Showdown at the NK

Jonah called at 6 this morning to say he was leaving Kampala. It will take him all day to get here. Tomorrow morning will be “showdown at the NK”, Nyahuka that is, when he arrives at the health center with his letter of appointment to be in charge. I expect most of the staff will be glad, we are more concerned about the district leadership. Meanwhile today is the last day for World Food Program food to be distributed to HIV positive mothers and children through Kwejuna Project. We anticipate over a hundred families arriving shortly for a day of registration, weighing, blood tests for children, some encouragement and teaching, and then the happy departure with bags of food. A large measure of chaos infused with some sense of purpose. And just to keep life interesting, four tilers, men from Kampala with expertise in laying floors, arrived to put in the floor for the new pediatric/maternity ward at the health center. They will be staying on the mission all week while they work. Stay tuned for the stories this week . . . .

Thread stretched but still hanging

Josh is the “new guy” who is supposed to be orienting to life in Africa and frontier water engineering.  Since he’s living alone as the only single guy, we invited him for dinner Sunday night.  As we sat down to the table he mentioned a rumor he had heard that our district’s Chief Administrative Officer (the CAO pronounced “COW” by everyone here) was about to be transferred.  Now, I can’t explain how Josh knew this juicy but of political insider intrigue, but we immediately realized that God had sent us the information in the nick of time.  The CAO is the only one able to write Jonah’s official appointment letter to Nyahuka Health Center.  Remember he (Jonah) left a couple of weeks ago in frustration and disgust when the district refused to pay him, and then there was the seemingly miraculous confluence of events where the Belgian medical consultant invited us to a district meeting in which we were able to advocate for Jonah, which ended in the entire group mobilizing that afternoon to arrange the proper pay and appointment.  But Jonah took his time in Kampala.  Late last week he sent a message saying he was ready to come.  When we heard from Josh Sunday night we realized that the window of opportunity might be permanently closing before Jonah could ever arrive.

Monday was a national holiday, and Scott was unable to contact the CAO in spite of sitting through the usual ceremonial speeches of the day.  But early Tuesday morning he went up to Bundibugyo again.  There was the CAO, sitting at his desk with neat stacks of paper, waiting for his deputy to come so he could sign out for good.  He was leaving, run out on a rail by those whose interests he crossed.  Scott asked for Jonah’s letter, he instructed a secretary to get the file off the computer and go print it, and told Scott to wait.  Though this administrative officer had hesitated greatly about appointing Jonah (he was under a lot of pressure not to do so) I guess by yesterday he had nothing left to lose.  He told Scott, if the secretary returned before the deputy arrived for the hand-over, he’d sign the letter.  That’s how close it was, the whole future of Jonah in Bundibugyo hanging by a thread.  Scott called me and I called together some of the team to pray.  After more than an hour neither the secretary nor the deputy had come.  Scott investigated and found the secretary had left her office locked, disappeared for the day.  Another attempt to passively obstruct the process?  So Scott reported this to the CAO who hand-wrote a letter, had it typed by a different secretary, signed it, and gave it to Scott to give to Jonah.

Jonah says he will arrive Monday and start work on Tuesday.  We asked for prayer from 2 Cor 4:  since we’ve received mercy, we don’t lose heart.  I admit that my heart has been nearly lost in this process, but the dramatic timing of this latest cascade of events (starting with Josh who had no idea what he was even telling us) smacks of mercy through and through.  The eight dog-bitten people are getting their tortuous series of vaccines which Scott brought back, and we expect results on the dog’s brain by Friday.  One of the patients I had felt so bad about having “died” on Friday came back alive yesterday—very sick, but not dead, so there is still hope there.  And I am pursuing the possibility that Kabasunguzi’s symptoms are all related to schistosomiasis, so in spite of her terrible condition we are also not giving up on her.  Ndyezika has shown a calm determination to persevere and will probably go back to school soon.  The battle has been very immediate, a hand-to-hand struggle this week, going one way and then the other.  We’ve been hard pressed  . . . and yet not crushed.  Our thread has been stretched, but we’re still hanging.

9th October Email Prayer Update

Dear Praying Friends,
If any of you are following our blog you’ll know that this has not been an easy week for our team. Ndyezika, our dear student and friend, failed his lab exams.  Two of the smaller kids on the team are pretty ill with asthma symptoms, which is frightening in this remote place.  Two people have had computer hard drive crashes this week, one of whom was Scott who safely returned from his long journeys last night and today tried to fire up his rather new (6 month old) laptop to no avail.  As he traveled back he collected a desperate Kabasunguzi Grace and her mother from the purgatory of Mulago Hospital and brought her back to Nyahuka, barely alive, possibly just to die. Several other patients in my care have died this week.  Incompetent mechanics in Kampala really messed up our truck.  We are struggling to treat 8 people attacked by a possibly rabid dog.  Michael has spent hours taking a neighbor caught red-handed with stolen items from his home and elsewhere to the police, a messy but necessary step after innumerable break-ins.  The A-level biology teacher Kevin tried to hire to fill in for the teacher who left for a master’s degree decided he needed more money, and with the students about to take the exam two of our missionary team mates are now adding that to their already full job schedules.  As we shared prayer requests at our last team meeting it was clear that many have been attacked by discouragement or illness or issues with family members back in the States having surgery or crises.  And close to home, we had a rough day with sibling behaviour today.  To top it all off, tonight we heard a rumor that the Chief Administrative Officer for our district has been transferred---just when Jonah, who had left in discouragement a few weeks ago, wrote to say he’s ready to come back.  This man holds the power to give Jonah the control of Nyahuka Health Center; if he has been transferred just as that was about to happen it will be a severe blow.

Would you please pray for the life of Jesus to be seen in our weakness and in our set-backs and struggles this week?  Instead of a list of prayer requests, pray through 2 Corinthians 4 for us, particularly verses 7-11, 16-18.  The life of Jesus, the weight of glory . . . The unseen becoming clear as we persevere through our light afflictions.  I can’t explain how that should happen, but please pray for faith that it will.

The 9th of October is Uganda’s 44th Birthday.  And this month marks 13 years since we Myhres moved to Uganda.  As you think of these anniversaries, please PRAY.
Love,
Jennifer for the team

Some sad follow-ups

Ndyezika did not pass.  I found myself crying at the news, crying for the blow to his confidence, crying for the injustice of this world where he has to struggle academically, crying to God “why this?”  Ndyezika is subdued, but later in the evening he sent me a note saying that he knows that God loves him.  So perhaps that is the answer to your prayers.  And just as we got the news God sent a dear friend who was a church leader to comfort me and pray with both of us.  Please do pray that he would not turn to things which can not satisfy to assuage his sense of failure.  And for wisdom.  The blow was somewhat muted by the fact that I had a long conversation with the lab school administrator who said only 20 of the 86 students did pass the exam, that the format and grading changed drastically this year and students nation-wide had difficulty.  He encouraged us to send him back to school to repeat the second year and take the exam again.

Yesterday was a day of attack on many fronts.  It came to light that the possibly rabid dog had bitten 8 not 4 people; the other 4 had gone to the district hospital and received no immunization, so yesterday they came to us.  We had a total of 7 doses of vaccine from Fort Portal, but the full course for 8 people would be 40 doses.  It sounds like an ethics class, but this was real.  Who gets the vaccine?  We opted for the two children to get the immediate dose, since the bite to the face was the most risky.  Scott was meanwhile scrambling to obtain more doses in Kampala which should reach here tonight.  As all this was happening I was getting desperate phone calls from Kabasunguzi Grace’s mother.  She’s been languishing in the hospital (her picture is on our site) for more than 6 weeks now getting almost no care in the notoriously abysmal public hospital and wanted to come home.  So Scott will bring her today, which feels like another defeat.  As Scott was trying to get medicine and supplies in Kampala he was severely hampered by slow and incompetent work on our truck (which was fixed at the last minute yesterday by a different mechanic than the one that caused the problems) and record-breaking traffic in conjunction with Makerere University Graduation!  And I was finding out that of my three sickest patients on the ward, two ran away to seek witch doctor advice because their parents feared that the cause was spiritual and their recovery too slow, and the third one died in the night.  All were on our nutrition program.  Of the two who ran away, one was a twin with severe dehydration that the staff and I had labored on for a long time that day to revive, and the other was a motherless baby with cerebral malaria getting good treatment but will also now probably die.  Several team members are also sick, or discouraged by betrayals and thefts, or dealing with the stresses of life in the bush, and our hearts ache for them too.

So in short yesterday was a bad day.  Last night the verses that came to mind were from 2 Corinthians 4:8-10  “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed—always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”  I know our problems do not compare to those Paul is writing about.  Still the truth somehow applies:  in our struggle and weakness and disappointment and failure the life of Jesus can be seen tangibly.  I would prefer to manifest glory by being right, wise, strong and victorious, but that does not seem to be God’s calling for us, not this week for sure.  Today, a clinging to the hope, that suffering will be redeemed.

4th October Paradoxes

Today we celebrated 10 years since the amazing gift of Julia in our family, with an all-team plus some Ugandan friends (37 people!!) VeggieTale party. Yes, even in the remotest parts of Africa, one may find missionary children who love silly songs and hairbrush searches. It was a great evening of community for us, of games and costumes and a treasure hunt and gifts and food. Of belonging to a group of people who love us and our children. Our team finds creative gifts, either precious candles or pens from care packages or amazing finds of gap pants in the used clothes piles in the market. Perhaps the biggest gift came from a little boy we have befriended who sometimes has trouble getting his own dinner but brought Julia a box of . . . Vegetables, how appropriate, several nice pumpkins and beans plus oranges. Twice major dark clouds gathered for our daily rain . . . And then blew on over. I was thankful to God for the day. But the day started with a story which may end in death. Four people, two children and two adults, were attacked by a possibly rabid dog in a nearby village. One little girl was just sitting in her house when the dog came in and bit her in the mouth, face, arms. The adults had significant wounds in their arms from warding off attack. Actually people I talked to were reluctant to say it was a dog . . . They reported that it had the structure of a dog but they couldn’t be sure, as if it may have been a spiritual entity. It took a huge effort to call multiple people, hospitals, health personnel, track down rabies vaccine, come up with money for fuel and a vehicle to get them to Fort Portal to get the vaccine. Immune globulin was not available. With wound cleansing and vaccine only I’m not sure what their prognosis is. The police were afraid to go look for the dog but some family members appealed to soldiers to go with guns to find it. All of this in the midst of many other desperately ill people . . And then back to VeggieTales and cake. What an odd life we live sometimes, rabies and death in the morning, and silliness and icing in the afternoon. It helps to remember that Jesus was both mobbed by the needy AND accused of partying too much.

Extreme contrasts and a third way

Two meetings, two countries, two sponsors, two very different experiences. The Cush Consultation met in southern Sudan and brought together 80 participants—expatriates and Sudanese nationals (missionaries, pastors, evangelists, radio technicians, pilots, teachers, and health workers)--to examine how the Christian mission community might collaborate to reach the unreached with the good news of the gospel and the compassion of Christ expressed through the provision of safe water, simple medical treatment, and education. We slept in grass-roofed houses, ate all the organs of the goat, bathed from water splashed out of plastic basins, and met in an upainted, concrete tin-roofed structure. Our strategic planning was guided by the Spirit, because we had little or no data on the specific physical/spiritual needs of southern Sudan or the activities of which groups are actually working in the country. Three days after returning to Kampala from Sudan, I flew to Arusha, Tanzania for the Global Implementers Meeting of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Over two hundred participants—physicans, public health managers, administrators, planners and leaders from 18 countries—convened to share and look for “the way forward” to prevent and treat mothers and children with HIV infection. And though we seek to alleviate death and suffering in one of the weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable populations in the world…we are not suffering in any way at this meeting. The Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge lies at the base of Mt. Meru and looks towards the snows of Kilimanjaro. At 6500 feet we are enjoying a cool 72 degree low-humidity climate. Four choices of juice every morning, a buffet extending for 25 feet, satellite television, Internet café, golf course, Olympic size swimming pool, and a luxurious conference hall with cathedral ceiling and microphones in front of each participant to facilitate questions and discussion. The progress in preventing mother-to-child transmission is impressive. Just five years ago the foundation had 8 sites in six countries. This year they boast over 1100 sites in 18 countries with over 2 million women tested over 5 years. The lectures are a mixture of medical, public health, and programmatic evaluation, but are generally driven by data. That data is not cheap. Millions of dollars. One presenter this morning estimated that the software developed for their project in 28 sites cost about $100,000. Midway through the third day of lectures, I am still feeling the culture shock from making the transition from one meeting to the next. This morning I was thinking that I am sort of a third-culture kid (TCK), raised in the objective information-driven highly-resourced professional world of medicine and public health, but transplanted to the church/missionary culture in Africa with a relative paucity of resources and more organic process of development. I feel like Jennifer and I have sort of melded the two worlds, but I no longer feel entirely comfortable in either. There are aspects of each which I love and embrace, but we’ve forged our own third way—doing little studies, analyzing our data, making conclusions, thinking critically—but living by faith and trying to apply the tools we’ve been given in a remote setting with compassion in the name of Christ. I suppose its not bad to feel uncomfortable, because this world is not our true Home. We are sojourners…just passing through. PS- The photos above show the contrasting accommodations: Yei , Sudan–v- Arusha, Tanzania. Keeping in mind, of course, that the Tanzania photo does not reflect the general level of development thoughout Tanzania. PPS- The luxurious accommodations in Arusha were funded entirely by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and Bristol-Meyers Squibb—no funds from WHM.

On Truth, convicting and consoling

N. has been a neighbor of the mission for two decades, a needy man, thin, addicted to alcohol, looking for money, neglecting his family.  When something is stolen he is usually suspected if not blamed, but culture is rather non-confrontational, and most people prefer to maintain some sort of coexistence even with a thief.  Yesterday, however, he came to Pat asking for money.  Only he made the mistake of wearing a rather unique sweater that Joanna had knit for Mark as a Christmas gift two years ago.  This sweater had been a labor of love and Mark wore it proudly for a short time.  Then one night, returning from a trip, they parked their car at the Massos after dark to eat dinner before settling back into their home.  They emerged to find the car’s window broken and their suitcase gone.  In the suitcase had been, among other things, the valued sweater.  

Because of the sentimental value, we prayed for that sweater.  I’m sure others remember praying for this.  We asked God to show His power and bring it back.  Just two weeks ago at team meeting we were celebrating the finding of Pamela’s lost re-entry visa and using that remarkable gift (it had been lost more than six months ago) to remind us of God’s answers to prayer.  But in that meeting I recalled the sadness I felt that the sweater prayer had never been answered, when I had such hopes that God would return it.

So last night, when Pat saw the sweater, she alertly asked for it back.  Today Michael took the police and in the house they found Mark’s bank card (with his name on it) and some computer discs.  Rather incriminating.  The community reaction has been:  Michael has done all of us a great service.  We missionaries are not the only victims of theft, in this case it is one of the ways we are treated as everyone else.  Everyone around us had suffered the loss of many things because of this neighbor and his children.

Did we do the right thing to bring this man to the police?  Is a sweater more important than the suffering he will no doubt incur?  

I’m re-reading a great study of the life of Jesus by Paul Miller called Love Walked Among Us.  That is what we want to be, Love, walking among the people of Bundibugyo.  One side of Love is Truth.  Jesus confronted evil.  He did not ignore the moneychangers disturbing the worship at the temple, or the religious leaders oppressing the people with their hypocritical rules.   It is not loving to enable a thief to continue stealing, to walk unimpeded down a road that leads to death.  So my guess is that yes, Jesus would have called N. on this.  But it’s a heavy responsibility and one which we as outsiders can easily misapply.   And it is always easier to rejoice over the convicting Truth applied to another person’s life, than to rejoice in that same conviction in my own heart.

Truth can also be consoling.  One of my students, M.J., is a true orphan, his father died when he was only 3 years old, and his mother when he was about 10.  He’s one of my favorite kids, and I know his relatives well and know he has a hard life.  He’s quiet, taller than most, studious, but with a smile that fills his face.  Many people prayed last June when he was very ill with some sort of arthritis, fevers, joint pain and swelling.  He improved over the summer but this weekend began to have a milder return of his symptoms.  As we have built trust over the years, he finally conceded what was really on his heart.  He hears people say that his parents died of AIDS.  And he’s worried about himself.  I knew his mother and frankly I do think it is likely that that was her diagnosis, but I’m not sure.  I seriously doubted this boy could have been infected even if that was the problem his parents had . . And I wasn’t sure if he felt shame that he was being stigmatized by the gossip about his parents, or worry that he also could be dying.  But I agreed to test him to put his mind at ease.  When I brought him is negative results, I could just see his face lighten, his body relax.  The truth set him free from that worry.   We still would like to understand his sickness better, but his death sentence has been lifted.

Jesus is so much like these two stories of today:  He convicts, and He consoles.  He calls us on the way our hearts grab for life apart from Him, then He offers us life by lifting the death sentence.  

Of Glory and Parenthood

(Friday 29 September)
Today several hundred people flocked into the gates of Christ School, parents, community leaders, siblings, graduates, all dressed festively, the atmosphere one of celebration.  It was our annual Parents’ Day, an open house to allow the community to come and see what is happening in the school.  When you consider that the average parent of a Christ School student has lived their entire life without electricity for so much as a light bulb . . .  you can imagine the polite awe which the computer lab inspires as confident students sit in front of a bank of laptop computers while the screens flash welcome messages in bright colors.  When you consider that the average family lives in a home whose walls are made of mud, furniture is limited to a bed and chair, there are no book shelves let alone books (unless they have one Bible) . . Then you can imagine how overwhelming the shelves of books in the library appear.  When you consider that almost none of the mothers and less than half of the fathers can understand let alone speak Uganda’s official language, English, . . . Then you can appreciate how impressed and proud the parents feel when their children give speeches in that difficult tongue.  When you realize that this is an almost completely unmechanized culture where all agriculture and building is done by hand, hoe, shovel and sweat . . . Then the computer programmable lego robots demonstrated by the technology club seem mysterious.  And that is how the day goes.  For the morning parents in groups of a dozen or so tour the school, peeking into the dorms to admire the neatly made beds and the luxury of mosquito nets, visiting the agricultural projects like the goats and rabbits being raised, shuffling through the labs to peer into microscopes or be shown the digestive system of a dissected live frog, chatting with each other and their children.  

Then about noon the ceremonies begin, a marathon of speeches, songs, dance, drama, poetry, and more speeches.    The dancing was the most fun—wild drumming, calling, traditional grass skirts and ankle bells and kitengis, bodies moving in unbelievable rhythm and energy, a reminder that underneath the veneer of the school uniform these students are still from a culture that is barely 50 years away from the introduction of clothes and a central legal system.  The dramas tend to be a bit like soap operas, quite long and involved and full of dubious characters.  Today’s featured just about every sin rampant in our society here, a complex story line in which every character was revealed to be corrupt or promiscuous or deceptive or violent.  But it culminated in a church service where each character repented, and subsequently the community was able to work together and move forward.  I really enjoyed it in spite of the length.  Christ School is a central piece of our team’s strategy and today was the kind of day when God allows us to glimpse the fruits of what He is accomplishing.  Kevin outlined many of the ‘ebeneezers’ in his speech:  250 students and 25 staff, a sprawling campus of classrooms, dorms, kitchen, dining hall, library, infirmary, of which about a quarter are new in the last year or so.  The top scores in the district on exams with no failures and 8 students qualifying for University scholarships.  The addition of 15 co-curricular clubs this year as diverse as cooking, drama, math, technology, agriculture, and crafts, giving students a fuller educational experience.

 Scott’s position as chairman of the Board of Governors meant he was slated to speak, and in his absence I was invited.   And I was glad to be invited.  As team leaders we are connected with the school administration, as a Bible study leader I feel connected with the teaching staff, as a sponsor of six Ugandan boys and mother of my own two boys I am a very involved parent.  I talked about the essence of parenthood being the giving of life, and how in God’s world giving life involves both sorrow and joy (John 16:21).  The parents before me I knew had sacrificed to have their children in school.  But the joy was before them today, and I read Isaiah 25 about the coming feast where death is conquered and the veil is lifted so that we live in God’s presence.  This day was a taste of that final party!  I ended with Heb 12:1,2, pointing to Jesus who brought life:   He suffered the cost, but He did it for the joy set before him.

Joy was set before us today, a glimpse of the Kingdom come.  And that joy was augmented by the community celebrating together.  

Back from Sudan

Michael and I barely scratched the surface of southern Sudan (SS). We spent one week in a town called Yei in order to attend a collaborative meeting of mission agencies dedicated to reaching SS. And though we didn’t venture a mile beyond the Yei’s edge, Sudan came to us. Missionaries, national pastors, evangelists, and theological students came from the far reaches of SS to meet, share, and pray. Sudan has been at war for nearly twenty years, north against south, Arab against black, and to some extent Muslim against Christian. Two million have died and four million displaced. But in January, 2005 a “Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)” was signed, bringing to an end the longest armed conflict on the African continent. For the next five years, the people of Sudan will look toward the Referendum of 2011 when those of SS will vote on whether to secede from the northern Khartoum government. Until then there will be reconstruction, lobbying, persuading, arguing, and praying. In some ways this Transitional Period may be the final window into the Khartoum north. The door to the north and perhaps even the disputed border zone (Nuba mountains, Abyei, and Upper Nile) may close. So, there is a sense of urgency. Sudan makes Uganda seem like a very well developed, luxurious country. The heat is brutal, the infrastructure (roads, electricity, safe water) absent, government services (hospitals, schools) a distant memory. The learning curve is extremely steep. The geography of a half million square miles of territory, the unfamiliar tribal/language names, dozens of organizations with different personalities and histories, shifting government policies, …it’s dizzying. The bottom line…planting your feet on the moist soil, tearing at the tough goat meat while you listen to the accounts of the hardship and suffering of these tall dark people, and praying through their hopes and needs. Well, Sudan found its way into our hearts. We thank those who prayed for our trip. We hope that we will be taking another exploratory trip into Sudan in the coming months. We’ll keep you posted. (Picture above: Michael and I with our roommate at the conference, a Sudanese man working with a reconciliation ministry)

There were 29 in 12 beds . . .

And the little one said, scoot over (or in Lubwisi, mwesike ) to make room for one more.  

We’ve had to limit our internet use this month but when Scott is traveling he hopes to post some pictures of the pediatric ward construction project.  Today I found 29 patients overflowing our current grungy 12-bed ward.  Two of the beds did have two patients each (sets of twins) and all contain both the patient and the mother.  But to squeeze in 29 means that many are on mats on the floor, between beds, in the aisle, out the door, in the hall.  IV bottles hang from nails in the wall or rickety moveable wooden poles.  I squat down on the floor to examine a dehydrated 3 month old, trying not to be judgmental and angry that a traditional practitioner has charged two-days’ wages to take a razor blade and slice open this baby’s gums in order to remove the “false tooth” that is causing his diarrhea.  Or that a dwindling twin with anemia and heart failure is getting no help from her father because he has four wives and too many children to take care of.  Or that the nurse who was on duty for the weekend failed to show up so that most children missed an entire two days of antibiotics.  I want to be compassionate and wise and think clearly through each child’s presentation and needs, respond carefully.   But by the 29th challenge I’m feeling completely at the end of patience (and patients) . . I’m almost out to the door when I realize there are five more outpatient referrals waiting dutifully on the bench.  

Just as I could be feeling sorry for myself and very weary . . I get to the last lady.  She had twins a week ago and has brought both tiny babies in, because she’s concerned about the leg of one which seems to curve a bit.  This is her focus, but from her book I learn that she tested HIV positive in this pregnancy.  Scott had ultrasounded her and noted that Kato, twin B, was breech.  So I ask about the delivery, a breech presentation being a reasonable explanation for his mild curvature.  She answers my questions and I gradually piece together that she did not deliver in the hospital but at home, it was in the night and she had no help at all, and has no idea which part of which baby came out first because it was too dark to see.  Even her husband seems to have disappeared during the critical moment.  So here she is laughing as she relates the story, a lady with a fatal disease and undersized vulnerable twins a week out from delivering them all by her lonsesome in a dirt house at night.  Puts life into perspective.  

But I’m still looking forward to a more spacious and clean ward!