Tuesday

I've now been in D. for one week.

Today was a good day.  I had my first language lesson under a tree with Butros.  I had prepared some greetings and responses that I wanted to learn as well as a few useful questions like "What's your name?" "Where do you live?" etc.  That led on to learning numbers 1-10.  I then had a couple hours in the morning to start looking at the written Mabaan lessons with a CD that we have from a retired Canadian missionary.

We've had a bit of excitement around here since yesterday afternoon.  51 Mabaan people from the S. refugee camp in E. arrived to tour M. county with evangelism.  They've been walking West and staying in villages and in the bush at times.  A lot of them are young people.

The place went NUTS when they arrived at the church, which is not far from our gate.  Exuberant praise and worship and dancing Mabaan style!  We all went out to the church to see what was happening.  It was amazing to see the excitement of the community.  These are people who have been away for 12 years and we got to be right there and see people greeting and hugging long lost friends.  The singing was amazing and carried on into the evening.  Then this morning they were at it again and again this afternoon.

This morning they all had these banner things on with a cross and did this march/dance from one side of the village to the church.  It was crazy!  I got some pictures and a video clip this afternoon so once I'm in Nairobi again I can share those.  They have now left for B., the market town and will be carrying on to other villages.  You can pray for them as they go out to reach out to their people.

This afternoon a few of them came to us for treatment, so we got to chat with them a bit.  One of the guys spoke pretty good English and translated for the rest.  It was interesting.

Then the local evangelist brought the leader of the group to ask us for medicines to take with them on their journey.  It was a bit of a tricky situation--we had to explain that we have to account for all the medicine we give as treatment and don't have the authority to give out a whole bunch like that and that we didn't feel we could send things like malaria medication that they wanted because there isn't a medical person in the group to assess people etc.

It was a classic cultural experience.  We talked with them for a long while and I thought Vicky, Grace, and I did a great job of beating around the bush and saying no without saying no.  In the end they seemed satisfied by our explanation and the fact that we had taken the time to listen to each of the sick members' complaints and treat them if we could and that we would continue to do so if there were others who were sick.

I had started my laundry by hand before they all arrived so went back to it afterward.  It's actually not that bad!  The sun was really hot today so it dried quickly.  I got really dark today, in spite of my sun block.  The sun was intense.

Another great thing--I have the language helper (besides Butros on Tuesdays) that I've been praying for.  Grace suggested a teenage girl named Padda that she had noticed being quite involved at the D. church.  We suggested her to Butros and he thought it was a great idea so went to find her and ask her.  She apparently was delighted and he brought her over this evening to meet me.  She seems like a really sweet girl.  I think she's about 15.  So she'll help me for an hour on Wed, Thurs, Fri and I will have to do a lot of preparation before these lessons because she doesn't speak any English!  But I think it will be really good and I'm really glad to be giving a young girl with a lot of family responsibilities a job.  Tomorrow she will be going to the market with her mother to get grain or something so we'll start on Thursday afternoon.  She goes to the school that's been started in the village in the mornings.

So this will be a challenge but if it works I will start learning Mabaan very quickly!

I don't think I told you guys that I have a Siamese cat!  Grace and I brought 2 from Loki, one for Vicki who's been wanting one and one for me.  There were lots of them at the Across Compound where we stayed and the staff were happy to be rid of a couple.  They are both male and are beautiful cats-part Siamese with something else.  Vickie named hers Frankie and he's the bigger one and older.  I named mine Tamam, which is Arabic and means something like "strong". It's a word that the Mabaan use all the time as both a question and an answer for how someone is feeling and is something of a joke around our compound.  Mine is very friendly and purrs a lot.  We think they think they've died and gone to heaven because we treat them so well.  They get milk in the morning and our leftovers in the evening.  And who knows what all they hunt on the compound!  The other night I saw Tamam catch a lizard.  We got them to catch rats but we haven't seen any since I've been here.  They went out hunting a couple of nights last week and each got into a fight with a dog or another cat or something but survived it with just a gash to the face each and now they stick around the compound waiting for their leftovers for the most part!

There are so many amazing things about being here.  Tonight I went outside my tukul for something and happened to look up and had to gasp at how beautiful the stars were.  It was such a clear night.

Oh yeah, another great thing about today...thanks for praying for Stephen, the little boy with the bad finger injury.  We've been really praying about how to make the dressing changes less painful for him.  Until today, he's been in hysterics each time.  Today we decided to try giving him some acetominophen/codeine that I have in my own medical kit, 45 minutes before the dressing change.

Grace also came up with the brilliant idea of having him listen to her CD discman to distract him.  So he listened to Spanish guitar music and was loving it!  We got some smiles from him today and all he did was whimper a little while the new dressing was going on.  His father has looked so stressed and worried every time until today but he was actually smiling today too and seemed very relieved, in spite of the fact that Grace warned him of the possibility of the end of Stephen's finger falling off.  And indeed, barring a miracle, that's what we think will happen.  The end of the finger seems dead.  However there is healthy tissue growing and he can still move the finger.  It doesn't look infected.  Keep praying for him!  He's such a sweet little guy.

Yesterday Vicki and I went to P. for the health teaching.  Mark the evangelist walked 2 hours to pick us up and then cycled to P. with us (an hour in the hot sun!) and back and walked back to P..  Wow, that's 6 hours of travel for him!  And he translates the lessons.  He borrows one of our staff bikes for the cycling part at the moment but is due to get one of the bikes that SIM is getting to help some of these evangelists in the near future.

It was great to be out in a village.  We started with only 5 people but by the end of the lesson there were 11.  There were a couple of old men, a man who did a lot of the talking who Mark later told us is some sort of witchdoctor, and a bunch of friendly ladies.  A whole bunch of kids gathered when we first came but they were sent away by the adults.  We asked them to please let the children stay and encourage them to come the next time.  Next time it will be my turn to try doing the lesson!  I picked up 2 new Mabaan words during the lesson--faeces and flies!

It was a BEAUTIFUL bike ride to P., along a good, flat road.  I was soooo sore last night.  I definitely am getting my exercise here.  At meal times, I feel famished!  My metabolism, which has always been good anyway, is in overdrive.  I eat a lot because we really can't keep leftovers and there's usually a bit too food and neither Grace nor Vicki has a very big appetite.  So I'm the garburator and the cats get what I can't eat.

This Saturday, I'll go to another village called G. where Vicki is also doing the health teaching.  I want to be out in the villages as much as possible because we don't have the freedom to be out of the compound without an escort here, because of the soldiers nearby.  If it doesn't feel like too much, I'll help her with the health teaching in G. too.

Wow, this is becoming a book and I've mostly written about one day!  I'd better go get some sleep here!