Nduli

Church today was 20 km north of town in Nduli. This is the site of the Iringa airport where one can fly to Dar Es Salaam for $260 dollars and 2 hours instead of 10 hours in the bus. This is tempting. Anyway here is Nduli Luterhan Church -- a cute little church with a 10 year-old building.

We had the pleasure of the Tumaini University Choir at the church and they filled the building with song and dance. This little church is in an area that is very arid. One of the preaching points of this parish has had no rain in 4 years. You can look off further north and see the dry land. The area around us at Iringa is getting green and the brown hills are lush green again. The service included a long description of all the agricultural and community development projects underway: bee keeping, tree planting, corn and soy milling, peanut crushing for peanut butter, etc. The end of the service included communion at the rail.

After each service we gather around the main entrance of the church for a final blessing and it this case a peanut butter and honey sale. The Tumaini Choir sang as well.

And the kids had fun with the drums.

We made it home after 3 hours in church and another hour for lunch at the pastor's house. For such a dry and hot place, Nduli's church and pastor's house were in very good shape. The congregation is building a new parsonage next to the existing one because the old parsonage is settling and some of the walls are cracked. The new house is twice the size of the original one.

The challenge for the past few days has been electricity. We have experienced 10 hours of no power on Friday (cooked over a kerosene stove), 6 hours with no electricity on Saturday (went to the restaurant up the hill), and today we thought we had broken the streak. We started dinner about 6:30 and finished cooking the sauce and noodles and cookies just as the power went out again. We bumped into each other until someone found the headlights and got candles lit for dinner. Then 20 minutes later poof, the power returns. Then 20 minutes later, poof the power goes out for another 10 minutes. It has been on since. Some of these outages are storm related and some are due to the limited generating capacity in Tanzania -- we don't know which are which.

We now have a contingency plan for Thansgiving: if the power is out at 5 we take everyone up to the restaurant up the hill that has a generator. If the power is on, we have chicken and stuffing with some of the other Americans here in the apartment. Well the dogs are barking so that must mean it is time to try to sleep.