Habari!
We have returned safely from Tanzania after two weeks away. The trip was good and productive, we accomplished all our goals for the project. For the rest of our time here, we will be working on finalizing the drawings. Praise God that we all made it safely back with no complications! Sorry for the lateness of this update. I planned on having more inspiring things to say and cool things that I learned about my future on the trip. But after more than a week after I've returned, I've had no super amazing revelations about my experience and that's about the longest I can delay this post.
Going to Tanzania was certainly new, but it was also quite familiar in other ways. The buildings were kinda like poorer versions of what I had seen from my travels in China, Taiwan and Mexico. It certainly wasn't as different as I had thought it would be.
We successfully did water tests, soil tests, surveying, and designed the masterplan and phasing for Efeso Baptist Church's student center. When we presented our plans, we got a lot of positive feedback from the church members, so that was also super exciting too.
However, more than the architectural aspects of it, I remember more the other things. Every sunset and sunrise was beautiful and there were many beautiful birds just flying around out there. I met a lot of extremely gracious people that had a lot more love and patience than I had. The children were also extremely adorable and I spent a good amount of time just making faces at them, trying to get them to smile.
The church had several people who spoke English well and it was easy enough to communicate with a smile around the church. I also picked up a little bit of Swahili, managing to almost master greetings and the names of several types of food and trees by the time we left. I praise God that he was super faithful in my one major concern about language.
I also experienced an amount of sad things too. There was a lot of brokenness of families from divorce, domestic violence, and traffic accident deaths. And sometimes the smiles didn't come easily to children's faces, as if it was something foreign to them. There were also times when I realized to many Tanzanians, white people were only seen as a Dollar Bill. We saw this especially when we were away from the church. The church was sold some land, but when we showed up, the original owners got angry and assumed that the church was making money from selling it to "white people" and demanded more money. It didn't even cross their mind that we were there to help and weren't benefiting monetarily from this in any way. It broke my heart how kindness is so foreign to many of the local Islamic people.
Overall, I suppose I was expecting to get some kind of conformation that this is or is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. But for me, that did't happen. I did what I was asked to do on the trip, but there were many times I felt I was being less than useful. I had fun, but the things I remember the most weren't architecture related. I suppose there will be more thinking in the next weeks about this experience and what it meant, but for now, I suppose I'm just happy knowing that we served the people there and will be continuing to serve them as we finish this project. It really isn't all about me but what we as the church have done for our brothers and sisters as they seek to further his kingdom.
Engineering Ministries International
