A Very Full Sunday

Today was a VERY full Sunday.

6:30 am: I wake up. Anna has been awake since 5:45 with Miriam. Anna goes for a quick run and we scramble to get everyone ready for 7:30am church. Luke is difficult, which wears on both of our nerves. As usual, we arrive more than 15 minutes late (but less than our usual 20 to 30 minutes late!).

7:45 am: We arrive at church. Different chorale groups are singing worship songs. We sit with the Peterson family. I, as usual, chase Miriam around during the sermon, which, by many reports, was concerningly close to the “health and wealth” gospel.

Miriam with her friend Patricia at church

9:30 am: We walk home talking with a lab tech who recently graduated from IEM. His schooling was paid for by an American, and he committed to stay in Nyankunde to work…but there is no work currently. We discussed potential options. I encouraged him to keep learning while he is jobless and to not be afraid to seek work elsewhere in the absence of a job here.

9:45-10:30 am: we get the house cleaned up a bit and then Michelle kindly takes Luke off our hands for a bit to watch a movie. Anna and I chill and talk about how to parent our absolutely wonderful but frequently exasperating son. Anna gets a migraine and goes to bed.

10:30 am: an IEM student arrives selling honey that he harvested on the mountain nearby. I buy about

Local honey...not bad for $15

2.5 liters worth for $15. Michelle buys another 1.5 to 2 liters. This will help him pay his tuition. Many of these students have NOTHING. Miriam of course wakes up early from her morning nap. Warren arrives with Emmanuel on a 4 wheeler. Miriam refuses to go for a joyride.

Warren, Emmanuel and Luke on a (very controlled) joyride

11:00 am: Jacques, one of the hospital nurses, arrives. He recently adopted a newborn member of his extended family when the mother died after childbirth. We have been helping him with the cost of formula for baby Israel. We catch up and then I give him $100 for a month of formula. I have also been communicating with Compassion International to help reconnect him and his siblings—all orphans—with their former Canadian, American, British and Australian sponsors. No luck thus far.

11:30 am: 2 kids arrive selling little trucks constructed of bamboo. We buy 2 for 3 bucks. They come back an hour later trying to sell something else. They refuse to take no for an answer and we finally have to send them away. One of them arrives in the afternoon with 2  planes made out of bamboo. He lets Luke play with them but we don’t buy.

12:15 pm: Lindsey drops Emmanuel off for us to watch him while she gets her haircut and Warren tries to harvest honey from his bees. Warren recently purchased a pregnant cow in hopes of having a stable supply of good milk. The calf died in delivery earlier this week, and the mother died presumably of sepsis yesterday. Pretty devastating. In lieu of burying the cow, the community was informed about the meat. Within an hour or so the cow was butchered and completely disappeared. A faint silver lining to an otherwise difficult event.

Moving the dead cow with the help of the MAF tractor

12:30 pm: we eat lunch--bread made by Michelle, peanut butter and some of our new honey (bee wings and all!).

1pm: Luke goes to bed but doesn’t sleep and intermittently repeats annoying noises or says his belly hurts. We clean up the house to prepare for IEM fourth year nursing students to come over.

Jon Cadd with his African Gray Parrot

2:30pm We give up on Luke’s nap and go up to see the Cadds before they leave tomorrow. John shows us his brown house snake which constricts itself into knots when you hold it. Luke has come to love holding snakes, which I think is awesome. Jon advises us not to let Miriam handle the snake as she is to young to know that she should be careful if she comes across one. We agree, particularly given that we recently saw a forest cobra in a tree in the Cadd's yard! Currently the Cadds have 2 dogs, 3 green pigeons, an African gray parrot, and a baby great blue turaco. I need to hang out with Jon more!

3 pm: Cezabo and his wife (the parents of Neema, the 16 year old who died recently of renal failure) arrive at the house at our invitation. We ask Julien to translate, then we give them pictures of Neema that we took shortly before her death. Cezabo cries. His wife is characteristically stoic. We talk about their family. Their daughter is currently sick with fever and vomiting but they have no money to pay the 3 dollars for a consultation at the health center. Cezabo hasn’t been able to work due to a hand infection that he got from a palm spine. After Neema’s many hospitalizations, we know that they have little more than nothing. Cezabo asks for work and/or financial assistance. We give $40 as “pre-payment” for completing our bamboo fence (which he has already worked on extensively) when his hand gets better. We spend some time disagreeing with the sermon and emphasizing that God does not wish for anyone to suffer or die. We remind them of how Jesus cried at the tomb of Lazarus. We emphasize that suffering is not necessarily a sign of the lack of God’s blessing but that, in fact, it is often the most faithful followers of God who suffer the most. We remind them that we have a God who knows suffering intimately and that walks with us in the midst of it…and that will put everything to rights in his timing.

Neema soon before she died

4:00 pm: Ité—one of the health center nurses that I have worked with frequently in caring for TB patients—arrives before Cezabo leaves and just as the 4^th year IEM (Institut d'Enseignement Medical, a school for high-school level training of nurses, lab techs and pharmacy techs, that is affiliated with the hospital) students arrive. He asked for $50 yesterday to help pay for his kids tuition at the local schools. This is not the first time he has asked for money. These situations are so difficult, not because I don’t think he really needs the money but because almost EVERYONE is just trying to survive here and we get requests on a daily basis. I tell him that we would like to buy his other goat (we bought the first before Christmas) for $50. He agrees.

4th Year Nursing students with their new stethoscopes

By now, most of the IEM 4^th year nursing students have arrived. There are 11 total. Over Kool-Aid and cake we talk about their experience at IEM . We remind them of their high calling, not just to practice as nurses but also to teach other nurses. We discuss the importance of honesty about “incidents” (mistakes made in caring for patients). I remind them that their patients are their best textbook. Then we give each one a cheap stethoscope (the kind that is disposable at US hospitals). They are thrilled. We challenge them to do good physical exams and to talk with and learn from their patients.

While the students are at our house, Daniel, one of the teachers at IEM and a friend, drives up on his motorcycle to welcome us back. We talk briefly and then decide on another time to talk more.

~5:00 pm: the students take off but pastor Timothy, another friend and the father of several of Luke’s friends, arrives. We give him an English Standard Version bible as a gift. He stays for nearly an hour. I split my time between him and playing with Luke. We decide that his kids will come on Friday to watch a movie with Luke. This is another extremely poor family. They are surviving and paying for his theological training by cultivating their own crops, eating some and selling others at the market, and also by cultivating other people’s fields, for which they are paid. He recently gave Luke a gift of a large bag of popcorn that he had harvested from his fields.

6pm: we eat a delicious dinner cooked by Michelle—beef tenderloin purchased at the local market, where beef is brutalized with machetes unless you push them for a particular cut.

7:30: after cleaning up and reading stories, both kids are now in bed, and I start writing about my day.