Joy and Strength

“Though the fig tree does not bud

 and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no fruit,

though there are no sheep in the pen

 and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength”

-Habakkuk 3: 17-19

Habakkuk isn’t a very well known book, I had never read any of it before last night, but a book that I’m reading called, Calm My Anxious Heart, mentioned this passage so I checked it out.  Most of my posts in this blog since I’ve come to Africa have been pretty perky and just based on what we’ve been doing, I haven’t said much about how I am actually doing.  I don’t want to discount anything I have been doing because it has all been fabulous and I am enjoying being in Tanzania, I love Tanzania.  However, at the same time, these past weeks have been hard.  It’s hard to be away from my family and friends, people who know me and encourage me.  It’s hard to be in a new place and have to figure out where you fit in the group.  It’s hard to have minimal contact with the people I love back home.  I have had a lot of encouragement from people back home through emails, but its hard not to have that encouragement be in the same time zone.  There isn’t anyone hear who really shares my faith and it’s really hard to be only one who believes something.  Part of me just wants to be connected to my email all the time in order to get strength from people back home, but I know that doing so isn’t feasible or isn’t pushing me to get strength from God.  I have been asking God, “Why”, a lot lately, like “Why do I feel alone?”, “Why did you bring me here?”, “Why why why”.  This is why I put the passage from Habakkuk in the beginning.  Habakkuk was telling God, though all this stuff in my life seems crummy and things aren’t going the way I would like, I will find my strength and joy in you.  Goodness, that is hard to say and even harder to follow through with actions.  So far, I haven’t done so well with following through with actions, but today is a new day. 

Thank you for letting me share where I am at and thank you for your numerous prayers.  I really appreciate them. 

Now I actually have something interesting about what we have been doing to share.  In Environmental Policy, we have been learning a lot about organizations called PRAs or Participatory Rural Appraisals.  Essentially PRAs are a different way to look at outreach and community programs than the traditional outsider donor programs.  They are a response to the disillusion in most developed countries that have given millions of dollars to developing countries but haven’t seen much change.  For instance, Americans have given billions of dollars to programs to halt poverty in Africa, however the poverty rate hasn’t budged and donors stop giving money because it doesn’t do anything.  Most of these programs haven’t accomplished much because they have outside technical experts come into communities and introduce a program to the community, but once the experts leave the projects fall apart because the local people don’t know how to continue or fix projects.  Therefore, PRAs come alongside local communities and use local participation as it main focus to empower communities.  There is a lot more effort that goes into PRAs because teams need to make relationships with communities, gather lots of data, and give up control to the local people, which means even if a PRA knows a better way to solve a problem, if that isn’t feasible for the local community, the local community needs to do what they want.   I think I’m probably rambling about something not very interesting to the majority, but I have really enjoyed learning about PRAs and really agree with their methods. 

Anyways, today we were able to test out some of the methods of PRAs in our own village of Rhotia.  We were split into groups, assigned a local guide who would act as our translator, and a specific problem we were to ask people about.  My group had to go around to farmers and ask about their crop preferences in terms of profitability, inputs such as water and fertilizer, capital inputs and arduousness. First of all, our guide, Harry was fantastic!  He is from Rhotia and has lived here his entire life.  He wants to go to college somewhere and study wildlife management.  Once we were done with our assignment, we were just talking and he was asking us if colleges or organizations in America ever sponsor international students because he doesn’t have enough money to go to school in Tanzania, but his dream is to get a degree in wildlife management.  The three other girls in my group and I are going to research that and get back to him, it is the least we can do and can be our way of saying thank you to him for being our translator and guide.  He would be a great candidate; he is trilingual and very competent and bright.  I hope something can be done for Harry. 

It was also really interesting talking to him about the differences between Tanzania and America.  He was telling us how everyone in the world wants to live in America, that it symbolizes hope and a better life.  He told us, “Ask anyone anywhere in the world if they would want to live in America, and they would all say yes”.  He was asking us if we had any tribes in America like they do in Africa and what the people are like.  I tried explaining about Native American tribes and how they aren’t really able to practice their culture and traditional practices like the tribes in Tanzania can.  We had some good conversations. 

For our actual field exercise, we interviewed seven families who are farmers. Wow.  Being farmers in Tanzania is so different than in America.  First of all, they plant corn they can actually eat off the stalk.  The vast majority of farming is subsistence farming, you can’t sell corn in the markets so unless farmers grow beans or wheat, they don’t sell any of their crops.  The four main crops are maize, pigeon peas, beans, and wheat; though we saw lots of tomato plants by homes and one family farmed sunflowers for the seeds and oil.  It’s really hard for crops here, especially in the dry season.  All the farmers we talked to told us how droughts have been getting worse each year and how the climate is making it hard to have good yields.  A few years ago they could produce a yield of 15 bags of pigeon peas from two acres but now they can only get about 7 bags.  The only irrigation the farmers around Rhotia use is rainfall, so during the dry season they can’t plant crops that need a lot of water, like fruit or bananas.  When we went to Mtu wa Mbu last week, we saw huge banana plantations, but they have many streams in and around Mtu wa Mbu that allow for bananas to grow. 

All the people we met were very friendly and helpful.  Most of them tried to teach us more Swahili so we could converse more.  I really like this aspect of environmental work, finding where the environment and people meet.  I’ve been hoping this semester would offer some more insight into what I want to do in the future because I don’t really know what I want to do, and I think I’m finding I want to work with the environment and with people.  I think I am finding I don’t want to work in wildlife management either.  I love animals, but I don’t think I love them in the way that I want to dedicate my life’s work to animals.  I really like the idea of being apart of a PRA. So we shall see what the future holds.  Until next time!