‘Sorry, he’s spent his whole life in East Africa.’ I find myself saying this almost daily. (I say East Africa rather than Tanzania because many people have no idea where Tanzania is, or mishear it as Tasmania.) Sometimes saying this diffuses the tension of a situation, like when Elliot joins […]
MZUNGU. We hear this all the time. Called out to Elliot in our backyard as people pass by; whispered in a tone of surprise when I walk into a shop where people haven’t seen me before; used as a description when someone answers their phone while at our house and […]
In the months before we publicly announced that we are moving on from St John’s University to work for TAFES, we had a number of meetings with our boss and people who have been mentors with us. We were very nervous because we knew they would be very disappointed, but […]
It was the morning of a public holiday and we’d gone out for a family walk to buy some bananas from a local stall. People call out to us all the time so we thought nothing of replying pleasantly to the three drunk guys sitting on the new drain constructions […]
We Christians have expected post-Christendom Australia to be pretty easy-going, wrote Stephen McAlpine a couple of weeks ago — but the harsh reality is Babylon, which he calls Exile Stage Two. In a follow-up post, he characterises this experience as a cage fight. Here’s my response. Exile is a given […]
The topic of the TAFES Dodoma Associates dinner we went to was ‘The Rising Divorce Rate’, and after contributions from several members, the speaker gave his point of view. He largely argued that the reason for divorce is that people have left God’s design for marriage. What followed was an […]
Tanzanians use Facebook quite differently from how Aussies do. It’s one place you can see their interest in wisdom as they post infographics about why you should drink more water, or proverbs from TB Joshua or Joyce Meyer. So when our friend asked the other day “Can someone enlighten me […]
Meet Jesus at uni 