the descent, at the minor cost of a few cuts and scrapes and near-death experiences. Afterwards we huddled under a tarp from the rain, packed in tight around the charcoal fire listening to Bwana Jon, Bryan, Eli, and Dave Moyer recount harrowing tales of all their near-death and most-frightening experiences. What better way to prepare for a birthday.

The next day was, I think, the happiest birthday of my life. I was serenaded at every meal; while on the road, we played cards and laughed. I recieved the coveted director's kiss from Momma Barb, and through the rest of the day the jealous women of the trip tried to sneak pecks on the cheek. Poor me. At dinner, I presided over the cutting of the excellently tasty cake (one piece for you, one for me...) and after laughing long and hard, we played kick the can under a full moon. Good times...I slept well that night.

And now we are here...our last lectures are thought provoking as the first, examining what religion is, and where it comes from, and how Christ interacts with preexisting religions. Today we looked at witchcraft, magic, and the spirit world, and the different ways it exists even today. 10,000 people, mostly old women, were burned as witches in Tanzania in the last ten years...mostly because witchcraft is often the only explanation for misfortune, and the old and different and antisocial are feared. It's tempting to laugh at the idea that every bad event must have been caused by ill will, anger, jealousy, and supernatural forces...but it's just as logical as saying, "Hey, bad things happen, and we don't know why." Sure, we can explain that three old men died because they were standing under a granary who's support poles had been eaten out by termites...but why were they there, the three of them, at that exact time, when the granary gave way? We have no answer...it just happened. They were at the losing end of a formula involving termites and wood and gravity.

So...lots to think about, lots to enjoy, and a little sorrow, because this time is coming to an end, and many friends are leaving never to be seen again. So without further ado, I'm heading to the Hasty Tasty Too for some excellent rice and beef with friends.

Big Thanks must go out to:
Mum and Pops: for emails and love, for instigating a birthday card campaign, and for getting all those little things done that crop up when a man is overseas. Love ya!
Joy: for the coolest card your big brother has ever recieved. I love being your big brother!
Uncle Chuck, Hiram, Alo, and Becca Clark: for making Valentines Day really special. I pounded so many Jolly Ranchers (note to readers...the length of enjoyment/packing weight ratio for these is very, very high...what an excellent idea for care packages :) )
Howard and Jacoby: for being super cool. and keeping in touch.
Cheryl Winter: for my first honest-to-goodnes real solid letter. I will write you back...but for now, yes, I posit all the time, and Mike and Christine abuse me when I begin suggesting that maybe we ought to apply Community Organization and Development, and Ostrom's Framework for Crafting Institutions for Self-Governing Irrigation Systems, to the lack of hot water in the communal showers.
Deanna: for an utter shocker of a surprise real letter that arrived the day after homestay, a few days before my birthday, and enabled me to triumph with glee over Tegan and Katrina because I got a Deanna letter!. Thanks for reading...hope all is going well.
Schmutz: for a perfectly timed email about my favorite subject. Frodo Lives! See you sooner than you imagine, bub. Bring a sweater.
Donna: for an encouraging card and a very encouraging gift. Let's get together when I get home; I'm excited to see how you're doing. Everyone in my village knows you from the canoe trip pictures :)
All those who sent Birthday cards: awesome. I feel the love...now what do I do with all these balloons? :)
Jen Gerow: for chipper emails and encouragement...
Mosher: for color commentary on the amazing adventure you're on! every time I think about complaining about homestay meat (mostly cubes of skin and rubbery fat) I think about beetles and ant-eggs and smile...
All the rest of you...you know who you are. See ya soon!

The stress is building...
Last week was paradise. We trucked happily to Ruaha, bouncing along in the back of the Green Bomber, singing merry songs and playing silly games and having a good time. We sat on porches in front of little stone chalets and watched hippos play twenty feet away in the river while zebra and impala and giraffe came down to water. We ate fine British meals and played bottle-cap poker while watching hyraxes scamper over the rocks. We went on game drives in open-air, stadium seated land rovers while sipping fine soda like Fanta Passion and Stoney Tangowizi. At night the hippos came up from the river and you never knew what you might run into on the path after dark...
Yesterday, we had our own church service, with two guitars and a banjo and an African drum and small clay pots. We played the Danes at soccer and watched a projected movie (a Masumbo first) where men in ultralights followed migrating birds. Today, we were tested on crocodiles and flamingoes babboons and the social life of the incredible naked mole rat. And we prepped. And tonight we pack.
Because tomorrow we leave at the crack of dawn for a little town, accessible only by Land Rover over a motorcycle track, an hour into the hills outside of Mbeya. There, we will split into pairs and walk off into the hills to meet our host family and begin our homestays with the Wasafwa. We will spend eight days sleeping, eating, drinking, and hopefully working and talking with our hosts, trying to make friends and cross cultural barriers and gather anthropological data. No professor, no cultural brokers, no schedules, no translators, nothing but you, your tentmate, and your new family.
Excitement and anxiety...but mostly curiousity. Who knows what the next eight days will bring?

Quick Update:
After a fast and furious week of classes and papers, including four lectures this morning (did you know that naked mole rats live in colonies with a queen, breeding "kings" who are deathly afraid of her, and workers? that some workers are genetically preprogrammed to break free and form new colonies?) we are taking a quick breather. Tomorrow some of us will hike a mile across the fields to a cement-and-thatch building to sing choruses and hymns in Swahili and hear Pastor Evony give the sermon (also in Swahili). The drums will pound and temperature will rise and we will be greatful for every cross breeze that blows our way; the smell of sweat and unwashed bodies packed onto cement pews has become the smell of church to me. But something draws me back every time: Pastor Evony's warmth of heart, the beauty of the praise choruses, the hospitality of the people...and the fact that every Sunday, underneath flowers and strings of styrofoam packing peanuts and surrounded by smiles and ordinary people, my heart is lifted up and I smile too.
Monday we leave for Ruaha, again; three days and two nights of bahaing in Land Rovers and watching for animals. After that, a few days of classes, and then the apex of our journey: we leave for a week-long homestay. We will live, eat, and sleep with our respective host families for the entire week: total immersion. God help my broken Swahili.
Then we go to Lake Malawi to recover on sandy beaches; a week of classes later, we are off for a final week in Zanzibar, and the program is over. So strange to see the end in sight...but very exciting. Because then the adventure of a wholely new kind begins: Travelling Tanzania by bus, working and observing development work in the field, and seeing what it's like to be, in a little way, on my own.

Back so soon in Iringa! It's a rare blessing. Everyone else in Tanzania is trying to be a cool American rapper, so it's time to give a shout out to:
Ben Howard, my hero, for finding me a house next semester. Love ya, bro...
All my housemates, the thought of whom brings a smile to my face. Hope your year is going swimmingly!
Cheryl Winter, for an actual real letter! Awesome! Things are swell, and COD is all over the place. Even used "posit" in a paper on brown hyenas the other day!
Becca Clark, Dave Truesdell, Ryan Alo, and all others who send the amazing valentines + Jolly Ranchers! I ate them all!
All those who take the time to post and write...those are moments of joy in a sea of junk email!
All those Houghton senior who I will not be able to see graduate...keep in touch!

And, a general news brief. I just bumped my plane ticket back until the end of May; so I will be hanging around in Tanzania post-program for a month, helping a local developer with the Anglican Church, returning to the Rukwa valley to teach English to kindergartners and show the Jesus film and maybe piki piki a little, going to Dar es Salaam to observe some new ministries to Muslims, and maybe even going to an Ethnomusicology conference. Maybe. Now all I need to do is rustle up some money for bus fares and such :) I'm super excited about being "on my own" for a little while (don't worry mom...I have good local contacts everywhere). At home or at school, I'm surrounded by friends and family and people my age. A month of wandering will be a good time to develop some perspective, see things through the eyes of new companions: Tanzanians, Muslims, Anglicans, missionary families, or just myself without all my familiar peoples.

I'll be leaving Dar es Salaam on May the 23rd, laying over for a day with a friend in London and heading home on the 25th. By June, I'll be in Houghton, writing my final papers and preparing for a summer leading youth into the wilderness for Houghton's STEP outdoor adventure program. So...for friends at home, let's get together really quickly while I'm home! And for friends at school...I won't be there for graduation...keep in touch. And for friends coming to Tanzania this summer...I might get to see you right before leaving!

Thought of the day, from Walter Wangerin: in Christ, we see ourselves as in a perfect mirror. In His death on the cross, we see the inevitable end result of our lives, laid bare in all its horror. But we also see resurrection. Christ came not just to pay the price of our sins, but to experience our lot so that He could lead us through to the other side. He shows us precisely how a grain of wheat is nothing until it gives up, and dies, and is buried, so that God may cause it to become something wonderful.

Dear Jeff, Josh, Nate, Chris, Aaron, Dave Hough, and Clarky, and all other motorcycle riding friends:
I have a sunburn. Do you want to know why? Because I spent last week as one of the only white people in the Rukwa Valley of Tanzania. The Rukwa valley doesn't have much of an infrastructure: one or two dirt doubletrack roads connecting villages, and a number of cattle trails. Between hills, dips, rivers, erosion, cattle, and encroaching thornbushes, they're pretty tough, rutted, muddy, bouncy roads. Why am I telling you this? Because last week, while you were no doubt ensconced in some school some where, buttoned up against the cold, I was riding a Honda XL125S dirtbike over these roads and through those rivers. It's a real pity you're stuck in snowland. :)

To everyone else: last week was spent on the road to Rukwa and back. It's an intriguing place: difficult to access (our amazing driver had a hairy time getting a ten-ton ex-military truck down the hairpin turns on the rutted swithback down the escarpment) and very undeveloped. Two missionary families are the only white people in a huge valley which stretches as far as the eye can see from where we stood on a granite slab four thousand feet above the valley. We had an amazing time exploring, going to the exploding native church, helping out at an outdoor evangelistic meeting, showing the Jesus film in Kiswahili, and interviewing some pretty incredibly missionaries. We also had quite a bit of fun tangling with their children...it was good to see American kids and goof off with them again.

I look at my hands and my feet and my legs and see a hundred different scratches, bumps, bruises, splinters, thorns, stings, bites and blisters, and I marvel. Each one has a little story to it's own, and each is precious to me. They are the accumulations of an active life, a full life. My muscles are aching and screaming from climbing a mountain and riding for two days over crummy roads. I don't think my fingernails will ever be clean again. I'm still spitting dust from riding the piki pikis. But there is a smile on my face. I think my heart is the same way. Some places are broken, some are sore, some are empty. Some days I feel alive and free and others I am tragically not. Eli Knapp, faculty and friend here, put it best: in our humanity, we are broken, and will never be whole. Some days we are vital and strong, and other days we are not. We gain ground, and we lose it, and gain it back again, and we will never be whole in this life. Only in this weakness can we be made strong.

Closing thought: from Sadhu Sundar Singh: You cannot live life without bearing a cross; if you refuse the cross of Christ, you will inevitably carry another. Pause, and consider: what cross are you carrying? Is it worth it?