Imiliwaha (Part 1): Bennie friends!

This past weekend we made the trip to Imiliwaha for their Jubilee celebration. They were celebrating the 25th anniversary of some of the nuns taking their vows as well as new nuns taking vows. I must confess I did not make it through the entire 3 1/2 hour Mass (I took a walk outside during part of the vows ceremony, but made it back for the Liturgy of the Eucharist) Charlie and Lennart made it through the whole thing standing in back as you see here.


After the Mass, it was time for a feast. I really do enjoy that part of the frequent celebrations here :) It was great food, and there was even cake for dessert! (sing the cake song here)
Part of the reason that we wanted to visit Imiliwaha was to see our fellow graduates from Saint Ben's who are volunteering there for the year. It was great to meet them and spend the weekend with them.
After the feast there was dancing...you can see Charlie was excited about this. (I think he needs a haircut...other opinions?)


Much of the celebration took place at the new secondary school that is in Imiliwaha. It is a very new school. Cara is teaching English here a couple days during the week.


After the feast and the dancing, we decided to take a walk to one of the lakes in Imiliwaha. The landscape is beautiful. The water is not quite clean enough to swim in, but it was nice to see a lake! I miss MN and all 10000 that we have there...


There is a plan to make a dam on this side of the lake. The project has begun, but it is currently halted due to a lack of funding. It will be finished some day...


Notice the lone tall tree in the background of this picture. This will be important for the next post :)
It was a fun weekend. The celebration took place on Saturday. I stayed the night in Imiliwaha on Saturday and Sunday and returned to Hanga yesterday evening. It was a long day of traveling: I woke up at 5:15 AM, waited until 7:00 AM for a ride to Njombe, stopped the bus from Njombe to Songea along the way, rode on that bus for a little over 4 hours, spent a few hours in Songea, left Songea on a bus to Hanga at 5:45 PM and arrived back in Hanga at 7:35 PM ... but it was worth it. Just not a trip i would want to make every day.

More pictures of our adventures on Sunday to come tomorrow.

thanks for reading!