Our Safari

The only word to describe it: WOW! I felt like I was in the movie Jurrasic Park as one of the first tourists. I must bring my family back with me to witness the glory of God’s creation. It brings a tear and a lump in my throat just thinking about it. The first 2 ½ hours in the park were just amazing! In that time span, we were surrounded by zebra and wildebeest as far as the eye can see. We had to almost hit them to get down the dirt road. We saw more baboons alongside the road than I’ve ever seen in any documentary on Animal Planet®. We saw many impala running about. On our way to our lunch stop, we were practically run over by a herd of wild elephants crashing through the bush. We were “challenged” by two large male elephants (posturing as if they were going to charge our mini-bus), as the herd marched by, big and small baby elephant. I can’t wait to show my video of this event! Then, at our lunch stop we saw many hippo and a few crocodiles in the creek next to our lunch site. This was all in the first 2 hours or so.

We have been so blessed. We saw more elephants the following day, cheetahs, lions (many), and a leopard in a tree right next to the road. A rare and lucky occurrence!
We were also extremely lucky to see lions right next to the road twice! Yesterday we saw a male lion guarding a wildebeest carcass along with 2 females and a young male, not more than 10 feet from the dirt road and pulled right up to them! It was as if we were invisible and they let us shoot lots of media. Can’t wait to show the family and others the video! There was so much to see and so many animals! There were too many to mention.

Asante sanna!
Dave Bogumil

Building the Nyakato Health Center

Well, the results are in and here are the final numbers:

Number of friends made: Many.
Number of lives touched: Many.
Number of building worked on : 3
Number of buildings readied for opening: 1 – Patricia Ward (Isolation ward)
Number of new stud walls built in BBC : 6-8
Number of ceilings installed in BBC: 2
Number of new ceilings in progress (BBC): 3
Number of book shelves built: 3
Number of tool shelves built: 1 (Thanks Avery – You rock!)

Value of our efforts here at Nyakato: Priceless.

We had a great crew working tirelessly this week and with a lot of heart. I want to thank all of those from One Community Spiritual center for the relationship we formed and the work that was done. Yes we had a few minor injuries and yes we might have gotten a bit tired. All the work was done with joy knowing that we were doing the work of God.
I will come back once the building is complete (the BBC) and help with the “Grand Opening”. It will be grand indeed.

Dave Bogumil.

Life in Tanzania

It certainly is not life as we know it. Poverty is everywhere. Very little in the way of an economy. It’s not much like the “bubble world” we live in. In America we take it for granted that we can go to the grocery store and buy whatever we want, whenever we want. Hey, we even have 24 hour grocery access. Most people in Tanzania would faint at the very thought of this. We have our Tivo, our Blackberries, our microwaves, our expensive Lexus or BMW, our constant electricity, our gas heat, our prebuilt insulated homes. We live in a very insulated world…our “bubble world”. To most the outside world almost doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter to many. I once had an attorney friend ask me: “It does not affect you directly in your own life, so why do you care?” That attitude is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. He taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to lend aid to those in need. I reject the attitude of my attorney (friend?) and other like him. What we are doing here in Tanzania is only like an ice cube that is being chipped off the top of an iceberg... but it's a start.

Ok, you might say: “You’re complaining about the problem, now present me with a solution”. Well, here goes nothing… It starts at the top of Tanzania and other countries like it and rolls on down to the local government and grassroots levels. There is wealth at the top of every national government. It is up to that government to choose how to use it.
The Tanzanian government could choose to use that wealth to focus on infrastructure development and through aid from the world bank do the same. The governments of these poorer countries could decide to inject capital into their economies and utilize their natural resources to build agriculture, mining and/or other industries. The sad reality is that many in power in these countries choose not to aggressively move down this path and instead seek only power, control and their own comfortable existence. They probably have the attitude of: “Hey, it doesn’t affect me directly, so why should I care?”. There is no easy solution to all of this. I can only try to follow Jesus and put into practice what he taught us to do to the best of my ability.

Imagine if all peoples of the world took the attitude of the missionary and not the attitude of the attorney mentioned above. What a wonderful world it would be.

Dave Bogumil

Blessings From Tanzania -- June 23rd

Mungu Aku Barisi! ("God Bless You"--In Swahili),

Sunday morning we went to the service here at the Lutheran church at the Nyakata compound. What a blessing. The minister asked for translators to sit with us to translate the service. I was asked to speak and shared blessings from our congregation to theirs. Our group stood before them and sang the Peace Song to them. Our children handed out Complaint Free bracelets to everyone--they loved them and now wear them proudly.

We then went to the Sukuma museum (Sukuma is the largest tribe here) and watched native African dance and we watched as the men danced with 16 foot pythons.

Yesterday we began work. The women in our group sifted through thousands of pounds of donated medicines and linens in the anti-natal ward. There are thousands of spontaneous abortions here because of malaria and this ward will help prevent this tragedy. The men in our group designed a process for hanging the ceiling in the birthing center and built a wall there.

Today we are finishing the wall, building a second wall and then we will begin installing the ceiling. Some of our volunteers are organizing the tools we sent. Organization is not a Tanzanian gift so we're helping out.

We are washing our hands constantly in bleach-water, taking cold showers, taking anti-malaria pills and doing without electricity for long stretches of time and yet, we are loving it. At night we gather beneath the vadana to share our experiences of the day. There is much tears and much joy. We wish you could be with us but feel you here in our hearts. We pray for you each morning.

Hope you're getting these updates and Asante Sana (thank you) for all you've done to make this possible.

Kweheri ("bye for now")

Rev. Will

Progress to date - 6/25/2009

Jambo!

Hey, it's really tuff to get time on this computer and of course it's dial-up so anything we do takes much time and is going to be slow. The power went out last night preventing me from adding to this blog. Hey, that happens quite often... It's Tanzania for Pete's sake!

I'll try to give a synopsis of what we've been up to so far. As of Monday morning, the interior walls were up on 85% of the rooms, mesh is on most of the walls but there is no concrete installed yet. IHP has no concrete (very little) and the law was temporarily changed on the exempt status of NGO's and the cost would have been at least 20% higher to buy concrete. We are hanging suspended ceiling tiles from the rooms that are all meshed for concrete (trying to anyway - the ceiling tiles and hanging rails did not match and we had to send some back and get the right parts). We have had to send Celli (Our right hand man and foreman) shopping many times as we did not have all materials needed. He was also sick on Monday so that slowed building progress down too. We are still adding interior stud walls and meshing walls on the interior that were not done. A lot of medical equipment supplies and building materials are stored in the building. This makes it very hard to move around and have a space to work. We have also built some shelving for the storage container office and we are building other shelving for Patricia ward. Some of the crew has been working at Patricia ward to get it fully up to speed, organizing, cleaning and assembling things, putting some stuff into the storage conatainers. I believe some painting is also going on. We're making progress ! We have new studs walls up for 2 new rooms, we're putting the ceiling into 2-3 at this time and finishing all the meshing.

More to come.
Dave.

Bless the children

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Hi, we are here.

Here is a photo and some copy for the web site Crop the photo to show the little girl and the doctor...


Habari! (Greetings)

After more than thirty hours of travel we are in Nykato Medical facility in Mwanza, Tanzania. The team is tired and jet-lagged but we are excited to get started. This is a picture of beautiful little albino girl. Albino children in Tanzania are considered "sub human." They are often killed and their body parts are sold off by witchdoctors as talismans to ward off evil spirits. These children are lucky. Their parents have turned them over to a state supported school. But the children are, essentially, imprisoned behind barbed wire. They do not get medical attention and many suffer sight challenges. Our group, thanks to your support, brought these wonderful expressions of God 125 pairs of custom, prescription glasses. We have been here only 10 hours, and already our impact is being felt. More to come. Keep us in your prayers.

Reverend Will Bowen - One Community Spiritual Center.

We made it in one piece!

After nearly 30 hours of air travel, we made it to Kilimonjaro and did not lose any luggage (First group to not lose any luggage! God's blessing must be on this!) . We had a nice overnight at the KIA Lodge and then it was off to Mwanza this morning, arriving around 10:45 am (Sat, Jun 20).

Paula gave us the tour of the Patricia Ward, the Bogumil Birthing Center (Or BBC - as it is called here). We saw other sites and Denny went over the future plans diagram with the group. We met Lucy and were served with some very fine food. Both meals today, the group left completely empty pots.

Met Celli (the sites' "right hand man") and already discussed "how to" on some of the work to be done. Our main job will be to hang the suspended ceiling and build some additional interior walls in the BBC.

I have been unable to sleep for 2 days. (Time changes, jet lag, trip on my mind). Tonight I crashed before dinner in the guest house and fell off my feet to slumber in spite of the blairing music from the band next door.

Good night from Paula's Office.

Asante,
Dave B.