Sunday is Church. And What an Experience!

 Sundays is church in Tanzania and it is a big and sometimes long event. We had church, gifts and a lavish dinner from our host. Mostly in pictures.

Three cathedrals in Rorya, Tarime and Musoma and three village churches in Tarime. Services ran for an hour to three hours in the cathedrals. Visitors visited the following churches (Taken froma whatsapp message)

Jodie McNeill – Musoma with Kim Kelly, Mandy and Eddie

David Morgan Rorya Cathedral preaching with Jim K, Lucy Lim amd Michael Charles

Rev Robin Vonk Tarime Cathedral preaching
Dr Dorothy Prentice Tarime Cathedral 8.30am translator
John Sandeman Tarime GAMASARA Parish
Barbara Stephens Tarime GAMASARA Parish 9.30am
Craig Roberts Tarime KITAGASEMBE Parish 9am
Elizabeth Roberts Tarime KITAGASEMBE Parish
Ruby Roberts Tarime KITAGASEMBE Parish
Fiona McLean Tarime NYANSURURA Parish 9.00am
Kevin Barraclough Tarime NYANSURURA Parish 9am
Steele’s 9.30am Tarime

The photos tell the stories although Rorya and Tarime photos are scarce.

Rorya is a Diocese which was established in 2010 out of mara Diocese. It covers one government district and on my first visit in 2017 had no electricty and water was fetched from a nearby creek. Anglican Aid has undertaken some water projects supplying wells including one in a village near the cathedral. The first bishop died in 2020 and Bishop Musa Yamo Masala (Musa) was installed as bishop in 2021,, having come from Mara Diocese where he was principal of Bunda Bible College

Unfortunately the group going to Rorya had a flat tyre five minutes from the church but still got a full service with unbelieveably 15 choirs.

David Morgan at Rorya Cathedral

To view a video of David Morgan preaching (well the start) just click

To exerience some of the music at Rorya just click and watch two conservative middle aged Sydney Anglican men transformatively worship like the locals click above. This may change worship music and style in Sydney for the better. Apparently Lucy Lim was airlifted by the locals but I am told no visual evidence of this is available.

Robyn Vonk preached at St Luke’s Cathedral in Tarime with Dorothy Prentice translating for him.

Robin Vonk and Dorothy Prentice on the steps of St Luke’s Cathedral Tarime with the translator

Meanwhile in Musoma Jodie McNeill preached and gave an invitation to anyone who would like Jesus to be their good shepherd. A young man responded and Jodie later had the privilege of baptising him after lunch after the Dean asked if he would be willing to do that. I took photos and videos so the following will give a flavour of what all others experienced in cathedral worship.

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Interviews of visitors during announcements – Kim Kelly, Helen Hoskins (translating), Mandy McNeill and Jodie McNeill. Rev Canon Gaspar Kasanda translated the sermon.

Communion

The Fire choir

Videos can be viewed by clicking on the links below

All photos in the album are here for those wanting more

After the service the church elders provided lunch and a time of greeting each other. A meeting about partnerships occurred (at their instigation). The hospitality extended to gifts being given to each of us.

Then the young man who had made a public commitment in response to the message was baptised by Jodie the video of which can be seen at the link.

Prior to leaving Musoma, the group visited the Bishop’s house (where I am staying) before heading off to Tarime in threatening weather. Apparently it bucketed down hail as well as rain during the choir festival, put on especially for the Archbishop of Sydney. We arrived in miserable conditions in waterlogged grounds. 500 young people were in the church on the property singing away. Those there described it and the rain in superlatives.

Bishop Mwita Akiri, his wife Mukami and daughters Mugure and Mbayo hosted all 19 of us in their home for a late dinner. Akiri’s home he built many years ago but was based in Dodoma for over ten years. His wife and daughters still live there but came up (1,000kms by bus) to greet us. Again prodigious hospitality under a covered African alfresco sky.

Mukami, Mugure and Mbayo Akiri

A purple shirt? Not on our tour

Bishop Mwita Akiri welcoming us to his home

For journalist John Sandeman’s take on the day read The Other Cheek He was at the choir festival and has photos.

The Looong Road – Nairobi to Tarime

 Saturday was always going to be a challenging day given the drive from Nairobi to Tarime was estimated to be ten hours.

Saturday was always going to be a challenging day given the drive from Nairobi to Tarime was estimated to be ten hours. Having met with the bus owner a month prior and mapped out the route the eight hour rute with some stops would get to Tarime in 10 hours allowing for some breaks along the way.

While no photos were taken of the guesthouse the following photo tells all you need to know about health education in Africa. Eat more sugar everyone!

Having driven this route in 2014 from Tanzania after visiting Masaii Mara I knew the road was all sealed. The shorter route provided the advantage of seeing the Great Rift Valley which was about an hour out of Nairobi. Our departure was an hour late as we loaded the top of the bus. No tarps for the rainy season!

19 intrepid travellers set forth from Kenya to Tanzania

The drive through Nairobi was an eye opener for many as we saw slums and shanty towns and multi story buildings built where shanties once existed. Being early Saturday morning we avoided the terrible traffic I remember of my previous visits to Nairobi.

The viewpoint of the Great Rift Valley was spectacular and littered with tourist “shops.”

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The drive gave views of agricultural life as we saw farms that had tractors growing large areas of maize, millet and other crops. Kenya is relatively well developed compared to rural Tanzania and even the towns we passed looked more propserous.

First stop after the viewpoint was Narok for petrol which is obviously a tourist stop that allowed some shopping. The owner and driver located a large tarp for the bus just in case.

Lunch was to be at Kisii but as the clouds increased the bus stopped at a largish town which could have been Bomet or Keroka. The driver and owner set to cover the luggage with a large tarp. We took lunch here and had a break. Given what lay ahead this was a lucky decision. Kisii as it turns out was still an hour away and we would have been eating at 3pm. People were not afraid to order and some even ate traditional African food! The chicken and chips photo is the KFC alternative outside Nairobi.

And then it rained soon after leaving for the drive to Kisii. The rain was incredible in its intensity and the volume of water on the roads. Photos were impossible. We saw motorcycle taxis with umbrellas attached to the front, providing scant protection from the downpour. Driving through Kisii was an adventure as the main road was blocked and we drove along dirt roads on the side through a very long sliver of a city that seemed to go forever.

Back on to rural areas but at a reduced speed to allow for the conditions.The driver was excellent. It was intended to be at the Isibania border by 4pm. The best laid plans …. saw us driving to the border after dark and entering a one stop shop. In the entry door, Kenyan desk to exit the country then onto the Tanzanian desk to present visas and enter our destination country. Some hiccups as the Kenyans asked for the tour leader and I was summonsed to be told tour operators need to provide a manifest before arrival so they can plan.

“We are just nineteen individuals on a private tour. I did have a list which I provided to be aked why is this not on the company letterhead? Our administrative probles and those who had no printed visas were hotspotted to getthe visas off phones and we were away in 75 minutes. Pretty good by African standards. A quick stop at an ATM so people could buy Tanzanian shillings and then thirty minutes in driving rain which became 45 minutes to Tarime. Liaison with the bishop and the decision was get off the bus and straight to dinner. He did make mention of getting us gumboots!

We would have appreciated gumboots on arrival as we left the bus. A huge number of church members who worked at Mogabiri greeted us. We were ushered to the dining room as others unloaded our luggage. After dinner our luggae was carried across the wet grass to our various accommodation units.

Mogabiri is a farm training centre. A good write up about it was done by Goshen College students who spent time here as students. The official website names it as Mogabiri Farm Extension Centre operated as a ministry of the Anglican Church and supported by Bread for the World (Brot fur de Welt) Germany.

Sunday was discussed over dinner. We had three cathedrals that pastors on our trip were preaching at. Jodie McNeill for Mara Diocese Musoma meant an early start at 6.50am, David Morgan at Rorya didn’t need to leave till 8.15am and Robin Vonk struck the jackpot staying at Tarime with a 9am start. Three local parishes were to be visited by three groups as well so all in all our 19 people were visiting six churches.

We were able to sleep soundly with top notch security looking after us. Oh and the rain just kept coming.

Gafcontiki Tours Tanzania – Local Volunteer becomes a Tour Operator

 On becoming a tour operator in Kenya and Tanzania. What was I thinking!~

What Was I Thinking? What Possessed them to Go?

Everything about this seems wrong. Everything. What if I could convince people from Australia to come to Tanzania after the conference in Kigali to visit the church on the ground and see the real Africa? It was an ambitious thought for someone not known as ambitious.

From April 2022 I was in Musoma, Tanzania volunteering with the Anglican Diocese of Mara at the invitation of Bishop George Okoth, who I had come to know through my work at Anglican Aid. Prior to departing Australia, I remembered the post GAFCON tour of Israel organised by a pastor from Sydney which was professionally organised by Sam, a guide who gave us lots of insights in the land of Jesus.

The issue for me was Jesus didn’t set foot in Tanzania, I am not a tour guide and this would be cheap as was the 2018 trip to Israel but in areas where 1 star accommodation was luxurious by local standards.

The purpose of doing something as crazy as this was that the Tanzanian church is struggling and its relationships in the UK are tenuous and it needs friends from Australia who might take an interest in partnering through prayer, visits and support through skills and knowledge transfer, training and money. Tanzania at one time had over 100 CMS missionaries here but will soon have one.

The other issue is the Tanzanian church is divided itself. American money, and lots of it is influencing relationship and orthodox bishops are seeking to remain true to the Biblical gospel which is under attack in the western church. Money is a new form of colonialism by imperial powers seeking to overthrow the faith once delivered by them when thy were orthodox.

On arrival last year the task seemed overwhelming and I had lost heart but after communicating with a Sydney pastor who encouraged me I pressed on. I discussed the concept with Bishop Mwita Akiri, chair of GAFCON Tanzania whch counts a dozen members of 28 dioceses. He was supportive as were his fellow bishops in Mara and Rorya Dioceses.

Rather than promoting a tour like tour companies do, this was a personal invitation from the Chair of GAFCON Tanzania and Bishop of Tarime Diocese. The letter was circulated to delagates in Australia registering for the conference while details were arranged. A rough itinerary and two pages of explanation accompanied the letter.

The logistics were complex and I decided the easiest and cheapest option was for people to fly to Nairobi from Kigali after the conference ended and bus it down to Tanzania. A kenyan tour operator who arranged my climb up Kilimanjaro provided quotes and I budgetted a minimum of fifteen by October to be confident of proceeding. However the numbers were thin and that idea was canned. A local bus operator in Tanzania know to the local bishop in Tarime was met prior to my departure in October and discussions occurred about his capacity to runa bus for a week from Tarime to Nairobi and all planned visits in Tanzania until each person was dropped either at an airport in Mwanza or a hotel.

So while numbers were still thin by November, the Kenyan company was cancelled and once 12 people committed I knew it was on. The bus at 29 seats was going to be limited to 18 plus the driver and I. As numbers increased the cost reduced as the bus hire was split eventually by 19 people.

In concert with the bishops an itinerary was planned. The Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel had also been invited by Mara Diocese to come to open Shalom School so it was possible the church would be managing two lots of visitors. This was eventually confirmed.

Bishops and their wives at Tarime June 2022 – +Mwita Akiri +George Okoth and +Musa Yamo

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The early invitation included an overight in Serengeti and when feedback suggested a shorter tour than the 10 days I had initially planned, this was scrapped in favour of a drive through the park while I was at the Shalom opening.

Accommodation was arranged in Tarime at a farm that the church owned which had basic accommodation and meals in a shared dining room. Rustic would be an apt decription with running water and electricity.

People were responsible for their own flights. Everything from Nairobi to Mwanza was covered except lunch on Saturday. The anglican Church Guesthouse in Nairobi was booked and communications with them was excellent. Costs were paid as they occurred so by February all Nairobi costs had been covered in Kenyan shillings. The Tanzanian costs were all budgetted in Tanzanian shillings.

The accommodation in Bunda was a hotel which I spotted opposite the bus stop and when next in Bunda I visited and saw it was opened in 2020 during Covid. Booking six months in advance was a challenge as they had no concept that people booked so far ahead. As numbers increased a local church contact would update the booking each time.

By Christmas all was finalised and barring a pandemic the only financial risk was each person’s Nairobi booking which was paid in advance.

Wise is a foreign exchange provider which made managing the payments a breeze. Costs were minimal compared the normal banking system and each cost was paid in local currency with less than 1% fees and a mid market rate (Banks in Australia charge a spread of 3-5 percent depending on currency). Finalising the accounts was also a breeze as I was able to download all transactions, filtering them by currency.

Final costs were about AU$800 per person with a minor reduction for married couples for accommodationinBunda. The final group was made up of

The group comprised the following:

• Five ordained clergy and three clergy wives
• Staff member from Anglican Aid
• Executive Director Anglican Relief and Development Fund Australia
• A former missionary to Tanzania now retired and her daughter who grew up there. Both were fluent Swahili speakers.
• The 15 year old daughter of a clergy couple whose school supports Bunda Girls Secondary School and Shalom School in Bunda
• Six lay people made up of a married couple, one female and three males (self included).
• Of the nineteen, two were medical practitioners and two were journalists (one of the clergy was a radio journalist before going into the ministry, the other a former SMH and Eternity Magazine Editor).

Our group of travellers ready to leave Nairobi on Saturday morning 22 April 2023

Mhina is the bus owner

Mhina and Kenyan driver Philemon

Our print journalist now posts daily on his blog The Other Cheek kept readers updated daily on what he called the Gafcon tiki tour (Contiki Tours were a rite of passage for young people in the 1970s and 80s. I will be posting about daily activities but if you want a flavour of what is to come John’s articles provide aspects of what occurred daily. My blogs will be pictorial more than editorial.

By the way I don’t begrudge travel agents now charging a fee after experiencing the work involved in travelling arrangements.