Generator Repair

We had a repair man come and fix our generator yesterday and I thought I would share some differences about that with you. First of all Joseph (a man who works for us around the house)  went to town and found him in a garage. He said that the garage repairs all sorts of mechanical things, lawn mowers, motorcycles, generators, etc. It is unusual because if someone comes to your house to fix something they usually come by the “dala dala” African bus where they literally pile people on top of each other, and then the repair person walks. So for starters the way the person gets to your house is different. Well the man, named Bensen, came right at lunch time. It is custom for people not to bring their lunch to work. In fact, if I told a Tanzanian that people in America had to bring their own lunch to work, they would laugh. From what I have seen here, the employer always supplies food for the worker. So when he came at lunch time we made an extra bowl of food and gave it to him to eat before he started his work. When he was ready to work did he get out his big bag of tools?, nope, he asked where ours were. Yes a repair man not having any tools. I would have thought that this was usual if I hadn’t already seen it with the plumber that came to fix our sink, or the electrician that came to look at the power box. Both times they came without any tools, they just used whatever we happen to have on hand. I am thankful that we have a good verity of tools around the house for the repair people to fix stuff. He had to go to town for a new part and he asked for money  because he didn’t have any. He explained what was wrong with the generator and I made sure to see how much the whole thing was going to cost. Sometimes a repair person waits until the job is finished and gives you a really big price and then you have to negotiate to a reasonable price. We did the negotiations beforehand. (By the way Carey wasn’t here or he would have done all this. ) Oh and by the way this was all in Swhaili because he didn’t understand any English. I was able to understand enough. His trip into town took to rest of the day, and he returned just before early evening. By the end of the day the generator was fixed, and all was well. (Smiles)
To me this was just a normal day so I even feel silly blogging about it, but I thought that some of these differences might interest someone.
Until Next Time,
Bonnie

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Using the Internet

Well it is less than a week before we make the big move. The Jensen family has already been there for almost a few weeks now and has really helped us get our house ready. They have even started the process on getting us the internet. This will be nice as I use the internet for a lot of things. Some may think that the internet is just a luxury, especially to a missionary, and this is true, but I use it for everything. I not only use the internet for communication, and this blog, but I use it for many other things. I use it to homeschool the kids, and it is also my personal reference to everything. In America if the kids are sick and I am not sure what to do, I would call the pediatrician, here I use the internet. I also use the internet to find out how to treat the dogs with certain things, again something I would call about in America, like the vet. And since I just can’t call my mom or friends to get advice on cooking something, again I use the internet. So as you can see it can it is a great resource that I use all the time. I am not sure how long we are going to be without it after our move, or how much slower it is going to be, so we will see. When Carey checked out the house he had to take someone from the internet company out to the house to check and make sure that the house and location would get internet. You may have noticed that I mentioned Carey had to take someone. This is because people and companies don’t have cars like they do in America, so a lot of times you have to go pick the company’s employee up and take them back. One unusual thing about the internet is that one house may get it, but next door they may not be able to. This is Africa. 
Until Next Time,
Bonnie

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