Updates 31.1.2008

Erne, thanks for making an entry here, and reminding me of the existence of my blog. And, karibu Tanzania!

I have found it rather hard to maintain these pages. Not that there would be nothing to write – far from that – it is just surprisingly hard to write when I can not picture the average reader, or any reader! I have always thought my writing is for myself only, but now it seems that a writing has to have someone to read it so it becomes meaningful. Is that so?

A lot is happening here on the hills of Iringa. Sometime at the end of last year we crashed our car on the road to Ruaha – well, I did that, not “us” as my friend pointed it out. I lost the control of car, hit a tree and rolled on to the right side of the car in between two large rocks. It was a lot of screaming, shattered glass, climbing out of the wrecked vehicle – getting dark, no people, no villages and of course no mobile signal. All ended well though, we were helped by a bicyclist, other bypassers, and some Iringan people driving past. Thank you all of you who stopped there – the Good Samaritans were many. As a matter fact, all bypassers stopped there to help – and unlike I have always been warned, no-one tried to rob us, no-one even wanted any money for their help.

Work is keeping us pleasantly busy and motivated. Jyri is at times traveling for weeks and I have to say I am a bit envious about the new places he has seen so far. It makes me feel my adventures are limited on the route between Ilembula-Makambako-Iringa-Dar es Salaam. However I also know the other side of the coin: days and days behind the steering wheel, at times nearly impassable mud roads, every night in a new guesthouse, sometimes next to a noisy disco, long meetings, heat and tiredness, and eventually when you return home, you return with a stomach bug, malaria or bad flu. It takes a week to recover from such a trip. This is not a complain in any sense, it only tells how the external factors take a heavy toll on what one can do or accomplish here. It has also taught us to take things easier and agree to be more slow and less efficient than you think you should be.

This year is going to be busy and active in my work as well. Probably the busiest year of all those four years this project will take. We will have quite a number of marriage seminars in Southern Diocese area, we soon begin training the voluntary focus group leaders in Makambako, we put remarkably more resources on school counseling programme development and research in general. Also the diaconic activities at Ilembula hospital will increse in terms of home based care and hospital counseling. I will also do some teaching at Tumaini, a bit of gender issues and HIV/AIDS. This is going to be an exciting and eventful year I think.

Kaisli and Pihla are working really hard at school. Pihla is developing her reading, writing and math skills - and all of them both in English and Finnish. Kaisli’s curriculum is also getting quite serious now with more demanding subjects than previously. Pihla is being active in football, community service and dance clubs, Kaisli does community service and horse riding. There is not much free time after school, clubs and homework.

Then we have also faced a terrible tragedy. Our Cookie, the best and most human-like cat in the world, was brutally slaughtered by neighborhood dogs the other weekend we were in Dar es Salaam. It was such a shock, poor Cookie being eaten by a pack of six half-wild dogs! And she was being pregnant, too. Now we have two 5-weeks’ old kittens at home, Mari and Minni (the latter may turn out to be Mikki as we are not sure if she is she or he). They are helping the post-Cookie situation a lot.