Telling Time in Tanzania!

Just like in the Bible, time in Tanzania (in Swahili) is spoken about differently than it is in English. Not only are we in a different TIME ZONE, but we have to remember how to read our clocks differently too!

Here's Kara to tell you how it works:




Since the sun comes up at 6:00am EVERY SINGLE MORNING here, and goes down at 6:00pm, it makes sense that their day begins and ends on the 6's instead of at midnight! This is actually what they did in Bible times, too.

Mark 15:33 tells us about Jesus' crucifixion...

"When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour."

So, according to Kara's explanation, we add 6 to the 6th hour, and figure out it got dark at 12:00 noon. The time they're talking about is from 12:00-3:00pm.


All this Tanzanian Time Translation makes playing What Time is it Mr. Fox? a bit harder, but in the end it's just one more way to see the world through another person's eyes!

(A big thanks to her parents for letting me borrow their brilliant blog! Here's the original here.)

Walk like a Chameleon!

Have you ever gone exploring in your back yard? Sometimes here in Tanzania we find some crazy-cool creatures right around us, even on the back fence!

"Look mom, no hands!"

Chameleons are especially COOL because:

• Their eyes can look in different directions at the same time.
• Their skin color and markings change - not to match what's around them, like people think, but according to their mood!
• God gave them really special feet and tails that help them hold onto trees as they climb.
• They shed their skin when they get too big for it.

This is a baby chameleon we found at school last year -
check out his feet and how he sheds his skin!

Check them out in a couple of videos! (commentary courtesy of some of my teammates and students)





Oh, and one last amazing fact: Chameleons have the coolest, funniest walk! Check it out in this video from my friends the Gerths.