On an adventure

First, keep praying for the recovery of the motorcycle, but the good news is that one of the two bikes was stored in a separate location last night and therefore was not stolen as we had feared. So only one is missing. The bad news is that the Masso garage was only one of six buildings breached by the thieves: they rifled through papers and wreaked havoc in the translation and literacy offices, the BundiNutrition office, the classroom used by the Deaf School on our property, even some store rooms. A laptop used by the Lubwisi literacy program was later recovered in a ditch, with some recording equipment.

Now back to the adventure: This post is being sent, amazingly enough, from wireless internet in ENTEBBE AIRPORT, which has become a truly modern over the last few years. Caleb finished his Beginning of Term exams and I saw all my patients this morning, then we hopped on a small MAF (Cessna 210) plane in the afternoon, with Juliet who was taking Arthur to meet his maternal grandmother for the first time. We lifted over the ravines where river-side laundry casts a colorful confetti drying in the sun, saw kids scrambling for views of the airplane from the dust of their compounds, glimpsed the orderly rows of huts at the main army barracks and the sprawl of tin roofs which is town. Then over the bare shoulder of the mountains, the volcanic craters of Fort Portal, the countless miles of papyrus swamp, heading due east all the while, to Entebbe. Arthur was perfect, Juliet was enjoying herself, and Caleb and I were GREEN. Delicacy prevents me from disclosing how many bags were filled from our stomachs, but let me say that the lion's share was not mine. Sigh. Afternoon flights, pockets of warm air ascending, lead to turbulent times down in the no- extra-oxygen small-plane strata. We are glad to be sitting here in the airport on solid ground for a couple of hours, until the next phase of the adventure. We will reach Nairobi tonight and then on to Kijabe Saturday morning. Luke turns 16 on Sunday. I sat a few yards from here with him as an 8 month old when we landed in Uganda for the first time, a bit lost and alone (our ride arrived a few hours late . . .). It has been an adventurous 15 1/2 years since then, and I am thankful to be rejoining him for the commemoration of this special Bday.

Under Attack

In the last week, unoccupied buildings on the mission have been broken into three times, on three different nights. One time we can write off as desperation (rising food prices, school fees due). Two, we began to wonder about security issues, lack of consequences. Three tells us we are under attack. The first time was the night of the Super Bowl, which here was on from 2am- 6am in our time zone. We set our alarms and about half the team slept over on our floor, so when our lights went on and we began to cheer in the middle of the night we suspect that the thieves at the former Gray home got spooked. The next morning we discovered that a couple of mattresses and sheets and spoons were gone . . . but electronic equipment piled by the door had been abandoned. The second time was an outbuilding (also at the former Gray house) from which we could not detect any missing items. But last night was a doozy. Someone pried open the lock on the Masso garage and stole one of our BundiNutrition outreach motorcycles (value ~$4000). This is the machine which Baguma Charles rides hither and yon, doing trainings, making home visits, teaching, encouraging, delivering food supplies, making reports. 

They also broke into four other offices around the mission including the BundiNutrition office, our WHM worker tool store, our Deaf School classroom, and the Translation Office.  I just felt sick at the prospect that the Lubwisi Translation computer might have been taken or damaged. 

Thankfully, that computer was taken home by Charles Musinguzi, our translator, so no Lubwisi  bible translation files were lost.  My next action...verify that they are backing up those bible translation computer files in a secure site!

So Scott will spend half his day making a police report, and we will file notices with the organization (EGPAF) which funded the purchase of the motorcycle, and we will scramble to find other means of transport, and we will hire three night watchmen, something we haven't done in a long time. And we will pray, and ask you to do the same, that the "God of the Angel Armies" will send a few troops our way. As an act of mercy as well as justice: women with AIDS and hungry children are going to suffer the consequences of this last break-in, and the consequences will eventually catch up with the thieves.

Conflagration

Post-team-meeting-and-pizza, sitting outside on our little bougainvillea-covered veranda, dim moonlight and stars, cool breeze. About half the team drifted home for early bedtimes, and half stayed chatting. I brought out candles and a new game sent in a care package: BeRhymed, a combination of catch-phrase, charades, and pictionary. We laughed at Jack's drawing of "shocked" and my acting out of "vampire", listened in amazement as Ashley took her team's score far into the lead. Then it was Caleb's turn, and as he drew clues I leaned closer to get a better look by candle-light as we raced the timer. Suddenly the night got brighter, much brighter. At the same moment I heard crackling near my right ear, smelled the acrid odor of burning hair, and saw everyone else's face register the same little "shock" drawing that Jack had penciled a few minutes prior. My hair was on fire. It only lasted a few seconds, by the time I jumped up beating on it with my hands it was out, I never even got to STOP, DROP, and ROLL. It seems the cheap local Ugandan hair goop I buy here, Venus Hair Food, to dampen down the frizz, is a petroleum based product, and quite flammable. Thankfully I don't use much, so it burned off in about three seconds. And thankfully I have a LOT of hair, so the loss is not even hardly noticeable. But for the rest of the team and family it was quite a sight, Jennifer in flames.

Reading nature

Early morning, pre-dawn dimness, the flutter of fruit bats with their
paper-thin wings and ominous swoops, returning to roost in the royal
palms, darting under the eaves and through the trees. I stand in the
yard and look up as one of the bats erupts in shrieking. An eagle
hawk grabs an oblong bundle of bat, holding it in his talons as he
flies low and powerful between the trees, confident, conquering.
Since ebola, it is hard not to see bats as evil, harbingers of
infection and rustlers in the dark. In our prayer times this week
we've been focusing on the fact that the unseen reality trumps the
visible problems . . . So as I stood watching this improbable scene, I
thought of angels, swooping down with precision timing and selection
to protect us from a particular crisis. Outnumbered but still
individually strong, pulling one problem out of our way, but not
eliminating the swarm of evil. Yet.

Later, the hospital is abuzz with the events of the night. Scott is
told by the staff that a rather prominent business man, a trader on
cocoa, who lived nearby, died. How? He was relieving himself outside
in the night when he was attacked by a snake and bitten SEVEN TIMES.
In painful places. People told us with assurance that the snake even
followed the man onto the hospital ward. I suppose it is reasonable
to assume it could have been gathered up in his sheets or clothes as
it tried to escape while his collapsed form was being transferred to
care? But the idea of a snake that stayed around long enough to
strike that many times, had enough venom to kill a grown man within
the hour, and appeared even on the hospital ward, is rather grim. A
tangible enemy, to be sure, unlike the subtle viruses, mutated genes,
or creeping fungi that attack most of my patients. I came home
forgetting the small victories (a preemie reaching 2 kg thanks to his
mother's skin-to-skin incubating care, and going home; a stick-figure
little sickle cell patient now smiling, naked except for her stuffed
giraffe tied to her back, having climbed from the ditch of
malnutrition to resume her march along the road to health) . . . in
the tragic arrival of a primary-school age child who presented with a
massive brain tumor growing out of her nose, her blind eyes swollen
shut, beginning to have trouble breathing, her disease having
progressed months untreated and now nothing more to do than palliate.

I am reminded, as I am many days, of the apt watch-phrase: "How goes
the world?" "The world goes not well, but the Kingdom comes." We
could use a few swoops of the hawk.

Deadly Beliefs

One of the great gifts of having a team nurse is that Heidi has allowed (?insisted) that I not do inpatient rounds EVERY day . . which has freed up Tuesday mornings this month for one of my first loves, community health and medical anthropology, the exploration of beliefs and their impact on health.  There are many strong and healthy and God-reflecting aspects to local culture.  There are many other neutral practices.  But there are a few deadly ideas, beliefs which result in much suffering and needless mortality.  I applaud the former, ignore the middle, and vehemently protest the latter.   I frequently see children in the terminal stages of dehydration and infection who have come to the hospital in a last desperate attempt to save their lives, after their well-meaning parents have subjected them to some barbaric practices.  Though I plead and lecture on the ward, it is a losing battle.  So this month I invited five recent CSB grads (3 of my male students and 2 girls whom I came to know well as their cell group leader) to conduct qualitative research on the topic of "bhiino", or "false teeth".  

These kids conducted 50 interviews with a cross-section of community members, and today we gathered to discuss their results.  The basic idea is that severe diarrhea in infants is caused by the presence of  evil abnormal teeth hidden in the gums, and these offending teeth must be cut out by specialists in the community, extracted by knife-point from the toothless gums of the babies.  This cultural practice filtered into Bundibugyo in the 1970s on the heels of Idi Amin's soldiers, who carried the idea from their home regions to the North.  By now it is so pervasive and popular that EVERY woman and most of the men interviewed reported having taken at least one child for this procedure, and EVERY informant believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that such teeth exist and must be manually extracted to save the life of the child.  

Sadly, the reality is that the mutilated babies refuse to drink, becoming more dehydrated, and the wounds from the non-sterile crude knives often become infected.  We say on our team (in memory of Michael Masso and Kevin Bartkovich) that we are life-long learners.  And though I've been speaking out against this practice for 15 years, I learned new things today.  First, that mothers blame themselves when their baby gets this problem, for not wearing herbal protective charms around their waists consistently throughout their pregnancies.  This struck my heart, because I know that parents allow and in fact pay high prices for this procedure because they truly want what is life-saving for  their child . . and now I realize the underpinning of guilt that makes the whole scenario even more desperate.  Secondly, I learned that the what I consider to be the second most deadly belief, the forcible administration of enemas to babies, is not a completely separate entity but is often combined with the tooth extraction.  So the baby who was already sick, whose mouth has just been sliced up, is further compromised by the dehydrating and painful procedure of having herbal solutions blown into  his or her bottom through a pumpkin stem.

This week's task:  for the young people to design an intervention to combat these deadly beliefs.  The encouraging thing is that our communities WANT their children to survive and are going to great lengths to ensure that they do . . it is just the tragic misunderstanding of reality that turns their heroic efforts of love into the fatal incisions of destruction.  I read to the group from Matthew 2, Revelation 12, Jeremiah 31, all referring back to Genesis 35:  the battle is real, and the battlefield is all too often the vulnerable bodies of babies.  Rachel weeps when her children are assaulted. Let us comfort her with truth.

Back to School

The mile of dirt road which stretches in front of our house hosts no less than five primary schools (3 large government schools and two major newly-opened private ones) and three secondary schools.  I would estimate that these 8 institutions enroll over two thousand pupils, not to mention that dozens of others use the path to head further afield.  So when the school year officially began this week, let's say it was quite noticeable!  Clusters of boys and girls, from tiny tots to burly teens, in solid color trousers and white shirts, maroon shifts and checkered blouses, a palette of colors, shapes, and sizes, all flowing up and down the corridor.  This is the first new school year since my neighbor died, and his successor son decided to observe a cultural practice involving sending the wives of his father back to their pre-marriage relatives (in spite of the fact that these women have lived there for 20 to 40 years . . .).  So I ended up taking the two teenage parent-less girls to sign into "Parental Care Primary" school.  It was also the first year of a stricter and more organized CSB entry process, so I went there to sign in my usual boys.  It was somewhat festive, rubbing shoulders with other parents, many of whom I know, respectfully waiting my turn, paying fees, saying goodbye.  Students greeted each other, harried staff members searched through trunks to enforce the proper clothing and shoes and books being brought.  And so the 2009 year begins here, hopeful.  

Give A Goat

A comment on the blog asked if we require goat recipients to return the first female offspring to the program. The answer is YES, we do. Only 8 were returned in 2008, but our extension officer anticipates at least a dozen more coming soon (female kids that he's seen in his home visits). The vision is that this program eventally become self-propagating, so that needs for immediate individual assistance can be quickly met as mothers die or as HIV-infected mothers wean their babies. But we also have a growing vision for the broader problem of chronic widespread under-nutrition in toddlers and preschoolers. Bundibugyo's stunting rate is 43%--that means almost half of kids are shorter than the lowest cut-off for normal in a healthy population. This happens because small bodies faced with repeated cycles of infection and access to minimal calories and protein compensate by slowing their linear growth to preserve survival (even our own child experienced this in his second and third years of life here, though he's recently miraculously sprouting lengthily). Our dream: the male dairy breed goats that we import will be used by every village, crossing with the hardy local goats, to eventually produce flocks of little milk-makers, adding high-quality protein to the marginal diets of most children. The Joy Children's Center in Masaka has provided most of our goat stock and we continue to work together towards this end, thanks to Karen's years of establishing the program, Lemmech's daily forays into the bush to follow-up on goats, Sarah's careful records and accounting, Pat and Heidi's patient screening of potential recipients, our Nairobi team's creative assistance with hand made ornaments, our Sending Center's coordination of gifts, and the 117 extravagantly gracious people like the commenter on the blog who actually purchase these goats for poor families. It's an amazing partnership (remember our themes!), made even more powerful by the prayers which accompany the giving.

A Vision of Hope

The 2009 school year begins tomorrow . . . and so tonight our WHM team joined the CSB staff for a prayer walk, bathing every corner of the campus in praises and supplications. David shared a few words about the faith of Caleb in the Bible, who was not intimidated by the giants in the land of Canaan because he sensed God's power to be more real. Annelise kept us moving from dorm to dorm, classroom to classroom, in small groups and then all together in a circle of prayer. We prepared the way for the students by asking God to do great things: to protect from disease, to give a passion for learning, to provide adequate food, to inspire teachers, to draw forth worship, to change lives. It was a beautiful tangible picture of our partnership, and a way for us to collectively acknowledge that like Caleb we know that the God we serve is the One who can bring true change to CSB.

And our vision of hope was boosted by the weekend's news of the O Level exam results. Christ School emerged as the leader in Bundibugyo once again, with 5 students in Division One and NO FAILURES. To put that in perspective, we had 5 of the 8 division one scorers in the district, but only 51 of the 435 students. That means a Bundibugyo student at CSB was 8 times more likely to score in the top tier than average. And in our district more than 10% of students fail, but none of ours did. We still have a long way to go to meet the highest national standards, but this was hopeful news.

And so we meet the new year. The giants in the land are real (alcoholism, abuse, cheating, mediocrity, rebellion). But the grape- cluster vision of what God can do makes it worth the risk to move forward.

Provision

Let us take a moment to be thankful, and to acknowledge the power of provision as a firm confirmation that we must persevere here. While the entire world scales back expectations, and struggles to navigate the thin ice over bankruptcy. . . God has moved many hearts to provide for the Kingdom advance in Bundibugyo. A paradox, for sure. We were tentative in our goat hopes this year, and would have been thrilled to fund 50 . . . but 117 were purchased through the Christmas Ornament Matiti Give-a-Goat fundraiser!! Lemmech will begin training new owners in February for the first allotment to go out in March. Amazing gifts have come in for Christ School, dramatic and generous answers to prayer, churches and individuals sacrificially putting money (that is no longer flowing so easily in America) into Ugandan education and discipleship. And a heartfelt salute to our own supporters, whose end-of-the-year outpouring of mercy carries us into 2009 with great hope. We've already been able to share the bounty with a boosted power supply for the lab fridge for blood banking, and with the nutrition office to computerize the goat database. Next on our list will be the non-glamorous but very-necessary addition of a new latrine for hospital staff housing. Dr. Jonah's children began their new year of school and our medical students continue in their studies thanks to your gifts. We are humbled and grateful to witness so many giving, not out of excess but in spite of your own financial losses, out of love.

And, equally amazingly . . .the Chief Administrative Officer has announced that an entire year's worth of government funds for health in the district have been "recovered" from the various departments which had "borrowed" them for other business. This is a huge answer to our anti-corruption prayers. Pray for this man, Elias, who faces not only opposition but no doubt also temptation to allow shadiness to continue. It takes much effort and courage to draw the line.

So both through donors and through the Ugandan government, God is pouring out His provisions in response to your prayers. Keep it up!

Disparity

A Ugandan woman in Gulu delivered premature sextuplets this week, after 4 months of hospitalized bed rest. And every one of them died. There was a newspaper story about her grief. She left the hospital with nothing to show for her love and effort.

Meanwhile the California octuplets make world headlines, having had 46 doctors and nurses attend their delivery, receiving state-of-the art intensive care, and all are so far alive.

The babies in both cases were similar sizes, 800 to 1000 grams. But California and Gulu are worlds apart. Regardless of who used what fertility drugs (the Ugandan woman denies, and the American might deny too) . . . the ethics of selective termination have overshadowed the more glaring ethical question of justice, of a world where one woman buries six and the other goes home with eight.