Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that you will have a happy, peaceful and fulfilling 2010, with good health and secure in the love of God, family and friends. Hopefully our Christmas season’s spirit of good will and peace will continue throughout the whole year.
We were home from our Christmas break by Sunday evening. It’s always a relief to reach one’s destination safely, especially since I read in the newspaper about a road accident that happened a couple of hours after we passed near Same (Kilimanjaro Region) on the way to Arusha on the 17th. A front tire of a large bus coming from Nairobi burst and lost control, plowing into a small bus and 19 people died: 16 in the small bus and three from the large one. The bus line on which we usually travel seems to have good, well experienced drivers, and they travel at a fairly reasonable speed so I usually feel safe. One can never predict an accident, however.
Our meeting of Maryknoll Sisters went very well and it was wonderful re-connecting with so many. We were 26 altogether, so there was never a dull (or quiet) moment. By Monday morning everyone was on her way back to wherever, and we went to the house of the Sisters in Arusha to begin our Christmas celebration. We had a couple of doctor/dentist appointments to attend to, did some (mostly window) shopping, and spent a lot of time relaxing, listening to Christmas music, reading, decorating the house, etc. Christmas day itself was sunny and bright, and we attended the 9.00 Mass at a church close by. There were casts of thousands attending church that day, with most people dressed up in their best clothes and happily celebrating. The church is large and round and I estimated that about 800 people were inside with another fairly large group outdoors who couldn’t get in. We were talking with some Sisters outside the church before entering (waiting for the previous Mass to finish) and they had a group of children with them. These are the children of women prisoners at the prison outside of Arusha, and these Sisters care for them while their mothers are in jail. What a helpful ministry that is, don’t you think?
At the end of Mass everyone in the church went up to pay a visit to the crib! So since we had already spent two hours + in church, at that point we decided to go home and begin to cook our dinner. And that was a delicious and festive meal, with the additional treat of a ham. There is a very nice butchery in Arusha which is run by some people from South Africa and they make their own hams around holiday times. It was really very good, and with locally grown baked sweet potatoes, a couple of nice vegetables, salad, and dessert (apple pie) we certainly enjoyed “feast day fare”.
When we returned here we found that there had been a couple very heavy rains and our neighbor’s roof had fallen in. This neighbor had a traditional house, built from mud brick with an earthen roof. If these houses aren’t repaired or rebuilt fairly frequently they often get destroyed when the rains come, and that’s what happened. Actually, he was probably just waiting for it to fall down since its location is not in the city’s development plan! The newspapers say that many houses in Dodoma and Morogoro Regions have been destroyed by the rains, and there are pictures of people wading in water up to their knees. We saw places between here and Morogoro where the water was nearly up to the road level, so I don’t doubt at all that there are plenty of places that were on very dry land last week but are under water today. Hopefully there won’t be too much more destruction and the rain will be a blessing and not otherwise.
So --- talk to you again next year!
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