Healing

This was a long-weekend break with our family all together, designed to be about fun and togetherness, but in God's mercy we are thankful that the last day has been one of healing.  Prayer.  MANY hours of sleep, small forays back into eating and drinking, sun, quiet.  A few dozen tablets of cipro all around.  The wilted kids have revived, and we are very grateful to have one more day together relatively healthy .. . As one of the kids reminded us, our original plan for this break had been to pioneer the Juba/bus route to Mundri, South Sudan .. hard to imagine what a disaster THAT would have been.  Grateful for unseen and unanticipated pushes from one plan to the next, protection of those with the least body reserves in our family and team (except Assusi .. ), and just this space to heal.

It's a hellish road to paradise

5 am Thursday: an hour before we planned to get up and leave, Jack wakes up with violent spasms of vomiting, over and over.  By the time we pack the car, Julia is similarly stricken.  I'm juggling basins and splashing bleach as Assusi emerges from her room with similar symptoms.  We know we are doomed.

3 pm Arrive in Entebbe, no one has eaten all day, we have stopped along the road at least ten times for uncontrollable explosions from both ends.  Jack is burning with fever, I can't stay awake, and Scott's hope of being by-passed is dashed when a cup of tea sends him running to the bathroom.

5 pm We talk to our team and find out that 9 of 9 people who ate the ice cream I oh-so-generously made and shared last night are down.  I feel like a murderer.  For years I used my parents' technique which included raw eggs . . .but during one of JD's pregnancies I worried about salmonella and started cooking the custard.  We've never been sick from it before.  I got sloppy--threw the eggs into the hot milk, but rapidly took it off to cool.  Seems there was something brewing, and now most of my family and team are paying the price.  We tell our kids to try not to look sick . . there is a fair amount of swine flu paranoia, and this is clearly food poisoning, and we can just envision being turned away from our flight to Kenya.  Our cover is blown when Jack vomits dramatically right on the floor in the airport as we rush to find a trash can.  Misery.

7 pm.  Jack and Julia lie on the floor, anywhere they can, in the airport.  "They're just so tired" I say to helpful people who enquire. They look pasty. We all avoid food and stay close to the bathroom.  When we move from one line to another, nearer to the gate, we peel them off the filthy floor and the collapse at the next stop.  Julia finishes her final stomach-emptying on the tarmac as we walk to the airplane.

10 pm The black cavelas (small polyethylene bags) I packed are lifesavers.  But only 5, and they are soon in short supply.  We make it to the guest house in Nairobi where Luke and Caleb are already waiting, asleep.  I'm shaking with chills and fever by now, and Jack is up every hour.

5 am Friday:  We never even carried our suitcases up the stairs, just left them by the door and collapsed into beds.  Now we're back in the dark in a taxi to the airport for the early flight to the coast. Caleb is chipper in spite of the early hour, having slept through the night's distresses, and Luke is forgiving us for waking him . . .at least now we have two healthy sane people in our family.  More lying on the floor, more running to the bathroom and not always making it in time.  The departure area is stocked with a few uncomfortable plastic chairs and a mal-functioning PA system that emits a high pitched shriek for about 50 seconds out of every minute.  This seems not to bother anyone but us.

8 am Land in Mombasa, then a 2 1/2 hour drive to our hotel.  No one throws up.  Amazing.

24 hours later:  The fevers are losing intensity, and everyone has tentatively tried a few bites of food, though paid the price soon after.  Luke and Caleb were able to windsurf while the rest of us slept.  Frankly all we care about is a level clean bed and nearby facilities, and hope the boys can have some fun.  Until we woke to pouring rain this morning, of course.  

Waiting for rescue . . . 

REST AHEAD

Mercifully, RVA has planned a mid-term break in every three-month term.  Which forces our life into a pattern of six weeks work and a long weekend of rest, a sabbath-like rhythm.  Tomorrow we will rise before light, drive all day to Entebbe, fly in the evening to Nairobi, and be reunited as a family.  Then we will spend Friday to Tuesday at the Kenyan coast.  The ocean is a very real metaphor of the powerful un-searchable depths of God's being.  We are praying that a few days of sun, quiet, waves, fish, exercise, and togetherness will be restorative all around.  The boys are coming out of a slew of exams, an exhausting soccer season, dull food, and lonely separation from family. We are coming out of one attack after the other, turbulence in team life and planning, old griefs and anticipated griefs, failing electronics, an over-capacity hospital, rumors of swine flu, and the messy early transition work for the new (to-be-discovered) head teacher.  In other words, normal life, which tends to unravel us, and requires extended hours, weekly days, and occasional retreats of rest and removal.  Praying for real rest of the body and soul, and family memories to sustain us for the next stretch!

Rain on the Party

Just as we took the risk of moving all our tables, chairs, balloons, posters, dishes, etc. outside on Sunday afternoon for Julia's party, the blazingly bright day began to rumble.  Within 15 minutes clouds rolled in, and rain began.  We live in relatively small (apartment-sized) homes, so when 25 or 30 people are over for a party, it is pretty essential to be able to go outside.  I remember very vividly a similar rain-soaking Bday-drenching many years ago, and being completely undone.  This time I won't say I was a paragon of calm virtue, but a decade in Bundi has had some effect, and I did have the presence of soul to keep praying "God, you know what we can handle, and how much this means to Julia, and this is completely out of our hands, so we trust you."  Even though I didn't necessarily FEEL that way.  Everyone helped ferry the plates and food inside, we sat on the floor, and the rain abated to a mild drizzle in time for games.  

Rain on a party may not seem like a very noble trial for a missionary.  But I think it is a concrete parable of so much of the faith-challenge of life.  We are not usually risking death from ebola.  We are instead, most days, facing interruption, disappointment, lack of control over plans, worry for our kids, the struggle to make things work out for everyone in the best way.  We are, most days, hoping for a bit more sun and sadly soggy when the rain comes instead.

Whether it is other people's choices or needs, or mechanical failures, or sicknesses, or corruption, or lack of supplies, or muddy roads . . .there are many times we look up at the gathering clouds and wonder if we can manage yet another storm.  These are the moments when we are called to say:  I would not have chosen this rain, Lord, but you see more than I do, deeper and further and longer.  So I can only choose to trust that you have not stopped it for good reasons which I may or may not ever understand.  Help me to slosh on.

In Africa, Scott reminded me, rain is a blessing not an annoyance to party plans.  So the prayer may be extended:  help me not to just slosh on, but to find Your rainbow to climb through this rain, the splintering spectrum of light which makes even our daily disappointments moments of beauty.

the promise of protein

Ever since John wisely roped Jack and Julia into helping with the chicken project here and there, Jack has been hooked. As one of the youngest missionaries on our team, it is not easy to find a niche that you are uniquely gifted for (fast, strong, and not afraid of getting dirty), and that most other people don't particularly want to do (intimate contact with messy birds). So for Jack, it is chick-catching. Every few weeks the new chicks have to be vaccinated, which involves grabbing them one at a time, 300 flustery squawking pecking mini-chickens, handing them to Pauline who immunizes them, then separating them from the others, until each has been dosed. This evening the chicks are five weeks old and getting their third round. Jack and Scott Will assisted Pauline, bare bleach-cleaned feet in the mud and wattle coop as the nervous chicks swirled around their ankles, and the calm Pauline directed the operation.

We celebrate the so-far-100% survival rate, no small thing. These chickens will eventually lay the eggs that will sustain many malnourished children at the health center, and boost the nutrition of AIDS-affected families. It was Stephanie's vision and Pauline's persistence, former intern Jenn Butz's grant, and lots of other people in between, but the project continues, and Jack is proud to participate. This afternoon we had our BundiNutrition meeting. Lammech reported on the 92 goats distributed so far in 2009, with 20 more to go soon. Amazingly we now are able to purchase the majority locally, because of breeding programs initiated via the Matiti branch of BundiNutrition (which means that the goat-donation money not only benefits a new motherless or HIV-infected child's family, but also a former family who now is able to breed and sell goats from the one they received, so all the funding stays within the district!). Lammech and John share a vision for expanding the general upgrade of Bundibugyo goat genetics, so that hundreds, even thousands, of kids could drink milk instead of just the most severely malnourished. We talked about the record-keeping and breeding, and how a fourth extension worker could be an asset to this vision. Baguma Charles talked about the BBB program, and other needy areas of the district where the local production and provision of supplemental protein could make an impact. Pauline, Lammmech, and Baguma Charles are all great gifts to this work, people of skill and integrity that invest their lives here with us.

Monday's promise of protein, from the new admission of yet another malnourished baby at the hospital in the morning, to the lofty long view of program planning and funding in the afternoon, to the scratch-in-the-dirt reality of the chicken coop in the evening.

On Fixing

It seems that here on earth, we have to do a lot of tinkering. Some of it relatively trivial, and some not, but in a splintering world that tends to disorder, energy is constantly required for survival. In our life, much of that falls to Scott. If it's not the motorcycle it's the fridge, if it's not the fridge it's the cow, if it's not the cow it's something else. Everyday something breaks or goes wrong, and if it can be pieced back together in ten minutes we rejoice; if it sucks in the entire day we moan; and if it's beyond repair we wonder if we can just do without it. Today's issue is the internet WAP, the little transmitter that allows the rest of the team to connect to the signal that is based at our house. It is located in a high central point, namely just under the roof-ridge of the Community Center. And in last night's Julia-Bday-storms, it gave up the ghost at last, after about five years of service. So Scott had to search out a ladder to extend up 25 feet, risk the cloud of disturbed bats, and is now spending the rest of the day trying to resurrect some old equipment to replace the broken parts. Of course it is important for our team to have their life-line to family and friends, but it is also tearing a pretty large hole in the fabric of the week . . .

Some things are a bit more important to fix. Balyejukia Godfrey is 17, though he looks like he's 12. He must have contracted Rheumatic Fever sometime in his early years, because his heart is now severely affected. He is surviving but definitely not thriving, because he needs a new mitral valve (at least). This surgery is not possible yet in Uganda, though for about 15 thousand dollars it is possible to go to India. For a family in Bundibugyo, 15 thousand dollars, 5 thousand dollars, a million dollars, it is all unthinkably out of reach. Teenage boys hit close to MY heart these days, so when he came to see me a couple of weeks ago I went on-line and found out that various hospitals like UNC and DC Children's send teams to Mulago here in Uganda to evaluate patients, and that Samaritan's Purse has a program to assist needy children who have to be sent out of the country for surgery. And by grace it turns out that a team is coming next week, and agreed to evaluate our patient. We are praying that he is chosen for care, soberly aware that not all the children who need cardiac surgery in Uganda will get it.

Fixing the internet, or fixing a heart. Fixing the internet signal SO that we can connect a patient to a potential fix for his heart.

It strikes me that God does not offer a fix, but a new creation. Create in me a clean heart, oh God. He is not in the business of tinkering for survival, but in radically restoring, in making all things new. Hoping.

Julia Myhre, 13-year-old wonder

Julia came into our family 13 years ago, taking her sweet time 2 weeks past her due date. She still hates to be rushed. She values friendship, finds joy in being helpful, holds her own against the boys on the football pitch, practices simple hymns on the piano, sets a lovely and hospitable table every night, makes her opinions clear when her brother gets in her way, writes descriptively, and frequently needs a hug. She has a passion for trees, and one of her gifts was tree seeds which she plans to nurture into seedlings. She is more concerned with practicality than fashion, and her signature look is the bandana. Her only request for a Bday gift: a pocket knife, like her brothers have, which comes in very handy camping. Hmmm, not the average 13-year-old-girl gift, but I well remember the thrill of a good pocket knife. So we ordered one on the internet and had Scott Will bring it, and her face just lit up. And as she opened it, I thought, not a bad thing for a girl who is as beautiful, friendly, and integrated into the culture as Julia is, to be armed. Sigh.

Though she's 13 and looking like 16, she's a kid at heart. She chose a "Phantom Tollbooth" theme for her party, which is a fantastic little book that is a must-read for 7 to 70 year olds. We have a very game team, and everyone dressed up at characters from the book, and participated good-naturedly in games ranging from an auditory charades (guess the sound), to creating a wild paragraph out of a pile of random words, to a "jump to conclusions" bag-race relay. We tried to beat the inevitable evening rain by planning a mid-day party, but alas, as soon as we carried everything outside into the bright sunshine storm clouds rolled in, thunder rumbled, and we were driven back inside, which was a bit discouraging. Still, the most fun for Julia was setting up all the balloons and decorations, even if they did get drenched. And the rain did lighten to a misting sprinkle in time for the games.

It was a full and fun day, wholesome and encouraging and community-oriented. The same three girl-friends who have been at almost every Bday for Julia since she was a baby joined her in addition to a couple of other kids and the whole team. Julia is a precious jewel in our lives, and I am very thankful for the willingness of so many people to gather around her and honor her today.

Dissonance

Dissonance is the darker side of paradox.  Saturday was a day of dissonance.  Most of the day was one of preparation and anticipation, for Julia's birthday.  She has reminded us a hundred times this week of the countdown to the day, which for her is made special by friends, team, a party, costumes, games, the experience of the day.  And for us that means posters, baking, designing, organizing for Sunday afternoon fun.  But in the midst of that, we got news that our friend Chris Kenobwa had lost another child.  This is the second who has died this year, and he is the same man who broke his ankle and hurt his back falling out of a tree he was cutting down.  Ammon was six, and though he suffered from sickle cell disease he grew well and seemed to have less problems than most.  But he became suddenly ill Friday night and died in the early darkness of Saturday morning.  Scott, Pat, and I walked over to our neighbors, and sat.  It was eerily quiet, an exhausted grief, with the women crowded into a closet-sized room in the mud hut, Ammon's face visible in the open crudely cobbled coffin.  I don't know if it was his body or the press of live un-health in the room, but there was a putrid smell in the mid-day sun.  As our pastor Kisembo bravely proclaimed Jesus' love for children, Ammon's mother screamed out her wail and he father Chris sat deflated outside the house.  Then we returned to the skipping joy of our kids in their eager pre-party projects.

This is the dissonance of life.  Surrounded by the odor of death, cut with the grief of loss, yet in the midst of that preparing for the ultimate party, the feast on the mountain, the wines on the lees and choice pieces, the no-tears end to the whole story.

SCOTT WILL IS BACK!!

Exuberant even jet lagged, the indomitable Scott Will has returned. He was our ebola-companion, and walked through some of our life's darkest days with us. God has been good to send him back to Bundi for three months, en route to long term service in Sudan on the Masso's team. We are celebrating!

Paulo, who pees. Praising persistence, a peculiar Rose, and Hope.

(Sorry for the slang but couldn't resist the alliteration)

This is the happy ending to a long story. Readers may remember Paulo, a little boy who was born with abnormal valves in his urethra that blocked his ability to urinate. His mother is one of the most persistent ladies I have met. In the face of widespread fatalism and weariness when the system fails to work, most people succumb to a lethargic and uneasy compromise with reality. Life is difficult and unfair, and there's not much hope of changing that. But not Paulo's mom, who knew that the painful dribbling urine her little boy eeked out was not normal, and not being treated by hastily scrawled prescriptions of antibiotics. By the time she landed on our ward he had some damage to his kidneys. But the struggle had just begun.

We referred him two years ago for the relatively straight-forward surgical procedure of ablating the problematic valves, i.e. getting them out. Instead the only urologist in the country performed a simpler procedure, an opening in his abdominal wall so that urine passed directly out of his bladder and onto his skin and clothes. This saves the damaging back-pressure on his kidneys, but is a socially untenable long-term solution. Over the course of the next year we sent him back to Mulago six times, the national referral hospital where citizens should get specialized care, free. Each time he was sent back with an excuse of why surgery could not be done. Once he spent TWO MONTHS admitted, was discharged with a note that he could not urinate, and told to come back in a week. In desperation we hooked him up with the private hospital in Kampala, IHK. However it turned out that they consulted the SAME urologist who was suddenly available to do the surgery he'd put off six times, but for an exorbitant fee.

Well, Paulo's mom met her angels at last, two more persistent Ugandan women. A woman named Rose, who bravely walked away from a life of witchcraft and sacrifices as a teen, to look for a better one. She was adopted by an Irish medical missionary couple, sent to nursing school, and founded a charity called Hope Ward at IHK (her dad's hospital). This visionary and passionate woman just held a huge fundraiser, to protest child sacrifice, a walk-athon of the route of her escape, and donated the money to Hope Ward. And a woman named Jemimah, who connects patients with the care they need on the ward, makes the phone calls and appointments. She found an alternative surgeon, and Paulo finally had his surgery earlier this year.

For the first time in his five years, he could urinate. But post-op, the old opening that had been made in his abdominal wall and then closed, began to leak. A few months ago we made a plan for him to return in October for a second surgery. On exactly the first day of October, Paulo and his mom showed up at our house. I thought they wanted to go back to Kampala. Instead his mom explained that God had healed Paulo, the old wound was closed, he no longer leaked through his stomach. He pees like any other 5-year-old boy.

It was a long saga, for one little boy, and I'm glad for his sake that it is finally over. The damaged kidneys will probably come back to trouble him eventually, but without the surgery he could have been dead by now. A big thanks to Hope Ward, Rose, Jemimah, the Clarks, and all the people in Uganda who stand against corruption and despair, and work to make things different.