Sunday service for Dale was off north of town and a little far for him to return to get us between services. Thus the Stiles (-Dale) and Petits headed to the little Anglican church near the Neema Craft Center about 3 blocks from the apartment. This is a service held in English on the 1st and 3rd Sunday by the Iringa Christian Fellowship -- a non-denominational group of folks from all over. The crowd included teachers from Australia, water engineers from the U.K., missionaries from Japan, visitors from the U.S. and Finns teaching at Tumaini. I saw the Finns at the University but never was able to corner them to say hello. There were enough children to even have two classes of Sunday School during the sermon. It was a pleasant break from 120 db church services and my ears don't ring all night on Sunday.
After the service, the group has tea and cakes (cookies to you) and fellowship hour. We finally got to meet many of the folks we had seen walking around town. We headed back to the apartment to prepare to host dinner for Pastor Ilomo and his wife and son. Pastor Ilomo taught at Luther Seminar last year and came to Fish Lake Lutheran Church one weekend during his stay. We wanted to try our hand at an African Dinner so Carrie and Sharon and Annica cooked up rice, cabbage salad, beans, papaya crisp and pizza. Wait! Who put pizza on the menu? The party went well and we made arrangements with Pastor Ilomo to visit a lake in southern Tanzania in a couple of weeks.
An interesting part of the evening was a discussion of the various tribes of Tanzania. Many of the present generation still identify with the tribes of their parents but most marriages are mixed tribes. With the mobility of the population and especially students going off to school far from home, this country is integrating the tribes. There are still many dialects and languages spoken in the villages, but most of the population speaks the language of their father, the language of their mother and Swahili (the common language of Eastern Africa).
Monday is back to school. Still no rain and we were promised at least 3 days of rain in October.
Are you going to Matema Beach on Lake Nyasa? It is really nice, like a warm water Lake Superior with famous fish, cichlids, and a nice but strenuous hike to a waterfall.
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