A Week into Africa (10/20/09)

Tanzania is great! As usual, there are things that we like about the culture so far, and everything else is just different. As we have been trained to understand, “Different is not necessarily wrong… just different.” But we are learning slowly. We are picking up some Swahili along the way, and it has been good to greet some of the people in their heart language. The driving is NUTS! I have often mentioned before about my experience in Indonesia and the driving there… this is the exact same way, but I feel like I have been in more ‘near-death’ experiences in the car here in a week than my whole life. (Some of the craziest drivers are the missionaries here..). The lane markings dont mean a thing… if you need to get into the completely opposite lane of traffic just to get around a car–go ahead!… The stoplights are more like guidelines than law… and neither people nor vehiclees and bicycles look to see if anyone is coming when they step out into the road…

The shopping here is pretty interesting! Things are generally cheaper here than in the States, but you get to bargain and negotiate prices everywhere you go… all those tactics that dont change a thing in the States would work great here for getting what you want for cheap. You almost feel a little bad about bargaining down things that already cost so little in the first place. (Like one of our Tanzanian friends who bargained a hand-carved stool down to a little over a dollar…) The pricing is interesting here though… Some American items are really cheap (Like Red Bull and Sodas for as little as $0.30 for a 20 oz size drink) while others are ridiculously expensive (like cereal for $10.00) We are just going to have to learn to live as Tanzanians do and not get used to having a lot of American items.

 

The people here are very nice and open. Lindsey says that they dont seem to walk around with much of a smile, but if you walk up and talk to them (particualrly in Swhili) they will smile and welcome you to Tanzania.

 

We got our new car… It is a Suzuki Jimny… no, I didn’t misspell that, it’s a Jimny. The cars here are ALL different. The only familiar models are Land Rovers and Range Rovers. It’s a 2008 or 2009 car, and it only has 1,560 miles on it. Not bad huh? All the other cars here at the mission are big land rovers or Nissan Patrols that are old and really outdated… So, even though our car isn’t as big as the others, it’s brand new and we wont complain at all. It is basically a shorter version of an SUV, and it has 4 wheel drive (For Safaris!). We have named the car ‘Dogo Kiboko’ which means little-hippo. We have made some videos on our new FLIP camera, so I will try to post those on this website or on our facebook group. We took a trip to Morogoro yesterday to get our drivers licenses (we dont have to take any kind of test in Morogoro, but we would have had to if we got one here in Dar Es Salaam). We have been practicing driving stick-shift, on the opposite side of the car and opposite side of the road, and have been getting pretty good at it. I will be taking my ‘driving test‘ with my boss within the next few days to see if I can handle driving here in Tanzania before they hand over the car to us. Lindsey will be practicing a little more before she takes her test. Please pray for that!

 

We will be re-packing and seriously condensing our luggage before heading to Zambia. We will be leaving a majority of our stuff here at the Mission Compound while we are at 40/40. We still have to get some more Malaria medication before we go to 40/40 as well, but that shouldn’t be a problem at all.

 

God has truly been answering our prayers and working in our hearts! From safety to providence, He has truly shown Himself faithful. We got about 2 hours toward Morogoro when we realized that we had left behind our eye exams, which were necessary for getting our licenses. However, God worked it out so that the guy who helped us get our licences knew the license issuer really well… so, we didnt have to have the eye exams. Praise God!

~ by Nate & Lindsey Platto on October 20, 2009.