chris and becka warner

Navigating through all our previous posts can be tedious, so if you’ve missed some or just stumbled upon this site, here’s a general update about what we’ve been doing.

At the end of January, our team completed its teaching projects in Burundi and felt it was time to move on. Not wanting to leave East Africa just yet, Chris and I followed up an opportunity in next-door Tanzania and enrolled in a 3 month New Testament course (one of the required courses to get our degrees through the U of N, if we decide to go that route). We are living and studying at the YWAM base in Arusha, just an hour drive from Mt. Kilimanjaro. It’s week five of the course (it will end on the 2nd week of April), and so far it is has been really interesting. Each week we focus on a different book in the New Testament, with speakers from around the world coming to teach the specifics. Like all YWAM schools, the schedule is packed with class, studying, practical work, and other ministry; so the time has been flying by. The base here has a number of ministries in the surrounding communities (orphan ministry, youth worker training, discipleship training, primary schools, computer training, kids ministry, community development projects, etc.), and following the completion of our course, we are hoping to spend some time going into the Masai villages to teach.

And after that? Since we first stepped out in missions, we have dreamed of going to the places where the Gospel has yet to go, places which tend to be difficult to access; we also knew that we weren’t ready for such a challenge, which is why we have spent the last three or so years training and learning through various experiences. Now, however, we feel that we may be at a crossroads. We have several possibilities in our minds, but nothing for certain. This is such a big decision, and we need God’s wisdom and confirmation. We would really appreciate your prayers! Please pray specifically that God would lead us to the right people and location, in the right circumstances and with the right timing. Thanks so much for your encouragement and for being a part of this journey!

I’ve been thinking about water a lot lately. After a few years of traveling to many different places, I am realizing how much our lives revolve around water. I never really give it a second thought when it is clean and readily available, but when it’s not, it sure makes life interesting. I’m getting used to boiling water, filtering it, conserving it, waiting for rain, walking to another source if my primary one fails, and buying bottled water. I still consider it to be an inconvenience, but I’m realizing that most of the world lives with such inconveniences. Availability of water can quickly turn into a life or death issue. I first learned this in India, where it is not uncommon for rioting and fighting to break out over water during the dry season. In some villages, people are totally dependent on trucks to supply them with fresh water, and they will wait in line for days to have a chance at getting some. Here in Africa, many villagers have to walk quite a distance to the nearest water source, where they can get drinking water and water their animals. For the millions of sustenance farmers throughout the world, their lives literally depend on getting a certain amount of rain when they expect it. I recently heard a report on BBC news that predicted developing countries will be hit the hardest by global warming for this very reason. All it takes is a little variation in rainfall patterns or quantity, and millions of lives are disrupted. Of course, first world countries are not exempt from unpredictable water availability either; it’s just that the infrastructure allows for a lot more breathing room. For example, farmers in the U.S. are just as dependent on reliable rainfall, but insurance will usually cover droughts or flooding. However, availability of water is only one side of the issue; quality of water usually has a far greater impact on people’s daily lives. Check out www.wateraid.org for some very interesting and thought provoking statistics on both. For example, “Households in rural Africa spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, and it is generally women who are burdened with the task.” Or, “The average European uses 200 litres of water every day. North Americans use 400 litres. The average person in the developing world uses 10 litres of water every day for their drinking, washing and cooking. This is the same amount used in the average flush of a UK toilet.”

When we were living in Burundi, we could drink straight from the tap, thanks to a recently installed filtering system. Bujumbura may be the only city in all of East Africa where this is possible (sadly the situation in rural Burundi is not as encouraging). Moving to Tanzania has meant going back to filtered or boiled water. Availability in our area is also an issue, though not as serious as some rural areas. Every once in a while I will turn on the tap and just hear a gurgle and hiss. Apparently in the past the base has had to go days without any water. They are trying to counteract this possibility by building more rain water tanks, which has improved availability a lot. I got some insight into the whole situation a few days ago when I was asked to help clear the pipes that supply our area. The water for our base and all the surrounding villages is piped down from a dam at the base of Mt. Meru, about twenty minutes drive away. Sometimes the area around the dam gets filled with sand and other debris and blocks the pipes and stops our water supply. On a base with anywhere from fifty to a hundred people, it becomes noticeable pretty quickly. Someone usually has to go a few times a week to clean out the area around the pipes, and during the rainy season, when the water is high, someone has to go everyday. To make the situation even more complicated, there are some people down stream from the dam that don’t appreciate their water supply being hindered, so occasionally they go up and open the dam, cutting off the water to our base and all the surrounding area. I went with Mr. Lee, a Korean missionary, who actually came to Tanzania to work in this whole area of water supply. He is planning to go into the rural Masai villages, which often have very poor water access, and dig water reservoirs to catch the water during the rainy season. Here is some footage that Becka took of us clearing the dam; it’s nothing spectacular, but it gives a good picture of what it’s like. The pipe in the last scene is what feeds our base and the surrounding area.

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“We’re peaceful here, everyone keeps the peace.” I looked down at my skirt. The bench seat in the dalla-dalla was meant for two; since I was the third person, I wasn’t able to cram more than half my butt on the edge. It was about as comfortable as my conversation with the man in front of me. Brown Shirt continued and I wiggled my butt a centimeter further onto the seat.

“We’re not like those other people in East Africa, killing each other. We’re peaceful. You’ll see that.”

“Mmmhmm,” I replied, as if I were interested. I was annoyed. It was hard to keep my thoughts to myself, but I said nothing. As soon as seats became available, I made my way to the back, ending the conversation. It was pointless trying to argue a stranger out of a strong opinion, especially one who had most likely never traveled to the countries that he was referring to. Or read his nation’s history, for that matter.

Much later, I was cleaning the room. Actually, I was making piles. Bulky piles in the corner of the room, snack and coffee-filled Tupperware piles in the closet. Clothes here, cleaning supplies there. Anything outside of its pile makes me uncomfortable, for obvious reasons. Well, they’re obvious to me anyway. Like the man on the bus who annoyed me with his ethnocentrism and sweeping generalizations, I too have my own perspectives on the world. From how to organize our closet to how I interact with people, I’m convinced I’m right. There may be no basis for what I think, other than it is what I’m comfortable with. Maybe everyone is guilty of making neat little piles of the world.

I have been learning to make piles since I was three feet tall: dirty clothes here, clean clothes there; Hispanics and whites live on those streets, and Asians and blacks live on these streets. These people are beautiful and those people are not. If you do this, God will like you, if you do that, He won’t. At first, I bumbled through the process, not knowing what goes in which piles. But eventually we all find what we are comfortable with, and more or less stick to it. Unless something forces us to reconsider the piles we make of the world.

Experiencing many different cultures during our travels in the past few years has shaken my careless notions; especially the hasty judgments about people that drive me to categorize and generalize the way that I do. For example, journeying to Kyrgyzstan, India and Africa has stretched my understanding of poverty. The poorest people would slaughter their only goat for us, or spend hours making a huge meal just for us. I was touched by the generosity of people that I thought I had come to help; even a little ashamed of my over-developed individuality and inexperience in welcoming guests in my own country.

Even my generalizations about how women are viewed outside the western world have been challenged. Through adapting to skirts instead of shorts, guarded interaction with the opposite sex, and more distinct roles, I have lived right in the middle of what I once believed was backwards and demeaning. Though women face many challenges in the non-western world, we face them everywhere. Not only that, but I am shocked to discover how anti-family and loose western women are viewed to be from the outside. I want people to understand my values, but I haven’t always been willing to at least listen to theirs. As a result of this process, I found that I have both softened and hardened. Softened because I am more interdependent on my community to protect me, and hardened because I am learning to overcome the negative messages that every culture sends to its girls and women. My mental list of what a woman is grows by the week, but my list of what a woman is not has been tossed aside.

In the last few weeks, my experiences have been nudging me again, reminding me that my old piles don’t work anymore. Maybe they never worked at all. While eating with people and learning their children’s names; walking down the strange streets day after day until they grow familiar, something happened to my lopsided, top-heavy vision of this continent: it collapsed in a heap. I’m learning all over again how to see the world, and I’m discovering that people are more like me than I once believed.

Just before leaving Burundi, we were told that most westerners like to prepare their own food. “For you to eat our food is a miracle,” insisted one of our friends after dinner. “It is a gift from God.”

Maybe our friend said it. It is a gift from God that allows us to leave the comfort of our addictive pile-making and try something a little different. It is a gift from God that helped me to recognize that the stranger on the crowded bus is actually more like me than not; I have no business writing him off, fitting him into just another pile in the corner of my mind.

I can’t say I’ve really seen the “wild africa” that most people envision when they think of this part of the world (i.e. safaris, the Big Five, seasonal migrations, etc.) I’m ashamed to say that my experience thus far has been more urban than wild; i’ve dodged a lot of cars, but no charging elephants yet. However, moving to Tanzania has definitely opened up a new world of possibilities. Nearby Arusha is the safari capital of the country; with some of the most amazing land and animals in the world just a few hours away. The Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater are two of the most common destinations, and both are supposed to be beyond spectacular. In other words, hope is on the horizon. Safaris are quite expensive, but Becka and i are thinking about combining our birthday money and going for at least a day or two. We probably won’t have time until April, but that is supposed to be one of the best times to go anyway. If you get a chance check out this site; it has some amazing pictures of animals taken in areas that are quite close to where we are.

You may have already heard about one of the staple foods that is eaten in most of East Africa. It is called “Ubugari” in Burundi and “Ugali” in Tanzania. Ugali is partially cooked dough, made either from cassava, wheat or corn flour. It’s usually served with sauce, and veggies or meat, and we think it’s pretty good. In spite of its appearance as “raw” dough, it takes a huge amount of effort and time to prepare. Flour must be obtained, and sifted of any critters. Next, it is mixed with a little water and stirred over the stove. More and more water is added until it is the right consistency. It is so difficult to stir the sticky mass, there is a special long wooden spoon for it. Usually someone sits, cross-legged, with the pot between the bottom of their feet (with some cloth to protect them from the heat) and stirs continually. It takes quite a bit of muscle to move the thick dough fast enough to keep it from burning. After many minutes and very sore arms, it is finished and served in a basket, piping hot.