Harambee

Saturday Brett, Baylor and I went out to a village in somewhat nearby Sengerema (only about an hour's drive).  They were having a harambee, which is a coming together of people to help someone or a group of someones.  In this case, the church there (began by the Mwanza team some time ago) was raising money for a church building.  The community gathers together for a day of fun, worship, auctions, eating, and of course, giving.  There's an MC who moves things along: announcing performers, introducing important attendees, making fun of people who don't dance their way to the front to give their money (it seems that dancing, or some sort of shuffling, is integral to the giving experience at a harambee).

We were told to arrive there at 12:30, and knowing things were not going to start on time, we got there about 1:00.  When we got there, they were still setting up, tying logs together for benches, hanging tarps up for shade, testing the audio equipment (yes, they had microphones and speakers in the middle of rural Tanzania).  We talked to some people for a while and then were invited to have lunch.  This is a more wealthy village than most, so we were served rice, chicken, and sheep. They even brought us warm cokes. Now I am not normally a fan of warm coke, but it was given to me right about the time I was munching on a sheep liver, so I was happy to gulp it down.  Brett got the intestines.  I'll go for liver any day over that.  The chicken was downright tasty, though.  After eating we made our way over to the cooking area to thank the women for lunch and were amazed to find about 20 industrial-sized cooking pots over open flames.  "How many people were they expecting?" we asked.  "About 200."  That's a lot of food for a lot of people.  As Brett said, "I guess it takes money to make money."

Round about 4:30 the MC started things up, only 4 hours after the initial starting time.  We knew the rest of the people there would stay til the wee hours of the morning singing, praying, and giving, but it's not particularly safe to drive between towns after dark, so we left about 5:30, after being fed another meal of barbequed chicken livers and rice, and taking about 30 pictures.  We haven't heard how the rest of the event went, but I assume well.  A member of parliament was even scheduled to attend, which is a pretty big deal.

We really enjoy harambees.  It's so encouraging to see not only groups of Christians get together to help each other, but also to be joined by other members of their communities.  It doesn't seem like that sort of thing happens too often in the world.