Author Archive

Soon, I hope to have a photo of the new bus for Bishop Stanway Primary School. A generous donor who has contributed so much already to Bishop Stanway over the past five years, has just purchased a bus. Yes, a whole bus! This will be the first and only bus the school has and we are so very grateful to Karl for his gift. As I write this, the bus is being painted yellow, and, with the name of the school. It will make two runs in the morning and afternoon, ferrying the children from Dodoma town to the school. Currently, they take dangerous Dala Dalas. It will also be a good advertisment for the school.

Tally wrote an Easter greeting to Moses and this is his reply after spending time in Ikowa Village for Easter:  “Dear Tally and Jessie,  Thank you so much for the Easter greetings.  Your greetings are still so meaningful to us and the people at Ikowa.  I am truly humbled by the prayers of the Christians of St. Mary Magdalene’s for me.  I really miss these friends and I am encouraged by the greetings that we are still boldly united through prayers and thoughts.  Please give them my particular thanks for their love and prayers.  I believe God will give me another time to meet with these friends of St. Mary Magdalene’s.

Please receive many many greetings from the women (and their men) of Ikowa.  These women in Ikowa never stop calling Tally and Jessie in their prayers whenever they meet in the Church and for their project.  I went there on Friday and found lots of women in the church for Good Friday service.  They were so glad to see me and they kept on asking me about you, Jessie and TOM.  Their faces changed suddenly when I mentioned to them that Tom has passed away.  They were all shocked by Tom’s death and could not resist to pour tears for Tom.  They made me cry as well as I was sharing to them the stories of Tom’s death.  These people of Ikowa love you and Jessie so dearly, and Tom had become part of this friendship.  They feel in their hearts that they have lost Tom as whom they know as a friend in the name of Christ Jesus.  We, we thank God for the gift of knowing Tom and we accept what God has done for Tom.

 The women continue very well with their Pigs project.  I spent the whole Saturday from 9 am to 6 pm visiting the pigs and piglets.  There are 27 new groups of women plus the 9 previous ones.  Each group has three pigs.  All together there are now 108 pigs and piglets in Ikowa for 36 groups of women.  Because each group has 5 women, there are 180 women now in the village who are in this project.  All pigs and piglets are healthy, strong and attractively growing big.  The project is growing well, the women are together and for those who started last year they have started enjoying the fruits of the project.  They are selling sosme of their newborns and they use the money for the needs of their families.  Here is a quotation of their message to you in my own translation from Swahili to English: ‘May God bless your good heart, Jessie and Tally.  You have loved us and have empowered us.  We have nothing to pay you back, but our only word to you is thank you and welcome again.’ “

I know the women rejoiced in showing Moses (who for those of you might not know, is the Rev. Cannon Moses Matonya, Dean of the Msalato Theological College) their projects.  Moses is from this village and has extended family there.  We stay at his Mother’s house when we visit.  Nine hours of meeting the women and pigs, I hope he got some, rest and time with his Mother!  Well done Ladies of Ikowa, you do have something to give back, it is your joy and success in this project.  You make us so very proud of you all.  Jessie & Tally

After loosing our friend Tom, then Holy Week, Easter was a wonderful day of celebration. Our friend, Moses Matonya spent Easter in his village of Ikowa and promised to send an update on the two pig projects there.

A friend of mine mentioned that someone she knew was negative about the work we are doing, questioning whether it will really do any good. This person is also negative about giving any help to the dissadvanaged. Yes, there are abuses, waste, but that exists in all that man does. Government, churches, education, research. I have met people who blame the victims for their problems, again in some cases that might be true, but as a philosophy it is devoid of empathy. This is what I do know. I have been blessed with being born in circumstances where I never had to face dying of starvation, disease, the worry of not having enough to eat. I have not had to watch those I love die from lack of medical attention, I have not felt the helplessness that no matter what I do, my circumstances will not change.

I have had an amazing life, very fullfilling with meaningful work, joy in relatioships with family and friends. The pure joy has been in transactions of giving where it contributes to the flourishing of each person involved. With KARIMU, we have been very careful in choosing the individuals we work with, the projects – chosen by the people who know what they can do successfully given their circumstances,.

For five years now, I have been working and learning from the people in Tanzania. I have learned that attachment to other people and God are more important to me than attachment to things. When I look at Tanzania, I see scarcity unimaginable in the US, but I also see abundance in their faith in God, in their relationships with each other. I write this to pass along to those of you who have been supporting the projects through your help.   Christ said: “for I was hungry and you gave me food”.   Christ felt the pain of the hungry person, he didn’t blame or question. He saw the situation as it was and acted. You are doing the same and I only wish I could transmit the spritual benefits we receive through our personal contacts there to you. The hands extented in the joy of welcome are extended to you as well, we are the liaison. They difference you are making is profound, thank you. Jessie  (Below is the church I used to attend when I lived in England, went to Easter service there three years ago).

TOM was a man born in Georgia, lived in Connecticut as well as other places while he worked for IBM.  I didn’t know him until he lived in Wyoming.  I met him through friends who knew I wanted to paint scenes of the West.  We met in Atlanta at the Episcopal Church.  After the service, we had lunch with his son, Tom, and his family  and made arrangements for me to go out that winter to see if we could put something together in the way of friendship.  We did and I came back out that summer.  Tom “rented” chickens for my Birthday and he and his son, Will, fashioned a part of the barn as a coop for four hens and a rooster.  We enjoyed eggs aplenty, and the sound of the rooster, though some of his neighbors did not appreciate the rooster!

Wyoming suited Tom.  He loved the open spaces, big sky, wind, wildlife, land to raise and ride his horses.  But it was the people he really loved – hardworking, self-reliant, practical, and down to earth.  Their work so physical and anchored to the land.  He introduced me to his friends who have become my friends and enriched my life immeasurably.  Many of them permitted me to tag along on their labors, driving cattle, hay making (the last time rancher, Dave Noble used the Buck Rake and Beaver Slide method which was a beautiful choreography of men, tractor and buck rake. (I think you can google that).  On another winter trip I rode out with a young rancher on a sledge of hay pulled by two big draught horses through the snow.  The wind was fierce, icicles formed on the horses mouths as well as the mustache and eyebrows of the rancher.  Wonderful paintings came of that.  On another outing, haying Elk, I fell of the sledge when the horses moved on and fell onto the antlers of an Elk.  Ended up in the ER for stitches from that one.

Then there was Kip and Bonnie Alexander!  Their ranch was down the road from Tom’s.  When Tom told them he was bringing down a friend from the East to see their operation for painting subjects, Bonnie told me she didn’t expect to see a woman in old wellingtons who knew how to muck out a barn.  We became fast friends, and I took many photos of them branding, castrating and giving shots to cattle which also became paintings.  I left a painting with each rancher as a way of thanking them for sharing their work with me.

Tom and I would ride up in the hills through fields of wild flowers and sage brush.  The smell of the sage as the horses plowed through it was pure elixer.  I was surprised to see Tom strap a holster with a 45 pistol on before we mounted the horses.  ”What’s that for?”  I asked.  Grizzlies and rattlesnakes were the answer.  We don’t have those in my neighborhood here.

The people there often converse with a minimal amount of words; many live in solitude, especially in winter when they cannot get off their ranches by vehicle with the deep snow.  When they do speak, much is conveyed by the way the say it and their body language and I came to love their economy of words as did Tom, who talked the same way (except in Tanzania, where his Southern roots came out and he talked with everyone at great length).

Tom started the Land Trust in that part of Wyoming, and we went to many a party – barn dances – which looked like something right out of Hollywood.  Men in boots, jeans and big hats, women the same though some wore skirts with their boots.  Young and old, everyone danced and danced WELL!  For more information on Land Trust’s you can google that as well.

On Tally’s and my first trip to Tanzania, I worte a journal and sent it to a few close friends.  A few of them asked if they could help.  There was my dear friend, Karl, in Germany, who has done so much for the Primary School in the way of scholarships, teacher’s salaries, and now buying a bus!  Tom wanted to help as well, so Tally and I made a trip out to Wyoming in the dead of winter (my favorite time) and made presentations at St. Andrew’s church in Pinedale, and a church in Big Piney.  It was night and 30 below zero.  Tally couldn’t imagine ANYONE coming out in that cold and at night, but all were there with hot coffee waiting.  These two churches gave so much of their treasure for scholarships for the children as well as adults.  They have such an empathy for the subsistence farmers in Tanzania, being farmers themselves.  Tom also learned of a grant he could apply for from the Diocese of Wyoming, and got it.  $150,000, spread over three years.  What a life saver that has been.  This is the last year and now we are trying to create an endowment fund and raise $1,000,000. so that the two schools will be less vulnerable year after year.

Tom put in a herculean effort in managing this fund that the three large books, one for each year, will be taken to the Diocese of Wyoming as an example of how to run such a project!!!

Tally and I will be ever grateful that he got to go to Tanzania last autumn and meet the people he helped and they him.  Tom had lived in two worlds,but died in the one he loved most.  Jessie