Bill Schrull
I mentioned in my previous post that I would share a bit about how it came about that I ended up partnering with DWT and Kasulu Bible College. Back in early 2005, our Rector, Fr. Andy Buchanan put out an invitation to our parish to have a group of us go to Tanzania to continue to foster our relationship with the Diocese. Andy and a group of others from our church had visited DWT in the Fall of 2004, so he wanted to have another group go in the Fall of 2005. I thought about it and decided to go. I like to travel and thought that this would be an interesting experience. I did not have a lot of particular expectations other than to go and represent our church and check in on some projects we had funded in the past. Over the following months, one by one, those who originally thought of going dropped out for various and good reasons. I ended up being the last man standing. I remember Andy asking me if I really wanted to go alone. It seemed perfectly fine to me. I almost relished the idea of being completely on my own, as I have always been an adventurer at heart. Even so, fortunately Beth Colegrove, the daughter of our good friends Jon and Jama asked if she could go as well. It was great to have her with me as I think the both of us needed someone in our own culture to “process” and talk about what we were experiencing during the trip.
So off we flew to Dar Es Salaam and to Kasulu in early November of 2005. We arrived on a Saturday so our first full blown experience of life in Kasulu was Sunday morning worship at the St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Don’t get excited by the word cathedral. It’s a modest building of brick with a tin roof and open window slots all around. No organ or anything like that. Anyway, when we arrived for worship, we followed the priests and leaders in procession while singing the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty” (in Kiswahili of course), but since I knew the words in English, it was easy to join in. What a glorious sound! An entire congregation singing unaccompanied by instruments. As we moved forward we were invited to come up and sit around the alter with the worship leaders, priests and deacons. While we were still singing the hymn, I looked down for a moment to put down my prayer book and bible. At that moment I felt something very peculiar, like I had been in this place before. As I looked up and around me, it came back to my memory.
I had a dream many years before which caused me to wake up in a start. As I recalled the dream, I remembered that I was looking down much like I was in the present moment. I felt like I was being watched or that for some reason those around me were waiting for me to do something, but I did not know what that was. Then I looked up and all I saw was a sea of African faces. I jump up in bed such that I even startled Cathy. She asked what was wrong and I told her about the strange dream. I thought about the dream for a day or so but eventually it faded into the past, as many odd dreams often do. So when I saw all those faces looking up at me and I recognized this moment, I started to cry. I was a little embarrassed and did not want anyone to notice so I looked down again and fussed about with my books until I regained my composure. I realized that I had been given a road sign those many years back so that I would recognize this moment and “pay attention”. For sure, the Lord had my attention now!
After worship that morning we were guided by Jackton Lugumira around Kasulu Bible College. Jackton was the Principal of the school at that time. It was a short tour since the Bible College only has a few class rooms along with a dormitory and few other buildings. We ended up going into a class room that had a couple of old PC computers in it. Jackton explained that that they had received these computers from church in the UK recently and was wondering if they could be used for Internet or any other purposes for the students. I guess he had found out through someone that I was an computer expert. I have to admit, as gracious as the gift was from those who sent them, these systems were just about as useful for computing as a door stop. I booted them up and examined them, but the systems were just too old to be of any practical use. I hated giving him the bad news, but what could I do. Jackton then asked if perhaps the company I work for could donate some old computers we were discarding or replacing. That’s when it hit me (my purpose for being there). I just boldly blurted out “Jackton, you don’t need our old stuff. You need new equipment like we have in the USA. That’s what we need to bring here”. You can just imagine the delight in his face at this prospect, and you can image the surprise in my face for having said such a crazy thing. Where was I going to get the funds to do something like this? Never the less. I really felt after what I had experienced earlier in worship that God had brought me here do something WAY outside of my comfort zone, yet something I was uniquely skilled and equipped to do.
So after spending about 10 days with our new friends at DWT, I went home feeling blessed for having come and also felt challenged as to how such an undertaking could happen. I mean I had no experience in the kind of fund raising that would need to take place, nor did I have any resources in Tanzania to deal with the logistics of getting computers out to a remote place like Kasulu. But God!! Remember those words. I’m going to continue this story tomorrow……..
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Today we again spend the majority of our time at KBC. I was happy to have have great Internet speed today so that I could download various updates with ease and continue to get the computer systems back in good shape. One thing that was a huge blessing was finding some new Internet Café software for Elisha to use when monitoring customer usage for payment. I guess I did not tell you about that part of what they are doing with the computer systems. Besides having them for teachers and students to use for their studies, the computers are open for use daily to the general public in Kasulu. They run an Internet Café. Because of KBC’s central location in Kasulu, it makes it a favorite spot for folks to use for Internet, E-mail and so on. They charge a modest price for usage and the funds collected pay for the electricity and maintenance of the systems, so that the project is for the most part self sustaining. We still donate new equipment and other items of the costly variety, but everything else is handled by the café fees that are collected and also from regular training classes they offer in word processing, spreadsheet and so on. I’m impressed with how KBC had taken this valuable resource and has worked hard to make it self sustaining. During the day Cathy and I interviewed Daudi, the KBC principal and Elisha, the KBC Computer Systems Administrator to get an idea of how the systems have positively impacted the academic level of the Bible College and also how it has impacted the surrounding community. It’s had a major influence in both areas from what they told us. I’m going to wait on telling more about that as Cathy and I want to confer and write up something when we get back from our trip to share with our congregation back at St. Paul’s. But we’ll also post it to our blog at that time. Needless to say, we were pleased to hear all of this.
It’s midnight now, so I’m going to pack it in. Look for part two of “Dreams do come true” story tomorrow. And YES dear friends at St. Paul’s I will get to the classrooms we have funded soon! I have not forgotten about that, but there has been so much for us to share each day. I just can’t fit it all in. You can get a bit of a glimpse about that story on Cathy’s blog at the http://trips.schrull.us site. She posted some pictures earlier today.
Good night from Kasulu.
Bill
Sorry my friends that I did not get a post off yesterday. Cathy and I had a very busy day down at the Bible College and then were out to dinner at one of our friends home’s, Ephriam Ntikabuze. Ephriam is another of the first people I met back during my initial visit in 2005. He is currently the Diocesan Youth Director. Once we got home last night, we were so exhausted that we just went to bed right away. So let me catch you up on what’s been going on.
Wednesday was more or less a work day for us at the Bible College. After scanning the main server, I found that it had been damaged enough by computer virus / malware that it needed a complete reinstallation of the Windows operating system. That’s not unusual really. I’ve been working systems like this for a long time and have found that either through malware or just too many installs and uninstalls of one thing or another that it’s best to start over. The malware got into the system because it’s been hard keep the protection software up to date from such a long distance over a relatively slow Internet connection. This was work that I had not anticipated so I was glad that the installation went quickly. Everything is running very well on the server now. For those of you who are “techie” types, the reason for a server computer is because I 
have employed a thin client architecture for the KBC Network. Back in 2006 when I was spec’ing out the systems for them, I realized that managing electric power consumption was going to be our biggest challenge. KBC had an old diesel generator that did not work well and consumed a lot of costly fuel to run. Battery stored solar power was our best option but we needed then to work on lowering the normal power consumption that typical PC’s require to run. We wanted to have at least 10 workstations, but that would have required a lot of solar panels and many costly batteries for storage. So I went with thin client computing. Thin clients allowed me to a multi user system whereby the thin client computers would simply open up individual user sessions of Windows with each working independently from the same single server computer. The thin clients computers themselves are basically low power consumption terminals. Using those along with flat panel monitors made it possible for us to run the systems with 8 solar panels and 4 deep cycle batteries. In fact, during the long sunny days during the dry seasons, we can run the entire operation from the solar panels while charging the batteries at the same time. Was that techie enough for you? I’ll stop here. The point is there are ways to bring computer technology to places like Kasulu that are efficient and affordable. We were able to accomplish that.
Moving on to today; we again spent the majority of our time at KBC working with the computers doing post installation setups and user session preparation. With those completed, we got the good news that our new DSL connection was ready to be connected. We completed that and are now able to connect to the Internet through faster land based provisioning, leaving behind our faithful but expensive satellite connection. Things sure have come a long way in the last 6 years. I’ll be running some tests tomorrow and making some adjustments to the network to optimize the new connection.
After working on the computers most of the day, we took a break at about 6:15 PM to meet with KCC (Kasulu Cathedral Choir). They were just finishing their practice time. We will be singing a song with them on Sunday at Murusi Parish. This will be yet another long and awesome worship service we will attend along with Bishop Makaya. Cathy and I will be singing and leading the song “He Reigns” from the Newsboy. Great song and it’s got a chorus that was easy to teach to KCC. We hope to have the congregation join in as well. There is a counter melody in the chorus “Glory, glory, glory, glory, halleluia, halleluia”, which is easily translated into “Utukufu, utukufu, halleluia, halleluia”. That’s the right number of syllables and the correct word meaning (Utukufu means glory) to make it work. It was great to be able to work together with them again. They promised to work out a dance step to the song as well. In Tanzania, you don’t sing unless you dance too. I love it!!!!
Lastly today, we visited our dear friend Fred Kalibwami and his daughter Katherine. Fred recently retired from the diocese as administrator and bible college principal. He had a very difficult year for some personal reasons that I am not a liberty to post on the Internet, but I will say that he has been on my mind, in my prayers and close to my heart throughout this past year. It was so good be with him, have a meal together and chat and pray together before we came home for the evening.
And so here we are again, at the end of a long and spectacular east African day. I thank God for his presence with us and the energy and resources He has given us to do what we are doing. This is a special place and a special people for me. I know many of you reading this who are in mission feel similarly about the people you know and worked with in countries all over the world. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it; how God has taken each of us out of our comfort zone and given us an opportunity to serve Him by serving others in places we otherwise would not have considered going to. Honestly could it be any better than this? I seriously doubt that it could be. We have often sung the song “Open the eyes of my heart” at St. Paul’s. It’s a prayer song really. We sing “Open the eyes of my heart Lord. I want to see you”. I have taken this to mean that we are asking the Lord to open our eyes to see “what he is up to” so that we can join in, follow and be in sync with what that is. Being involved with DWT is very much that for Cathy and I; being in sync with what the Lord has given us eyes to see and has given to us to do. In fact, what caused us to be here in the first place is one of those coincidences that can only be attributed to the Lord’s leading in our lives. Tomorrow I’ll share with you how that came about.
Blessings to you all.
Bill