It’s Live Below the Line time again, Oaktree foundation‘s fantastic initiative to help Aussies experience in a very small way what it’s like to live below the global poverty line: AUD2 a day. When I quoted the AUD2 per day stat at a church in Adelaide before our departure a […]
The contention of the ‘Why men hate going to church’ movement is that church has become feminised. From David Murrow’s website: With the dawning of the industrial revolution, large numbers of men sought work in mines, mills and factories, far from home and familiar parish. Women stayed behind, and began […]
As I blogged here, there’s a range of church experiences in Tanzania. One exercise we did in our intercultural training was to observe without moving to evaluation or explanation. It’s a practice I’ve continued. Here’s some of what I’ve noticed about our church.
Red Twin and I have been talking about contextualisation: the necessity and complication of putting off your own culture to live in another. It’s always a compromise. Everyone draws the line somewhere different. But it’s more complex than simply working out what you’re comfortable with. What do those in your current country think? For […]
Let me paint two pictures of Tanzanian church services. The first is a Good Friday service. It’s long and the ministers are dressed up in their robes. It’s an Anglican service. And there’s something familiar about the way the congregation responds: the mumbled words after the Bible reading, the faces […]
Instead of learning about babies in Tanzania at the baby clinics yesterday, I learnt a lot about Tanzanian culture and myself. For a start, I learnt the difference between wazungu treatment and wageni treatment. The first is for white people and it’s about making Tanzania look good to westerners; the […]
eating: rice and beans. missing: dark chocolate (any chocolate!) learning: ‘African babies do not cry’ is a myth – at least according to the baby next door! making: passionfruit curd, mousse, ice blocks, slice – our vines are prolific! thinking about: how stress manifests. Neither of us feel particularly stressed […]
Meet Jesus at uni 