Tanzania Trip Preparations Continue
Patricia Gross

Mungu Ni Pendo (Our God Is Love)

The St. Luke’s group preparing to travel to Tanzania in October was treated to a visit from Dr. Shoonie Hartwig, retired professor of Education at St. Olaf College, and a former ELCA missionary who lived and worked with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) for more than 10 years. Dr. Hartwig leaves a strong legacy in Tanzania, including an ongoing ELCA-ELCT education partnership which she founded, and her son Kristopher Hartwig and wife Rebecca who are currently working in an ELCT AIDS hospice ministry based in Arusha. We will visit the hospice program and meet the younger Hartwigs as part of our Tanzanian experience, bringing greetings from St. Luke’s, one of their partners in mission.

Shoonie’s task at St. Luke’s was to provide a basic orientation to the people and culture of Tanzania. She told us that Tanzania is a place of believers, with the people almost equally split among Christians, Muslims, and indigenous beliefs. Mungu is the Swahili word for God, and Mungu is the center of life that connects you to all others. In Tanzanian culture, God is experienced through interpersonal connections, especially the interdependence and responsibility of family, which includes the broadly extended family. This interdependence, or ujamaa, is the basis of all interaction and social understanding. It is lived out in the ways that people take time with each other: how they greet one another and ask after not only family members, but also after the cows, crops, etc. This makes life in Tanzania move at a different pace, one that is perhaps less efficient to American eyes, and certainly less attuned to schedule.

So we are warned that schedule does not exist; that the days do not necessarily assume the shape we had planned. The surprise and serendipity of such days are central to the experience of Tanzania; it is part of Tanzania’s gift to her visitors to allow time to connect and share personal stories. Tanzania is still a culture of oral tradition, where stories are the basis of cultural learning and exchange. There are 120 different languages spoken in Tanzania, though formal education is conducted only in Swahili and English. We will be visiting one of the ELCA schools in Arusha that Shoonie helped to establish. Of the 900 secondary (high) schools in Tanzania, 50 are Lutheran. The paucity of public, government-sponsored schools makes the ELTC’s educational work an important source of hope to Tanzanians.

Tanzania is one of the poorest nations in the world. It has few natural resources, an underfunded educational system, AIDS and malaria-driven health crises, and no real economic engine. As a result, it is a nation of njaa, or hunger. This hunger goes far beyond physical hunger: it is a njaa of the spirit that results from the lack of life chances and choices. Despite their many difficulties, the people of Tanzania live in hope and gratitude. The ELTC is one of the fastest growing Lutheran church in the world. (And they don’t complete their worship services in an hour!) So we have been warned. And we expect to have our eyes opened in new ways as we experience Mungu ni pendo in Tanzania.