This week there was a discussion in my network here in Tanzania about Psalm 51:5: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Did David being conceived ‘in sin’ mean that his mother committed adultery and he was illegitimate? Admittedly the grammar of the […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
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
We were at church for the commissioning of a new children’s ministry team. There were all the usual Tanzanian positions: head teacher, teacher, secretary, treasurer, etc. The entire team was women, and the pastor commented on why. Men were not excluded from being on the team, he said, but none […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
It has become commonplace in the west in recent years to assert that the ways in which women experience oppression in Australia are minor compared to the oppressions that women in the majority world face, from gender based violence to lack of access to education, to maternal health, to poverty […]
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
“I want us to start with university students, to give girls opportunities for leadership and to build their confidence while they are still studying,” said one of our colleagues. This is a common sentiment among many in Tanzania’s middle class, that women’s welfare rests on them seeing what they could […]
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
There’s stacks to unpack from the list of good and bad husbands and wives that a Tanzanian friend posted in a whatsapp group recently. I will only make two observations here, one about the husband list and one about the wife list. Husbands: economic care must include the emotional My […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
The other day a Tanzanian friend shared over a whatsapp group qualifications of a good husband or a good wife. Each one began with a list and explanation of lesser types of husbands and wives. Today I provide summary translation of the qualifications of husbands and wives. In the next […]
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes