4 years!

4 years of living in Uganda... sometimes it seems soooooo much longer and other times like I just arrived.

Lomoruchbae

Newsletter

Last week I sent out my newsletter so if you received it there is nothing new here. But if you didn't...

Updates!

There is so much great stuff going on right now in Karamoja that it has taken some serious self-discipline (which I obviously haven’t had for the past several months) to sit here, in Soroti, at my computer to write to you.

In the peace villages there are 2 new Village Health Workers (VHWs) in the groups that I’m training and assisting. I’m also in the process of working with a group of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs), assessing their level of training and discerning how we can support and encourage them. The medical needs feel a bit overwhelming right now and the workers, though trying hard, are struggling with the diagnostics and critical thinking. Please pray for them!

Also, out in the villages we are beginning to tell the Old Testament stories the same way they tell stories, from memory while just sitting together in the shade. People are very receptive. You can pray that they are able to take the message of the stories and apply the biblical truths to their lives. 

Prayer Needs

 "Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers." -Sidlow Baxter

·         Love and team unity- May they know we are Christians by our love. (John 13:35)

·       More workers in Karamoja!

·       Health- Lately it seems like every time I come back from Karamoja I’m sick.

I had the privilege last month of going down to northwest Uganda to help with a medical outreach and church plant project.  It was a good break from my normal routine and an encouraging group of nurses and doctors to work with. 

 

Spending time with the ladies, learning how to carry firewood on my head. 

Teaching kids about hygiene. 

All for a little hot water...

It has been a while since I've been so exasperated with the Ugandan way of doing things but today has pushed me to post I'm so frustrated.
Let me vent explain.  Almost a month ago I moved into my new house. I had extended conversations with the landlord to get a contract that we could both agree on. Mostly about how I wanted to be responsible for significant repairs and then I would subtract the cost from my quarterly rent. This is pretty status quo here because the Ugandan landlord rarely has the upfront money to do anything. After the problem occurs they have to save for months before any work can be done. But my landlord doesn't want to do that. He insisted that he could take care of problems in good time and he didn't want our contract to say I could ever deduct anything from my rent. Well, finally, after getting him to insist that very little time would pass until repair, I gave in and the contract was signed. Then, that very day, before I even moved in, I reminded him the hot water heater was broken and needed to be replaced. It needed to be ordered from Kampala so he said he would get right on it and call me when it arrived to be installed. Two weeks past and finally I called him again. He said, as though we had never even mentioned this very topic, "actually I don't have the money right now".  I offered to order it and then give him the receipt for reimbursement. I know that I will actually never get cash from him and will just deduct it from my rent next month. And actually, none of this surprised or frustrated me.  But he asked that he hire the electrician to install it as he can negotiate a better price. Which he can. Also, it was his responsibility to get the heater from the bus-park so it seemed like he would take care of all of that. This week Monday morning I got a phone call that it was all arranged and he would be at my house in an hour. I had no idea he'd gotten the heater, and wasn't even at home. So I told him he had to wait until I had a few free hours so it was going to be Wednesday.  He got all annoyed with  me and reminded me that I wanted stuff done promptly. I bit my tongue from replying that the house has had no hot water heater for 4 weeks so the "promptly ship" has already sailed and he could chill until I could make a few hours in my schedule.
This morning the electrician arrived with the heater and notified me that I actually needed a plumber. He wouldn't remove the old one or hang the new one (water heaters go up on the wall in the bathroom here). That was the plumber's job. So I called the landlord and he told me he was at work and couldn't arrange a plumber now. So I did it. While waiting for the plumber, the electrician decided he had other things to do so he started to leave. I asked him who was going to hold the tank up while the plumber attached it to the wall and he told me under no uncertain terms that I was going to have to do it as it was not his job. Turns out his job was to go get drunk but I'll get to that shortly.So the plumber arrived and accidentally forgot to turn the water off before loosening the input pipe. So now there is 4 inches of water on my bathroom floor and muddy footprints from one end of the house to the other. (Due to the dry season dust, feet are always covered in a layer of dirt).  To make it worse, I kid you not, after he unscrewed the pipes from the bottom of the tank, he told me to call an electrician to unhook the wires because he couldn't do anymore until it was unattached. I'm proud to say I didn't scream. I politely called the electrician back by implying that the plumber was actually done (when really he hadn't actually begun).  While waiting for him to arrive, the plumber kicked back and relaxed and fell asleep on my couch. After what seemed like forever, but was really only maybe an hour and a half, the now intoxicated electrician came back. How can one get drunk that fast?! Besides, it is not yet 1pm!

This is the tank neither plumbed nor  wired. But attached to the wall (which was my job). 

But, the after a conversation in Ateso between the plumber and electrician, the tank was disconnected and removed from the wall. I went and turned the power off for him. I didn't want a dead electrician on my hands. Then, after opening the box of the new one (which I think could have been done earlier but was preempted by a nap in my living room) it was discovered that there were no fittings. So another conversation in Ateso between the plumber and electrician and it seems that the electrician simply taught the plumber how to rewire it then left. Which I'm fine with. Then the plumber went into town to get the lacking parts. They are back now and I'm just sitting here trying not to think about all the other things I was going to do today. This project started at 8:00 am and is still going strong.  And the Ugandan's think there is nothing wrong with any of this.
Atleast I'll have a hot shower tonight. I hope.

Too much...

So I'm at that point where I just have too much to write about to even know where to start. So I kept putting it off. But today I'm laid up so I told myself to just take the best pictures of the last 10 on my camera, give them captions and put them up. The first picture is from almost 3 weeks ago so I'm doing almost as badly at taking pictures as I am at blogging right now. But I'm not going to beat myself up because that does no good and a small post with a few pictures is better than nothing right?

So here it is:

I've been packing in order to move and it seemed like anytime I left a partially packed box this little cat would unpack the top half and make himself a nest. Not very helpful at all.

Speaking of nests, now that I'm into my new house my little hens have no idea where to put their eggs as I haven't made a chicken coop yet. Everyday is a bit like Easter as I wander around collecting their eggs.

 I have been trying to spend a few hours a week with Janet, one of the girls I've known since moving here. A few weeks back I asked her read a verse in church. She burst into tears and said she couldn't. She is in P5 (roughly 4th grade) and so I offered to help her, thinking a few weeks of reading together would be all she really needed for confidence. Well, I gave her a spelling test to determine what her level was. The column on the left is her attempt. The right is me telling her how to spell the word. I wish I was joking. We are now working on A is for apple and B is for bird. She only knows about half of the letter sounds. We have a lot of work to do.

It has been a little hot and dry here in Soroti so I've attempted to make jerky. I cut some thin strips of beef, marinated them then locked them in my truck in the sun for 4 hours. My over thermometer reads between 190 and 200 inside the vehicle which is actually too hot per the recipe I'm trying to follow. But the directions don't say anything about using your truck and I don't have a fancy dehydrator besides it is working.  Now, I have a few kilos of teriyaki jerky packed away for my next trip to Karamoja. 

Speaking of Karamoja, this is me attempting to smear cow dung to make a surface for drying and threshing sorghum. It is a skill every woman in Karamoja must have. As usual the ladies found the foreigners entertaining and let us try for a while but then told is the work was finished and did the rest themselves. Evidently I need to practice more. 

An lastly my two little ducklings, Abatat and Darkwing. They were a gift from one of the village health workers in Nakayot. You can never have too many pets future dinners, can you? 

Culture Shocking

Great post over at Into Africa
http://www.babble.com/babble-voices/into-africa-kristy-carlson/6-culture-shocks-and-how-to-handle-them/

Friends!

I’m having a terrible time lately keeping this blog updated… So much has been going on lately. 2014 is off to a great start so far. Last week I helped the community of Lormoruchabi put the walls on  Daniel & Rachel's new house!

 And we ate rat. Tasty as always. 

Betty in the kitchen getting ready to prepare it for us. 

I’ll be back to Soroti and able to update more in a few weeks. 

New Years celebration

Some pictures from Timothy Retreat

Timothy retreat is when the CLIDE staff bring all the kids that they support (most from Karamoja) away to a fun week of "camp". This time of year is the end of one school year and they will begin a new school year in Feb.  Most Timothy sponsored kids are identified as high needs kids who have the potential to do well if they are supported in school.  Last week we had around 120 kids in a church here in Soroti. Some things were very much as you'd expect.

Lots of singing and laughing.

Plenty of eating. 

Games

Lots of games. 

Many, many games

Girls... doing whatever it is that girls do. 

But of course, this is Uganda so there were several things you wouldn't see at a camp in the States. 

Like the adults sleeping in tents, instead of the kids. 

Dinner of potatoes, eggplant and chicken piled in the sun waiting to be peeled, cut and slaughtered. 

Water filters lined up to clean gallons of drinking water. 

It was a wonderful week and I think fun was had by all.

Being a camp nurse again!

It has been a long time since a patient really got to my heart but I’m feeling a bit wrecked over some kids I took care of this week. Most of the kids I was with are kjung and were here in Soroti for the Timothy Retreat. Many of these kids are in the program because they vulnerable and neglected.

The Timothy Retreat is a lot like a week at camp and I was filling the role of camp nurse. One little girl, Sabina, was driving me nuts because she was coming to me over and over again with physical complaints (usually when I was in the middle of something else).  But one of the things all the kids got was a brief health exam because very few get their basic medical needs met and in my time with Sabina I realized she did possibly have something going on. She had some adventitious lung sounds and enough other symptoms to make me suspicious of TB.  Her exam also increased my sympathy for her quite a bit. She in 13 but doesn't even tip the scale at 40 kg (less than 90 pounds). She wasn't just seeking attention but possibly saw me as her only chance at getting some help before being send back to Karamoja. So she was put on my follow up list and I made plans to get her a chest x-ray.  I had characterized her as one of the slightly slower kids because for Primary 5 (roughly 5^th grade) her English was pretty poor. But while we were at the clinic she started translating easily between Teso and Nakaramojung for the doctor and one of the other kids I had brought.  So, she was poor in English but fluent in two other languages. When I asked her about it, she explained that her father was Teso (a different tribe) and when she was little he had told her she wasn’t to speak Nakaramojung when she was with him.  Her mother is Karamojung but estranged from her father. She hasn’t seen her mother in years and her father sent her away to live with an “auntie” because “he was tired of caring for me.” So, now she lives with a distant cousin of her mother because she was the only family who would take her in. Sabina says frankly that her auntie abuses her but she only has to stay with her when she is not at boarding school.

Frustratingly, there was no power when we were at the clinic so I never did get her a chest x-ray but I’ll follow up with her in a few weeks and see how she is doing.

Then there is Abraham. He is the closest I’ve ever come to taking a child home with me. Abraham is bright but obviously quite insecure and unsure of himself.  He is new to the Timothy program and very neglected. At 14 years old he is also in less than the 25^th percentile for weight and has a general look of undernourishment about him. I was told that he has no home, so for this Christmas break he will just stay in the empty dorm at school because he has nowhere to go. He came to the retreat with the one shirt he had that wasn't his school uniform and one pair of torn shorts. When he came in for his medical assessment he told me his teeth hurt and when I looked in his mouth I nearly gagged. His mouth is hands down the worse I’ve seen outside of people who have used methamphetamine. He told me he had been taken to the doctor for the pain in his mouth back in 2012 but he didn’t have any money for treatment so nothing was done.  I arranged with Daniel (as a vet, teeth seemed more his specialty than mine!) to take Abraham to the dentist who removed a rotten molar. I’m sure more needs to be done but we’ll let the poor kid recover from that first and I’ll try to follow up soon.

After the extraction he had come back to the church and I checked on his bleeding a few times and got him something to drink.  I gave him some pain meds and antibiotics a few times and was trying to keep him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.  I had gone home for a few hours but went back to the retreat before the kids went to bed for the night to check on him again and make sure he had eaten something.  As I was sitting with him while he swallowed the fistful of meds I was making him take, he made the statement “You are taking care of me.” It was like he was processing why I was there. He was kind of just staring at me. “Thank you” he said. I almost cried. No child should have to say thank you for having their basic, human needs met.  The next morning as they were loading on the bus to head back to Karamoja again he just came up to me and quietly said thank you again. As it was day 5 of a very full week of camp (camp counselors you know the feeling right?) I was feeling dragged out and tired.  And here was this kid who was about to head back to an empty dorm, less than 24 hours after a rather painful procedure, with only some Tylenol, and what to look forward to?  And he was appreciating that I had spent a few extra minutes paying attention to him.

Father God, May your favor rest on this boy in a special way this Christmas. May your peace surround him in a supernatural way and will you show yourself to be the loving Dad he doesn’t have. I pray for all these children, that they will know you and trust you as their Father when their earthly fathers have failed them. Please meet their needs out of your glorious riches in Christ Jesus’ name I pray. Amen. 

Thinking deep

Some days I wrestle with stuff and struggle with listening to God and try to think deeply about the world  around me. Some days I just try to make it through without thinking.
Anyway, today is a day somewhere in the middle. There is an amazing blog post over at She Loves called Come to the margins. Can I challenge you to read it, and if it is a good day for thinking for you, will you ponder it and try to listen to God about who He is calling you to?

On the day that my dad and brother are scheduled to arrive I found myself really resonating with this post over on Into Africa.
All of them are true for me!

12 things Expatriates are thankful for

Afflicted

Read a great post over on Life Overseas. Click here.  Or I just copied and pasted below:

Over the years we have tried with patchy success to create a habit of frequently asking ourselves whether the things we are doing make sense and if it seems like ‘God is in it?‘

 We hope to avoid getting trapped into routines or habits without truly examining what we’re doing. We desire to be purposeful about the choices we make. It is helpful to examine ourselves to assure that our motivations and attitudes are pure.

 It is important to step back and look at what stress or fatigue is causing in us and in our reactions to things. If we are driving around and going about our days with an undercurrent of anger or an attitude of superiority toward people we’re here to love and work with then we don’t really belong here. Those of us living here can think of a few crotchety old missionaries that are mean and negative and angry toward this country and all of us can easily become that crotchety old missionary if we’re not careful.

 In the last several months we’ve had an epiphany of sorts. We’ve discovered that most of us that are here working with “the poor” can and do unwittingly find ourselves in a bit of a distressing position of superiority. It is not a position we knowingly choose nor is it what we want. It just kind of happens when we stop paying attention to our heart attitudes.

 We don’t know very much, but we do know that Jesus calls us to become incarnate. In order to live that way we need to see ourselves as we really are.

We are the poor and needy. We are the afflicted.

 When I see myself in the women Heartline is serving, when I see my own manipulation and excuses, my own poverty, my own pride  – I am suddenly able to serve and work together with the women with an attitude of humility and grace rather than superiority and judgment. It is the difference between serving from a position of eminence and authority in a top-down sort of way, to serving like Jesus served with a meek ‘power under’ approach.

 The only way to remain genuinely humble when doing this work is to be perpetually aware that we too are the afflicted ones. There is vulnerability in that, but it is a necessary thing.We are every bit as miserable; our passports and perceived wealth simply mean our misery is better disguised

 God is not made known in our ability to fix or heal “the poor people”. We are all weak and wounded,after-all.

 Jesus calls us to stop trusting in our own capacity to do good or make change. If we trust in His ability rather than our own we’ll avoid acting superior. God is made manifest in our ability to recognize that we have nothing to offer apart from Him and that we are every bit as much in need of love, healing, and restoration as the people with whom we work.

 …Pray for all of us to entirely give up believing in ourselves and our own abilities. Pray for healing, freedom, and restoration for every. single. afflicted. inhabitant of our little island and this big world.

 Tara Livesay – works in Maternal Healthcare in Port au Prince, Haiti

Seems strange, I think I'm headed into two weeks of vacation. Sort of. I've had a few busy weeks and as I look back at my November schedule I think I spent a total of 8 days sleeping in my own bed.  A night in the back of my truck, a few in a tent, several in a hut... but now I'm in a nice guest house in Kampala because I have to pick up my dad and brother, Benj, in Entebbe on Thursday! So excited!! I had to come upcountry a day early because my truck needs some serious maintenance (four new brake pads, three new wheel bearings, two new CV joints and a partridge in a pear tree.) Turns out the Karamoja roads are hard on it.

Playing in the mud last week.

 But for the next two weeks I'm hanging out with Dad and Benj as they work on electrical wiring and a bunch of other handiman tasks for team mates.  We are also going to spent two days at the possible sites for the discipleship camp and retreat center.   Benj and his wife, Christina, are prayerfully considering being a part of that center so will you join me in praying that they will move to Uganda that they will be obedient to God's will.

I need to add an addendum: Woke up this morning feeling like I was hit by a truck. Body aches, chills, fever.  Also I was called by the mechanic and turns out I also need a new drive shaft. He isn't sure he can get a new one and get it installed before I need to head to the airport. Ugh. So I'm laying low today, praying I feel better fast and praying that the mechanic is super efficient. Can you pray with me?

Peace Celebration

I had the opportunity to help Dr. Val last weekend with their 5 year celebration of peace in the first peace village, Nabwal. As I wrote that last sentence this sounds normal and like something I could easily describe but I don’t even know how.

Picture me, with several ladies from around Karamoja, standing in a big open field in the midst of 5 giant cooking fires with huge sauce pans on them. Then add to that picture roughly 1,000 karamojung in their traditional wear singing and dancing around us while they wait for the food to be ready to eat. Two bulls have been slaughtered in the not so distant background and we are mixing food with huge sticks and carrying the meat for boiling in large basins. Can you picture it?  Don’t worry, I don’t think I could have either if I hadn't been there.

Some days....

We had lots of rain while in Nabwal and the day after the big celebration it was still raining but we were trying to get back to Kangole. I had both axles buried in mud and had three Karamojung men yelling in the windows at me to go three different directions. (Literally. Go forward, go back, turn hard right) But if you've ever been in 3 feet of mud you know that you are really not going anywhere.  You trying to picture it?  I’m in a skirt (because that is what women wear out here) with my favorite gum boots on. My land cruiser has mud coating it from the roof all the way down. There is so much mud tossed up on the back window that I can’t see through it at all. It is hot and humid and I would rather just be sitting with a book and a cup of tea on this rainy morning and instead I’m trying to ignore all of the people yelling at me while rocking the vehicle enough to get an inch or two of traction. I have it in 4wd low and finally manage to grab a bit of solid ground under the mud and am able to accelerate out (as much as you can call 2^nd gear accelerating). Everyone splashed back over to me and climbed back in, congratulating for getting unstuck again (it was my 4^th time that morning). 

Yet somehow this is becoming normal...

I was driving between the peace village and my home and had to stop on the side of the road because just a few feet from me was an adult pair of ostriches. The male at nearly 8 feet tall with his flame red neck and coal black feathers shook his giant wings at me while the slightly smaller (at only 7 feet tall) dusty gray female moved back away from the road into the bushes. 

Well Update

So, things like this move really slowly in Uganda.  We are trying tp help the village of Loromoruchabi seek permission from the Uganda Wildlife Association to finish drilling their well so that they can have clean water in their village. We had to stop back in September because the drillers were threatened and accused of drilling in wildlife protected land. We have a map that says they were not and the village really needs water but we still had to stop and work this out before the well could be completed.

So, the local chairperson of the lower level had to seek permission from the district government then they had to seek permission higher up and we have just recently heard that it has actually reached the desk of the president of Uganda.

Please pray for him this week.  Pray of course of Lormoruchabi’s well but please also pray for all of the other issues President Musiveni (spelled wrong intentionally) has to deal with. He has been president of Uganda for 22 years and he has brought about good development of his country in that time. But he is still a dictator and another election year in coming in 2016.