Distance

The idea of distance struck me recently.  I’m a long distance from home, they measure distance in kilometers, not miles, here, it’s a twenty minute walk from the compound where I live to the Macay House where I work, et cetera.

On Tuesday I joined the director and deputy director of The Carpenter’s Kids, Noel Chomola and Rev’d Emmanuel Petro, on a visit to Ibihwa, the site of a diocesan vocational school.  As we rambled down the two lane road, impressive rock formations flanked us on either side.  A number of villages were also dotted alongside the road.

The Central Tanzanian landscape

In due course, I would begin helping with the Saturday distribution of school supplies to villages such as these spread out across a diocese (the Diocese of Central Tanganyika) comparable to the size of Wales (says Brian Atkins, CK’s business advisor from the UK), visiting two or three villages a day.  With around 119 parishes, some of these villages do not see new school supplies for as long as two years.  That struck me as distance, a distance that ultimately impedes the ability of vulnerable children to be better equipped for the future.

And yet, once that distance is at last finally traversed, something good happens.  The kids get the supplies they need, and the servants fulfill their purpose.  It seems like God’s love can be found there.

Ibihwa, where we are about to visit a classroom

God’s love knows no bounds, no distance too great.  Even in my short time here in Dodoma I am finding that truth more and more apparent.  If He acts through us, then the words of support I have received and the prayers are a testament to this.  (The internet.  The internet helps too.  Woe to those abroad in the 20^th century before Wifi!  Major props to you!)

Moreover, “distance” seems to connote being far away in the same way that “luck” seems to connote good luck.  But God and His love are always proximate.  As I further settle into life here, I am learning more and more to lean on that love through both prayer and right relationship with others both here in Tanzania and abroad.

Finished carpentry projects at Ibihwa

After a little less than an hour, we arrived in Ibihwa.  We were guided into classrooms where girls were busy working on sewing machines, boys crowded around a circular saw guiding a piece of wood through its blade.  Their finished products looked well stitched and of sound build, respectively, evidence of the expertise transmitted to the students.  A quick peek into a classroom served as the last stop of our tour of Ibihwa.  We all hopped back into the Toyota Prado land rover and drove through the reddish terrain back to Dodoma once more.