4 Months

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the 30^th, which means that it’ll be 4 months to the day that we arrived in Tanzania. On the one hand, it feels like we’ve been here forever. But at the same time, America seems less far away now than it did 4 months ago. I think that’s probably because things are just now evening out and feeling quasi-normal. So, I figure that if things are less alien, then I’m feeling more at-home.

That’s not to say that we’ve moved in our home yet. We’re still squatting in a house of other missioners. But we hope to sign the rental agreement to our place in the next few days. Then we’ll slowly move in after that. We’ve actually already acquired a good amount of the most essential things we’ll need to survive in our house. Water filter, stove, fridge, plates and silverware, bed, water buckets, towels, sheets. The hubby and I spent 2 days in the big outdoor market last week, pricing things, bartering to lower the price, and eventually buying a bunch of this stuff. We were very proud of our successes because we’re not big on shopping in general, let alone in a place where we’re not fluent in the language, where you have to barter for pricing, and where people are yelling out to you to buy, buy, buy!

But still, it’s a lot harder here to move into a house than it is back in the States. There has to be a lot of things in place that we wouldn’t even think about otherwise. Here we have to have an evening guard hired. And we need to supply the guard with a flashlight, thermos of hot tea, and an outdoor chair. Then, we need to have padlocks for all the gates and doors, plus the gas canisters, and other things. We need the water filter hooked up. The stove and fridge also have to get hooked up because houses here don’t come with appliances. The fridge needs a special outlet called a “fridge guard” because we have power spikes here and it’ll fry the fridge without this outlet. Houses in Tanzania also don’t have kitchens with counters, so we need to order and have them made. These are just to name a few things. It’s all a really interesting process and I’m super glad that we’re not in a pinch and need to move in in a rush.

So, needless to say, four months along and things are moving “polepole” as we say here (slowly). But I’m grateful that it is, indeed, moving along. I’m also super grateful to all the MK folks here who have helped us in countless ways.

Here’s a quick snapshot of our future house. 

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*And, as an fyi to those who are wondering, we won't be using that satellite dish. It was just on the house from the previous renter.