Raining Mercies

Small but significant things to be thankful for rain down, in drizzles with occasional downpours. The biggest, a clap of thunder sort of of storm: Luke's room mate got called up to play JV soccer, from the wait list, because another boy broke his arm. Sorry for the kid with the arm, but I know that being new in the school as Luke and his room mate are, the chance to be on the team is HUGE. And that it was very hard and sad when one boy was selected and the other was not. We prayed for grace in their friendship. This is a huge boost. A downpour: that we can communicate so well with Luke by SMS and email, multiple times per day, so that issues like a computer stick that is improperly formatted or whether to choose Martin Luther King Jr. as a subject for an English report are still life details that we can know an interact about. At team pizza last night we called and passed the phone around; it was fun to see Gaby, the almost-little- brother, talking to Luke, and to be reminded that we share him with this team family of committed people who also love him deeply. A brief shower: Karen donated a handful of spiffy new, brown-faced, cuddly baby dolls to me, and I distributed them to four little girls admitted for severe malnutrition this morning. What an uproar! The grandmothers and aunts could hardly keep their hands off, and half the ward came running over to admire the babies, laughing and clucking out traditional greetings to the little patients as the mothers. The newest admission, Kansiime, had been sent to live with her aunt two months ago because both parents died of AIDS. She is wide-eyed and silent, a stunted 3 year old who has been bowled over by life already. But today she got a soft clean new UNICEF blanket, a baby of her own to hold in the chaos of her bereaved life, milk and eggs and beans to satisfy her hunger. Very nice. The long rains have begun in earnest, a drenching morning, sloshing ankle-deep in puddles just to walk across the lawn. In Africa rain is blessing rather than an inconvenience. Food prices have nearly doubled for many items this year, from drought, from over-use of land for cash crops like cocoa, from rising population and demand. So the rains bring a promise of abundance, of hunger satisfied. Beans were 350/= a cup a few years back, 500/= a cup (half kilo sized cup) last year, and now 800/= this week. Rice has gone from 700/= to 1200/= per cup. May the rains produce relief!