Baking With No Oven

I love to bake, but it has been unattainable since arriving in Tanzania. Everything I know how to bake needs an oven (hence it is called baking). Unfortunately I only have a double hot plate.

Today I could not stand it any longer. So I tried to make cookies. I looked up a recipe for "no bake" cookies. I found a recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies that I had all the ingredients for... well with a few substitutes. So I attempted to make them. The result was a liquid mess. It looked like someone was trying to make brownie mix but added too much water. It was slightly disheartening.

I did not want to wash them down the sink, because I used up a lot of our ingredients, so I showed them to Justin. He thought they looked like a start of something good. Justin went across the street and got eggs and flour. We added an egg, a pinch of baking powder, a pinch of baking soda (we didn't know which would be better, so we used both), and some flour.

We kept adding flour until we got it looking something recognizable as batter. We then started to cook them on the hot plate like a pancake. It took about two hours watching the hot plate to finish the batch. They resulted in a shapeless chocolate mass that is sweet and chocolaty. Some of our latter ones looked a little more like cookies. They do not taste like anything that I have ever had before, but they are really good.  

-Lauren

Language School

Justin and I spent the last three weeks at language school in Arusha, Tanzania studying Swahili. I was in the beginner’s class and Justin was in the intermediate class. We learned more than I ever thought possible. I thought my brain was going to explode. There is so much that I was given to learn that it will take another few months for me to actually learn everything. We had pretty much the same schedule, but Justin studied a little more advanced material. We had six hours of classes a day with a break about every two hours. Our schedule was:

7:30am--wake up (This is an hour and a half later than we normally wake up, so it was nice to get to sleep in a bit)

8:00am--breakfast (They provided us with delicious breakfast. I normally had an omelet and bacon on toast)

8:30am--class starts (During this time we would go over home work, and review what we had already covered)

10:00am--tea break (Tanzania was once a colony of England)

10:30am--learn something knew (This is the time that we would be introduced to new vocabulary and grammar)

12:30pm--lunch time (There was a mix between Tanzanian food and Western food. It was all really tasty)

1:00pm--break time (A time to rest your brain before going back to class. I normally read during this time)

2:00pm--afternoon class (This was a time to reinforce what we had learned so far that day, through reading, role playing, and games)

4:00pm--we are done for the day (During this time I did homework, read, and played volley ball)

6:00pm--dinner time (Once again we would have some great food, and a delicious dessert)

After dinner we would socialize with the other people taking the course. We met some really nice people from all over the world. Our evenings and weekends were free. Which was much needed, because by the end of the day I thought my brain was going to explode. 

- Lauren

Visit To Ndanda

This past weekend we traveled to Ndanda, Tanzania which is home to the priory of the sisters we are working for and also the home to the abbey of the associated brothers. The prioress, Sr. Raphaela was in Mtwara for a board meeting at the school, so we rode with her back to the Ndanda to have an orientation at the priory and to see Ndanda. The abbey and the priory in Ndanda have been there for over one hundred years. The abbey was founded in 1906 and the priory two years later. The Benedictines were the original Catholic missionaries to the whole southern half of Tanzania. 

 It takes about two hours to drive to Ndanda from Mtwara. It was our first trip into the really rural areas of Tanzania. Mtwara seems to serve as a regional market town for what otherwise is a very rural part of Tanzania. The landscape going out to Ndanda was beautiful. The terrain is hilly and is a mix of forested and brush land type of foliage. Most of what seemed like it was being farmed was cashew and coconut trees as well as corn and millet. The car also frequently had to slow down for cows or goats that were crossing or just wondering in the road; there are not a lot of fences in Tanzania, and most animal are free range. We passed many small villages along the way. Most of the houses were built in the traditional way with sticks and clay and had thatched roofs. There are still many mud houses in Mtwara, but most here are made of concrete blocks and have corrugated steel roofs. 

 Ndanda is a peaceful and prayerful place. We stayed for four night in the guest house across from the convent. Sunday we went to morning prayer and mass with the sisters in their chapel and then went on a hike with Enrique and Carolina from Mission Doctors up to a spring fed swimming pond. It was a nice hike and took about an hour, so it was nice to go for a swim. Then for the next few days we had some classes given by some of the sisters and one of the brothers. We received a nice overview of Benedictine spirituality, the history of the Benedictines in Tanzania, and Tanzania culture. 

 

It was a very nice trip to Ndanda. We enjoyed seeing another part of Tanzania and spending time with the sisters and Enrique and Carolina. It was also very encouraging to see the foundation that the missionary before us have laid and know that we have a wider support group in Tanzania than just Mtwara.

First Week

We have been in Tanzania about a week now. After the first few days of orientation we moved into our new home on the outskirts of Mtwara. We are living in what we were told is part of what used to be Aquinas School before it grew too big and was moved to a new campus about a mile away. The building is part of the parish complex of Christ the Redeemer parish. The rest of the structure and the adjacent building is occupied by a kindergarten.

On Monday were started coming to the school for the first time and have been meeting the teachers and other staff as well as getting to know how the school operates here. The school is run by the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing. It is one of the nicest secondary schools in the area and has around two hundred seventy students enrolled. Around two hundred of the female students are boarders and live on campus in dormitories or the hostel as they say here. The remainder of the students, boys and girls, walk or bike from the surrounding area. The school is well equipped with solar panels that were donated a few years ago since the city electric grid does not come out to the school. The city water does make it out here, but the school also has its own water storage and rain water system, so overall the school is well prepared to handle what can be an unreliable municipal system.

Tuesday we were able to sit down with Sister Maureen the headmistress and discuss what will be our responsibilities here at school. I will be taking over many of the jobs for which Earl Fong the outgoing Lay Mission-Helper was responsible. This includes creating the timetable for which teacher teaches which class at what time, maintaining the donated computers (many of which are aging fast) and keeping the records for the school backed-up. I will also be teaching math and physics and possibly computers. I don't know when I will start teaching but it shouldn't be until at least when we get back from language school in August. Lauren will also be taking over many of the responsibilities of Diane Prell, Earl's wife. This means that she will be in charge of the library and book catalog and checkout records, all of which are done by hand. She will also be teaching bible knowledge. In fact one of the bible classes currently has no teacher, so Lauren just found out today that she will be covering that class tomorrow. That seems to be the norm for here in Tanzania; things are fluid, so we will be fluid with them.

-Justin