Sunday and the living is easy

Sharon, Caleb and I attended the Lutheran Cathedral Church this morning. The rest accompanied Dale on his last preaching trip to one of Bega Kwa Bega's partner churches. The rest of the day was reading and relaxing until dinner. I finished a book called "The Zanzibar Chest" by Adrian Hartley. He was born in Africa of English parents and a family that had been part of the British Foreign Service for a couple of generations. When Adrian left school he became a journalist for Reuters because of his intimate knowledge of eastern Africa. He then reported on the revolutions in Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia and the Balkans from the late 80's to the late 90's. It is a very harsh book to read because of the atrocities committed during these times, but it gives you an idea of what this area has gone through as these countries become independent.

Caleb and I did have one more wall switch to replace in our laundry room. These switches just wear out because the pivot pieces are plastic and get turned on and off many times a day to save electricity. We again went to our little hardware fellow, but this time I was wearing pants and a nice dress shirt. He still thinks we are a little weird! The switch went in and we now have things working nicely. I could fix a leak created yesterday from the plumber pulling apart every valve in the place, but there is nothing more dangerous than trying to fix old faucets. They tend to disintegrate on contact and that would require another visit from the plumber.

This evening we dined at the house of Pastor Ilomo, his wife Flora and son Luke (Caleb's age). Pastor Ilomo has studied in Germany and Finland and loves to get folks together to do things. He lead our trip to Lake Nyasa about a month ago. Tonight's activity was making bread. Luke and Caleb made some nice wheat bread from flour milled in Ilomo's home town.

They mixed and kneaded and baked the bread and each family brought a loaf home as our parting gift. Kind of an interesting way to keep the kids busy when you don't have ESPN or an XBOX. The Ilomo's home is oh the hill above our apartment and it is still a work in progress. The most interesting part is that the living room faces up the hill and the bedrooms look out over Iringa. Sitting in most Tanzanian living rooms is like sitting in a cell. There are usually windows that are heavily curtained and one cannot see out. I don't know what they don't want to look at, but as you can see from our photos, the scenery is beautiful.

Here is our parting picture of the Ilomo's and Sharon and I. Dale will put up the picture of his family with the Ilomo's.

We are ready to start our final week of class. I will hand out a review paper for the Discrete Structures class and I am asking the Thesis class to submit a list of at least 20 references relevant to their chosen topic. Those lists are coming in via e-mail so it will be interesting to see what they find.

As if to add to the noise, I think the ambulance service or the police service found the siren switch on their dashboard. It is 10:45 PM and there is not a car on the road. I started hearing the siren go about 5 minutes ago and it will go until the car gets to its destination without warning a single car -- just making lots of noise and disturbing the peace. We haven't heard sirens before and now they are using them at times when it really isn't necessary. And I doubt that during the day anyone will hear them in their cars as no truck has a muffler anymore. I look forward to the peace and quiet of downtown Minneapolis.

By the way, we did see your snow by looking at the Minnesota Department of Transportation traffic cameras. Looks like we will have a white Christmas after all.