Malaika Mbili Corners Marmalade Brittany

It is getting close to Christmas.  As I write this, the chicken and stuffing are in the oven and the potatoes are boiling, ready to be mashed.  We are enjoying a Christmas dinner on the 21st of December with our housemates before we head off tomorrow on a safari.  We will wake up on the Serengeti Christmas morning!

We have been around Usa River for two weeks now and it has been filled with adventures. Camping overnight in the Meserani Snake Park, dinner at Khan's BBQ (an auto parts shop that turns into a BBQ restaurant in the evening- my favourite meal so far in Tanzania!), getting fleas in our bed, getting a brutal sunburn on my lower back from bending over in the garden.... good times.  But by far, our favourite adventure so far has been Malaika Mbili Corners Marmalade Brittany.

A few weeks ago we went to Cradle of Love to visit the girls and share some banana bread with the director, Davona.  While we were chatting, Davona mentioned that they had been having some troubles with rats, and that a worker had brought a "little cat" to kill the rats in the supply pantry.  Of course, this piqued Brent's attention and he asked to see the cat.  Inside this pantry, which was extremely hot, we didn't think anyone was there at first because we couldn't hear anything for the longest time.  But after a few minutes, hidden way in a corner, we heard a tiny mewing sound.  Brent then set to the task of trying to catch the cat, and about 15 minutes later, drenched in sweat, he emerged with a tiny little creature, which fit in the palm of his hand.

She was no more than 6 weeks old, which in North America would mean that she would not yet be separated from her mother.  She was terrified, and once Brent was holding her, she started to nuzzle in his neck.  However, whenever he put her down, she would start mewling non-stop in pained tones.  While we visited more with Davona and the babies, we debated about what to do.  We didn't feel right leaving her in that pantry... the rats were bigger than she was, and Davona was allergic, so couldn't take care of her.  We knew some of our house-mates are not in favour of pets, so we couldn't keep her.  However, we decided to take her home for a few days, in order to try and find her a loving home. Most of our house-mates were gone, so it worked out.


When we got her home, our friend Hana immediately fell in love with her.  We had recently befriended a cat at our local restaurant whom we loved, and had named her "Malaika", which is Swahili for Angel.  We decided to name our new kitten"Malaika Mbili"- "Angel 2".  When we got her to our room and put her down, she immediately ran under the bed.  For the whole day, if we were not cuddling her (which she thoroughly enjoyed) and we put her down, she would dash for the nearest dark corner.  We decided a more appropriate name for her might be "Corners", since she seems to love them so much.

The first night she cried intermittently through the night, giving us a glimpse of what new parenting might be like.  Yikes. But after the first day Malaika Mbili Corners started to become more outgoing... when we came in the room she would be hidden in a corner, but then might eventually come padding out across the floor and seek us out.  She began to play with anything that was shiny or moving... there are not to many things more fun that playing with a brand new kitten and a ribbon.  For two days we remained almost entirely fixated on her.  It was bliss. 

This is Brent, trying to calm her down while I set up a temporary litter box in the bathroom.

Hana with the kitty.

She stayed in Brent's arms for almost 2 days.

She seemed to have developed a curiosity for coffee.  We didn't let her have any, as it would stunt her growth:)

The first day I had put out an email to the St Jude's volunteers who lived off-campus, praying as we sent the email that someone would take her.  If nobody replied, we really didn't know what we would do.  Leave her in the village to eat garbage scraps and become a feral cat?  Plead with all of the local hotels to let a cat live on their grounds?  The ad I put out was answered immediately by Shawn, a volunteer at St Jude who has a family here in Tanzania.  Her daughter had been yearning for a kitten for a long time.  The ad had said that we had an "adorable, marmalade cat" available. Shawn said that she would let her daughter name the cat, but that she liked the name "Marmalade".  We arranged to meet her in Arusha the next day.  It was sad to give her away, but we were also so, so happy that she was going to a loving home.  Shawn's daughter and son were coming back from a vacation the next day so we got Malaika Mbili Corners Marmalade all set up in her new home.

Old owner and new owner.  Brent is obviously having mixed feelings over the whole ordeal.

We got an email the next day from Shawn, saying that both of her kids absolutely loved the kitty.  They were taking turns sleeping with her each night.  Her daughter, being a 7 year old girl, named the cat "Brittany". 

We would have loved to keep this little creature.  She stole our heart and we will never forget her.  But we are so thankful that she has found a loving home for good, and we can always come visit her.   Our dear little Malaika Mbili Corners Marmalade Brittany.

Advent and Watermelon Seeds

We are officially off for 5 weeks' holiday- much like "summer vacation" in Canada, the kids are off until January 9th, and we are relaxing around home.  We spent part of last week on the beach in Pangani, which was delicious... a constant routine of reading, sleeping, swimming and eating.  Now we have a few weeks at home before we head off on our Christmas safari.

It's advent now. I've always been drawn to advent... it's a time of waiting and anticipation.  I know that biblically it is meant to be a time when we anticipate the birth of Christ.  But I find it a bit too abstract to anticipate something that has already happened.  Instead, in Canada most years, I find myself in the cold and dark winter, exhausted out of my mind from the first 3 months of teaching.  I anticipate the solstice- when the days will start to grow lighter bit-by-bit.  I anticipate the Christmas holidays, when I will rest and recover from the exhaustion.  And I anticipate the holiday of Christmas- the time with family, the food, the celebration of Christ with singing and candlelight scripture readings.

So I find myself caught in a totally different advent here.  I'm not that exhausted, as my job is actually a manageable work load and I don't take work home in the evenings.  The amount of daylight stays virtually the same all year, with the sun rising dutifully at 6:15 am and painting the sky pink around 6:30 pm.  So no deficit of vitamin D here.  And I find myself not missing the Christmas "trappings" at all... the other day some friends drove us into Arusha and we went shopping at Shoprite- which is a rather grotesque imitation of a Superstore kind of environment and, despite the availability of things like ketchup, it usually leaves me feeling a bit nauseous as I leave.  Anyways, the whole time we shopped there were Dolly Parton Christmas carols playing over the tinny speakers, and little tufts of tinsel were haphazardly taped to random ends of aisles.  Then at the end of the store was a sad-looking artificial Christmas tree with some plastic balls dangling from its ends.  It was the first I have seen of any Christmas consumerism, and I couldn't finish my shopping fast enough.

But despite my not missing Christmas "stuff" at all, I am finding it a beautiful thing to spend the weeks leading up to Christmas in a relaxed state, with plenty of time to ponder the meaning of advent and Christmas.  At the same time, I have been spending lots of time in the garden.  Helen, a long term volunteer here, has built the most beautiful garden.  There's too many beautiful things to name in this garden, but my favourites are the herbs (almost every one you can imagine), peppers, lettuce and  chard.  She has also started nursing several trees into existence- most of which she will never see the fruit of, but we have avocado, passionfruit, papaya, and lemon trees growing in our yard.  Helen has gone home to Australia for the holidays and asked me to care for her garden, so I have been dutifully watering, weeding, and doting over her babies. I have also been throwing any seeds I can into empty spaces of dirt to see if they will grow.  A few weeks ago I had watermelon for lunch and stood over a hole in the dirt, spitting them in as I ate.  Then I made pumpkin pie (out of butternut squash) for Thanksgiving, and threw the hole goopey mess of seeds into a hole.  Now, as they are beginning to pop out of the ground, I excitedly run out to see them in the morning, to see what progress they have made.

I am discovering how much a garden, like advent, is all about anticipation.  I come from the city where, if I want a tomato right now, I just drive down to the store and it sits ripe and tasty on a pile waiting for me.  I sometimes feel frustrated watching the garden... everything is happening so slowly, and I want my butternut squash NOW.  And sometimes, when a pepper or zucchini is looking so promising, it falls off the stem or gets eaten by bugs.  My hopes are dashed.  But I keep waiting, anticipating the fruits of my labour.  But at the same time, a garden is about celebration of the little milestones.  Every day I see a change... the first leaves popping out of the ground; the leaves changing shape an colour as they mature; the first flowers; the first fruits.  Each one of them causes my heart to jump a little, even though the finished product is so far from arriving.  This is a side of advent that I have missed out on.  In the exhaustion, busy-ness and stress of most Decembers, I
am unable to see the little celebrations along the way. 

I think about the Tanzanian friends I have made here.  I think their lives are a bit of a constant state of advent.  They are trying to survive; working hard as a cleaner, taxi driver or teacher; trying to feed their kids, send them to school, and care for sick family members.  The small amount of money that comes in each month is nearly never enough to cover what they need.  Like the Israelites were waiting for a saviour, they live in anticipation and total faith that God will help them, even if they're not at all sure how.  They take evening classes in French and zoology, in the hopes of becoming a safari guide.  They send their children to an English-medium school, in the hopes that that child will one day be a doctor or lawyer.  They befriend a mzungu (white person) like me, with the unspoken hope that I might one day pay for their university tuition as so many other mzungus have done.  There are so many sad things that happen to people here; I can understand how they would look to the future to lift them out of the present.  And YET... my Tanzanian friends are also the most joyful, in-the-moment people I know.  They celebrate an uneventful day as a miracle... grateful to God that they have enjoyed another day on this earth without tragedy.  They celebrate that God is here, now, and loves them unconditionally.  We saw our friend James the taxi driver (who is also a school teacher) the other evening and asked him how his classes were that day.  He said: "Oh, my classes went very well today, praise the Lord!".  The irony is never lost on me that we mzungus, the ones who have all of our basic (and not-so-basic) needs and wants provided for, are the ones who forgo this wonder and celebration, in order to complain about the heat or office politics.

This advent, I want to learn to think more like my Tanzanian friends.  I want to live each day in hope that something beautiful and life-changing is around the corner.  But I also want to live each day in awareness that something and beautiful and life-changing is right here.  In the midst of our African adventure, in the midst of  my watermelon seedlings... God is here and he loves me unconditionally.

Helen's beautiful peppers.

The spit out watermelon seeds flourish!

I had to plant more basil... I am seriously depleting the supply.

Someday to be butternut squash.  I want them now!