Background information for Wahaki and Pato's remembrances

The Vessos: Wahaki is the son of the late Pastor Tawi Vesso. a pastor in Pangani who was a close colleague of Carl's during the years the Lindells lived in Tanga. Wahaki is also the grandson of Immanuel Vesso, who served in Moa, Kenya as the first pastor in Digoland. Wahaki and Pato's fathers (Tawi and Jesse Vesso) were brothers, and so Wahaki and Pato call each other "brother" following local kinship custom.

As a co-pastor at Kana Lutheran church in Tanga, Carl held primary responsibility for youth ministries, and taught religion courses in local high schools. It was in that capacity that Wahaki and Pato first got to know Carl. Wahaki was a primary school teacher (and Pato, who is ten years younger, was one of Wahaki's students) when Carl came to Tanga. As Wahaki explains, he often accompanied Carl on Sunday visits to area congregations to help with language interpretation.

Besides briefly being a grade 3 "classmate" of Carl's while (the adult) Carl was learning Swahili, Pato was later a student of Carl's religion course in high school. He mentions the vacation "camps" that Carl organized were held at Mbuyu Kenda; this is the name of the church housing compound where the Lindells lived. Pato also took piano lessons from Faith; note that Pato still serves as the choirmaster at Kana Lutheran in Tanga!

Pato is 70 years old now at the time of Carl's passing, while Wahaki is 80. Pato appears younger than his age, still riding his bicycle everywhere. Wahaki suffered a stroke in April 2022, and despite therapy, has still not fully recovered the use of his right side. This did not deter him from attending his grandson's church wedding ceremony (plus at least 4 hours of the wedding reception a bit later), two days before the video was recorded.

Geography: Wahaki refers to "Digoland" and asks that people pray for it. The Digo people are an ethnic group located along the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast north of Tanga. Here is a description of the Digo from a travel guide, as well as a Wikipedia entry. (Note that Tanzania is home to 120+ ethnic groups: In Carl and Faith's later work in the 1990's in the region around Shinyanga near Lake Victoria, they worked primarily with Sukuma people.)

Wahaki also refers to Pangani, a small city to the south on the coast between Tanga and Dar Es Salaam.

When Carl and Faith lived in Tanga, it was the second largest city in Tanzania, although by 2012 it had dropped to 7th largest.

Wahaki mentions that one of his daughters is now Head of Nursing at Bumbuli Hospital. This is the hospital in the Usumbara Mountains near Tanga, where Carl and Faith's daughters Christine and Cathryn were born.