Leaving the Mountain Tomorrow

(I can't believe the month at Gonja Lutheran has come and gone! Julie and I are leaving the hospital and mountain tomorrow and taking the Land Rover to Same. I will take a bus down to Dar Es Salaam on Friday and meet up with my friend Faro and her friend Emily to do some traveling in Dar, Zanzibar, the Serengeti, and Ngorongoro Crater. All the best, Lauren)

April 19, 2009

DOWNED TREES

I slept in today (a hard thing to do around here) until a quarter to eight and fixed a little rice and beans for breakfast. I spent the entire day writing and doing laundry, leaving just once to walk to Lusingu and Kajiro’s next door for dinner. Every so often, the sounds of church singing and children’s Sunday school lessons wafted in with the breeze. A large tree fell in the nearby village in the early afternoon, ending all power for the remainder of the day and night.

Dinner at the neighbors’ house was a delight --- I called out “Hodi!” at their door, and Dr. Lusingu’s 13-year-old son ran to greet us. “Karibu!” he smiled and held the curtain to the side so we could enter. I showed them a few of the family pictures I had taken the day before and reiterated that I had taken them in order to send back a few copies --- not just for me to remember them! We talked and laughed and ate by kerosene light atop a large wooden table, learning about their children’s schooling, how the two of them met, more about their training, and how they hope their daughter Mary (away at secondary school) can teach them how to use computers. I was impressed that they had remembered the names of all the Iowa students who had studied here and lived next door (One had even given his guitar to the eldest son.) and that their children ate at the table right along with the adults … and that their three kids even cleared the table and washed the dishes afterward! They are such an outgoing, gracious, and friendly family --- neighbors of the best kind.

Julie and I needed a lamp to walk the short twenty feet home to our door, as the black, velvety sky was illuminated only by hundreds of thousands of stars. The hospital, without the moon, was shrouded in total darkness. It’s hard to achieve this kind of peace and stillness back home.