Of Land Rovers and Grumpy Men...Tyler in Tanzania

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 Hey all, I've been relaxing the last couple days. It's been nice to sleep in a bed for a little bit. I just wanted to follow up on my trip with a few pictures, and a little more detail. Here's a picture of Prosper. He was my traveling companion for the trip. He was a joy to travel with and like me he was happy to work hard and play hard, so we got along just great. He can speak a little Maasai and just a little bit of English so between the two of us we could communicate pretty well. He also knows a little bit about everything. He's a good cook (as can be seen here) and a little bit of a mechanic, so that was very helpful as well. The Land Rover--When we were under the hood working on the truck about 3 hours down the road we should have known how things were going to go on that front. I'm no mechanic, but Land Rover's are so straight forward it was really more like working on a lawn mower... (no computer, no sensors and tricks, everything is right there at your fingertips and fixable.) We were inside the hood and under the car every single day... usually with minor repairs of this or that, or tightening some bolts, but we had some big ones too... (sheared a steering relay, broke a trailer ball [on this very dip where this picture is taken], sat dead on the road for about 5 hours facing up a little hill with about 4000 pounds of water in tow.) So it was definitely an educational experience in mechanics. Prosper and I were able to do the repairs ourselves except for the steering relay where we needed a new part and our mechanic brought it out from Arusha. So the Land Rover had problems, BUT on the other hand its a work horse. We were pulling huge loads over pretty steep hills with not much complaint from the fairly small engine. Ideally, I'd like for it to work all the time (but then I'd also like for it to have windows and power steering while I'm wishing)... but overall I had a lot more fun driving it than I did heartache. Plus I think it taught me to pray hard. "Please God just help us get back." And here's one more person I feel I need to tell you about. This is the old man who was in charge of the well every other day. Believe it or not he turned out to be a much bigger headache to me than the Land Rover. We had many nicknames for him in 3 different languages... all along the lines of "Grandpa Water" or "Old Man Trouble" or "The Old Well Problem" etc. The community had made an agreement with him for all the water they needed to build the school. Since he was only there every other day and we had made the agreement with him, we tried to get at least 2 loads each day.. (each trip probably took anywhere from 4 to 6 hours total.) This old man knew each trip took us a long time so every day he tried to make things as hard as possible for us. He tried to take as much time as possible so that we wouldn't have daylight for a third load. He would have me dancing circles with the trailer or have us waiting for all the cows to drink. Every day he had a new strategy for how we could get water faster and every day it slowed us down and we always went back to plan A. Then on top of that he wanted more money basically every day. He knew this community was desperate and knew we only had the truck for a short time, so he knew he could get more money. I think they eventually ended up paying double original agreement. I was really struggling to hold it together with this man on some days. We would come and try and be as respectful as possible (as you're expected to always be with the elderly in this culture) but every day we would end up arguing.. which is hard to do respectfully.. and if he got mad then he would say he wasn't going to deal with us in Swahili, he'd only deal with us in Maasai.. which put me out of luck, and didn't help Prosper much either. So the one day that I found myself boiling over and cussing this man through my teeth, we broke down about a mile away from the well and it was the one day of the trip I forgot my cell phone. (The only place with service was the dirt mound at the well.) So I found myself dragging my feet back to beg this old man for a phone. I had to swallow my pride and put myself at the mercy of this man I'd spent more time arguing with than speaking to like a human being. But he was happy to let me use his phone. And that day it clicked in my head.. I ought to love this grumpy old man as much as anyone else. (or more) He was stubborn and greedy and was doing everything he could to slow down our work, but at the end of the day it was more important that I love this man than that I "get more work finished." Ideally I'd like to have both, but the way I treat him says a lot more about the God we worship than the fact that I'm there helping to build a school. It was humbling but it was helpful. Here's my favorite picture from the trip. We were so stoked this day that we got the truck fixed, got the water delivered, and weren't sleeping in a stranger's village in Kenya. Thanks for your all's thoughts and prayers. I had a blast, and I get to do it again here in a few weeks!