Feeling Right At Home

After our last meeting on Thursday, a local farmer named Ibrahim invited us to his farm along the road. He had not, as many had, invested in a new cement brick farmhouse, but apparently "plowed" his money back into his farm, which was JUST AMAZING! He proudly pointed to tall trees in the distance and said that his farms were, "all the way there"! He in fact owns four different farms, including one in Bagomoyo, which is hours north of Dar es Salaam.

He also serves as a "farmer-motivator" who has received extra training from HPI in livestock keeping and farming, and in turn is responsible for providing extra training to the other farmers. He sure must've learned SOMETHING, cuz his place was fine! He had goats, as well as his own chickens, turkeys (the first i'd seen in this country), ducks, pigeons, and even two guinea hens! It made me miss my "Dream Hometown", Beebe Arkansas!

His "man" climbed several trees, and before i knew it, i was being fed fresh coconut, papaya and passion fruit for lunch, as well as given some for my travels back to Dar! "Vizuri sana!" The pictures are me-stuffing my face, Ibrahim and his wife, and the view as you walk out from the front of his house. I told him that, to many folks this would look like the road to paradise! He smiled proudly.

A Fine Time in Tanzania

I just got back into Dar es Salaam after a week in "da bush" - staying in a village about 2 hours south from here along the coast. Not AT the beach, mind you, but near enough that the coconut palms all lean decidedly west. After a few days of finding WHERE i could eat and HOW to sleep comfortably under a mosquito net, i began to feel right at home in Mkuranga, but must come in town to tap into the internet and catch up on the news. Maybe that's a mistake, eh?

The photo here is from Thursday's HPI member meeting in Hoyoyo village, where they have imported dairy goata (mbuzi) , local chicken (kuku), and fish (samaki) farming projects. The ponds for fish farming dried up during the drought of the last two years but it has since been re-dug, filled and is awaiting a new supply of fingerlings, which the locals referred to as "seed".

The bad news was that a shipment had already been sent once, but was overturned on the local highway. No one was hurt, but thousands of li'l fishies roasted on the road. Or perhaps they survive still in the pond-sized potholes that dot the roads around the city.

The good news is that, unbeknownst to the community, another shipment is scheduled for this coming week! They will be SO happy! They are a very motivated group, and even have their own "cheer", which i can't exactly duplicate, but at the end it goes, "Hoy, Hoy, Hoy!", just like something heard at a soccer game! Cool. More pictures with the next post...

A Hills View from Africa

“Hamjambo!”

Greetings to you from Africa, the home of the Rift Valley – “the birthplace of us all” as many have claimed. This is a contentious argument from people blinded by their religiosity AND science, who are missing the whole point.

Please Pardon Me

I must address this issue before going further. I will surely offend many, but my vision from so far away impels me. Please lend me what attention you may afford and I will try and be brief and direct.

Evolution + Creation = God

To digress just a bit, the Rift Valley if a long line of fertile land stretching a great length along the fertile river valleys and lakes along Eastern Africa. If you look at a topographical map (Google it, or look in any encyclopedia!), it is that green strip running north & south between Kenya and South Africa. It is where they have found many of the most ancient of human remains. For those of you who are visual learners, think of the lush veldt as seen in “The Lion King”.

Some Evolutionists believe that man developed from this region and extended its reach from that original point.

Some Creationists believe the literal, day by day creation story as relayed by God through the Old Testament prophets of the Bible. So, Man was created on Saturday, and on Sunday God saw that it was all good and took a rest. Much deserved, in my mind.

Many others find a niche somewhere in between these two concepts, while others come up with their own “truths” outside of both views. These are too many to recount and an amusement well beyond my subject.

There have been very many resources dedicated to this debate; many brilliant minds dedicated to the work, much paper consumed in the publishing of their treatises, and hours and energy expended beyond my meager ability to measure. There have also been lives lost and blood spilt over this divisive study. We will come back to this word later: divisive.

Flash News: this whole field is a big waste of time. It is not important whether you come from 6,000 year old dust from Central Iraq, or if you are a descendent of a monkey, or even an alien being born of a pod left by alien visitors. The “how” of our creation is completely irrelevant.

Do you remember the “5 W’s” of journalism? Who-what-where when-why; only at the end comes the “how”. How is at the end for a good reason.

“How” comes from man’s natural curiosity; his incessant nature to seek out knowledge. The story was related well in the Book of Genesis. Man ate from the Tree of Knowledge and has thirsted for it ever since. We want to know. That is our human nature.

From this point of seeking knowledge, our “sin nature” (translated many different ways in different belief systems – use your own filter on this term) leads us to focus on ourselves: our own desires and our own understanding.

It is these/this nature that calls us to historically struggle with our “How”, to the ignorance of the “Why”. Why are we here? “What” are we to do? (knowledge being one of them).

The “Where” & “When” of creation are equally useless questions; both regressive and wasteful. I believe the answer to “Who” is painfully obvious to each of us, although the label we place on that which we can never fully understand may vary. It is painful only in that it is so often ignored during the course of life.

It is only the “Why” that leads us forward. It is only the “Why” that gives us direction.

Perhaps I too am contributing to this wasteful thinking by spending my few column-inches on the subject. But I will say that, while I sit here, eight time zones away on another hemisphere, I have also invested in another human being. She is labeled here as a “servant”, and came to clean up the mess I have made in my room. We have shared each others language (and she is much more fluent in mine than I am in hers), and I have shown her the similarities and differences between a “caribou”, a “karibao” and “karibu”, the last being their word for “welcome”. I now believe she is much smarter than many of you in this one field.

She understands me a little better now, and she knows that I have respect for her – that she has value beyond that which her label offers. I have shown her “love”.

This is my “Why”.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31

What is your “Why”? Can you put your “Why” before your “How”, and “When” and “Where”? Can it even come before your “Who”?

I am beyond my word-count, and my time is running short. The end of the rainy season in Tanzania approaches: I can hear the thundering, ancient signals of her farewell message as it slowly moves toward my room across the tin roof drums stretching out below my window like a sea of gray and rust. The coconut palms, banana and papaya all wave their farewell, and the “how” is once again painfully unimportant and maybe even disrespectful of the creation that exists in the present. Only the “Why” can truly fulfill us and allow us to love and enjoy all that is. May each of you come to know your “why” in a deeper and ever-more gratifying way.

“Nenda kwa amani o Mungo akubariki” – Go with God’s blessing.

Reach Paul and Julie Hill at hillsview@sbcglobal.net or at PO Box 599, Beebe, AR 72012