To Tanzania and Beyond

Amazing, Before and After Pictures

2009-08-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody,

This is Tony this time, posting pictures about our 3 year house renovation. The renovation consisted of completely changing the size, layout, and location of the kitchen. Consequently the size and location of the dining room, family room, and laundry room had to change as well. The layout was originally cramped and inconvenient; now it is spacious and quite nice to live in.

I will be showing many pictures this post so I will go ahead and explain now. I will start each series of pictures with the before and after shots. Next will be one or many pictures of what the view looked like during the 3 years of destruction and construction.

Ok, first we will look at the old kitchen and notice how it disappears.

Before:

After:During:

Amazing; it is gone without a trace. Now we will look at were it went. We took out a bunch of walls and put the new kitchen in place of the old laundry room.

Before:

After:

During:

Here is another series of the laundry room/kitchen from the perspective of the family room. The before and after pictures have absolutely nothing in common except that they were taken from the same location.

Before:

After:

During:
Notice Rachel on the fridge. She is so cute, and a good sander.

Now on to the family room. We moved the laundry room into the family room and refinished the rest of the room. You can't see it in the pictures, but there is now ductwork and a 4 speed furnace fan to move heat from the wood stove to the rest of the house. we have primarily used the wood stove to heat during the winter for the last few years. It saves a lot of money.

Before:

After:

During:
All our kitchen things were in the family room for about a year while we moved the kitchen. The wife got a little tired of that. ell, so did I.

Before and After:

Bedroom Before and After:

Upstairs Before, After, and the new Bathroom:

Last But certainly not least, here is a series of pictures taken from the living room pointed into the family room. The whole series is in chronological order. Have fun.

Work Day

2009-07-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Since I'm slowly updating this blog concerning what's been accomplished over the past few months, I want to mention the Work Day we had with people from our church. This occured on Memorial Day weekend, but dispite being a holiday, many people from our church came together to help us out. Plus, of those who couldn't come on the Saturday work day, many came later on during the week. Sadly, we didn't take any pictures doing that time, so I can't show you all the doors, trim, etc. that was painted, or the window trim that was nailed up, or the wonderful lawn work done, or the general cleaning I received help with, or the many windows that were scrubbed. Thank you very much to all of you! I won't put up the names of everyone who helped because I know some people would prefer not having thier information on the internet, and I will respect their privacy, but you know who you are. Blessings on you!

So, I apologize that this posting lacks pictures, but I wanted to testify to how incredibly supportive and helpful our church has been - many thanks to our church family!

Stay tuned for the next posting: before and after pictures...

The Third Superman

2009-06-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

I've been delaying publishing this post because I wanted a few more pictures, but I'll just give you what I have. First of all, after my dad came up to help on the floors, we had another incredible offer (which we immediately accepted) of Tony's younger brother, Micah, also coming up for a week to help on the house. So you'll eventually see a picture of him in here. I think of him as The Energizer of the group - he was a great motivater for all of us.
While Micah was here, the men worked upstairs drywalling, mudding, etc. and of course putting a second bathroom in. Here is one of the upstairs bedrooms
during the drywalling stage.

Here is the second bathroom being put in.

Micah in the other upstairs bedroom.

Another project I'd been working on for a while was the downstairs bathroom. When we moved it, the lower four feet of the walls were covering in ugly green fake tiles. It took me months to chip off all the tiles and glue, then Tony had to repair the walls with gallons of drywall mud. The square patch you see above the toilet is where the bathroom used to have a window. Yeah, we took that out, saying as the view was just of the inside of the family room.

Sorry I don't have more for now. I have one more work day to write about next post, then eventually we'll do an entry with before and after pictures. It'll blow your mind! Enjoy these few pics. for now. Thanks!

The Start of Finishing

2009-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings! First, I must apologize for my two month blog absence. However, those two months can be easily summarized in this phrase: working on the house. It was pretty crazy for a while, but now the house is finally on the market (and we have had a couple showings), so mostly we focus on keeping things clean and doing the last minor, less visible repairs.

So, to fill you in on all the house work we did, I'm going to be posting pictures of various places around the house; however, I don't want to post everything at once, so I'll spread the blog entries out over the next few days. Today is wood floor day.

The specs: 710 sq. ft., much of it about 70 years old.

The characters: Two Supermen, plus me.

The time: About four days.

It all started with a trip to TN. Tony and I drove down for his sister Rose's wedding, but Tony rode back up with his grandparents while I stayed a few days longer in TN. While I was gone, Tony moved everything we owned off the wood floor and onto the tile floor in the wood stove room. By that time, I got back to MI, but I was home barely an hour before I got a very wonderful phone call. My dad called to say he was coming up for the week to help us on the house!!! So, the following pictures are of the floor project; more later of the many other projects we accomplished that week.

Our bedroom at the beginning of the project.

Trying to showing some of the scratches and overall worn out aspects of the floor.

The drum sander, for the largest areas.

The edger. For, well, the edges!

After an initial drum sanding

Haven't edged it yet.

Contrast between sanded and unsanded floor.

An old, closed off vent Tony had to fix.

No more vent!

Resting after about three days of sanding.

Putting on the first coat (out of three) of polyurethane.

Applied with lambs wool on a stick.

GORGEOUS! Smelly, but BEAUTIFUL! Want to buy a house?

Tile, Tile Everywhere, and Not a Piece to Walk On

2009-03-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

A Brief Floor History
Those of you who have seen our house may remember that for a while the kitchen just had a plywood surface for flooring. We spent some time debating between linoleum (easier) and tile (harder, but increases the selling value of the house more) and finally decided on tile. The room adjacent to the kitchen usually holds our wood-burning stove (of course we had to move it to put down new flooring), so we wanted something fire-resistant for in there also. In all, we decided to tile the kitchen, wood stove room, and laundry room (coming off the wood stove room): 300 square feet in all.

The Prep. Work
The wood stove room had old, ugly red linoleum on the floor, so my first job (while Tony was finishing all the drywall in the laundry room) was to scrape up all the beastly red stuff and get the floor relatively neat. This actually only took two days, so I was happy. Then Tony laid down backer board ("The Ultimate Cement Board" is printed on it, so it must be good, right?) and screwed it all down everywhere we wanted to lay tile. I helped with a few of the boards - the screws are a nice green color. :-)

Tiling
Now some pictures. Tony started in the kitchen by the doorway leading into the living room. He mixed up the mortar and started laying 'em down with the help of an experienced friend from church. We started on Thursday night.

The above pic. was taken by standing in the kitchen, facing the living room.

Now the photographer is standing in the living room looking at the first long row of tiles, reaching all the way into the wood stove room. This became our baseline row from which we moved out towards the walls. We finished our baseline row by the end of Thursday.

Here's the finished area around the doorway into the living room. The tiles with bits of masking tape on them were the first ones we laid down, so we knew we could walk on those earlier than the others. Tony stayed up late on Friday night finishing the kitchen area.

We did a lot of tip-toe racing through the kitchen on only tape-marked tiles.

Here's after a Saturday's worth of work: a large percentage of the wood stove room was done by Saturday evening.

This is the vent right behind where the wood stove usually sits; it was a bit difficult because they almost had to cut a hole in the middle of the tile - a hairy situation with the tools available to us. But they (Tony and a friend again) managed somehow - I was doing laundry so I didn't see the whole process.

Here you're standing in the kitchen looking into the wood stove room on Sunday evening. It looks done, but there's a bit left to do in the corner you can't see to your left.

Here's the corner. The plan in to finish this and the small (30 sq. ft) laundry room this evening (Monday), and then start the grout pretty soon. Praise God for knee pads!

Village Trip

2009-03-04T20:12:00.000-08:00

One of the most exciting parts of this orientation course for Rachel and I was the Village Trip. This involved driving for about three hours, taking a ferry, and walking a little way to the home of a Tanzanian family who had agreed to show us their lifestyle. They spoke no English, so we brought along a friend and interpreter from the office. First, we drove through the city and got onto the ferry. Here's a cool sailboat passing in front of us.

Then we drove on dirt and sand roads while our guide looked for "a mango tree" to indicate the turn off.

After we parked, we walked for a little bit, passing cattle on the way. The cows were under the previously mentioned mango tree.

Our host family's house.

The women were weaving palm branches when we arrived. We sat on large mats that were all woven by hand. You will see them throughout these pictures.

The main project we were to accomplish was the preparation of a Tanzanian feast prepared exactly how people in the village would do it. This included harvesting, cleaning, preparing, and cooking the food. The one thing we cheated on was to bring dead meat, instead of having to kill it ourselves. The husband of the family took us on a walk to his brother's coconut trees. He then proceeded to climb up and get us a few coconuts for dinner, which the men took turns husking. Culturally, harvesting and shucking coconuts is man's work.

Next, we started cooking. I helped set up the two fire pits in the front yard. A local pastor had also come with several couples from the church to help make the meal; the group brought charcoal, then several of us helped chop wood and get a fire going.

Rachel got to help cut up the meat. Don't worry, we boiled it for hours.

The family had several cashew trees on their property, but the nuts won't be ready until September to November.

A common food in Tanzania is greens. Basically, if the vegetable has leaves, they are edible. These in the picture are sweet potato greens. We also had pumpkin greens.

Preparing the greens.

Here is Rachel cooking over the fire. Ingredients: Corn oil, Onions, Tomatoes, Sweet Potato Greens, Ground Nuts, and Salt.

Collecting water. This is the water we used for cooking and cleaning.

We cooked lots of rice. We had to pick out the rocks and a few bugs. When all the food you use is freshly harvested with almost no processing, it is amazing all the extra steps to preparing a meal.

These are the men doing the culturally appropriate dinner prep.

This is the 60 Liter pan we used to cook rice. Tanzanians eat an amazing amount of rice each day. We used about 12 gallons of water to cook the rice.

After about 30 minutes, we piled all the coals on top of the pan to cook the top half of the rice.

Ugali is something that Tanzanians eat with every meal. It is basically just corn meal and water. The corn meal is added to the boiling water until it is very thick. When we saw these big paddles at the store, I thought they were oars, but actually they are for stirring ugali.

This is the whole feast laid out on palm branches. It only took 7 hours to prepare, but it was worth it.

Well, I guess I will end this post. Rachel laughs every time I add more pictures. Maybe I'll put a few more in the next post.

Tanzanian Church and Food

2009-03-03T07:54:00.001-08:00

The second Sunday we were in Tanzania we attended a Swahili church service. We especially enjoyed the worship time, although unfortunately we neglected to take pictures. We didn't understand much of the sermon, but a Tanzanian friend who spoke English was able to direct us to the scripture passages being read throughout the service. Afterwards, Tony and I were invited to the house of a Tanzanian family for lunch. We walked about 2km in the hot, hot sun to get to the family's home; on the way, we took many short cuts through people's yards and outdoor shops as our host explained that property is viewed as communal in Tanzania, so it is in no way rude or imposing to walk through other people's yards in your own neighborhood. When we got to their house, a wonderful meal was already being prepared by some of the family's relatives; we ate rice spiced with cinnamon, bananas cooked in a tomato sauce, a cabbage dish similar to cole slaw, and meat cooked in a tomato sauce - it was all delicious. The conversation after lunch was equally enjoyable; we discussed the differences between America and Tanzania on the subjects of food, government, education, family, and marriage. Our host was shocked to discover that Tony hadn't paid my family anything in order to marry me! A Tanzanian groom pays a dowry for his future wife, the amount of which his uncle will generally settle with the bride's family beforehand.
To make up for the lack of pictures, I'm answering a question some friends posted here earlier. They asked us what the most usual thing we ate in Tanzania was. To answer that question, let me tell you a story.... One evening, we were all sitting around waiting for dinner to be ready; one of the course participants ran down to the dining area to see how the food preparation was progressing and came back up to where we were sitting with a mischievous grin and a comment. "Bring your camera to dinner," he said. Heather Pubols grabbed her camera and took the following picture of our meal.

Fish isn't necessarily unusual, but a few of our fellow class members didn't like the idea of staring their dinner in the face.

Now it gets more interesting

2009-02-25T04:53:00.000-08:00

On a day off from classes, a group of us decided to finally go to the beach; our hotel was very near the ocean, but no one had ventured into the water on their own yet. So, on Saturday Feb. 14 we took a bus to a beach with boats to ferry us to a nearby island. The day was gorgeous: hot, of course, with a strong sun and smooth water.

The beach where we caught a boat

The first boat was too full and heavy, so we decided to wait for the next one.

The island beach! Someone loaned us snorkels so we were able to see beautiful coral and extremely colorful fish. I wish we had an underwater camera because the coral dwellers where amazing. Oh well, you all will just have to visit some day...

Next, we decided to walk around the island. We were told this would take about 40 minutes, but between the many stops to watch crabs scuttle out of the way, and the sea urchin obstacles, we were gone for nearly 2 hours. All along the coast of the island we found these cool, extremely sharp rock formations.
Enter sea urchins. Their spines are poisoned and can cause lasting pain or numbness if stepped on. So, just avoid them, right?

What about when there are this many?

Sea urchin skeleton.

Sand dollar remains, unfortunately a bit broken.

Can anyone remember what these are called?

More cool rocks; Tony got a bit scraped up climbing on them, but it was worth it.

All in all, the island day was wonderful, despite the fact that almost all of us were extremely burnt afterwards. We all applied a high spf sunscreen at least once every 2 hours, but far be it from the tropical sun to be deterred by so little! One of our friends had brought a bottle of Aloe Vera, so over the next few days a very powerful threat if we mistreated this friend was a response of, "no aloe for you!"

Arriving in Tanzania

2009-02-25T04:41:00.000-08:00

The Dar es Salaam airport: we bought our Tanzania visas in advance, so we got to skip to the short line and get through the airport quite quickly. Someone was there to pick us up right away and it felt wonderful to let someone else be in charge as he drove us to our hotel.

Our hotel room: we even had air conditioning!

A friendly lizard we were glad to have lurking around our door.

The view from the conference room where we had all our classes. The Indian Ocean!

Travel: Detroit, MI to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

2009-02-25T04:11:00.000-08:00

I won't go over all the details again, but below are two pictures of airport sparrows in the Detroit airport. They're a little hard to see, but the first one is sitting on the window sill above and to the right of the plant; the second picture shows one on the floor between the rows of seats.

Our hotel room in New York

The next morning, we got on our first Emirates flight to go to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Food! Very good for an airline meal.

Every seat has its own console - besides movies, TV shows, and games, you can also use two external cameras to keep track of what it looks like outside the plane. It also give stats such as altitude, estimated arrival time, etc.

Dubai airport

The desert leaving Dubai.

49 Hours Later

2009-02-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

We're back! We arrived back at our Michigan home at midnight on Sunday. Our journey started 49 hours earlier when we woke up in Tanzania on Friday morning at 7am local time. We saw a few friends off on their way to various places in Tanzania, then packed up and waited for our taxi to take us to the airport. Our flight left on time at 5:20 pm (local time) from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, arriving to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, around midnight. We napped a bit until 8:30am Saturday, when we boarded our next plane, the new Emirates Airline's A-380. Between all the movies, TV, games, and food, the 14 hr. flight passed rather quickly, although we were getting tired at this point and it was hard to sleep on the plane. We arrived in New York early in the afternoon, local time, got through customs easily, then waited 5.5 hours for our next flight. Than another hour, and another hour...I suppose Delta felt that they had to delay our flight just to complete our Delta experience. But, despite being two hours delayed, two good friends picked us up at the airport and brought us home after we finally landed in Detroit. We were exhausted after 49 hrs. without being in a bed and 43 hrs. of actual travel. And now that's we're back, we can finally post pictures! So, I'm going to start at the beginning of the trip and do separate posts with pictures for particular events or days. Sorry we couldn't post these pictures earlier, but I hope they're worth the wait!

2009-02-20T03:09:00.000-08:00

Hello again from Africa! Ironically enough, we came to the office to use the internet and found to our surprise that the power was on and the internet was good. Ahhhhhhh. Then, as soon as we clicked on Internet Explorer, the power went out. now we are about to lose it again....

Pili Pili Ho Ho

2009-02-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

Well, we have a little internet again. Still using generator power but hopefully it will last long enough to post this. I will not waste time going back to correct mistakes so forgive the spelling and puncuation mistakes. Also, this is tony, not Rachel.

Wednesday we got to go to a tanzanian outdoor market. We had a list of things that we had to find out and we also had a translater. It was a great time. You definitely cannot survive without kiswahili here. we had heard that you can get by with english in Dar, wich might be true, but anywhere else you would be lost. The people in the market were very friendly although we heard many shouts of mzungu (white person) anouncing that we were coming. Many of the merchants enjoyed teaching us new words in Kiswahili. Parachichi is avacado. Mchichi is Spinach. Ndizi is Banana. Nanasi is Pineapple. Rachel bought a fungu (small pile) of Mangos for 500 shillings (40 cents). I bought a fungu of passion fruit wich nobody seamed to be able to say in Kiswahili.

Well, I will wrap it up for now. We will be telling lots of stories with pictures once we get back to the states and better internet. thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

First Week

2009-02-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

We're quite enjoying our stay in Tanzania, although the heat can be a challenge for Tony. Also, internet is quite limited, so this will be a short post. Some new experiences this week include riding our first tuk-tuk, walking around in downtown Dar es Salaam, lots of Tanzanian food, learning an incredible amount about Tanzanian culture and the Church in East Africa; plus, Tony has gotten to drive! On the left, of course! This can be challenging to a newcomer since traffic rules are sometime vague and right of way may at times be determined by chance. The official Kiswahili word for a round about here is "keepy-lefty" - there's quite a lot of British influence. In fact, since we don't have British or Australian accents, it is sometimes difficult for Tanzanians to understand our English. Our health and well-being continue to be good and we're very grateful for all our American, European, and Tanzanian teachers who will help us adjust to Tanzania. So long for now!

In the Southern Hemisphere at Last!

2009-02-02T04:12:00.000-08:00

After our extended layover in New York, we flew Emirates Airline to Dubai, then Dar es Salaam; the plane ride was long, but quite comfortable and fun. We arrived at the hotel in Tanzania just in time for dinner, then rested up a bit before our first day of classes. Jet lag hasn't been a problem so far, praise God! We eat outside three times a day; the food has been great, and with the breeze coming off the ocean, the heat is not oppressive. We've just finished a good first day of classes learning about general safety in Tanzania and getting to know the other orientation participants. There are nine of us total and we're enjoying the group. We probably won't be able to write very often since the computer is 1.5 miles from where we're staying, but thank you all for your prayers and we thank the Lord for a safe trip.

Day 1

2009-01-30T16:01:00.001-08:00

The trip has not started out as smoothly as we would have hoped, but we're doing fine. We woke up this morning at 2:30 am and a gracious friend took us to the airport around 4:30 am. By the time we cleared security, our flight was 10 min. delayed - set to fly out at 6:10 am. Then it was 7:10 am. Then they started putting people on other flights. All in all, our plane was delayed over 5hrs., but was still the first available flight to JFK, New York, with Delta Airlines. We missed our connecting flight, which only flies once a day, so we'll arrive in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 24hrs. late. While waiting for our flight out of Detroit, we amused ourselves by watching the three House Sparrows trapped in the terminal (we sympathized) and listening to the interesting conversations amongst Delta representatives. Here are some quotes that instilled great confidence in this airline: "Are you the flight attendant?" (to a passenger), "What happened to the flight crew?" "Welcome to a Canadair jet" (on a Comair plane) and, best of all, "Is he the one supposed to be flying the plane?" These are all verbatim! Now, some useful statistics. In our first 24hrs of travel: 2 hrs. of packing and getting out of the house, 9 hrs. in airports (2 hrs. spent waiting for Delta to confirm our identity and figure out what planes we were supposed to be on), 12 hrs. in a hotel, and 1 hr. in a plane. Hopefully tomorrow is more sucessful; we'll do our best to leave the country this time! Especially since Tony didn't bring a coat, not predicting we'd have to walk through snow and wind in New York...!

The Day Before

2009-01-29T05:50:00.000-08:00

We leave for Tanzania tomorrow! So today I am doing some last minute laundry, making sure all our bills are paid for the three weeks we'll be gone, and finishing up the packing. We were trying to get away without checking any baggage, but the airline we're using only allows one carry-on per person, so we decided to check one small suitcase. Although much of the paperwork required for the trip has been a stressful headache for me, I'm finally beginning to realize that by this time tomorrow, we'll be on a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. We will fly from Detroit to New York, stop briefly in Dubai (United Arab Emirates, or UAE), and finally arrive at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Since we won't be taking our laptop on this trip, we will not be able to post pictures while we are in Tanzania, but we'll be sure to get some up as soon as possible when we get back to the U.S. Thank you again to everyone who has emailed and called, as well as for the many who have prayed for us; our church blessed us with wonderfully sincere prayers last Sunday, and we certainly feel very loved and covered in God's blessings as we set out. By the next time I write, you'll have a friend in Africa!

New Cabinets

2009-01-26T05:46:00.000-08:00

When we first started house-hunting about 4 years ago (before we were even married), the goal was to buy a fix-'er-up-er, remodel, and then sell it for a profit - God willing, of course. So, we've completely redone the kitchen and moved it to a new location in the house. Most of the work is done; our latest project was putting in new cabinets, so I'm posting pictures of the process below.

First, we unpacked the boxes.

Then we started on the wall above the refrig.

And moved our way along the wall, ended with a great pantry.

We also have a peninsula with the sink, dishwasher, and cabinets that open from either side of the peninsula, but we don't have any really good pictures of that yet. It's wonderful to have cabinets!!!

Background

2009-01-25T04:28:00.000-08:00

Greetings and welcome to our first blog posting! We invite you to follow along as we prepare for and eventually embark upon a move to Tanzania! We are currently in Michigan, U.S.A.; over the next few months we'll be finishing up some remodeling on our house, raising financial support, and putting our house on the market. Before actually moving to Tanzania, however, we'll be spending three weeks in the capital, Dar es Salaam - we leave in just five days! Maybe we'll be able to post some while we're there, but before that we may load some pictures of the house remodeling. Enjoy!