Team Tanzania: A Personal Reflection of a Vine Trust Work Party Member

By Melville Crosthwaite

People talk of ‘life-changing experiences’. This book describes such an event. Heading out to Tanzania as part of a Vine Trust Work Party to help some of the world’s poorest children orphaned by Aids, this is the author’s personal account of what happened. Both heart-warming and heart-rending, if you read this book, you will want to do something to help change the lives of others for the better.

‘Connecting People to Change Lives’, Vine Trust is a registered charity, founded in Bo’ness, Scotland in 1985. Its work has grown to reach out to both Peru and Tanzania, to help some of the world’s most disadvantaged children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gilead Books Publishing
• Release date: Apr 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310076541

Melville Crosthwaite

Married to Irene, father of four, and now grandfather too, Melville Crosthwaite has been a Church of Scotland parish minister since 1984, prior to which he was a teacher. For over 20 years he has ministered in Larbert East where there is a heartfelt desire to reach out to others with God’s love.

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Team Tanzania:

A personal reflection of a Vine Trust Work Party member

By Melville Crosthwaite

Published by Gilead Books Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright © Melville Crosthwaite 2016

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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This book is available in print at Gilead Books Publishing

All scripture quotations are from the Good News Bible © 1994 published by the Bible Societies/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd UK, Good News Bible© American Bible Society 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992. Used with permission.

Cover design: Nathan Ward

Contents

The Team

Introduction

Chapter 1 Tanzania Here We Come!

Chapter 2 Moshi

Chapter 3 To Work

Chapter 4 Head Office and the Painting Squad

Chapter 5 Hey Ho, Hey Ho, it’s off to work we go (again)

Chapter 6 A New Experience

Chapter 7 An Incredible Experience

Chapter 8 Fuka School

Chapter 9 A Day in Moshi

Chapter 10 Kiboshu

Chapter 11 ELCT’s Wider Work

Chapter 12 Back to the Classroom

Chapter 13 Overwhelmed

Chapter 14 Church Tanzanian Style

Chapter 15 Farewell Tanzania

Epilogue

Postscript

The Team

From Castle Douglas:

Anne Carstairs

I am from Crossmichael, Castle Douglas, a retired ecologist, and now enjoy doing voluntary work with a number of charities. Having heard about Vine Trust through my brother, I was able to include collecting stationery items for Peruvian children in a challenge for Girlguiding Stewartry in 2007. From there, a wish to maintain the contact developed into a work party to Peru for Girlguiding Stewartry members to celebrate the Girlguiding Centenary. Later I joined another work party to Peru and then decided to broaden my experience with a work party to Tanzania in 2013. Now I'm looking forward to a return trip in 2015! The connection between my life and those of some vulnerable children in Peru and Tanzania has certainly 'changed my life'!

Jackie Davies

I live in a lovely small town called Castle Douglas in Dumfries and Galloway. I am married, with two grown up daughters. I work with disadvantaged and vulnerable teenagers who get themselves into situations where the police become involved. My aim is to build up trusting relationships with these young people and to keep them out of the criminal justice system. My reason for going on this visit was simple: I wanted to meet other young people who faced different issues in their lives and to help out by doing whatever I could. It was a truly memorable trip and very emotional at times.

Jim and Judi Duck

Jim: I was inspired by friend and work colleague Maureen Hughes, to join her Vine Trust visit to Tanzania. Knowing our interest in working in Africa, she rightly thought that going to Moshi to build houses and to view other ELCT social and medical projects might prove just the inspiration we needed. Having recently retired from the NHS, the timing was perfect.

I had trained in Paediatrics with thoughts of serving abroad, until I realised that I was a GP by instinct and our place was here in the UK. I am also a 'general practitioner' in church experience. Baptised into the Church of Scotland, my parents went to India and Pakistan with the Anglican Church Missionary Society. At University, the evangelical emphasis of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society introduced me to a variety of Edinburgh’s evangelical churches. Then I married a Methodist! Eventually I realised their them and us approach felt wrong for me, while Methodism’s social awareness rang true, matching what I think the Church of Scotland is about at its heart. So it was a challenge to visit the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. Yet I saw in their approach wonderful social concern borne out of love for their country and its people.

Judi: I am a retired midwife, living for the last 35 years in Castle Douglas. Having been to Africa - Kenya and Malawi - several times, I was itching to get back and wanted to explore possibilities for Jim and I to return, in our retirement, in some medical capacity. Inspired by good things I had heard about Vine Trust and the experiences of past volunteers, I signed up for all that was involved in the September 2013 trip: the fundraising, travelling, hard labour and happy fellowship! It was a great experience all round, and we travelled on in Africa for 4 more weeks. Since then we have returned to Tanzania, with the third group of volunteers on the medical ship, Jubilee Hope.

Maureen Hughes

I am from Castle Douglas in south-west Scotland. I got involved with Vine Trust initially through Girlguiding Stewarty when I was part of a work party that went to Kusi in Peru. As part of that trip we walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. This trip was such a rewarding experience that I returned to Peru in 2011. When I heard about the charity’s project in Tanzania, I was keen to be involved and, together with a small group of friends who had been to Peru, we joined the Larbert group for the October 2013 trip. This was as equally rewarding as the trips to Peru and again has given me friends for life. I will forever be grateful to Vine Trust for allowing me these opportunities and will undoubtedly be involved in work parties in the future.

John Muir

‘Jambo’ to everyone who reads this book. Can I point out what a charming and lovable man Melville is, and I couldn’t have had a better Umoja hostel roommate...

For me the trip to Tanzania was a first experience of overseas voluntary work and has given me a taste to do a similar project in the future!! I wish to give a big thank you to Dr Jim Duck who helped give me this opportunity from start to finish, as well as the rest of the group who gave me great support.

At the moment I am putting up marquees for weddings, fayres etc and have just returned from Aberfeldy. I shall never complain about our local weather again....

Iain and Lorna McDonald

We live in the beautiful market town of Castle Douglas, where Iain is senior partner in Gillespie, Gifford & Brown solicitors and Lorna is a primary teacher in a local rural primary school. We were inspired by our friend Maureen Hughes when she came to speak to the local youth group about her previous trips to Peru and the work of Vine Trust. We felt that this trip offered a great opportunity to volunteer in a well-structured project supporting the ongoing work of local people, groups and the community. We came back greatly rewarded in many ways... but mostly by the warmth and generosity of the many people we met.

From Dumfries

Rosemary Murray

My day job is in accounts, working with various clients in Dumfries and Galloway and Cumbria. I am an elder at St George’s Church in Dumfries, which I have attended all my life. I am married to Ian and have a daughter Sarah and a son Sean.

I went to a talk by Neil Graham about Vine Trust and what they did. I was dismayed by the need in Tanzania but encouraged by the Vine Trust projects. My husband Ian came along that night and we both decided that it was something we had to do. We were encouraged by the support we received from the church, family, friends and work colleagues, so 12 weeks after a total knee replacement we set off to Tanzania.

Once there I knew that I had done the right thing: at one of the projects a pastor welcomed the group and said that it is easy to send money over to help but it made it special when work parties took time out of their lives to come and do some work. I discovered I was useless at digging trenches for the foundations to the homes but had a talent for painting. I was privileged to be able to go to Tanzania and have made good friends with all the team.

Ian Murray

I have worked in the gas emergency service industry for forty years. In my spare time I volunteer with St Andrew’s Ambulance Association and support our local football team, Queen of the South, and our local rugby club, Dumfries Saints.

One night I gave my wife Rosemary a lift to a church meeting and on impulse I decided to join her. I listened in awe to Neil when he told us about Vine Trust and its work parties. I had made up my mind I was going to Tanzania before I left the room. I received lots of encouragement from family, friends and work colleagues. I took part in many of the fund raising events to raise the money to buy building materials and paint when we got to Tanzania. Like Rosemary, I made good friends with the rest of the team and was slightly overwhelmed by the whole experience. I hope it won’t be long before I can repeat it.

Tom Marchbank

In 2013 I was a 61 year old and had recently retired from my last job as a project worker with Citizens Advice Scotland. My ‘real job’ if you like, was as a bank worker which passed 30 years quite uneventfully from 1972-2002 (although it is where I met my wife, June!) I was involved a little bit with charity work with Alzheimer's Scotland and in 2002 had done a sponsored walk on the Great Wall of China for the Scottish Society for Autism. While that was great and raised a lot of money, it wasn't ‘hands on’ which was the attraction of Tanzania.

I knew about Vine Trust because June had previously been with them to Peru. The original plan was for us both to go to Tanzania, but when our elder daughter announced she was expecting our first grandchild in the August, June thought she would be more use at home, so didn't go. I had known Neil Graham from our Hamilton days as we attended the same church there and, as whoever meets either of us knows, we both support Hamilton Accies!

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip; we were a really good team, gelling even before we left Scotland thanks to our meet-ups in Hamilton. In Tanzania it didn't matter how we were split up to go to the various sites, everyone mucked in and contributed to the cause. It was humbling to see how delighted the recipients of the houses were with the finished articles, which, although a lot better than what they had previously, were still well short of what we would call habitable in Scotland.

My main highlight was being in our choir and singing in front of the Bishop at