Regional Rep meetings and a return to paradise

Exploring tide pools at Turtle Bay

In 2009, we were brand new missionaries working in Burundi. We’d been living there full time as a family of 4 for just 7 months (David was just 9 months old that August) when we received our first family visitors: my parents. They met us in Nairobi and treated us to an amazing, tented safari experience at Sweetwaters. On the recommendation of other long-time missionary friends, we then proceeded on to the Indian Ocean coast to Turtle Bay Beach Club. It offered a great missionary deal to us then, with a kids club ready to engage the children while we had a good rest. Oren was a little too young then (and David much too young), but we went back again with my brother’s family in 2013 and had an even more fun experience with the kids being a little older and ready to explore the hotel grounds on their own. Here are links to our two previous blogs from those visits.

Moonrise on the beach

When we got the news that our regional Rep meetings would be held at Turtle Bay this month, we were elated. But we were also a bit apprehensive. Over our 13 years of living in this part of the world, we have noted indeed that, as Chinua Achebe says, “things fall apart.” What would we find after eight years? Would it still be as great as we promised our Area Directors? When we arrived on Sunday morning, we were delighted to find that Turtle Bay Beach Club was as well-maintained and well-run as ever, even with the losses that they must have suffered from the COVID tourism depression. Furthermore, with our kids 8 years older, we were all much better prepared to enjoy the ocean, not just the pools.

the beach at dawn

So first, the journey getting to that point…Paul had returned from his meetings in Arba Minch, and we had a weekend to do a few things as a family. We hosted our first church fellowship group meeting on Sunday, and it was good to make a start at building up a new small group for bible study and prayer. Oren got to work in two sessions of playing Axis and Allies with a new friend who also enjoys the game. I had a nice time talking with his mom for a few hours. One night we watched a newer Marvel movie with David’s neighbor friend. The next night the neighbor friend came over for a sleepover. So, there was lots of time for kids to interact with friends.

Wondwesen's birthday cake and flowers

The workweek was totally full of reviewing quarterly reports coming in from partners, as well as many work meetings about the food security projects that are in process or hopefully starting soon. One tricky aspect of our life in different time zones with our colleagues is this: at about 4:30 pm, they are finally awake in Winnipeg and ready to start video conference calls. With our mornings full with Amharic lessons and our middays full of interacting with our colleagues in the office, it’s a little hard to figure out how to manage the long hours. Where does the time fit in to get kids started on their homework, or to take a walk ourselves in the neighborhood. These are the questions we are working at resolving in our work-life balance. For now, the only answer seems to be to rest as hard as possible on the weekend. There were some nice moments: one of our colleagues had a birthday and so we celebrated with cake and gave him the traditional birthday tray of eggs with flowers.

Even Friday night included a very long meeting for Paul, so I took our kids and three neighbor friends to youth group for a session of bowling at the nearby mall. It wasn’t all bad. I had some time to sit quietly by myself, drink a hot ginger lemon tea, and think about what I would share as a devotional for our Rep gathering the next week. And I am very glad that our new church in Addis is working on starting up a youth group for our kids, a safe way for them to get out and interact with their peers. Even better, both kids are now considered “youth!” We had been missing that kind of structure in their lives for the past four years in Arusha.

Indian dinner at Anghiti, Nairobi

Early Saturday morning, we got a ride to the airport and headed to Nairobi. We elected to spend our first night there at the Amani Gardens Inn (formerly Mennonite Guest House). We have heard that it may soon be sold, and so we wanted to enjoy one more overnight in that place that holds a lot of memories for us. In fact, our first night in Africa as a family (2008) was spent at that guesthouse, and we’ve visited many times before. Sadly, the city is rapidly encroaching that green, garden space, some plots have been sold, high rises have gone up, and the entire grounds was covered with tents, pitched for a wedding, an effort to try to make ends meet in the tough hospitality climate. Sadly, the place was not nearly so charming as it used to be at this point. But we were still able to explore and remember, and then walk down the road to an excellent Indian restaurant. We have yet to find a good Indian restaurant in Addis, and so it was a real treat to enjoy those masala flavors.

Our last breakfast with Ruth and Dawn

Early Sunday morning, we headed to the airport again, this time bound for the coast. In the departure lounge, we met up with our two colleagues who had traveled from the US to join us for these meetings, Dawn and Ruth. Ruth is both our “big boss” (International Program Director for MCC US) but also a good, long-time friend and fellow member of North Baltimore Mennonite Church. It was so great to have time to catch up with her personally during this week, as well as professionally, and to hear news from our church at home, how they are handling hybrid Covid services, etc. She brought a packet of lovely encouragement cards from church members, as well as several other personal items we needed out here.

Golden palm weavers at Turtle Bay

And so, we arrived at Turtle Bay together in the late morning, got a quick lunch from their buffet, and then tried to make the most of our free time that afternoon. The tide was high and the waves too
crazy for snorkeling, so we tried the pool and enjoyed more of the all-inclusive service. In the late afternoon, I took a walk with the kids down the beach and up onto a  new concrete sea wall. We found all kinds of crabs clinging on precariously as waves smashed against them. I looked down and saw what I could have sworn was a school of large angelfish swimming near the shore. And then it looked like there was a stingray down there too, maybe a foot in diameter. I’ve never seen that on the Indian Ocean coast, so I just shook my head. By the time we got back near our lodge, other MCC kids had started gathering to play in the sand. Soon our kids got over their shyness and joined in, parents showed up, we talked, went back in the water which was now a lot calmer and shallower, and enjoyed the sunset from the gentle waves. The only difficulty in swimming in the ocean was the masses of seaweed clogging the shoreline you had to push through to get out to open water. Still, seaweed is better than picking your way through sea urchins (often the case in Zanzibar), so it wasn’t too bad.

MCC kids from East Africa/Sahel region

We had an opening dinner all together as an MCC team in a special dining room, and it was nice to start getting introductions. A new family from Uganda recently joined our group of MCC leaders serving in Chad. The rest of us had been together for the past year or more. I was really struck right away that in MCC East Africa and Sahel, we have a wonderfully diverse group of leaders. All of us are serving outside our passport countries, representing MCC in Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya/Tanzania, and Uganda. We ourselves hail from Uganda, Kenya, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States, and our Area Directors are an intercultural Kenyan/American family. Even six years ago, MCC was not hiring multicultural teams so intentionally, and it really helps us now to bring more shared wisdom and experience to the table when we meet. Of course, diversity does not equal inclusion, and that was one of the main subjects of our meeting together – how to intentionally work to make sure that people of all cultures feel included and heard in an organization that is strongly North American in its roots.

David hefting a coconut he found

We were awake at dawn, and I had a few minutes to swim some laps in the beautiful main pool before heading out with David to check out the tide pools. The further the tide went out, the more variety of tiny colorful fish we began to see, baby versions of the ones we hoped to find while snorkeling.

heading for the boats

After breakfast, our first large group activity was aimed at helping us to have time having fun together and it was one of the highlights of the whole week: we took two glass bottom boats out to a coral atoll that is part of the Watamu Marine Park. Everyone had kids present at the meeting, with 8 younger ones and 7 youth joining 15 adults (including 2 staff from headquarters). There were quite a few non-swimmers in our group, but almost everyone put on a life jacket to get in the water and see the fish. About 10 of us had done some snorkeling in the past and so we jumped out early, with fins, to let the current carry us gently over a good long stretch of coral. It’s always such a phenomenal experience to snorkel over coral like that, occasionally to dive down and try to glimpse who might be hiding in caves and crevices. That reef has an amazing variety of parrotfish of outrageous color combinations (aqua and purple, green and magenta) with gorgeously detailed markings around their faces. 

Paul discussing snorkeling technique on the boat

I don’t know the names of all the fish we saw – I wish I did – but it is quite enthralling. And then there is also the relaxing physical feeling of taking long, slow breaths in and out, the roll of the waves, the introverted nature of snorkeling when you can’t talk even if you wanted to. Of course, Paul and I did have to pop up every few minutes to check on the kids’ locations, but at this point, they are very experienced snorkelers themselves and good swimmers, which is such freedom for all of us. After spending almost 2 hours in the water, I finally reluctantly pulled myself out and joined the crowd of kids on the wooden boat roof to warm up in the sun on our way back. And when we got back, David really wanted to just keep snorkeling near the shore. It was worth it! We saw at least 2 cool-looking stingrays right near the shore and a school of foot-long angel fish passing by.

Meetings

Our meetings started up in earnest in the afternoon, and it was heart-wrenching to leave the beach and go into a conference room for the rest of the day. That afternoon, David elected to join the Kid’s club with the group of younger kids (at 12 years old, he was the oldest of them and just on the cusp of being a youth). I think he really enjoyed how playful and welcoming the younger kids are and they had fun swimming and exploring tide pools together. 

python, it was huge apparently

But he grew tired of the strict rules and programming required for supervision of younger kids and by the middle of the day Wednesday, he decided he was a youth. The youth took a little while longer to get comfortable being together, and some of them also had schoolwork to do during the week. But they were sent out on an ice cream run on Tuesday afternoon, riding in Tuk-tuks to old town Watamu, and that helped them a lot to get to know one another. They played beach volleyball on one afternoon. And on Wednesday afternoon, David joined them on a visit to the Snake Farm. That was an incredibly interesting place, granting refuge to hundreds of venomous snakes and serving as an anti-venom center. Oren took a whole bunch of photos there and I’ve included a few here.

smallish Moray eel at night, with my foot

On Monday evening after dinner, several of the kids and a couple of us adults decided to go out to explore the reef at low tide after dark. The moon was close to full, and we brought headlamps to see our way around the various tide pools. We were astonished to come across quite a few very large moray eels out hunting, fully exposed outside of their holes. There were also some large boxfish that we only ever saw at night. I had never thought about the different life of nocturnal reef creatures, although they must be very well adapted to hunt in both shallow and deep water at night. That’s a unique challenge!

Tuesday was all-day meetings for us adults, but we ended our day at 5:30 pm with line dancing led by Paul. Pre-covid we would have loved to teach people folk dances, square dances, circle dances, partner dances…but these days we have adapted to line dancing since it doesn’t require any contact, but still allows you to move in unison with the whole group. 

line dancing

I was a little worried that the  idea of line dancing might be too Western for some of our team, but absolutely everyone participated wholeheartedly in trying it out. Paul also does a great job of explaining how social dance functions to form a community and I think we can all appreciate that from our different cultural perspectives. We have two old favorites we’ve led before (“Pata” by Miriam Makeba from South Africa and “Same ol’ Two Step,” a hip-hop dance by Ent.Districkt ). Paul taught a new country and western dance “Good Times” and then we finished off with “Yerusalema,” another from South Africa, which the Kenyan kids led with style.

teatime with Amos and Ruth

Our Wednesday was even more full than normal because we started out with a 7 am breakfast meeting with our directors, and then also had a lunch meeting with our HR specialist. It’s great to have the  one-on-one time to talk with each of them about the various situations we are facing in our assignment, but it made for a very long day! I was glad to get into the ocean with David after all that and jump around in the waves for a bit before dinner. He’s also a total genius at catching those little sand crabs that scamper around before they can get to their holes, so that’s always fun.

At one point during our meetings, someone had said, “I packed Dutch Blitz. Anyone want to play after dinner?” And we found out that three other families had also packed Dutch Blitz. So, our evening group activity involved a spontaneous Dutch blitz tournament. All the youth got involved, along with quite a few adults who rotated in and out. Our boys played with Amos and Luke (an ethnic Mennonite who pretty much always won after years of intense training😉). They had a fun time together, and I was so glad to see Amos relaxing and enjoying himself. He came with his two kids, but his wife has been very unwell, and she was not able to join this week. Both with the dancing and the card games, it is such a unique delight to see people of multiple generations interacting and appreciating each other’s company.

Dutch blitz tournament

On Thursday morning we elected to start our meeting an hour later which was awesome because then David and I had a little more time to be in the ocean – he showed me an even more interesting set of tide pools a bit farther away and I must admit it was all so interesting that I sort of lost track of time a bit…That’s the hard part about having meetings at the beach. We had a very nice time of family sharing and then prayer time with the adults that morning. Meanwhile, all the youth were finally able to do some watersports. 

Kids on boats at low tide

I glimpsed them way out, paddling kayaks and stand-up paddleboards out to a sandbar at one point (fighting down my jealousy!). Apparently, after swimming off the sand bar for a while, they went out further to the edge of the reef and had a great time riding the breaking waves out there. Hearing about it afterward really made me hope there is a “next time” for us at Turtle Bay. David was just about back to shore when our meetings broke for lunch and Paul and I were headed out for more snorkeling instead of food. He joined us and we spent about an hour and a half at that perfect time when the tide is coming in and the water is deep enough to really swim over the tide pools. I was again truly amazed at the variety of fish we saw that close to shore; every submerged tide pool we swam over potentially contained new treasures; it felt like unwrapping a gift each moment.

closing dinner

We ended that evening with another special meal in a quieter spot, with time to share our highlights and a spontaneous series of speeches. Every single person was able to share their favorite moment of the week, down to three-year-old Mandela, who was delighted that we were “all one big family!” Even Oren gave a very brief but moving speech, appreciating MCC for making him the person that he is.

We had to leave Friday morning, but fortunately there was still enough time for a good, solid lap swim for Paul and me, and then one last breakfast with our colleagues. We flew out of the delightfully charming Malindi airport, full of open sea breezes, but the contrast to the plane could not have been starker: stifling, hot, with a 45-minute stop on the island of Lamu before getting to Nairobi. We were grateful to peel ourselves out of that sweaty tin can and get in the cab to Brackenhurst retreat center in the hills above Nairobi.

When your life is so full of so many new experiences and the need to absorb and adapt, there is something incredibly restful about returning to a place you’ve enjoyed before. That was also the case with Brackenhurst. We’d spent nearly a week there in December 2019 on a missionary retreat with several close friends from Tanzania. We missed the friends this time, but I personally found the place just as refreshing and delightful. Yes, it was much cooler than the beach, but also quieter and more green. 

Paul and I took a long and somewhat more adventurous walk than we had planned around the tea plantations. I was struck by how much I miss that kind of walking in the quiet green with few concerns for security when you get a little lost. Our colleagues Ruth and Dawn arrived later that night, so I took them on a similar walk in the morning, when the tea pickers were just starting their day in the tea fields. I did my best to soak in the birds and the trees and flowers and clear air and try to make it last for the next few months of city living.

Walk with Dawn and Ruth in tea fields

On our way to the airport, we made a stop at one of the amazing Nairobi malls. We needed to stock up on a few sporting goods, as well as cheese, butter, and preserved pork products (things that are outrageously expensive or poor quality here). And finally, we arrived at home about 10:30 pm last night. After church, we’ve spent today unpacking, clearing the sand from the snorkels, catching up on homework (Oren), trying to make some phone calls to our family members, and getting ready for the week ahead.

There are far too many photos to fit with the text above. Here are some bonuses:

A few restful moments before meeting

rainbow agama near our room

youth playing beach volleyball, Oren in purple

Dutch blitz table

From the pool to the ocean

David at Brackenhurst

Moray eel at night

Chameleon at the snake farm

Smiling mamba (Oren liked that)

A sea turtle Oren saw on a solo evening walk

 

 

Arbe Mensch, Amharic, and some thoughts on Frankenstein

Two weeks can seem to fly by when one is busy all the time. Despite the attempt to define our life by a routine, in practice, most weeks can feel like the routine days are the exception rather than the rule. Case in point, Rebecca and I have tried to take Friday mornings off for a swim and to be able to have some time together for reflection as a couple. After school and evenings are impossible with close accompaniment of the kids on homework a necessity at this time. (They have been a bit unmotivated.)

I think the last time we could actually get free from some urgent task on Friday morning was several weeks ago. There often is no way to avoid losing a Friday morning. One week there was a COVID case in Oren's class, in that situation, the protocol is that all kids in his grade stay home for 10 days and do online courses. 

Last week was another exception as I was out on another field visit this month--this time to a town south of Addis about 8 hours by car or a short 50 minutes by plane. I chose the latter. Actually, flying locally in Ethiopia is quite easy and relatively cheap. Ethiopian Airlines has a fleet of turboprop Bombadiers that go to a number of cities in the country. Happily, I did not even need a COVID test to fly locally. 

The town I was going to is called Arbe Mensch (at least that is how I would spell it in English). This was the first time I was going. The plan was to meet up with the group on the morning of their first day. Mesfin, our program officer had gone ahead by several days. Arbe Mensch seems to be a kind of tourist town by all appearances. It is small, relatively clean and sits on a 500-foot escarpment above a canopied rain forest that runs around two of Ethiopia's biggest lakes. Coming in by plane is actually a great view of the landscape. The view from the hotel, when I arrived was equally impressive as all the rooms sat on the edge of the escarpment and overlooked a canopy of trees several hundred feet below with the lakes in the distance. The hotel offered safaris, although I don't know what animals one would see in the forest. The schedule of the training I was attending was not going to allow any such excursions. 

The occasion was a training attended by a number of our partners offered by a technical expert from CFGB (Canadian Foodgrains Bank-- one of MCC's back donors). The person giving the training, Neil Miller, is a good friend of Rebecca and me as he and his wife live in Arusha and went to our church there. We sang in choir with Neil sometimes, and Rebecca and he led music together as well.

Several of our food security partners have been instrumental in disseminating a low-tillage agriculture approach called conservation agriculture, which has been adopted into the Ministry of Agriculture agricultural extension system. As they try to scale up they are working on ways to mechanize the approach. Neil was training on ways to control pests, appropriate cover crops, and also brought a single furrow 'ripper' developed in Tanzania that can be pulled by oxen that makes a furrow and seeds at the same time in the proper depth and spacing for best CA results. It can be ripped through a mulched field without disturbing the soil that much.

The Tanzania business model is to have a farmer own the plow and rent out his services to a number of neighbors. Neil was making some modifications to the ripper and wanted to literally 'try it out in the field by having a farmer pull it behind some oxen and plant corn. 

The test in the field happened on the third day of the visit. The first two days were spent in a large conference room at the Paradise Lodge hotel where partners shared their experience with improving the method and sharing technical details on cover crops, fertilizer, and pest control. 

It was a good opportunity to network with our food security partners and see what they are doing. At meals, I took the opportunity to practice my Amharic that Rebecca and I are fast and furiously trying to absorb. Mesfin, MCC's Food Security Program Manager was particularly helpful in teaching me some farm-related Amharic. 

Last Thursday was the field visit and our group piled into a bus and headed upcountry. Actually, it was quite a steep climb up higher into the escarpment which offered a commanding view of the entire city and lake from the highway. 

The bus let us off near a small village and we walked several kilometers to visit some model farms where CA has been practiced for several years. We met a farmer who proudly showed us his corn crop intercropped with haricot beans. 

Our second stop, several more kilometers away was an elderly woman and her husband who had some very nice fields with various vegetables and legumes. She took us to meet another couple whom she had trained and had their own field.

After lunch at a well-known fish restaurant, we headed to a research farm with the new ripper (maresha in Amharic). As planned, Neil hooked it to some oxen and gave it a test run. The first try was not entirely successful because the oxen were a bit uncooperative. After making an adjustment he was going to try it again when it began to pour rain. We had to delay the completion of the demonstration to the next day. 

I, unfortunately, had a morning flight on Friday and missed the demonstration but heard it went well. I was actually happy to get home and see the family after 4 days away, and I know leaving Rebecca alone to parent and do her job is a real challenge. 

We had a good weekend together, although there was a lot of homework on Saturday, and I had to prepare a Sunday school lesson for kids at our new church. Fortunately, that went well the next day. Oren spent a fair amount of time playing a gigantic game of Axis and Allies. 

One Sunday highlight was the launching of our new small group. we had 4 people join on week one by are hoping that a few more will come as well as we get more established. 

Neil dropped this week as well on his way back to Arusha. He had dinner with us and it was good for Rebecca to have a chance to catch up with him since I had a chance during the trainings. 

Rebecca and I, as mentioned above have really been plowing into Amharic. Despite it being a difficult o language, we are finding we are beginning to be able to have simple conversations with our colleagues and staff at tea and lunchtime.

Travel has afforded some time to listen to some audiobooks. I just finished Ready Player One, which was interesting in terms of a genre I would not normally read. I also am listening to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I have to say, it is nothing like I would expect, and am fascinated by the focus on relationships, particularly creation to creator, and the 'monster's fascination with the family he spied on to become 'civilized'. At times it sounds like the 'beast' is narrating Pride and Prejudice. There is little interest in the technical aspects of the animation of the monster, something that a male author would likely find far more interesting. Definitely worth listening to if you think you know the story but have not heard it from the source. I am not sure that the 'moral' as it is often described (man's hubris), is actually completely accurate. There is something about the pathos of this 'beast' rejected by his creator that seems to be a comment on faith. More when I finish. 

We are heading to Kenya next week for a Rep's meeting. It is term 1 break so the whole family is going. More on that later as well.