Home again, home again....

My flight left Mbeya at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning. We walked in the door on Baker Rd. at 4 p.m. this afternoon (Thursday), which was 2 a.m. Friday in Tanzania. Frankly, I'm way too tired to do the math necessary to know how long that trip took, but it felt like...days. The trip included three flights of 90 minutes, 10.5 hours, and 10 hours, and layovers of 12 hours and 3 hours, plus a 2-hour drive home from PDX.
Yeah, I suppose I could do that math to come up with the total, but even that is beyond my consciousness right now. So here are some random pics from the trip:

While in Mumba I stayed at the Carroway's house. They're here in the States on furlough so the Bentons (more on them soon) and I had the run of the place. Living in a very rural area of Tanzania includes some interesting dynamics, including taking a shower. Forget normal water heaters and prepare yourself for a wood-fired model. The wood goes in that tray underneath the tank and then routes to the shower left of this contraption.

A few years ago they updated to an electrical system affectionately called The Widow Maker. On the wall inside the shower (but it's fairly high on the wall) is a switch. Turn on the "cold" faucet and then the switch and you get immediately hot water! Pretty impressive, huh?
Don't ask me what all those tubes and wires are for, I was just happy to have a hot shower.
To turn it off you reverse the procedure: shut off the switch and then the water. I was told that if I turned the water off and left the switch on I'd ruin the system.

So why do they call it The Widow Maker? Maybe this pic from the back/sink side of the shower helps explain that.

Yeah, I'm not sure exposed wire connections meet code here. When giving me instructions on this contraption Mike said, "Don't touch anything except the faucet and the switch."
Got it.

My first Sunday in Tanzania I went to church twice. The first service as at a mostly ex-pat church service that's done in both English and Swahili. Most of the wazungus (Whites) who attend are missionaries from a variety of countries. Attendance varies depending on who's in town; this Sunday they had about 30 in attendance.
It's a pretty humble building from the outside.

From the inside it's another example of the difference in building standards around the world. The good news: engineered trusses. The bad news: there isn't a stick of wood longer than 48".
I guess this illustrates that it's not the building that matters, but what goes on inside it.
(And in this case the sermon was a hot mess of bad exegesis and bad theology, but at least the whole thing was congruent.)

I've dozed off twice since I started this post. That's what happens when you've traveled halfway around the world and been up for almost 48 hours. Never mind what time it is; I'm going to bed.