Latest video blog...

A few things have happened since our last post including Andy and Susie's house (soon to be ours) half burning down and acting in a movie. I will expand upon  these in our next Link Letter, until then, have a look at our latest video blog by clicking on the link below:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49469363/Neema%20Nov%202011.m4v

You can also view the video of our guest house opening by clicking on this link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49469363/B%26KRAYVidBlog.m4v

If you would like downloadable versions of these videos, please sign up to 'Dropbox' and send me your dropbox address.

Love to you all,

Ben and Katy X

Charred remains of A&S's office

I knew I shouldn't have worn that old German Army costume here

...the spice of life

The thing I love most about our work at Neema is the variety. Today for example, I started by drilling holes into plywood birds. This was for Susie who was fulfilling an order being sent to a boutiquey shop in Dar es Salaam called the Green Room. I then had to review the books for our Guest House; which seems to be doing well in its first fledgling months. 


After resolving some personnel issues, at 10am I collected two of our volunteers: Amanda, a Physiotherapist from Oz and Mark, a ceramicist from New York and took them to meet the Bishop of Ruaha. As we went I explained appropriate etiquette for greeting a Tanzanian of senior position. On my return I had a chance to view Mark's intermediate technology potter's wheel in action. Made from an old off-road tire filled with concrete, a couple of bearings and a wooden frame. The weight and diameter of the wheel means it has enough circular momentum to keep going for a while once you have given it a kick. Mark swiftly demonstrated how easy it was to make a pot on his homespun machine...well, easy that is if you're Mark.

Mark at his newly made wheel

a minute later...

Voila!

Mark is looking forward to training Ahazi one of our deaf collegues in using this with locally sourced clay and then firing it in our 'Bottles to Beads' kiln.


I returned to conduct my first Tanzanian interview for the post of Guest House Manageress and Office Assistant. We were interrupted once, when I had to add a dimension to an ergonomic table I had drawn up for Josphat in the paper-making workshop (as strictly instructed by Mim, an Occupational Therapist volunteer). As this was conducted next to the cafe I soon found myself fixing the coffee machine - before ordering one of course!. Back downstairs I was able to continue my 'QuickBooks' training with Destory (yes that is his name) our invaluable accountant. By the time I had replied to a few emails from volunteers from various countries across Europe, it was time to help Katy and Susie pack up their order for the Green Room on which they had been slaving away all day along with our tailoring staff. We raced down to the bus station with with just one minute to spare and narrowly managed to get our three large boxes stuffed with bespoke cushions etc onto the next Sumry bus headed for Dar. This was not without Susie making a scene by literally throwing the large boxes up and down in the cramped bookings office (to prove how light they were), so we could get a haggled down price of 10,000Tsh!


By the time we pushed off for home Katy and I were cycling back in the dark (again) with only one headlight between us. This is not a good idea on potholed roads as you tend not to see the larger crevices. I soon found this out when rolled my bike over into one! Pulling myself off the dusty road I thought how different the evening had been from the previous night when we were in the sanitised studio of a local radio station talking about the work of Neema in perfect, unbroken Swahili- well Susie was. My contribution was 'Habari za jioni, ninaitwa Benjamin' Good evening, my name is Benjamin' and at the end of the half hour interview, 'Kwaheri', 'Goodbye'.

1st Video Blog!

Hi, I can't quite believe we've managed to upload such a big file from out here, but if you click on the link you'll see our first short video blog. Sorry the sound quality isn't great at times...

July News Letter

Mmmm... lunch

This was the week I killed my first chicken. I won’t go into too many details, but the Tanzanian way allows the bird a slower death than we would normally go for. According to our instructor it ‘allows the spirits to return to the earth’. On our last day of Kiswahili training at the campsite, Katy, I and the other students were treated to Tanzanian cookery course hence the need for a sacrificial chicken or two. During this we learnt to use a special device to scrape out coconut shells for making coconut rice, how to make mandazi - a traditional ball shaped donut, and how to cook pillau - a spicy rice dish that is usually reserved for special occasions. Oh and we did also have to pluck and gut the chickens.

Katy plucking the chicken

We have now sadly bid farewell to the RiverValley campsite and the other trainee missionaries we befriended there including three SIL students - Michael and Bev Harrah from the US and Danielle from Canada. We will really miss our little cabin perched on the hill and enjoying friendly banter over delicious meals that we didn’t have to cook ourselves!

The Lord has blessed us with some lovely accommodation for the next stage of our journey towards taking over from Andy and Susie Hart at Neema. The first six weeks we will be living with Andy and Angela a couple serving with Emmanuel International out here, Andy is a water engineer and Angela teaches English. They are both from London so the regional accents are making me feel right at home. After this we will be house sitting for another EI couple Andy and Miriam while they travel back to have their third child back in England. They have a five bedroom house - so we will have plenty of space for guests! In fact we are already expecting at least five visitors to join  us there between August and September.

My first chapati

Last week we had the fantastic news that our air freight had arrived safely and all in one piece in Iringa - Bwana Asifewe! It did take us five weeks and many hours of phone calls and favours from friends in Dar es Salaam; but we still couldn't quite believe it when we saw our ten boxes stacked up in a corridor at Neema. I don't think we'd try it again though.

This morning we visited the Iringa Cathedral for the first time and we were pleasantly surprised by how much of the sermon we were able to understand with our newly learnt Kiswahili. It was a particularly encouraging message for us as it was taken from Psalm 121 ’I lift my eyes up to the hills- where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth’  The best part of the service however, had to be the beautifully harmonious choir, who’s master had the most incredible voice. We are not yet sure which church we will become established in, but the cathedral may be a good choice as it is right next door to Neema.

Tomorrow we have our very first day at the Neema Centre where we will start to work our way around each of the various workshops, finding out how each process works and carrying out a mental SWOT analysis on each area so we can start to assemble our plans for the future.

Please pray for:
> Good observations skills and that we would be able to pick up as much knowledge of the project as we can before Andy and Susie leave
> That we would establish good relationships with the staff
> That our Kiswahili continues to improve as we move to just two hours  a day
> That we would find learning sign language straightforward
> That the Neema guest house is ready for its grand opening in two weeks time!


Praise God for:
- Our new home with Angela and Andrew
- The welcome Andy and Susie Hart have given us
- Having our airfreight - including an incredibly luxurious latte maker - bought by our friends Amy & Pete
- The opportunity of working for such a brilliant, God ordained project.

With much love,

Ben and Katy XXX

Arrival in Tanzania

We have arrived safely in Tanzania and have now completed our first week of language training! I am writing to you from our 'banda' or log cabin at the Rivervalley campsite, a few miles down the Ruaha River from Iringa. We will be staying here for the next five weeks while we get to grips with Kiswahili, which all the Tanzanians say is 'rahisi'. We are currently working our way through the eight noun classes and picking up about twenty five new words a day so we feel it is more 'gumu' than they keep making out.

Our classroom!

The campsite we are staying at is beautiful and our banda is perched on the side of a hill overlooking the river. The height we are at (1600m) means the climate here is so much better than when we spent a night in Dar es Salaam recently. It gets to about 25 degrees during the day and drops to around 12 degrees at night - I actually saw my breath this morning! As we are slightly more out in the sticks we do have to contend with a wide variety of 'wadudu' or insects, a large one of which we met yesterday... This also means there are some amazing birds and butterflies to be seen too. Last night we saw a Verreaux's Eagle Owl.


On Wednesday we visited the new Neema Crafts centre in Iringa for the first time and met with the staff. Susie introduced us as the new bosses which was a strange experience for both us and the staff! It was great to see again the range of different crafts they were busily working on and to see some familiar faces once more. Susie was in the midst of a last minute effort to make enough stock for two exhibitions this weekend, one that she is running in Dar and another we ran yesterday at the International School in Iringa.
It was amazing to see the many aspects of the new building and to see volunteers from St Mark's Harrogate painting and decorating the new guest house rooms. These need to be finished in time for our first guests in June so please pray that they are. A particular problem is finding enough wood in Iringa to make the ten doors needed!

I was also shown a sizeable upstairs room at the back of the centre where I will be setting up a carpentry workshop. It was exciting to see our workplace for the next few years and Katy and I are eager to get started once our language training is over.


There is a reasonably large ex-pat community here who have been very friendly to us since we have arrived and it was good to meet a number at the English speaking church service last week. The
family who run the campsite we are staying at have been particularly welcoming.


This morning Katy and I went to a local Lutheran church (as it was near the campsite) and we savoured hearing our first Swahili Gospel choir since arriving. In fact both of us were struggling to hold back the tears. After about an hour there was a short break in the service which was followed by another hour of just singing from various choirs and individuals. Of course, Katy and I as the only Wazungu there were asked to share a song. It was difficult to sing 'Lord I lift your Name on High' with no accompaniment but being able to do the actions helped!


Please praise God for:

* Our safe arrival – although we did see a number of overturned vehicles along the way
* A friendly local community
* Great language teachers
* God's provision for all our needs





Please pray for:

* Tanzania as it is about to undergo nationwide powercuts over the next ten days affecting businesses and homes alike
* Our take up of Kiswahili – that it would be quick and we would have plenty of opportunities to practise.
* That we would be able to get our air freight through clearing easily


With every blessing,

Benja na Katy X

Kwaherini!

'Goodbye Ben and Katy' 

It has been a while since we last blogged, but as we learnt on our 'en route' course we have been  sure to follow our own 'RAFT' plan before leaving for Tanzania. 

RAFT is an acronym for:

Reconcilliation - making every effort to restore relationships and situations that needed reconciling. 

Affirmation - Saying thank you to those who should be thanked and receiving encouragement.

Farewells - Taking time to say goodbye to those close to us and important places.

Time - Ensuring that we don't rush through each of the above

As part of this we have been travelling around the country an awful lot visiting friends and family members. So we hope you forgive us for not being in very good communication of late!

As we have been from place to place we have felt as if we have been on a raft of goodwill. People have been so generous with their time, encouraging words and gifts. In April, we had a beautiful concert organised by Katy's cellist sister Rachel in aid of Neema. This was followed by our commissioning service at our home church Holy Trinity Combe Down (a very moving occasion). Last weekend we also throughly enjoyed our leaving do at All Nations.

I would particularly like to thank all of the people who have contributed to the tools and equipment we will be taking with us to Neema. Especially, Hugh Davis, a plumber from Harrogate, who worked at Neema installing the showers in the new guest house a few months back. Since his return he has worked tirelessly, sourcing every conceivable carpentry tool I could think of of from suppliers who have often given enormous discounts on their equipment. It literally brought tears to my eyes when I saw the shipping container packed full of equipment destined for Neema. It will be so exciting when it arrives. Please do pray that we are able to get it all through customs without any going missing.  

Our worldly possessions

Katy and I have just had our final dinner with my parents before we fly off to Dar es Salaam tomorrow and as I write this my dear Mum is sticking on the last of the labels to our boxes for air freight. We will let you know how we get on when we finally arrive....

Feb/March Latest

Meeting Bishop Joseph

Bishop Joseph and his wife Lillian

A few weeks back now Katy and I were able to meet with our new boss, Bishop Joseph Mgomi, who is the newly enthroned Bishop of Ruaha. We were also pleased to meet with his wife Lillian, with whom we were able to practise our basic Kiswahili. It was an opportune time to see them while they were staying with St John’s Church, Egham for a couple of nights after a Bishops’ training conference in Canterbury. 

Bishop Joseph was very positive about the work of Neema Crafts and is excited about the prospect of having many new guests to the Diocese through the new Neema Guest House. He was also keen for visitors to go on Safari in the nearby Ruaha National Park.

It is a tough time for the Diocese as poor rains over the last few seasons have crippled the agricultural productivity in the region. This has meant that the mostly rural parishioners are having to survive on very little. Please pray for the region in the coming months and years that it would begin to see the regular rainfall that it used to.

Church Circus

Outside Broome Church, Norfolk

This month, Katy and I have visited St Mary’s church, Ealing; St Andrews Church, Chinnor; St Mary’s Church Sydenham; St James’ Church, Chipping Campden and St Michael’s Church, Broome (Norfolk).

We have been so blessed by the warm welcome received at each of these churches and really appreciate all of the encouragement folk have been through buying from the Neema stall and committing to pray for the work of the project.

We also spoke at the Putnoe Beaver-scout colony this Friday where my sister is known as ‘Eagle’. The beavers were most interested in the concept of paper made from elephant poo and discovering that the Lion King names were real Swahili words: E.g: Simba (Lion), Pumba (Warthog) and Rafiki (friend).

Tools for Tanzania

The Brick Hill Baptist Team and another container

I spent a couple of days this week driving around country with my brother-in-law and his ex-Parcel Force van. We were picking up the many and various woodworking tools, generously donated by folk from our link churches. We now have enough good quality tools to set-up a quite a decent workshop at Neema.

Another great answer to prayer this week was discovering ‘Operation Tanzania,’ an initiative run by volunteers from the Brick Hill Baptist Church in Bedford. This church send out a shipping container to Tanzania every 10 months, stuffed with useful supplies from medical equipment through to tools and toys.

I was amazed when I first contacted the project that they immediately agreed to send out all of our equipment directly to Iringa, for very little payment. They are even storing the equipment for me while I gather up the rest of what is needed, Praise the Lord!

Week 5 Already!

The term has been rolling on at quite a pace since our last blog post.

We now only have one week left of our development module, but we have found the reading and discussions really helpful. As I mentioned previously some of our study has been taken from Bryant Myer's book 'Walking with the Poor'. In this he proposes the idea that poverty is about broken relationships, broken relationships between us and others, our community, our environment, ourselves and ultimately God. In this sense we are all impoverished until we begin to put our trust in Jesus who is able to reconcile these relationships.

Bath Time

At the end of January we were back in Bath as we had an important presentation to make to our home church missions committee (the WiSE team). We also used the Sunday to feedback what we had been doing to the three services at Holy Trinity Combe Down. It was a great opportunity to catch up with friends from Monkton and our home church. We really enjoyed staying with the Udale Smiths who have an annex to their house especially for returning Mission Partners! We will be sure to find lots of reasons to come back to Bath now, especially as the annex includes an outside hot-tub!

A Good Year

A couple of weeks back we were able to attend the Neema Crafts UK trustees meeting. It was great to see how much interest and support for Neema has been generated this year in the UK and very exciting to read the Hart's review of the year which I include below:

“This has been a big year for Neema Crafts with visits from the BBC, The Times and the National Geographic Magazine as well as several Tanzanian government ministers and senior officials. Neema Crafts has been honoured with two major awards: Neema Crafts Restaurant was voted ‘Best Restaurant in the World’ in the Telegraph Newspaper ‘Best of British’ competition. Neema beat over 600 nominated establishments from all over the globe. This is a huge honour for a restaurant entirely run by deaf chefs and waiters who a few years ago had no training and no hope of employment. Susie Hart, founder of Neema Crafts, was named one of four ‘Women of the Year’ at the prestigious Women of the Year lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane, London, in front of a selected audience of 450 of the most influential women in the country. Susie was nominated for the award by Sandi Toksvig and Maureen Lipman in recognition of the work she and Andrew have done in Tanzania on behalf of the disabled community."

This was taken from the Neema Crafts UK annual report which can be found on the charities commission website: http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/

You can also follow the latest news from Neema by signing up to the Neema Crafts group on Facebook.

First week back

Katy and I have now settled on our modules for this our second term at ANCC. Katy is studying 'The Hebrew Bible', I am looking at 'Bible in Mission' and we are both taking a course on 'Interpersonal Skills' which includes lessons in public speaking and listening to others - the latter being something Katy would love to see me develop.

Worth a read

Our main focus this term will be on the Development module, which is actually part of the MA course at ANCC, but we are able to sit in and 'audit'. We don't officially have to compete the assignment for this module, but we have decided that we'd like to use the  opportunity to research models and principles of development that might specifically apply to Neema, with the objective of arriving at a few proposals for the future of the project. Our first couple of days in this module have been fascinating. We are doubly blessed with knowledgeable and experienced teacher and fellow class-mates from six different nationalities - meaning we are never far from a lively debate.

Pray for Sudan

The college has been praying particularly for the referendum in Sudan this week and while the votes are now being counted we continue to pray for a peaceful outcome. Please join with us in prayer for wise decisions that may have to be made over oil resources and the administration of a new state.  Pray also for the church in northern Sudan as many Christians move south with the desire to build a better future.

Heart to Harts

Susie Hart and someone else 

On Tuesday evening we both travelled down to Kent to meet with Andy and Susie Hart before they flew off to Tanzania for their final term out there. Not surprisingly, we found them in the midst of a hundreds of bags of various states of packing, most filled with useful gadgets an oojamaflips to keep life running in the workshop, internet cafe and award winning restaurant. Both Susie and Andy have an uncanny ability to be utterly captivating in conversation and from the moment we stepped through the door we were drawn in to a world of adventures and tales from their past year or so; of the sort most people would spread out over a life time. During our time we were able to ask lots of questions about what we could expect when we arrive out there later this year. We also spent time together dreaming about the future of the project and where we might aim to take things over the next 5 - 10 years. One thing is for certain, there will be plenty more adventures to be had.

Yorkshire Tales


Friday afternoon we set off up the M1 to visit missionary friends of Katy's from her gap year in 2003. Here we reminisced about life in Tanz and later met Kathy Grace, a designer friend of theirs who had visited Neema recently. Kathy has offered to help us improve the style of our blog and Neema's web presence in the future.

Our stop off in Leeds was the first leg of a long weekend's itinerary that David Macha (an old friend) had planned for us in the Dales. Our first task was to run a craft activity for an unknown number of  kids in the local community hall. We decided to do some T-shirt printing with and African theme, and so using Katy's silk screens and large quantities of ink we set up the hall in hope of people coming. We weren't disappointed and in fact we had a more children than expected, but with the help of parents, some great prints were produced!

Shortly after this we were, driven off around many Postman Pat lanes to meet parishioners from St Michael's church Grassington. This was a lovely occasion and we were able to meet our advocate Cath who had travelled out to Neema earlier this year.

After we'd talked about Neema late into the night, we were back on duty early the following morning to visit two of David's seven churches. Apart from almost setting fire to the place with the projector, our first visit to St Peter's, Hebdon went well. We were then left with 15 minutes to get over to St Michaels (10mins away), leaving us very little time to set up. Nevertheless, the Lord helped everything to work and we really enjoyed speaking to a full church and following the special Kenyan liturgy that David had found for the day. The choir too, treated us to a round of 'There's no-one like Jesus' in Kiswahili - most impressive.

St Michael's Church, Linton

It was great to meet folk after the service and as ever the Neema crafts proved a great hit. David and I were able to run off after the service to watch his son's rugby team Wharfedale see off the opposition with some ease.

At the end of our marathon weekend we were finally treated to time with the Macha family: David, Elaine, Sam, Jess and Jonny. We are so pleased to see that they are enjoying their new lives in Yorkshire having moved back from living in Tanz not too long ago.

We now have the deepest respect for rural C of E vicars who have to juggle the needs of so many churches!

Happy 2011!

We hope you had an enjoyable Christmas. Katy and I have spent the last month travelling around the country and spending good times with family and friends for our last Christmas before heading out to Tanzania (God willing).

Katy Cold Christmas Market Stall

Katy was back at her market stall in Greenwich in the run-up to Christmas and stood for many hours in the freezing cold enduring repetitive Christmas muzak. The snow disrupted what should have been the busiest shopping weekend of the year, but fortunately she didn’t make quite the losses of her competitors John Lewis and Selfridges.  If you are looking to decorate soon, we can give you a good deal on the website price list! Email: Katy@kjray.co.uk

Katy was un-able to join me on our visit to St James Hill, Sutton Coldfield as she had the coughing cold that seems to be going around. Nevertheless, I was given a warm welcome by folk at the church and was encouraged by the friendly conversations over our Neema Crafts stall.

Off sledging in Bradgate Park

This was the first year Katy and I have attempted to cook a family Christmas lunch. After 30+ years of  spending Christmas day in the kitchen we offered my Mum a well earned break. I couldn’t believe quite how much preparation and planning was involved. Fortunately, Katy took care of most of this. I was just careful to obey orders and offer a hand when the enormous turkey needed hoisting out of the oven – it had one of those pop-up timer things embedded in it which helped to ensure no one was poisoned. On reflection, Christmas day isn’t much of a holiday when you’re cooking and I think I’ll give it another 30 years before attempting it again.

Having celebrated Christmas Eve with my family, we headed up the motorway to Katy’s parents in Leicestershire. We were just in time to join John Woolmer (Katy’s Dad) give the midnight communion at the local parish church. I rubbed my inward hands with glee as I saw a few visitors wander in from the pub, quite unaware of the mind-blowing testimonies of angelic visitation and Christian conversion that would be shared later. John referred to his book ‘Encounters’ during a gospel-loaded sermon and we were pleased to see that all of the free copies of this book were taken at the end of the service.

It was so special for us to have a white Chistmas before we head out to Africa. We were able to go tobogganing twice on Christmas day in Bradgate Park. We were all shocked when my Mother-in-law Jane consistently overtook us on every hill….see video for evidence… she’s cutting the straight path down the middle! 

We spent New Year’s Eve with our close friends Pete and Amy who run Pulse Ministries – an organisation that runs childrens’ holiday clubs and events for training and youth and children’s leaders. See http://www.pulseministries.org.uk if your church might be interested,

Since then we have continued to travel across the country visiting friends and family. I have picked up two large boxes of tools in recent weeks that will be greatly appreciated at the Neema Crafts workshop. If you happen to know anyone else who is clearing their workshop we are looking for woodworking tools, specifically: chisels, hand-planes, marking gauges, tenon or dovetail saws and metal rulers. It would also be great to find a wood lathe!

We are now back at All Nations and I have already been persuaded to start training for a half-marathon... I don't know if Katy's committing yet, but watch this space to see which we do!