My teammate, Caitlyn wrote this blog about one of our very last days in Morogoro. Enjoy!
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It all started this morning at 2:39 am when I awoke to a man shinning a flashlight into the window in our bedroom. Frozen with fear I waited until I no longer saw the flashlight to wake up my roommates, Kenra and Heather. After waking up (almost) the entire house, we made sure all the doors were locked and attempted to go back to sleep.
I woke up several hours later around 7:30 am to someone crying. After checking all the mzungus (white people) in the house, I went into the bedroom of Stella, one of the women who also lives here in the house with us. I sat with her for 20 minutes as she cried. Later when I asked the house mom what Stella had been crying about she informed me Stella had 184,000 shillings stolen, roughly 115 US dollars, by the same man who had been shining the flashlight into our window.
Around 10 am I headed into town with Heather in hopes of having a productive morning. After spending 30 (horrible) minutes in the bus station trying to get tickets to Dar es Salaam, we headed to the hotel to get some internet. Upon arriving our team leader, Kenra, informed us that a ferry had sunk the previous day on the way to Zanzibar, killing many people. Which meant that our mini trip to Zanzibar would not be happening.
The trip we had been looking forward to all month; the trip to tropical, beautiful, white sandy, clear watery Zanzibar. And even more importantly, over 1 hundred people had been killed or were missing. So many families were mourning the loss of loved ones.
Heather and I decided it was best if we spent the afternoon watching movies and eating chocolate. We left around 4:30 pm to head back into town to meet our friend Naheeda for dinner. Town is a 15 minute drive by motorcycle, the local form of transportation, from our house. As we were feeling the wind through our hair and the freedom in our spirits, Heather’s moto driver stopped. He had run out of gas, and we were a few blocks away from the nearest gas station. So, as her driver walked his moto to the gas station Heather jumped on another moto to take her to the gas station to meet her first moto driver.
When we finally arrived at Naheeda’s house we were excited to meet her family and spend time with her and her sister. I was a bit nervous about meeting her family, all I really knew about her was her family owned the small convenience store we always visited and they were Muslim.
Heather and I were welcomed with open arms. Naheeda’s mom cooked dinner while we sat in the living room with her and her sister. We talked with them, asked them about their faith and their lives, and her sister gave us both beautiful henna tattoos.
Then we sat down to the most beautiful dinner Heather or I had seen in all of Africa. There was cheesy pasta, fried mashed potatoes, vegetables, meat, wonderful chai tea and juice, not to mention the amazing drink that tasted like a strawberry milkshake.
What a beautiful surprise. A dinner filled with wonderful company and delicious food. I would never have thought the day could have ended so beautifully. I knew this was God’s little surprise for us. A gift that He gave us because He knew we had struggled through the day but had given it to Him.
This was a terrific, definitely not horrible, excellent, very good night.
Sometimes we just have to remember the Lord is in control. I recently read a book that talked a little about trusting God and having faith in His plan. Today as I talked with Heather about how terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad our day seemed, I decided to just trust God’s plan. The day happened the way it did for a purpose. And even though someone broke into our house, even though we can’t go to Zanzibar, and even though our moto ran out of gas; God is still good, and the best part is He still has a plan.
Love,
Caitlyn.
