Dear family and friends,
Things are going very well here. We officially started the rainy season two weeks ago…and found out that all water flows to our front door. After bailing and sponging up ten buckets of water from our house (it was 1 ½ inches deep in one room), we worked on digging a trench around the house. I had to take out a row of brick from our entry and back patio to allow for water flow. The burm the trench created added to the insurance against future flooding. You live and learn; a student warned me against having the brick level with the floor, but I had no idea of the amount of water HE KNEW would be coming. I taught him an English phrase to say to me, “I told ya so!” Now, the only time we get water is when the wind is blowing from the south and water runs down and under the door. Life is simple and good. A little water is good for mopping the floors. As I type, the rain has begun very heavily and Joanne has put a rag at the front door. A group of Brahma walk by the front window, two bulls, a cow, and a calf, followed by a lone sheep. Poor things are looking for shelter. Perhaps they will come under our back entry roof, where a goat routinely beds down. I told the owner of the goat that she has adopted us; he told me if he ever wants to sell her, I will get the first chance. It would make a good Christmas dinner!
We started construction a couple of weeks ago on a hen house and adjoining garden space, which needs a fence against the cows and goats, but as the Form II students helping me went on a two week break, the work has all but stopped. We have a hen that knows her place in the house and gives us an egg nearly every day; we are excited about adding to the flock when things get organized in order to offer boiled eggs at the student canteen; they could use the protein in their diet, as do we.
Joanne continues to get new students and is up to 60 in her class; she knows them all by name. She is teaching English and Math, sharing with some student teachers from Madisi. Gary has added to his teaching schedule the task of photographing the student body for government records. Come January, he will be very busy organizing and attempting to teach all of the Bible Knowledge classes for Forms I, II, and III. As the students get to know us, along with the staff, we are getting more and more visitors in the afternoon and evening. We discuss Kiswahili, play games, sing choruses, and discuss the differences in cultures. Nothing is really an interruption; what you were doing just gets postponed. We love it.
We don’t know when our computer will be up again in order to check what we’ve received or respond. “POLE” (Swahili: Sorry)
Love you all dearly,
Gary and Joanne Grenell
Idigima Secondary School
Tanzania, Africa
P.S. The rain has stopped and people are walking about on the dirt…this ground is so sandy that it doesn’t get sloppy muddy like in Iowa. We’re thinking it would be perfect for carrots. They are sold in Mbeya, but we’ve not seen them out here in the remote villages. We’ll have people going to the city look for seeds. During the hard rain, two students called from the darkness outside our window, wanting to give us avocados. They were huddled under an umbrella and had two gunny sacks with huge avocados; nearly twice as big as you’ll find at Hy-Vee. They had walked 30-40 minutes in the rain to give fruit away to their teachers.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
In the thick of it!
Our computers are down and we don't know when we'll get them restored, but we have use of this visiting laptop for about ten minutes, so here goes.
Joanne has new students arriving daily, it seems, and now has a class of 60 who will begin as Form I students in January. She knows them all by name and many visit us in our home in the evening and on weekends. They enjoy using their English skills and teaching us Kiswahili phrases. They also enjoy learning American table games and chapel choruses. We have a number of Madisi student teachers helping until they return to school in January, so that has helped to break up Joanne's class into the different levels of proficiency. We have taken the more challenged learners, each of us taking classes with about twenty students. The other day during class, we heard a low, pulsating noise and looked out to see a group of very large black birds with huge bills and red baggy throats walking across the soccer field. The red sack at the throat was the source of the noise, puffing up and down somewhat like a bull frog...or bagpipe...making drumming/throbbing noise...very strange. The class was excited to know about a bird not familiar to the local American. Another day in Form II Bible Knowledge, we had a goat start to enter the classroom. I asked if she was a Form II student...the class laughed so loudly that the goat left in a hurry.
The rainy season officially began a couple of weeks ago, and we were formally initiated. We'd not experienced more than a light rain, almost misty, since coming to Idigima, so had no idea of the kind of rains we'll be living with for the next few months. We had gathered fragments of bricks from the construction areas and put in an entry pad at the front door and wrap-around patio at the back. The plan was to establish a buffer between the dirt and the floor of the house. The student helping me told me to set the brick three or four inches below the floor level to keep water from flowing into the house. I thought that would cause a lot of people to trip, walking around at night without lights as much as we do. I assured him that the gaps between the brick would allow plenty of drainage.,, We bailed and mopped about ten buckets of water out of our house after the first "real" rain. The student came by the day after our first seasonal rain, and I taught him a new English phrase, "I told ya so!" We both had a good laugh and started rearranging the brick and digging ditches around the house to direct the floods that wash over the ground during the rains. You live and learn, and everyday is an adventure with totally unpredictable events. It may be a need in the middle of the day or night that totally changes your scheduled activities, or it may be a chance meeting of someone on the road who ends up coming to your home for a Bible study. I was pulled off the street into a tea house one day by a tailor we'd spent time with a week before (Joanne showed him things on his sewing machine he didn't know how to use). He was so excited that his children were getting an education...and he considers Joanne his sewing teacher, even though she's lost her sense of timing in being able to keep a treddle machine going.
Better close this before the battery dies and you fail to receive news for another month. :-)
We covet your prayers.
God bless you all as you serve our Lord in your various responsibilities.
Gary and Joanne Grenell
Joanne has new students arriving daily, it seems, and now has a class of 60 who will begin as Form I students in January. She knows them all by name and many visit us in our home in the evening and on weekends. They enjoy using their English skills and teaching us Kiswahili phrases. They also enjoy learning American table games and chapel choruses. We have a number of Madisi student teachers helping until they return to school in January, so that has helped to break up Joanne's class into the different levels of proficiency. We have taken the more challenged learners, each of us taking classes with about twenty students. The other day during class, we heard a low, pulsating noise and looked out to see a group of very large black birds with huge bills and red baggy throats walking across the soccer field. The red sack at the throat was the source of the noise, puffing up and down somewhat like a bull frog...or bagpipe...making drumming/throbbing noise...very strange. The class was excited to know about a bird not familiar to the local American. Another day in Form II Bible Knowledge, we had a goat start to enter the classroom. I asked if she was a Form II student...the class laughed so loudly that the goat left in a hurry.
The rainy season officially began a couple of weeks ago, and we were formally initiated. We'd not experienced more than a light rain, almost misty, since coming to Idigima, so had no idea of the kind of rains we'll be living with for the next few months. We had gathered fragments of bricks from the construction areas and put in an entry pad at the front door and wrap-around patio at the back. The plan was to establish a buffer between the dirt and the floor of the house. The student helping me told me to set the brick three or four inches below the floor level to keep water from flowing into the house. I thought that would cause a lot of people to trip, walking around at night without lights as much as we do. I assured him that the gaps between the brick would allow plenty of drainage.,, We bailed and mopped about ten buckets of water out of our house after the first "real" rain. The student came by the day after our first seasonal rain, and I taught him a new English phrase, "I told ya so!" We both had a good laugh and started rearranging the brick and digging ditches around the house to direct the floods that wash over the ground during the rains. You live and learn, and everyday is an adventure with totally unpredictable events. It may be a need in the middle of the day or night that totally changes your scheduled activities, or it may be a chance meeting of someone on the road who ends up coming to your home for a Bible study. I was pulled off the street into a tea house one day by a tailor we'd spent time with a week before (Joanne showed him things on his sewing machine he didn't know how to use). He was so excited that his children were getting an education...and he considers Joanne his sewing teacher, even though she's lost her sense of timing in being able to keep a treddle machine going.
Better close this before the battery dies and you fail to receive news for another month. :-)
We covet your prayers.
God bless you all as you serve our Lord in your various responsibilities.
Gary and Joanne Grenell
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