Getting Home

It was one of our more adventurous, or laborious trips home we’ve had since we started traveling to and from Tanzania. We really thought the travel to Minneapolis from Dar es Salaam back at the end of April was the best trip we’ve had yet with two kids. On May 29th at 12:30pm CST we arrived at the MSP airport 2 and a half hours before our flight was to take off. Check-in was a breeze, and we went straight to the gate. Once there an announcement came on the PA stating that the plane we were to board had been “downgraded,” and they needed close to 40 volunteers to board a different later flight in order to get the proper number of passengers. Any volunteer would get a pretty sizeable travel voucher to be used on any future travel. After some deliberation- the next flight was set for 6 hours later at 9pm, and we thought about the prospect of adding more time to the task of traveling with two toddlers, but thought the voucher money would come in handy the next time we wanted to travel, and might enable us to afford to come home for Christmas- we decided to volunteer. So, to their credit, the airline was very nice and grateful that we volunteered, and gave us more meal and beverage vouchers than we could spend; and having that travel voucher (x4) made us feel pretty good about the decision. The changes to our itinerary were that instead of two planes- Minnesota→ Amsterdam and Ams→Dar es Salaam, we had three with an extra stop in Nairobi, the lay over in Ams was now 8 hours instead 3, and we were arriving in Dar es Salaam at 9am on May 31st, instead of the originally planned 9pm on May 30th. But still: who could refuse so many meal vouchers right!? The kids did great with the extra wait, and we had dinner in the airport, played in the playground, and rode the tram back and forth until it was time to go. That flight (8 hours from Minnesota to Amsterdam) didn’t entail much sleep for the parents as the kids sort of alternated when they felt like sleeping themselves. The lay-over in Amsterdam featured several attempts to get the kids to nap, and a small success when Mommy and the three year old took a crammed nap in the Kids’ lounge crib. Next came the flight on Kenya Airways to Nairobi. It seemed like a decent enough airline, and it was novel and nice to hear and read Kiswahili on an airplane and while still in Europe. The kids didn’t sleep at all on this flight, however, and they had several meltdowns during the Nairobi airport layover (2hours) even though it was a nice airport that even had a playground as well! The flight from Nairobi to Dar (one hour) went really well on the other hand, and just as we landed in Dar (9am on the 31st local time, 1am on the 31st Minnesota time- 37.5hours after we arrived at the first airport) the three year old decided to finally collapse into sleep. Little did we know it would take us more than twice as long to cross Dar es Salaam to get to our friends’ house than it did to get from Nairobi to Dar! We went to go get our good friend and Nanny, Eliza, who was staying about an hour away from the airport, before heading to our friends’ house where we’d be staying. Just as we began to wonder why the driver had decided to get us first and not Eliza before collecting us at the airport, the driver threw us for another loop turning down a back road to meet a relative of his who was said to have the credentials to help our sewing class as a potential teacher In case we wanted another. Sort of, “Welcome back to Tanzania, mind doing a quick job interview?” After the meet and greet was done, and we met up with Eliza, we arrived at our friends’ fairly close to noon, dropped off the kids, and went straight to work meeting with friends from Mufindi who had come to Dar to attend the Dar Goat Races Charity Event (goatraces.com). We spent the rest of the day preparing for the following day’s event, then fell asleep about 7:30pm and woke up almost 13 hours later. The goat races (June 1st) was a great success, and we also managed to get our recently purchased furniture on a truck headed to Iringa. We also put almost all of our luggage (8 checked bags, 50lbs each) on the same truck. Our plan was to finish up at the goat races event, which ended at 6pm, then head down the road to Mufindi to get part of the way home to a town called Morogoro which was 200km (~125miles) from Dar, which would leave us with about 425km(~265miles) left to drive the next day to get home. That was the plan anyway. We had called ahead to our Tanzania family in Morogoro who booked us in a hotel there for the night telling them we’d arrive fairly late depending on traffic, maybe 11pm. This is something we had done at least dozen times before. 40km east of Morogoro, there was a massive accident that blocked both lanes of highway with big 18-wheeler trucks lined up in a backlog clogging the road. We were stuck. Because traffic was so bad in Dar es Salaam, it was around midnight when we had reached this point. We followed a clever, seasoned, Tanzanian who communicated with these trucks one by one to move this way or that to let us with smaller cars weave in and out of the middle of the trucks, or either shoulder to eventually get past the accident a few kilometers down the road. We eventually turned up in Morogoro at 1:30am. Once at the hotel, we said hello to the nice-seeming man who let us in, and we started to get all of our remaining luggage out of the car, wake up the kids, and enter the hotel, when he started shaking his head. We asked him which room we were staying in, and he said, “Oh… hee… (shaking his head) the rooms are all full.” We then asked, “You’re joking right?” Because that would have been a pretty fun joke to make at that time: to watch us come in very late, road weary, watch us unload the car, watch us wake up our kids, and then tell us there were no rooms (meaning he had sold the rooms to someone else even though a booking was made). That would have been funny had it been a joke, but of course he wasn’t kidding. So we packed the car back up, and the kids started crying saying, “We want to stay right here,” we told them we couldn’t stay there because there was a bad man at that hotel, which they seemed to surprisingly understand quite well. We went to another hotel that probably has 200 rooms, and it was completely full as well with two weddings happening that night. The man there called other places and said they were full too, offering that likely, it being Saturday, it might be hard to find a place. So we decided to just keep driving down the road to Mikumi town- another 100km closer to home. Once there the three places we checked were full, and we became befuddled as to why it seemed like everyone in Tanzania had decided to stay in a hotel that night! So we drove all the way to Iringa, and arrived at 7am in Iringa twon, still another 3 and half hours of driving away from home. We had sent a message to some friends of ours in Iringa at around 6:30am to ask if we could pass out at their house upon arrival, and were relieved that they obliged. We woke up in the afternoon, did some shopping, and then headed home. At home in Mufindi we were given a heroes’ welcome as the older kids and a handful of guardians from the Children’s Village all met us at our house with songs, joyful cheering, and lots of hugs. It was great to be home, and everybody greeting us like that has really started our return on the right foot. Despite the difficult travel, everyone feels refreshed, recharged, and ready to do good. The kids are speaking Swahili fluently with their friends, and English with Mom and Dad, and they’re happy to be home as well. It takes a lot to get back to our home sometimes, but once there, it’s more than worth the hassle.

Hello again, hopefully I can get some posts out here more often as the internet is back at Fox's. Things have been busy and good here. It's a fun thing to be busy doing, and I'm feeling really good about this year with the NGO. I think there will be some really exciting things this year, so hopefully I can keep everyone posted and up to date about what's going on. Here's a couple of pics in the meantime...

I can’t post blog-posts unless I pay for internet. So as I’m doing that now, I just wanted to share the blog-post I wrote the night before my wedding:


I get married in 14 hours, and I can't sleep, and seeing as this has
been the first time I've had with email since before xmas I just
wanted to say a few things before I become a married man.
I would like to say thank you to all of those who may read this entry
that deserve some gratitude, and since there are so many to thank
apologies if I forget those I shouldn't, I promise it was only because
I got tired :)
First of all I would like to thank my Family. Dad, Mom, Cam, Dave,
Emily and Ben. I've never been more proud of the family I grew up with
and I love you all, and I'm eternally grateful for all that has been
done by you guys since you have arrived. The support I've received
from you guys since you've arrived here in Tanzania has been above and
beyond anything I could expect from anyone else. It is fitting that
the support and love I've seen in recent years from you my family, has
come through so crystal clear during the days leading up to such a big
day. I love us so much.
To my new family, Stephanie, Carla, Jim, and Jenny, I am so very
thankful that you are able to put up with us! You are all so caring
and thoughtful and gracious that it is truly an honor to which I'm
very humbled to accept, as I join your family, and I'm very excited to
be the first to welcome you to our family.
To the other guests at our wedding who traveled 10,000miles or more
to be here, Gina, Joe, Anna, Katy, and Alex. I can't tell you how
exciting it is that we have been able to show you our new home. Thank
you so very much for coming, and I only hope we have given you an
experience as equally enriching as your presence here has made it for
us.
For those who couldn't make it to the wedding, thank you for trying,
or considering, it means a lot even that you considered such an
endeavor just to come and see us.
Overall, there are countless people that went into this wedding to
make it what it will be, and however it ends up I now feel able to go
to bed knowing there is one giant family of people that supports this day, and there are no words sufficient enough to describe the
gratitude I feel to you all. Thank you all so very much!

I welcome you all to visit anytime in the future to come and see
our new home. Karibuni Sana!

The other day I went to a village to check in on a Man who came to us about wanting his child to join our Orphanage. The man has 4 kids and doesn't have a job, just a farm where he grows his food for his family, and wanted us to take in his youngest- 11 months. His other kids are 11, 9, and 6, with the two oldest still in school. There is a long process for us to admit a child, and we scheduled an appointment with him, but the man never called us to instruct us where he lived exactly. I went myself to the village and asked around if anyone knew him, and there was a women selling maandazi (like donuts sort of) who did. She told me that the child had already passed away.

I felt like garbage, and told her (I never met the man, no one knew where he was at the time) to have him call us from a friends phone, and we'd reimburse his phone credit. I didn't know what else to do, and so my drive back to our village was pretty depressing. It was the first time really that I saw the responsibility of this new job in a really tangible way. It was also the first time it seemed like there was actually something I could have done to make a difference in whether or not someone lived or not.

I've seen Chimps, and Jane Goodall since I last posted. It's been a while, so I can also say I've taken a 43.5 hour train ride, met a publisher who I wrote a paper on for University before I came here, and I killed and skinned a goat!

Things have been going well with my new career path. I've stopped working as a teacher in the town of Mafinga, and am now volunteering as an Administrative Manager at an NGO in the village of Igoda. I now live with my fiancee, which is better then seeing her on the weekends as it was, and I commute back and forth from our village in Mdabulo to Igoda (7.5km) on a motorcycle. To get a better idea of our NGO you could check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkufSbWZYlc

My new volunteer position puts me in charge of the Orphanage, and the NGO projects basically, and it has been a lot of fun work is the way I'd put it I guess.

We went to Kigoma for my birthday and saw this guy up close and personal. It was quite an experience seeing wild chipanzees. We went to Gombe National Park, and on our hike we saw this family of chimps just hanging out with us for over 2 hours! The pictured guy you see here is named "Titan" and he is apparently the trouble-maker of the park. At one point he charged me, and picked up a rock to throw at us... The guides told us he was upset that we were taking pictures while he was trying to sleep. I guess that's pretty understandable.

It's become difficult to send this through email, so I'm just going to put this here... Emily did a lot of work to get the school library in Mdabulo up and running, in fact I checked the before picture, and it shows she had almost exactly a month, pretty impresive- Ongera Sana!

And here was one adventure we had trying to pass the usual road to our village during rainy season...

Travel in Tanzania can be quite an experience, so I posted some pics to try and capture the experience...

Been a while, but I'd thought I'd say hello now that I've got a chance.  I've moved to the village! I'm working in and around a village called Igoda for an NGO where my job title is: NGO manager.  I'm responsible for quite a bit I guess, and it's fun to have different things to do each day.  It was fun teaching, and I still teach adult English in Mdabulo, where I live.  The NGO has given me a pikipiki (motorcycle) so I've been able to ride around the villages getting my first ever experience riding.

Figured I'd post of few pics to commemorate Emily's visit.  She really did well for herself!

Here are some random pictures I could download... Some village kids, a picture of a building burned down in my home town of Mafinga... and a piece of KS right hear in Tanzania!

In class I have taught them the values that can be instilled through the glorious game: Rock Paper Scissors (We had a littlew tournament as you can see). Also there is a picture of a local game called Mba0.