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Lori Byerly

Voice from Tanzania

In the corner of a Davenport coffee shop in November, we chatted. About our lives — women’s lives — in Iowa and in Tanzania. We wondered together how to give voice to our yearnings, in the midst of so many voices. To express ourselves and our faith in unique and authentic ways. To give back to others, finding our own clear and passionate voices.

Lori Byerly, who serves as an ELCA missionary with her hus-band Todd, returned to Tanzania, East Africa, in November with a request from an Iowa church newsletter editor: Use the wonders of writing via email to express your own story. Let it be an American woman’s story of women’s lives in Tanzania, in your own words.

In mid-summer, an email popped up on my computer. Lori had indeed found her voice in writing. These are words full of grace. Lori’s voice — coming to us from northern Tanzania — reflects her passion and purpose, struggles and joys, discovery and gratitude. (Mary Miller, Journey newsletter editor)

By Lori Byerly

ELCA missionary serving in Same, Tanzania

Well, for days I’ve been wondering what I will write about women in Tanzania and how their life affects a foreign woman living among them. See, most of the women living around me have a better life than the majority of Tanzanian women.

Then on Monday, my house-helper, Mama Maisha, does not come to work nor does she show up on Tuesday for my neighbor. I decide to drive to her home to see if she is sick, because this would be the only reason for her not showing up for work.

What I found was actually worse — a sick child living some kilometers away and little means to help her. She receives a phone call on Sunday to rush to the Ruvu Dispensary where her youngest child has been admitted. She arrives, via the help of her brother who paid the transportation fare to get her there, to find her daughter connected to IVs and unable to recognize her mother; probably a case of malaria not treated in time. She returns home that evening, pondering whether or not to remove her from this secondary school.

Over-abundance
Today is Wednesday. Mama Maisha comes to work. I ask her what her news is, how is her daughter and her home. Things are Nzuri kidogo (a little good), which means that something is wrong. She shares that last night her oldest daughter’s four-year-old son arrives at her home at 4 a.m.! He and his mother have been beaten by his drunken father. The corn crop has been good, which translates into an abundance of corn alcohol, pombe. This little man, determined not be beaten again, says that he will live with his grandmother!

Add the stress of the past few days to her struggle to complete her new house after the old one collapsed during a rainstorm late last year, the struggle to pay for secondary school and to help her middle child, a boy, get through a certificate program for tourism — doing all this alone, as her husband is an absentee father and husband.

Mama Maisha is sleep-deprived and heavy-laden, but through it all we thank God for giving her strength to handle daily life filled with a shida kila dakika (a problem every minute). She laughs through her tears. Her children are adults and yet she carries their burdens as only a mother can do.

I ask myself: how can I support her since I cannot remove the burdens she carries? Then the answer comes from Mama Maisha herself, although she does not even know that I am questioning myself. She finds comfort and strength in our Lord through listening to Sauti Radio Tanzania, the ELCT Christian radio station in Tanzania, on our radio! I thank God that she finds a place of solitude in my home and that the “things” of this world are diminished through the music which refocuses both of us on our Lord.

My heart aches for her and so many others like her who live with this type of daily stress. They understand that until we reach our eternal home in Heaven, life is full of hardships and that God is the only one who can give us the needed strength to go through our earthly life.

This story has such a beautiful ending: While at home last year, I received a few contributions to purchase a sewing machine. One machine I decided to give to Mama Maisha’s daughter, who is a seamstress. I asked her daughter to come to my home so I could place an order. After I explained the things I needed made, I presented her with the new sewing machine on which to make them. She was ecstatic. We then loaded the machine and drove to her home, stopping to pick up her husband along the way.

The following Monday, when Mama Maisha comes to work, she is overjoyed and tells me that her son-in-law fell to his knees praising God for this gift and promised to worship the God that Mama Maisha and her family worship and not to get drunk again. Many months later, I am happy to report that he has kept his promise!

Hospitality 101
If there is such a course, there is no need to offer it in Tanzania. I am constantly amazed at the hospitality shown to Todd and me as we travel around the diocese. Here in Same, the invitations for dinners and chai mostly come from those who we know are poor. They have very few possessions and money, but they open their hearts and homes so graciously. I have sat in many one-room homes wondering why they invited me to their home and I did not invite them to mine. It seems backwards; it IS backwards. Why do we lose the ability to share our wealth once we start accumulating some?

School days
Preparing your child to leave home for school is an experience all parents share. Here in Tanzania, the children often attend a boarding school during their secondary school years (equivalent to junior high and high school years).

In early July, my friend took her daughter to secondary school with many other parents and students. No, they did not take their own cars and comfortably and safely drive their children to school. What did happen was that over 100 people piled into the back of an open-bed truck with their luggage and off they went.

The next day my friend passed by my home on her way to work. She tells me of the shida kubwa (big problem) that occurred on the way to the school. The truck broke down and thieves robbed her daughter of all her belongings. Her daughter, having little to begin with, is now left with only the clothes on her back and no school supplies. This is what I understood with my limited Swahili vocabulary. Later I would learn that close to 70 students lost all their belongings.

Anyway, after I finally understood her daughter’s plight, I went to my closet and began pulling out clothes that I thought would fit her. I did not know what else to do. After folding a couple of outfits, I turned to my friend to get her opinion. I see that she is holding back the tears. We embraced and she began to cry openly. It was at this moment that I realized how she must have felt, watching me choose clothes for her daughter. Not because I had so many, but because I freely gave her what God had first given me without reservation. No act of kindness is too small when done with love.

To be continued with Water Stories

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"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.