Geyman Steps

On November 20th, only a few weeks ago, what began as a joyful welcoming of child into the world quickly turned into a terrible nightmare. One of which we would find ourselves caught in middle of. Helping a Friend My friend, Bernadetta was due and as a midwife, I regularly visited her for checkups and to help her with labour education. Unfortunately she knew very little as there are no checkups during the last 4-6 weeks of pregnancy and there are no childbirth education classes. Historically, giving birth to a child is the number one cause of death of women in Tanzania. As such, there is also a lot fear surrounding child birth.  It was 11:30pm when I received a call from Bernadetta's husband. Her water had broken and I had agreed to drive them to the hospital. Upon arriving at the hospital it was determined she would likely need a cesarean but they agreed to start with a pitocin induction. It was getting late (or early) and not being allowed to be with her I returned h...

Tuesday last week I flew out with another MAF pilot, Kirstein, to Haydom. Our schedule was full with flights out to even more remote villages, and we would not return back to Arusha until Friday. On one of the afternoons we needed to haul to the maximum capacity of the aircraft, and so I was left on the ground.  As I waited to catch a few pictures of Kirstein taking off to the villages, these two girls kept begging me to take a picture of them so they could see themselves. They were quite pleased, and a little shy, when I showed them my camera screen. After he was off, I began my hike to the large hill beside the town of Haydom. Having grown up in the mountains of Idaho, I miss the tranquility and peace of being in the wild. Being away from busy city life gives me time to think and process. I began to contemplate how different Tanzania is from the world I grew up in. For instance, it took me multiple visits to the Haydom airstrip before noticing the ridicu...

Above is a short video about what the boys and girls have been up to. Life sure is interesting with these guys! Tivoli, caught in the act of escaping. She is very proud of herself because she managed to reach up and undo the latch above her head.  They get dirty so fast out here. Soon they will be walking. That should at least save their knees. Nothing like bananas! The past two weeks have been very full with MAF standardization. This involved ground courses and flights in order to learn to operate with MAF International procedures. My last MAF standardization flight took us to a few airfields which we fly into regularly. After crossing the escarpment, which is a plateau dividing very dry land and mountains covered in rainforest, we had a slight diversion to avoid thousands of flamingos which had taken flight over the rainforest next to Lake Manyara. One of those times I wish I had brought my camera! One of the three airstrips we flew int...

A picture is worth a thousand words. Jason, this is only the beginning. Frozen fruit popsicles for the first time. You see the baby gate on the left? Ya, someone left it open. They are supposed to be on the other side... At least they are cute about it The other night Carmen and I were on a night stroll when we heard something shuffling around in the bushes. Upon discovering the source of the noise to be a kurunguyeye (hedgehog) I attempted to reach my arm into the thorn bush to take a snapshot with my phone. This little guy, however, was not very photogenic or helpful.  Now, I will take a moment to say that hedgehogs are one of Carmen's favourite animals. In fact, at one point while living in Texas she was in the process of obtaining one as a pet until we were informed of the no-pet policy in our apartment. Bummer. Anyway, as you may imagine, we were both filled with tingly feelings of wonder at the beauty of cute and cu...

I needed to pick up a few items for my sewing projects, however, I was not having any success finding what I needed. After asking around I was told of a market that would likely have what I needed. Kariakoo. Not knowing much about this newfound market other than that it is big and in the general direction of downtown, I debated how to go about a trip to "Hobby Lobby". Feeling as if going solo on this expedition was not the best idea, I had been contemplating on who would come with me. It so happened that the day before I was to go I met a lady at a used clothing market while I was looking for the next size for the girls. She helped me find a few items that were tucked away in an obscure corner of the market, walked me through the back neighbourhood, and helped me to the bus stop before going home. In the process of talking, I asked her if she had any plans for the following day. As she did not, I asked if she would like to go with me to Kariakoo. She agreed and we sor...

This week Silas had his 5th birthday. We asked him if he wanted to have his cake at his school or at home. Of course, there was no doubt in his mind what he wanted. Silas thrives on friends and what better way to have a birthday than with as many friends as possible.  Carmen was able to catch most of it on video. Just as a disclaimer, I don't think this is a traditional Tanzanian birthday as the preschool is run by a British lady and there is a lot of English. We actually managed to find a game.  And an umbrella from Dinah! Just like the one she gave Jason for his birthday, only this time green. On another note, Jason received a letter from great grandparents for his birthday a few weeks ago. Do you notice anything suspicious about this letter? Notice the small cut on the bottom which was likely used to check if there was anything valuable to be had inside...

This video highlights some challenges we have been facing along with important lessons God has been teaching us. We are not alone, as the other two families who began language with us in February have been facing similar life lessons while in Tanzania. Much of the footage is from our week in Morogoro during our language acquisition workshop as seen in the latter half of the blog post   Still Small Voice . I had planned to create this video shortly thereafter, however, life caught threw a monkey wrench into my plans and it had to be put off until now.

6:30 Monday morning last week I awoke, fresh and ready to conquer the day. Since Dinah was in South Africa to renew her visa, I have the day off from language classes. I have a daunting 'To Do' list to begin hacking away at. Some of these, such as emails and taxes, had been put off for far too long. Optimistic that I could check off a fair amount, I go about getting ready for the day and then heading out to the SIL office. 8:10 Settling down into my chair I let out a sigh, "Ahhhh, finally. Aircon and some quite all to myself." Just perfect. Well, First things first. My desktop had taken the appearance of a delicious steak covered in flies and I can hardly even tell what picture lays underneath. Much better. Next, taxes or email? Email wins out. Besides, I have been procrastinating on getting taxes together for so long that I might as well continue.   8:55 And thus proceeds the morning…until I receive a call from Carmen that she is planning on going...