It’s Tanzania. Ministry and life feel slow. Time stops when you’re in Africa, or so it seems. We are working alongside of team Imago Dei, totaling 14 of us World Racers. Our contact’s name is Pastor ChaCha who to me looks like Bill Cosby when he dances to the African worship music.
It’s team announcement time: “We are going to break up in groups of three and disperse in to the local villages for a couple nights.” (aka “local” meant bouncing 2 hours along dirt roads in to the middle of nowhere.) Something that I wasn’t really looking forward to due to my new found dislike towards African transportation.
took a bus out to a small village of mud
huts, dirt roads, no electricity, no water, and the blackest night sky I have seen in my life. We were to stay with a pastor who ministered to the Maasai tribe in that area. 
OKAY,
picture this…
It’s the next morning. You’re standing in a wooden box crammed with people. No cushions, no seats, no handrails. This wooden box is traveling around 20 miles per hour, the wheels are creaking, and you have to wonder if this mode of transportation will stay nailed together. There are pot holes the width of a person that we try to avoid on the dirt pathway, but conveniently catch the corner crevices jolting everybody like popcorn around the cart. You manage to dodge oncoming tree branches covered in 3 inch thorns only after paying the consequence of the first one that smacked you in the head at 20 mph. The driver is screaming and flinging his whip onto the bloody backs of the donkeys. And the whole time you’re hanging on for dear life. THIS is what it’s like on an African Ox Cart! Especially when we ended up losing the pathway, and the bush was so high we had to get out and walk the rest of the ways.
We were told by our translator that we must eat the food or we would offend them. He repeated this 4 more times which made us anxious to know what was going to be set before us. Well, lunch was served and it was none other than goat’s meat and chunky, non refrigerated milk, with the usual rice on the side. Being a vegetarian and a liker of “fresh” milk, this was a hard meal to get through, but God helped!
listened to the chief- a very strong woman, sharing the concerns of her heart. The village was ran and led by the women. Most of the men were absent, lack leadership, and responsibility hurting the Maasai tribe. The children avoided any school system and chose to tend the herds that supported their villages. They choose to live way out in the bush to avoid any outside influence of the Tanzanian government. I think they do a good job at hiding
because I can’t imagine trying to find
this place again.
(Above: Alisa and I with the chief and her daughter-in-law)
We say our goodbyes and take our Ox Cart back to the other village that is more populated but just as rural. The day wasn’t complete without some door-to-door evangelism, street preaching, songs and skits in the city square. A form of African ministry that doesn’t seem like it would go over smooth back in the states, but most African’s doors and hearts are always open to visitors, especially Westerners.
