Last month was probably one of the most difficult months of the race for me. There have been several rough times/ months on the race for me, but Tanzania definitely takes the cake. To be honest I’m not so sure why exactly it was so hard, it wasn’t just one big awful thing, more like a bunch of little things that added up and made me desperate for the end of the month.
Transitioning to Africa wasn’t easy, leaving Vietnam after 6 months in Asia was actually terrifying for me. I had heard some horror stories of African travel days and I wasn’t excited about squatty potties, limited power or running water. As we arrived in Uganda my fear dissipated and was replaced by love and peace, I knew that God was answering my prayers. I knew the next three months wouldn’t be easy but they would be amazing. I fell in love with Uganda, with the people. We had no running water and I learned to shower with as little water as possible, waved as people stared and called out muzungu everywhere I went, ate beans and rice day after day and walked along rutted dirt roads for hours. I didn’t mind it, I loved it.
Then we arrived in Kenya, and it was almost the same exact thing. Sure the setting changed but our ministry was still door to door everyday and our living situation wasn’t much different (I had an extra roommate – Remy the Rat). By the end of the month I needed something new, something different, I was just tired. My parents arrived in Kenya on March 4th and I spent the next week with them in Kijabe, Kenya while my team traveled to Tanzania. I left Kijabe energized and excited. I was excited about my final 3 months, I just knew God was going to do amazing things in the next months.
While I was in Kenya my team was experiencing one of their worst travel experiences of the Race. In total it took them about 4 days and 29 hours on buses to arrive at our ministry site in Tabora. I was lucky that it only took me 2 days and about 20 hours of travel to meet them. Upon arriving in Tanzania I immediately felt a spiritual heaviness over the country, the joy that I felt upon leaving Kijabe was just sapped from me, I had to fight the rest of the month for joy. Meeting up with my teammates involved me being left at a crowded bus station with a pastor who spoke no English by myself, while I waited for Andrew and Ginelove’s delayed bus to arrive to pick me up. When they finally arrived I just saw it written all over their faces, the heaviness and weariness, it was affecting our entire team.
This heaviness and weariness were really hard to shake off remainder of the month. I was diagnosed with Malaria the day after I arrived in Tabora and couldn’t quite kick it for the rest of the month (don’t worry, I’m fine now, the only symptoms I really had were exhaustion, soreness and a fever). Everyone on my team except for Ginelove had it at some point during the month. We traveled to villages out in the bush of Tanzania during the rainy season and spent about 15 hours essentially off-roading through the muddy and water- logged roads and about 7 hours stuck in the mud. By the end of the month I was desperate to get back to Arusha and then back to Nairobi.
stuck in the mud
When I look back at the month, it would be easy for me to write it off. To say that it was just a pointless and bad month. But it wasn’t, yes it was hard, really hard. But we weren’t defeated.Yea, I had to fight for joy everyday, but I fought. Our team did have an impact, we loved and we fought to love. We did battle with a demon (not kidding we actually fought a demon), we brought light into darkness. Yes, that darkness did it’s best to extinguish our light, but it didn’t win, and it won’t win, it’s already been defeated.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
Tanzania was a trying month, a month that broke me, but most importantly a month that pushed me to a deeper dependence on God and His promises.
– Jess
