I feel like the longer we are here, the more I see how much we have to learn. If we spent our first three years trying to get our heads around prosperity gospel, I have spent the last few years trying to get inside Tanzanian understandings of hierarchy, and it […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
I told Elliot this story on the way to school one morning. At the end I asked him if he thought it was just a story, or if the ending would come true. Once upon a time there was a little dragon called Elliot. He lived with his Mama Dragon […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
I’ve been thinking recently about language learning. It goes so quickly at the beginning. At the end of our four month course when we first got here, I wrote and gave my first talk in Swahili. A bit over a year later I could go off script during sermons, or […]
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Yesterday we visited a different church, to see our friends Eliud and Dorothea get officially engaged. The denomination was Evangelistic Assemblies of God Tanzania (our normal church is just run-of-the-mill Tanzania Assemblies of God), and this particular church was called ‘Kambi ya Waebrania’ — the camp of the Israelites. Up […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
I learned a new word the other day: bi-dialectical. We’d been watching a show with Gillian Anderson in it, and wondering at why her British accent is so good. Turns out, because she lived between the US and the UK as a child, she has two accents in the same […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Once upon a time, there was a little dragon called Elliot. He lived in a lovely cave with his Mama Dragon, Dadda Dragon and toddler brother Callum Dragon. They loved one another very much. Elliot the Dragon’s favourite food to eat was cheese, and his least favourite food was broccoli. […]
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In a hierarchical society, who is powerful? It’s natural to me to think that it’s the people at the top, with people becoming less powerful the further down the hierarchy they are. Those down the bottom of the hierarchy are vulnerable, and therefore would benefit from gender equality. This is […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes