It’s Wednesday September 12th, I arrived back to
Kampala yesterday in the late afternoon.
We had spent 12 days in Tanzania, and I was happy to be home.
The trip was a success.
We trained roughly leaders who were from a variety of different
backgrounds. It was a great time of
learning, sharing and growing. The
response from the participants was overwhelmingly positive.
 |
| The 10 Principles of Leadership; Shinyanga Tanzania! |
Life, in Tanzania, had to be lived through translation.
Tanzania is the land of Swahili. Swahili
is the language that is used throughout this vast country, just as English is
used in Uganda. While Tanzania was
colonized by the British, the people of Tanzania rejected the white man and
everything about him… including his language, during their independence struggle. Thankfully we travelled with a great
Tanzanian guy who speaks perfect Swahili and English. We would have been totally lost without him!
Tanzania is a beautiful country. It’s huge.
You can just feel space, it’s like being out west in America, where the
land just rolls on. Instead of plains
this is savanna, broken only by the occasional hill. Throughout the journey to Shinyanga the
landscaped changed drastically a number of times. Mwanza, one of the larger towns in Tanzania,
is called the rock city. It has many strange
rock formations, not unlike the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. Other places have large hills that have
massive cliffs which slope down towards the rocky shores of Lake Victoria.
Our journey was long… I will never again complain about 18
hours to Bujumbora or Arusha… this was 24 hours on a bus (12 hours per day over
2 days), with an overnight in a city called Bukoba which is fairly close to the
border with Uganda. We had countless
adventures… but I am sorry to say I am too tired right now to recount any of
them.
For me this trip was a little bit of a “return to Africa”… I
had been more stability in Kampala the last few months, and I had been living
how I live and thrive in Uganda. But
this trip put me right into the heart of African life, and I was reminded of
all it’s joys and pains. It was a good
reminder, but it made me very tired.
Today I am home, resting and trying to fix my poor beat up
body. I am on malaria medication, which
makes me tired and nauseous, so I need to take it easy. For some reason I am in cleaning/giving things
away mood… my house keeper is getting a mini Christmas today. I have the best house keeper ever… she comes
once a week and is probably one of the happiest, most joyful people I’ve met in
Africa. She is super great, so I always
try to think of ways to do nice things for her.
Today it was a bunch of random gifts from my closet and telling her she
can borrow my children’s books for her son (in sort of a library capacity). J
No comments:
Post a Comment