Idunda

We have been gone for the past four days, two nights in Idunda. It’s about 90 Km from Iringa. It is virtually all dirt-washboard road, so to get there it took us about four hot and dusty hours in two vehicles since the basi (Swahili for bus) couldn’t negotiate it. It was worth it! People lined the little road as we came into town, singing and dancing. To our great surprise and pleasure we got to attend a wedding Saturday afternoon. Now that was amazing! In the evening we danced and sang. The best part was the Idunda choir came to our quarters and sang to us. They serenaded us after we went to bed. There are few Americans who can claim this elite status!

Sunday came early. We had breakfast. The meals were all quite similar, with chicken, pork, rice, beans, potatoes and once pumpkin greens. They served tasty pork and chicken sauces and ugali, the local equivalent to bread (but you would need a much longer explanation on ugali to understand. This is significant because I do not think the Idunda Tanzanians eat this well on a regular basis, yet the showed us their best. Worship was fun! Lots of singing and dancing, five baptisms, and a sermon by me! All in only 2 1/2 hours. The pastor let the congregation off easy since he decided that hearing me preach was enough. I doubt you can imagine either my surprise or panic at finding out I was expected to preach. It went OK. Say a sentence, Pastor Ma ng’ulisi would translate, talk, translate, talk, translate, etc. I said, “Asante sana,” many times. It means “mangen tak.”

They need a dispensary.

During the rainy season, eleven women delivered before they could get to the nearest dispensary, because they could not cross the river. Two of the infants died. Dispensaries have wards where babies are delivered and newborns are attended.

They have a building that can be brought up to standard and a residence for the nurse who runs it. The community is already planning to rebuild the residence, which has a good roof, but needs new exterior walls. For both, they need support for supplies, but will provide sweat equity. It will take 3,000,000 TSH for the rehab of the dispensary, 1,000,000 TSH and 2,000,000 TSH for the required photovoltaic electricity source. This is about $5200 USD. We left heartened and excited that something this significant can be done so inexpensively. Two of Idunda’s form four graduates want to go to nursing school, so they will whet their appetite at Red Cross training for a year, with ambitions to stay in Idunda. Wow! Would that be great!

On Monday morning as we left Idunda, people again lining the road, I had the great joy to see a mother and her daughter a second time. This time, the mother was very happy and the little girl no longer had a cleft lip, having been nicely repaired and well healed. Of all the wondrous things we saw and experienced, this was my peak experience.