Desert Journey

Solemn Meditation

2009-12-13T10:40:00.003-05:00

I saw this family, and I knew they were different. They didn't share in the general jovial community sense that the rest of the parents and family members had in the pediatrics ward. Granted, some families don't always; when their children are hovering precariously between death and life, they don't always take part in the community atmosphere. And yet this family's little girl was able to walk, was not lying limply from malaria, meningitis, or other savage illnesses. Her life was not hanging in the balance.

I asked around about her. "Why is she here? What's her diagnosis?"

Then it all made sense. Despite the fact that she was physically alive and her body was not being ravaged by disease, her family was mourning her death. Or at least the death of her innocence. This ten year old girl had been raped by a family member, and now her father and mother mourned in silence as they comforted and loved her. Their somber affects and gentle care for their daughter as they grieved the loss of her innocence is something I won't soon forget.

Crimes against innocence are of the vilest nature. And yet how often do I myself not respectfully mourn the loss of innocence? Because one day in ages past, innocence was slaughtered on a hill called Golgotha, and so often I carelessly mention that death without allowing its gravity to sink in. Even worse, I often scorn the death of innocence by my own crimes against it in choosing self over love.

I miss my African family

2009-11-25T23:20:00.002-05:00

Home sweet hut

Pierre at work

Hawaa, proud of the family millet field

Innocent at clinicals

Bruno at home on the well

Berthe and me

Ruth (has one of the most beautiful smiles) and sweet Esther

Twister with the girls

Esther and ever confident Anne (one of my favorite pictures)

Little Dorcas

And spoiled baby Bezalel

Another beautiful African sunset

Ethiopia: Conditioned Response

2009-08-18T18:56:00.003-04:00

Tchad is hot. Toward the end of my time in Tchad, I was sleeping outside on a grass mat with just a blanket over top of me because it was too hot to sleep inside my hut. During the day temperatures hung out at about 115 degrees Farenheit, and temperatures at night were probably somewhere in the 80s or low 90s. This was in Bere.

Then we went to the capital, which is further North and much hotter. I remember staying at the TEAM mission compound, and sometimes during the day it would be so hot that we would turn the ceiling fans up as fast as they would go and sprawl on the bed not daring to move for fear that we would begin to perspire (sometimes doing so despite our stillness).

When I left Tchad and made it to Ethiopia, it took me a while to adjust to the much cooler climate. I would often wear my jacket despite the incredulous looks it drew from the other Farenji. I remember one particular day being inside the house where Ansley, Priscila, Dipika and I stayed and seeing that there was a thermometer on the wall in the corner of the living room. Curiosity compelled me. I looked and in astonishment called out to Ansley, "Ansley! No wonder we're cold! It's only 85 degrees in here!!"

Backfire

2009-06-11T16:02:00.002-04:00

I called Wendy Roberts today to talk and let her know that she has a host of people praying for her and her family. She told me that they appreciate the prayers so much. Please continue to pray for her and the whole family, that God will give them the strength to keep going as the days keep coming. I want to share some of what she said.

As I talked with her about Kaleb and how she was doing, she told me, "I just hope that this is a witness to the people here. It's really hit them hard. They think that we're somehow immune to their problems, and now I hope they can see that we're not." Just as Jesus lived among men and experienced what we experience, the Roberts family is living among the Chadians, experiencing their hardships, and relating to them. And it will be a witness, I'm sure it already has been.

Kaleb coloring with Mbai, a patient

"And I hope that Kaleb will have many stars on his crown because of it," Wendy said through her tears, "I want this to bring glory to God; that's what Kaleb would have wanted."

When I asked her how Cherise, their 2 year old, was doing, she said that Cherise didn't understand until the casket went into the ground and they started piling dirt on top. Cherise said, "Mommy, I don't like that." And Wendy replied, "I don't either, honey." Then Wendy explained again to Cherise that they wouldn't see Kaleb again until Jesus comes. Since then, Cherise keeps telling Wendy, "Mommy, Jesus is going to come soon and say, 'Kaleb, wake up!'"

That's the kind of kids Gary and Wendy have raised.

I remember having family worship with them one weekend; Kaleb liked to sing I'm in the Lord's Army and With Jesus in the Family. Both Kaleb and Cherise loved to listen to their Bible stories for worship every night.

Once again, Satan's scheme has backfired and pulled the ground out from under him. In the times of the early apostolic church, Satan persecuted believers mercilessly. His intent, I'm sure, was to stomp out the blaze that Jesus had started; instead, Satan unwittingly spread it like wildfire. Likewise, I'm sure that in attacking God's missionaries, Gary and Wendy, his intentions were cruel- to knock the air out of their chests and send them reeling out of the mission field. But as Gary and Wendy have turned Kaleb's death into a testimony against Satan's depravity and continue to work and testify for God, I'm afraid Satan's small victory has been transformed into yet another defeat.

My prayer is that I may learn to live my life as a testimony like Gary and Wendy's lives, and that by my every action, Satan's plans may backfire. And it will be my prayer until Jesus comes again and wakes up all the ones we've loved and lost.

For Kaleb

2009-06-10T19:08:00.004-04:00

I just got an email from Dr. James in Bere. As soon as I began to read, I knew it in my gut: he was gone, they couldn't save him.

It's one of those things that seems so unreal, like a bad dream that you just know you're going to wake up from at any moment. But you don't.

It's funny how we offer words of solace for those who have lost someone dear, but when it's your turn to receive those words, they only sound hollow and are unable to touch the aching in your heart.

But as I sit and question, "God, why Kaleb?" I do so knowing deep down that God knows best. I do so knowing that while words can never cure the heartache, He can. And so I pray to the God of all comfort to ease the pain until He can wipe the tears from our eyes.

Please pray for the Roberts family-- Gary, Wendy, and their 2 year old, Cherise. I can't even begin to imagine how much they're hurting right now.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'"

Come quickly, Jesus.

Chad: Bere's Farewell

2009-05-04T11:53:00.003-04:00

My last Sunday in Bere was rather memorable. For some reason, I just wasn't feeling good at all. Ansley and I had planned to go to Prudence's house for bouillie because she wanted to have us over one last time. So, off we went. But as we were walking there, I told Ansley, "I really feel pretty awful." My head hurt, I was slightly cool (which is only unusual since it was probably a good 100 degrees outside), very nauseated, and rather fatigued.

You guessed it: malaria. I still went to Prudence's and looked at all of her pictures, ate bouillie with her, and talked for a while. But I don't think I was my usual "charming" self. When Prudence asked why I looked so glum, and I told her how I felt she said, "Oh, it must be Bere's farewell to you."

What a sweet parting gift.

When we finished, Ansley went home and I went back to the middle house. I lay on the bed for a while out of sheer exhaustion. Then I took my temperature, and when I discovered it was 103.6, I decided that I ought to muster up the energy to get up and go bother James. But I knew what his answer would be, and it was not what I wanted to hear.

I had made it my goal to get through my time in Chad without ever needing an IV. But sure enough, the verdict was IV Quinine. I have a theory as to why this last round of malaria was so bad. About a week earlier, I had tried to give blood, but Anatole couldn't find my veins. The next day I did a malaria and hemoglobin test, which showed that my hemoglobin was 9.6 (low normal is 12), but the malaria was negative. Praise God that Anatole couldn't find my veins because if I had given blood, who knows how low my hemoglobin would have dropped. Anyway, I suspect that it was a false negative test and that the malaria had just been multiplying in my red blood cells for a good week or two.

So, Ansley kindly came back to the hospital to take care of me. Apparently I don't do well with IVs though. Ansley stuck me twice and got good flashback, but couldn't advance the catheter. We called Caroline who also had to stick me twice with a smaller needle. And then, my IV infiltrated before a day was over, so Augustin 2 had to come stick me the next morning. His IV lasted an even shorter time before I got phlebitis. I am not a fan of IVs.

Let me just say, this experience gave me an awful lot more sympathy for my patients. When you are already feeling fairly miserable, the last thing you want is for someone to be shoving needles in your veins.

Anyway, they got me all set up, gave me some Vitamin B complex and some Diazepam for my nausea and to make me sleep. I don't think the Diazepam worked too well though; it knocked me out for about 10 minutes, and then I think I was just slightly loopy afterwards, though the memory is a bit fuzzy for me.

The one thing I will say though, is that IV Quinine really works. I was feeling tons better within several hours, and tried to convince Ansley that I could take pills, but James had ordered for a full day of IV medication. I suppose nurses really don't make good patients.

I am quite content that there is no malaria here in Gimbie, and would be even happier if that turned out to be my last experience ever with such nasty parasites.

Chad: Jungle Adventure

2009-05-04T11:53:00.001-04:00

In my last blog I mentioned that I'm now safely in another country. Unfortunately, with the last minute rush of everything in Chad, the stories just started to accumulate from my time there, and now I have quite a few stories to write from Ethiopia. So, for now, I'll preface each post with the name of the country it happened and hope that I don't confuse everyone too much. Here's a story from Chad:

Jungle Adventure

For quite some time, I had wanted to go to the river for a sunrise. I thought it would be a nice, peaceful, and possibly beautiful activity. I invited others to come with me, but it ended up being just Jason and me.

Sunrise is generally around 5:45 am, and the river is about an hour walk away. So, Jason and I both woke up early one Sabbath morning and met up at the middle house at 4:45 am. It was still dark enough that we needed our headlamps every once in a while, though we went a lot of the way by moon and starlight.

I was glad to have Jason along because my directional skills are certainly not up to par with the average human being. However, it's amazing what being in the dark in a desert will do to even the average person's sense of direction.

We ended up taking a wrong turn that led us far, far out from the main path we generally take to the river. The sky began to lighten as we neared a small village. We asked a man near his home which way it was to the river and were thanking God that the man spoke French so far away from town (God answered our prayers and sent people our way several times on the trip). He pointed us in the right direction and we continued on our way.

Now, at this point, the sun had already risen. The unfortunate thing was that we didn't really get to see a "sunrise" because it was rather hazy that morning. So we stopped for a minute to take a few pictures of our sad sunrise and kept going.

It was about at this point that my right foot began to hurt really badly. It was strange because I hadn't twisted my ankle or anything; it just felt like one of my tendons was really sore. It was at this point 6 ish in the morning, and I knew we had a long ways still to go.

We walked and walked for another 20 minutes or so when we finally reached the river! But alas, it was still very far away from our usual river spot and we didn't want to just back track the way we came because we weren't 100% certain of how we had gotten there. We decided to follow the river until we came to our usual spot so that the journey back to the hospital would be quicker.

I can't even remember how long we walked, but it seemed like forever. While we were walking, though, we discovered that there are jungles in Chad! Or at least, it was the closest thing to a jungle I'd ever seen in Chad. There were lots of green plants that were sort of thick, which I thought odd since it was the dry season. So we took some pictures and a funny video in our jungle (I'll have to post tons of pictures online when I get back to the States).

When we finally arrived at our destination, both Jason and I waded in the river a little bit to wash and cool our feet. Then we sat down on the shore and ate some mangoes. Of course, the whole time we were doing this, we had a small audience. Apparently, it was prime time for washing clothes and crossing the river to get to the market (Saturdays being market day in Bere). I tried to ignore the people staring at us and talking about us in Nangjere (I could recognize a few words…).

Eventually we headed back, but it was a lot slower than I had anticipated. By this point, my foot was really hurting and it took a lot of will power to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But we made it. It was a rather unsuccessful and anti-climactic river sunrise trip, but it still made for a good adventure. The only unfortunate consequence was that that evening, my right foot became more than slightly swollen and was sore for a couple of days.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention… After church was out, James decided to make another river trip with the van. I'm not certain, but I'd be willing to bet that they've never fit so many people in that van before—36 people all in one load. So, I spent an unusual amount of time at the river my last Sabbath in Bere. But it was worth it.

Ethiopia: Five Minutes

2009-05-04T11:51:00.001-04:00

Five minutes can change a life. A month ago in March, 30 year-old Taye was walking, presumably to work as a daily laborer, early in the morning. While en route, Taye was stopped by a man who was constructing a new building and asked to help. "Just for five minutes," the man implored.

Taye acquiesced, unaware of some exposed electrical wiring, and began to pour water on a new cement wall per the man's request.

Now, a month later, I help the local nurses at Gimbie change the dressings to his electrical burns every day. We also change the dressings to his amputation sites where he lost both of his feet due to his injuries. His burn wounds are looking better every day, but his muscles are now so weakened from a month of lying in bed that he cannot move of his own will.

Currently, the owner of the new building where Taye had his accident is paying for his hospital stay, but I know that both Taye and his wife worry daily about how they are going to care for their two children when they leave the hospital. He is no longer able to work as a daily worker and has no education for another job. Right now, the outlook for his quality of life is grim.

The first day I saw Taye, he stopped me as I was leaving his room. He pointed skyward and lifted his eyes up. I gathered he wanted me to pray for him, so I did. It's hard to describe the dimly hopeful look I saw in his eyes when I finished praying. I left his room wondering what else I could do for this man who, in my eyes, seems to have so little left to hope and live for. I gave Taye a Bible in his native language hoping that he would read it, and that it would bring him some kind of peace, but it doesn't seem like that is enough. Yet each day since I first met him, Taye always asks me to pray with him before I leave his room, and each day it seems to me that I see an improvement in his countenance.

I still pray often that God will show me other ways to help Taye, but for now, I try to spend about five minutes each day visiting with his family and praying with them because I have to believe that five minutes can change a life.

Alive and Well

2009-04-14T09:49:00.001-04:00

This is just a quick update to let you all know that I'm alive! I made it safely from Chad to Ethiopia, and I'm currently enjoying the beautiful mountains, cold weather (85 degrees), and good Ethiopian cuisine.

I'll have to write more later because I'm rather short on time, but I have lots of stories from the end of my time in Chad, and I'm already collecting stories from my time here in Ethiopia.

Arab Maffie

2009-04-01T06:40:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I went to the market to run some last minute errands. I'm leaving Bere on Friday, so I had a few more things to drop off at the tailor's, and I wanted to get some bread and things for lunch. Unfortunately, market trips are terribly unpredictable. Some trips are more successful than I could have hoped for, and others are just plain disappointing. Yesterday's trip was one of the disappointing ones, but it is redeemed by one thing: I had a funny experience that I will remember forever.

When I arrived at the market, I went first to the tailor's shop because I wanted to drop off the cloth to make room for vegetables and bread in my bag. The door was wide open, cloth was laying on the machine, and there were half-finished and finished products strewn about-- all signs that the tailor was in. Alas, despite these signs of life at the shop, there was no tailor to be found. All the women selling little things near the tailor shop looked at me, and I realized that they were all Arabic, so I couldn't even ask where he'd gone or when he'd be back. So I left to buy some vegetables, and came back to find the shop still empty.

The Arab woman across from the tailor shop motioned for me to sit on the bench and wait. So I did. I decided I would wait for 15 minutes, and if he didn't come, I'd finish all my market shopping, come back one last time, and leave if I couldn't find him. As I waited, the Arab women stared at me with unrelenting eyes. I looked everywhere but at them because it kind of made me nervous to be stared at. Finally, I looked at the Arab woman across from the shop.

She was making hand motions trying to communicate with me, but I couldn't understand. She would point to me, then point upward.

Somehow I don't imagine she's trying to say that she'll see me in heaven. What on earth could she mean?

In confusion, I said, "Arab maffie," and made a motion indicating that I didn't understand Arabic.

"Arab maffie?" she questioned.

I repeated, "Arab maffie."

"Ah, fie," she said triumphantly.

I laughed at the fact that she was implying that by my being able to say that I don't speak Arabic was a sign that I could indeed speak Arabic. She motioned for me to come over to her little hangar, and I complied wondering what she wanted me to come for. When I was right next to her, she motioned to her half-packaged bag of salt, and then motioned to me. She wanted me to help her bag the salt.

Her surprise when I actually sat down on her mat and motioned for her to give the bag to me made me laugh again. But she gave me the bag of salt, and I twisted it tight, and motioned for her to give me something to tie it. She did, and when I had finished I could tell that she had thought I didn't know how to do this simple task that she has done from the time of her childhood. She then motioned to the pile of natrone and handed me another little bag. I eyed how much natrone was in her already finished bags to sell, and filled the sac accordingly, twisted it, and tied it off.

She laughed as she said, "Kalass!" (it's finished, or no more) and then she shook my hand and thanked me. I smiled at her and the crowd of women who had gathered around, picked up my bag and headed home. I'm actually kind of glad that the tailor wasn't there. God worked out a different tailor for me, and if my tailor had been around, I would never have gotten to work for a moment with the Arab woman.

Another Long Night

2009-03-31T10:32:00.001-04:00

Warning: this is a sad blog. I know I post a lot of really discouraging and sad blogs, but I will also write some more uplifting and lighthearted ones. This actually happened almost 2 weeks ago. I've been really behind on writing blogs because I've been busy, traveling, and then sick. With that preface and my excuses out of the way, here's the story.

Another night shift in pediatrics. I had a feeling it was not going to be a good night. Ansley had told me that there was one baby with meningitis that had not been breathing well, and somehow I knew it was going to be trouble. Sure enough, around 2 AM, the family came to get me to tell me that the baby's breathing was getting worse. I came to look, and decided immediately to go get Dr. Jacques. The baby would breathe really quickly for a little bit, and completely stop for a while.

When Jacques came, he went to the OR to find the baby size ambu-bag. We both stayed by the bed and took turns pumping air into the baby boy's lungs. Every once in a while, we would stop to see if he was breathing better on his own, but we weren't seeing any improvement. After 10 minutes of bagging the baby, I said, "Jacques, what are we going to do? We can't keep breathing for the baby all night." He didn't answer me directly, and we continued. Then Jacques was called into the ER for an emergency. I stayed by the bed, pumping air, but my wrist started getting tired. All together, we ambu-bagged the baby for a little over an hour. Finally, Jacques was satisfied that the baby was breathing well enough, and he went back to sleep.

About 20 minutes later, the family came up to me again. "He's not breathing well, come see."

I looked and very quickly realized that he wasn't just not breathing well, he wasn't breathing at all. I started CPR and prayed hard. I didn't want to lose another one. I got him to breathe again and went back to my desk, but 20 minutes later, the family was back again to call for me. All through the night, from 3 AM until I got off shift at 8 AM, I went and did chest compressions on that little boy every 20-40 minutes. One time, he had stopped breathing and had no pulse as well.

By the time my shift had ended, I was exhausted, and as I passed off the patients to Salomon, I just knew in my heart that that little baby boy was not going to make it much longer. I went to the middle house to lay down and rest for a while. Then I went back to the hospital to find Salomon.

"Is the meningitis baby still here?" I asked, but I already knew the answer.

Worth the Trouble

2009-03-31T10:01:00.001-04:00

There are some small experiences that I've had here that I've been so glad for. Every once in a while, I'll see an opportunity to do something small, something that probably won't make a life-changing impact, but that makes an impact nonetheless. I actually just finished reading a book called The Shack by William P. Young. It definitely challenged my view of God and gave me a lot of profound insights into the love and character of God. But there was one line at the end of the book that has really encouraged me.

Lately I had been feeling kind of like a failure. I came here to be a missionary, to touch people's lives for eternity, and I'm afraid that most of what I've done is just make some really good friends and help to heal people physically. There's nothing wrong with that, and I know it's good work. But I had really hoped to make some kind of lasting impact on someone's life. Anyone. Even just one.

Then I read this line, spoken from the perspective of God in The Shack: "...with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again."

Since then, I have had a new perspective on things, and when I see opportunities to do something for someone, I try to take advantage of it, to accomplish God's purposes. Which, by the way, I believe that quote is very true. Anytime we choose to show love in any way, we are witnessing to the universe that we believe that God's way is the best way.

The other day I had a unique opportunity to show love. Ansley, Caroline, and I were walking back from the market with Simeon, a 10 or 11 year old boy who only has one arm. It was super hot because it was the middle of the afternoon, and we were tired from having walked to the market and buying things. Along the way, we saw a girl, maybe 6 years old, with a baby strapped onto her back, and another young girl who looked to be about 18 months old following behind. We watched as the smallest girl stumbled and faltered in a zig-zag pattern behind her sister, falling and then standing up to walk forward again. It looked like her legs were somewhat crippled, possibly from Ricketts. Then Simeon told us, "You know, she's four years old." We were in shock. It didn't seem possible that she could be that old.

Ansley shook her head and said, "Malnutrition." She's probably right. So Caroline took one of the girl's arms, and Simeon took the other and helped her walk along the path. She was still having some trouble walking and continued to stumble despite their help, and she was breathing hard. I asked Simeon, "Do you know where she lives?" He said he did.

I then picked her up, and she looked at me with little to no expression on her face. I was glad that she didn't cry because some of the young children here are really afraid of white people. We walked all the way to her hut, which was only about 2 minutes out of the way, and I walked into her yard and set her down on the ground. She stared up into my eyes, and then unexpectedly, she laughed. Her eyes smiled with her mouth, and that laugh was the most beautiful sound I have heard in a long time. I smiled back at her and waved goodbye to her older sister and the baby, and we continued on our way.

As my time here is coming to an end, I've begun to realize that it's the experiences like this that really make everything here worth the trouble.

House Call

2009-03-27T15:35:00.001-04:00

I've had some really funny conversations with my family here because of our cultural differences, but I think last night beat all. I was sitting on the mat with my girls, and they were looking through my phone. Of course, all of the contacts on my phone are in English, so when Berthe got to "Home" in my contact list, she said, What's this number?"

Without pausing for thought, I said, "That's the number for my house."

Her eyes got wide with wonder. "If you call this number, your house will talk to you?!"

I laughed realizing that she had taken literally what I had said along with the fact that people only have cell phones here, not phones at their huts. I explained that no, my house cannot talk, but if I call that number my mother would pick up the phone and I could talk to her. Conversations like these have made me wonder just how much of a culture shock I'm going to have when I get home...

Life is Not Always so Kind

2009-03-13T10:03:00.001-04:00

Today was a sad day in peds. It just kills me. When Ansley and I got report from Caroline, we found out that one of the really critical patients had died last night.

There was another baby who was really sick too. We had been treating him for malaria and a respiratory infection. He had been getting better-- his respirations were better, his lungs were clear, and he looked like he wasn't as tired as he had been. But then he went downhill again. This morning, he started having seizures, had a fever, and his respirations were not good again. Jacques decided that we would do a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis.

We moved on with rounds, but we hadn't even finished with the next patient when we heard crying and the grandmother of the really sick baby called us over. He wasn't breathing and there was no pulse. Jacques started compressions while I opened his airway, but it was all for nothing. Once again I had to watch another mother with tears rolling down her cheeks for the loss of her baby. Once again, everything we could do was not enough. I cried as Ansley took out the IV and Jacques covered the baby with a sheet.

There was another mother who kept trying to tell Ansley and me something, but we couldn't understand her. We asked another nurse to come translate, and that's when we found out she wasn't Nangjere, she was Gumbaye. We found a different nurse to translate, and what she said was just so awful. Her baby, only several days old, was on her second dose of IV Quinine and was doing pretty well. However, the mother had just received news that her older daughter back at home had died. When she left home, her older daughter was in perfect health; we don't know what happened, just that her daughter was no longer alive. This mother didn't know what to do because her baby wasn't finished with its treatment, and she couldn't just leave her baby at the hospital to go take care of things at home. So we had to talk to Dr. Jacques who prescribed other medicine so that she could go home. It wasn't ideal treatment for her newborn baby, but what else could we do? Throughout the day as we were preparing things for her to go home, I watched as she sat on the edge of her baby's bed, head in her hands, wiping solitary tears from her eyes when she just couldn't hold it in any longer.

Life here is hard. The longer I've been here, the more I've realized just how tough Chadians are. Their strength, both physically and emotionally, amazes me. Girls here learn how to cook for a full family at the age of 10. The 8 and 9 year old girls at my house almost daily haul up gallons of water to water both of the gardens. Women give birth to between nine and twelve children, and often have to watch up to half of them die before they reach adolescence.

I don't know what to do with all that I've seen here. I'm not sure that there's much I can do about the way life is here. It doesn't seem like anything I can do would make any difference at all. And yet, I try to remind myself of all the children that do go home, happy and healthy, because of the care that we've given at the hospital. I just wish I could do more.

Rats

2009-03-11T11:21:00.001-04:00

This is a guest blog by Ansley Howe. She compiled a blog with a few of our favorite rat stories. Hope you enjoy. Just in case you don't already know how to access Ansley's blog, it's found at http://howeareyou.blogspot.com.

"Sarah," I say one hot February morning, "We must do something about the rats. Every time I work the nightshift I see rats, and last night there were five different times when I saw them. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same one. They are in the ceiling, too!"

The hospital is very small. It is infested.

Sometimes we startle new volunteers with our various tales of rat encounters. The following are few of the memorable rodent experiences.

One night Jason was giving an IV medication to an isolation patient who was waiting for tuberculosis test results. The man was a classic picture of tuberculosis and AIDS: small, wasted limbs, hollow face, clothing so big it looked like he was dressed in gowns for a Christmas pageant.

Suddenly, a rat ran down the windowsill and leapt onto the man's mattress. Startled, Jason jumped back. This sudden motion startled the rat, which dove for the nearest haven: the patient's pant leg.

As the patient began hollering, another isolation patient from the next bed jumped up, grabbed his IV bag, and ran to the rescue. He started grabbing for the rat shape that scurried frantically in the trousers of the unfortunate man.

The rat ran up the tunnel of the patient's pants. Soon both patients were swatting madly at the rat. The rat went up one leg and down the other. Other family members in the room came over to watch and add their vocal excitement to the scene. Jason could barely finish giving the medication for all the swatting, shouting, and din.

The rat finally escaped the pants trap and disappeared below the bed.

Another time Sarah was working the night shift and assisting a patient to prepare for surgery the next day. She was in a small exam room with the patient and his two brothers, doing paperwork and telling the group how much the operation would cost.

Another nurse was working down the hall where he was finishing up vital signs.

A large rat ran out from the corner of the room.

"Shut the door!" yelled Sarah. She knew they would have a better chance of getting him if the space was enclosed.

The occupied nurse down the hall was surprised to hear the exam room door slam.

One of the patient's brothers took off his heavy shoe and began throwing it at the rat. There was a loud scraping of furniture as they tried to prevent the creature from hiding under desk and chairs. The shoe clonked against the wall, then was picked up and hurled again in the direction of the rat.

The other nurse heard all the commotion and was concerned for Sarah's safety. He had no idea what was going on, except for hearing yelling and banging and thumping coming out of the exam room.

He assumed Sarah had been telling the family members about paying for the surgery, and they had gotten upset and attacked her. He ran to the exam room and tried to pry open the door.

Sarah, not knowing who it was, yelled, "Don't open the door! Don't let the rat escape!"

The confused nurse was surprised as the door was slammed shut in his face.

The rat was finally captured and escorted off hospital property, and Sarah laughed with her coworker as they smoothed out the rumples of misunderstanding.

One night, as Kristin prepared to give the midnight medications, she found the door to the nurse's station was closed. That door is never closed. Kristin heard some commotion inside. When she tried to open the door, Enoch, a fellow nurse, pulled it shut again, with some force.

Kristin was quite surprised.

"What do you need?" asked Enoch, "Do you want your bag?"

She replied, "No, I want the charts so I can give medications."

She heard a little shuffling around, and then Enoch opened the door a little bit. Kristin peered in to see Enoch bending over a limp furry object in the dark.

Then he said, "This rat, he's annoying me a lot!"

Kristin watched in horror as Enoch started beating the poor brown rat with some large hard object.

He beat the rat to death in front of her very eyes. She was mortified.

Then Enoch proceeded to flick it across the floor all the way down the hall and out the door.

I cornered a huge guinea-pig sized rat behind the autoclave machine a few nights ago. Koumabas, one of the hospital pharmacists, came around the corner in the dark and asked me what I was doing, as I shooed the trapped rat from one side of the autoclave to the other.

"Koumabas!" I said, "The rat is cornered behind the autoclave, now what should I do?" I hated to just walk away after the chase, but I wasn't about to try and grab it.

"Well." said Koumabas. He always has something comical to say, and the funny thing is that he is usually actually being serious. "Maybe if we corner him here until the morning then Abel will arrive and we can turn on the autoclave and burn him."

Thank you, Koumabas. That's a practical idea. Let's stand here in the dark for eight hours until Abel arrives just so we can burn the rat.

As there were IV's to start and baby bottles to be washed, I ended up just leaving the rat to escape on its own. I released him from impending death in the autoclave at the hand of said Abel.

Pigeons

2009-03-11T11:11:00.001-04:00

The other day as Ansley and I were sitting at the nurse's desk in pediatrics, we had an unexpected visitor. Mounden, one of Emily's brothers from Samedi's family, sauntered up to the desk. I started talking to him about random things, and then I asked him about his birds. Mounden, who's about 13 or 14 years old, loves to buy and keep these pigeons. When Emily was here, they made a little mud hut for all of Mounden's pigeons.

"How many birds do you have now, Mounden?" I asked, trying to make good conversation.

"Eight," he said as he smiled and kind of fiddled with something on the desk.

"Have you given them all names?"

He looked around, and thought for a second before he said, "Yes."

"Well, what did you name them?" curiosity got the better of me.

A huge smile came over his face, and he said, "Emily. And Alex." Then he tried to stifle some laughter.

Ansley and I burst out laughing, and then I said, "But Mounden, that's only two of them, what are the other ones' names?"

He thought for half a moment before he smiled again and said, "Caroline."

This was just too much. Ansley and I laughed again. Then Ansley said, "What about Ansley, is there an Ansley?"

"Yes, there is," he laughed some more.

"And a Kristin?" I asked.

More laughter. "Yes. There is one for everyone, Jackson, Sarah, James." We all laughed for quite a while over Mounden and his pigeon's names. Apparently there isn't one for Stefan. Later when Mounden was walking to the market with Ansley, Caroline, and me, we were telling Caroline about his pigeons. So she suggested that he name one of them Jackson Stefan. Mounden thought this was hilarious, and we all laughed some more too.

Mango Season

2009-03-11T10:50:00.001-04:00

It's mango season. I love it. I've only found a few things that seem bad about mango season, the main one being that sometimes kids climb mango trees to pick the fruit and end up falling out of them. Then we get to clean them up at the hospital. Another thing that's not so cool about mango season is actually kind of humorous.

I used to think that it was awesome that we have worship every morning at the hospital under the mango trees. I mean, really, how many people can say that they do that? However, I do not have these same sentiments any longer. My former sentiments have now been replaced with feelings of anxiety. Why?

The mango trees are home to many very large fruit bats. Every morning when I come to the hospital for worship, I have to look very carefully before sitting down because our cement benches are absolutely covered in bat droppings. Once I find a place that is clean enough to sit down, I spend a good deal of worship time praying that the bats won't make any fresh marks. I have been very fortunate in escaping the bat droppings thus far.

Unfortunately, good grace ran out this morning. There is generally a great sound of flapping wings and rustling leaves to signal the oncoming bombing, and this morning as I heard the warning, I cringed. Moments later, there was a small shower from above- just about the only moisture during this dry, hot season.

As I sat there feeling rather gross, I had to comfort myself with the thought that at least it's mango season and that's all the bats have been eating.

_________________________________________________

Just another short mango season story. Mango season can actually be kind of dangerous. As I said before, sometimes kids will fall out of mango trees because the branches aren't all that strong. Once, we had a woman come into the ER because a mango branch had fallen on her head. The other thing that you have to watch out for is falling mangoes. Mangoes will randomly just fall from the sky without warning.

Tonight I had to laugh because as Jason and I were standing outside the hospital gate talking to a local high school teacher, random mangoes were falling from the trees above us. There were a bunch of kids gathered around because Jason had brought out his guitar, and so every time a mango would fall from the tree, there would be this mad dash as the kids scrambled in the dark to find the mango first.

Oh Dear

2009-03-06T03:40:00.001-05:00

I was just reading through some of my old blogs when I came across "Lai Revisited." All I can say is, please excuse my horrible grammar! As I read I saw some split infinitives, abused pronouns, and a lot of disagreement in number. My English teachers would be horrified I'm sure :)

I guess it's just been a little too long since I've been speaking civilized English. My vocabulary is dwindling and my grammar is suffering horrible cruelties. My specific apologies to Little Christen; it must pain you to read my blogs :P

Fishing?

2009-03-05T13:04:00.001-05:00

I used to go fishing sometimes with my Dad when I was little. I don't remember going a lot of times, but I do remember going once or twice with him. I really enjoyed going with him and my older brother, but I don't think I actually liked fishing very much. At least, not from what I remember. I didn't like to touch the fish. And I very specifically remember one fishing trip where my younger brother, Stephen, caught a little sunfish, but when we went to get it off the hook to throw it back, it was bleeding. Not something that little girls like to see, no matter how much of a tomboy they might be.

In any case, I got to go fishing here yesterday. You might be surprised to hear that there's fishing here in Chad, but believe it or not, fish is actually one of the favorite foods. Of course, there aren't really any salmon, trout, or bass. But there are fish. Sometimes you can see kids going out with their little poles to try to catch what they can in big puddles during the rainy season. Amazingly enough, they do sometimes catch things in the puddles. How the fish get into the puddles, I have never been able to figure out. The other mode of fishing is to stake two poles in the river with a net attached.

What kind of fishing might I have done, you wonder? Well, a very special kind of fishing, domestic fishing. Yesterday I was at home with Hawaa and Bezalel, the two year old. Hawaa was washing clothes, so naturally, she needed water drawn up from the well. Bezalel is ever so helpful, or at least wanting to be as helpful as any two year old can be. Hawaa would draw up the water with our water bag, and then let Bezalel hold the end of the rope after she had dropped the bag back into the well. He thought this was great fun, and he would pull on the end of the rope like he's seen everyone else in the family do, but inevitably it was too heavy for him, and he couldn't hold it long.

As he was playing with the rope, I thought to myself, "I hope that he doesn't let go of the rope." No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than Bezalel did just that. Hawaa turned around at the sound of the plunk in the water. She quickly went to find our grappling hook, but the rope attached to it was way too short. So I went and found the long cord I had bought as a jump rope for the kids. We attached the two together, and I began to fish. It was actually kind of fun, though short-lived. Hawaa was funny though, because as soon as I had hooked the water bag (which was conveniently still floating near the surface of the water) and began pulling it up, she started saying, "Quick, it's going to fall again!!" So I pulled faster, hoping that nothing would rip or fall again. Thankfully, we were able to recover our water pouch without any problems, and I think it may be a little while before Bezalel will be allowed to help in that way again.

Sweet Rice and a Sleepless Night

2009-02-26T08:27:00.001-05:00

Last night we had a small party at my house. Emily and I had been planning for a long time to make sweet rice for my family because it's kind of similar to bouillie, and we thought it would be fun. We finally decided to do it last night because Emily is leaving in a few days. We got all the stuff together, and we invited lots of people. It ended up being Sarah, Jason, Stefan, some of the kids from Jason's family, my whole family, Emily, me, and two random visitors who are staying at my house right now.

I never realized how much work it takes to make rice here. Before Emily came over, I started sifting the rice and picking out all the bad pieces and the little rocks. It took a long, long time, and thankfully, Jason and Emily came and helped wash the rice after it had been sorted. Then we put it on the charcoal fire to boil.

While the rice was cooking, a bunch of the guys played Uno, and Sarah, Emily, and I played with puzzles with the kids. It was really fun just to play and talk with all the kids. Emily kept talking to my kids in Nangjere (which is funny because they don't really speak a lot of Nangjere) and saying, "Do you want problems? Come here, fight me." Her family has taught her how to say some really funny things...

Then Emily and I seasoned the rice, and dished it out. There was a lot of rice. We served up one huge bowl to the six guys, one bowl to Sarah and the little kids, and then Emily, Berthe, Ruth, Pidi (13 year old from Jason's family), and I shared a bowl. Every once in a while, Emily an I would start talking in English, and Berthe would say, "Talk in French. We don't understand English, and we want to know what you're saying." So we would translate into French, which turned out to be funny because once we had been plotting against Berthe in English...

After rice, most of the visitors left, but Sarah and the kids from Jason's family stayed because we had invited them to spend the night. The kids continued working on the puzzles, while Sarah and I talked to Pierre. First I asked him how he became Adventist, which was a fun story to listen to. Then Sarah asked him to tell how he had met Hawaa, and how he decided that she was the one he wanted to marry. This proved to be a much less interesting story than it might sound because Pierre would just laugh and tell us little things like, "Well, we grew up together," and, "She just interested me." It was still fun nonetheless, and just being together socializing was great.

Finally, we all decided that it was far too late (9 pm) and we all needed to go to bed. Bruno and the two visitors slept outside Bruno's hut on a mat, Pierre went into his hut, and then Sarah, all the kids, and I put out a mat under our hangar. It was more than a little crazy. There were nine of us all on one big mat. Sarah and Dorcas shared a blanket on one end, Anne, Esther, and Romerick (10 year old from Jason's family) shared a blanket all squeezed in the middle, and finally, Ruth, Pidi, Berthe, and I with a blanket over our feet on the other end.

It was really fun to lay out on the mat with all of them and look at the stars. At first there was a lot of giggling and squirming, but everyone finally settled down and drifted off to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn't really sleep much. I was on the very end sharing a pillow with Berthe, and she kept on rolling over and pushing me off the edge of the mat into the dirt. I was kind of uncomfortable and woke up every hour or so because my neck was stiff or my arm was numb again. Finally, at 4 am, I woke up cold and realized that if I was going to get any good sleep at all I would need to go back to my hut. So I did. Of course, at 4 am, this decision was a little late because there were only 2 more hours left for me to sleep.

In any case, it was an awesome night, and I hope that there are many more nights under the stars on mats with my family. And I hope that they pass a little less crowded and more comfortably.

Homesick

2009-02-26T08:02:00.001-05:00

It seems ridiculous to still be homesick after 6 months of being here, and maybe even more now than I was when I first came. But I am.

This morning I was cleaning up in my hut, and I found some letters and pictures that my Mom had sent me a while back. So of course, I started looking through them. I came to a picture of my brother, Stephen, sitting on the couch with our sister-in-law, and I don't know why but it triggered something in me, and I just wanted to go home. It made me just want to be able to sit on the couch at home with my family so close that I could touch them.

After cleaning my hut, I took some time out to talk to God. As I was telling him how I felt, how much I just want to be at home, face to face with my family, I had another of those deep impressions that this is how my God feels too. It just hit me, that God's heart aches like that to be face to face with us, for us to be so close He could reach out and touch us.

Yet, as homesick as I am for home, I think being here has also made me more homesick for heaven than I ever have been before. And I think that in a way, God is homesick too.

Philippians 3:20

Odd Night

2009-02-25T08:35:00.001-05:00

This whole month I've been scheduled on night shifts with almost the same people-- Enock, Hortance, and the third person changes from night to night. Last night I was working the night shift, and Hortance came up to me and asked, "Kristin, where are you going to sleep tonight." I was a little confused, but I told her, that I would sleep where I always sleep-- on the floor in the first partitioned area in Urgence.

"Ok, we'll sleep together tonight; after the midnight care, we'll put down the blanket and sleep some," she informed me.

Now, there's something that I should explain about Chadian culture; in their eyes, it's not good to be alone. Period. It's considered one of the most awful things if you eat alone, and heaven forbid that anyone should have to sleep alone either.

Midnight came, I did the meds and vital signs, and then Hortance and I went to put down the blanket and pillow that I had brought. As we walked to the partitioned area that I usually sleep in, I noticed that Felix, one of our janitors, was sleeping on the table/bed with IV fluids running.

"Hortance, we can't sleep here. Felix is here," I protested.

"No, it's nothing. We'll sleep here."

So, we did. We laid down on the floor and shared a blanket and pillow while Felix slept next to us on top of the table/bed. As I laid there, I felt like I was in a strange dream, and it didn't help things that Felix had some odd, battery-operated flashlight that was blinking different colors through the night. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep, especially because it was super hot inside. So when I woke up to check on the patients, I decided to go sleep outside on the cement benches in front of Urgence.

At one point, a patient's family member came outside and woke me up to ask me a question. I woke up so dazed; it was pitch black (there were no stars, no moon), my glasses were off, so I was blind anyway, and I couldn't figure out where I was or what direction I should go to get back in to the hospital. I asked him to repeat his question as I put on my glasses and looked at the time. 3 AM. He repeated his question, but I still didn't understand, so I thought it just better to put on my shoes and find the door. I stood up and nearly fell over. Right, Quinine, still dizzy. I zig-zagged through the hallway, despite my efforts to walk a straight line, and when I got to the patient's bed, I asked what the problem was again. I'm sure I was doing much to boost the confidence of the locals in the hospital staff's competency.

I fixed the problem and went back outside to sleep until the morning medications. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, and I was glad to see the light of day again. But what an odd night.

Setting up Shop

2009-02-25T08:09:00.001-05:00

Ansley had a brilliant idea a little while back. She thought it would be fun to gather a bunch of random stuff, take it to the market, and sell it all for practically nothing. It would be a true African experience, setting up shop like the African women do.

Today was the day. We all put on our African dresses and filled grass baskets and a market bag with our goodies. Things ranged from little toys for kids to toothbrushes and clothes.

We began our walk to the market with Jolie, Emily's African mother. I'm sure it was a sight: three white girls in African dresses with bags and baskets on their heads. Yes, we carried our things to sell on our heads, and did a surprisingly good job of it too. We met so many people on the way asking us in Nangjere where we were going and what we were going to do. Laughter erupted from all present, including the Nassara, when we would tell them back in Nangjere, "We're going to the market. We're going to sell things."

It was such a fun trip to the market, and we took some good pictures. Jolie just laughed and laughed at us as we were going along, trying desperately to balance the bags and baskets on our heads. Once we got to the market, we set the things down next door to Jolie's little fabric shop. By this time, we had drawn quite a crowd, and I'm not sure how it happened, but as soon as Ansley sat down on the ground with her basket of things, the crowd engulfed her as people started grabbing things out of the basket to look at and ask how much it cost. I'm serious, Ansley practically disappeared in the swarm of people. It didn't take long for us to realize that maybe setting up shop was not such a good idea.

We were losing track of who had grabbed what, and the people were just smothering us. So we decided to pack up. We tried talking to them and asking them to back away and come one at a time, but it just wasn't working. We took our stuff and left, rather disappointed that we wouldn't be able to really get the full African experience of selling at the market. But once we got back to the hospital we just set up all of our things on our back porch and sold to a few of the hospital employees and people who live nearby. It was still kind of fun, still very African-- "bargaining" prices and people asking for a gift after they had bought something (that's customary; if you buy from someone, you ask them for a "cadeaux" or gift because you've just done good business with them, and usually they'll throw in something small). All in all, it was a success, but I still wish that we could have done it at the market.

Just a funny story

2009-02-25T07:51:00.001-05:00

So, it finally happened. I broke the wall.

I've climbed the wall to our house so many times now that I've lost count. It's actually become somewhat of a tradition. But one night this week, I went to climb over, and one of the top bricks didn't hold when I tried to pull myself up. Luckily, I missed hitting my foot with the falling brick. I felt a little awful about it, but my family wasn't too worried about it the next day when I told them what happened. In fact, they just laughed at me.

Then I asked them how to get in the back way (why it didn't occur to me to ask this ages ago I don't know); there's a place in the back of our yard where random animals, mostly pigs and chickens, run through at will. So the girls took me around the outside wall and showed me the back way in, which is a little bit of a tight squeeze and comes out into the bathroom or shower. Unfortunately, there's a very, very low-branched mango tree guarding the back way. As I ducked under it, almost on all fours crawling on the ground, I felt something scrape my back. Ow. It would be my clumsy luck that there would be a broken branch jutting out.

After showing me the back way, Berthe started talking to me and said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. A long time ago Pierre said that since you're usually the last one in, we'll leave the door open and you can just lock it behind you." Again, why this solution didn't come up a couple of months ago, I'm not sure. Whatever... TIA.

So thus ends my criminal days of breaking into our house instead of entering through the gate.

Lai Revisited

2009-02-22T15:38:00.001-05:00

What a day. I worked the night shift Saturday night, and then left a little bit early from work to go to Lai. Emily, Ansley, Caroline, and I all decided to go to Lai to visit another missionary friend of ours, Arlo, who's working with some Evangelical missionaries. We decided to go to their church and then spend some time with Arlo and the family he lives with.

It was a pretty uneventful clando drive to Lai, but once we got to the river, things started to get interesting. There are little dugout canoes that ferry people across the river for a small price, but since it's the dry season, the water has gone down drastically. So, we had decided beforehand that we were going to walk across. Perhaps a little bit crazy, but you only live once, right?

We watched one man coming across from the other side, and were hopeful at first, until we realized that he was pretty tall, and the water was probably up to his chest in some places. We decided to go for it anyway, and all the men up on the half-constructed bridge started protesting. "What are you doing? Don't you want a boat? You can't walk across!" We smiled, laughed, and assured him that we were going to walk across. When they realized that we were not changing our minds, they told us, "Go further up, it's not as deep."

We thanked them and took their advice. Ansley and I began wading across the river with bags on top of our heads to keep the contents from getting wet. Not too long after, I was up to my chin in water, standing on my tip-toes, and coming real close to being swept away in the current. We turned around and decided to go even further upstream. We struck out again, with much laughter and a good amount of confidence that we would get across this river walking. At one point, some of the canoe drivers started rowing toward us to come to our rescue, but we kindly refused his help.

Finally, we found a good route that seemed promising. It was then that Caroline lost her flip-flop. It started floating ever-so-swiftly downstream. So I ran (as well as one can run in water) to Caroline and took her bag while her and Emily ran after the flip-flop. It was soon recovered, and we continued on our way. As we got closer to the shore, a bunch of people who were washing their clothes started laughing at us (I guess it's not everyday they get entertainment with crazy Nassara), and trying to guide us away from deep holes. It was funny because I would be going along in a nice shallow part, and all of a sudden with my next step, I would sink waist deep into the water.

We did make it across, all four of us with all of our shoes and other belongings. And with one adventure behind us, we set out to find Arlo and his church a little ways up the road.

Church was definitely an experience. Ansley had been there once before, so she warned us, "Ok, when we go in, the girls sit on one side and the boys are on the other." As our eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight, we realized that the women's section was absolutely full. Oh dear. What to do. We then saw a man at the very front of the church motioning for us to come up there. Great. Just what we wanted, to be at the front of the church in plain view of all the members.

The way the church was set up was like this: Two sections of benches facing the pulpit (women on the left, men on the right), and then toward the front there was a middle section facing the pulpit (where the choir/band sat) and two small rows of benches on either side facing the choir/band. We were ushered onto the right side facing the band, and sat down amongst several guys, and Arlo sat with us. So much for segregation.

I had trouble staying awake for most of the sermon since I was tired from working the night shift and I wasn't feeling good (yes, sick again, though not with malaria). But what I did see/hear was really cool. The whole service was in Nangjere, so I didn't really understand it. But the music was great! It was so fun to listen to the band with their various instruments. I can't explain the instruments, so I'll have to take pictures sometime and bring them home. But anyway, we sang in Nangjere (Lorraine, an American Evangelical missionary was sitting next to me with a Nangjere hymnal), and the women danced. It's apparently completely normal for women to stand up in the middle of any song and break out in a dance.

They had a time where they had all the visitors stand up and they introduced us. Then they had the sermon, which I did not follow. After that, there was more music and it was time to give offering. The way they do offering is very different. While the music is going, the men get up, row by row, dance/walk their way to the front of the church and drop their offering in the box. It's like a long continuous circle, because the men come up on the left hand side, walk by the front, drop their offering, and then go back to their seats on the right hand side. Then, when all the men have gone through, the women dance their way to the front and go the opposite way to drop their offering in a different box on the other side of the front of the church. Maybe that was confusing. I wish I could draw a little map. Oh well.

After the offering, they took care of some other church business, and then they asked us four girls to stand again. Slightly confused, we rose to our feet. The pastor at the front of the church then began to talk about us in Nangjere for the next five minutes. When he had finished, he explained in French what he had said.

He thanked us for coming to visit their church, and more than that for coming to their country to aid them as missionaries. He said that we were such a good example for their young people, leaving our families to come far away to help other people.

After prayer, we were dismissed, and all the men went out a side door at the front of the church, and the women exited at the back of the church. We went through a long line of people shaking everyone's hands and greeting them with variations of "Lapia" (the Nangjere greeting word).

I thought we were done, but then the pastor called us over to some benches under a mango tree and asked us to have some tea with them. While we waited, Ansley and Emily joined a large crowd of women who were dancing round in a circle under the mango tree. Then we all gathered together, talked, drank red tea, and had some little cakes they had made. It was so much fun talking to the church pastor and elders; they were really sweet people.

When we finished, we went to Arlo's house and sat down to a huge meal that his family had prepared in honor of us coming. We had boulle with some chicken meat sauces (which I did not try) and a bean leaf sauce that was really good. There were also baguettes and coca colas for us. Once we were absolutely stuffed with good food, they brought out a huge salad with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and ranch dressing, which we ate with our fingers. That was a first, and I'm not sure I would ever want to eat salad with my fingers again; it was quite messy.

As soon as we finished, Caroline and I left because she had to be back for work and I wasn't feeling good. We decided to take a canoe back across the river, and then found a clando driver. The drive back wasn't too bad. At one point, poor Caroline said, "Oh, no! I dropped my glasses!" So we talked to the driver, got him to turn around, and we found her glasses on the road a little way back. Other than that, it was an uneventful trip back to Bere.

Life in Passing

2009-02-21T11:10:00.001-05:00

Man, with the blogs and emails that I've been writing recently, I'm afraid that people might think that I'm just miserable, which is not the case. But something just happened, and I really felt the need to get away and to tell someone. I just told Emily, but I think if I write it down I'll feel a little better, and maybe I can move on with the rest of the night shift.

It's Sabbath, and I'm working the night shift in pediatrics. Jason had just given me report and left, and I was sitting down at the desk to write a patient in the register (we keep track in a book of who comes in, what their illness is, and whether they get better or not). All of a sudden, I hear wailing, loud, unchecked wailing. Immediately, I knew that a baby had died. I ran around the corner from the desk into the ward, and I saw a crowd of people gathering around a bed and weeping.

Sure enough, there was an 18 month old baby lying breathless in its mother's arms. I felt to make sure that there was no pulse and no respirations, and as I raised my eyes, I saw the mother's face-- eyes red, tears just streaming down her face-- and something in me just broke. I cried silently as I took out the baby's IV while the mother held her baby's eyes closed. She was a baby I had admitted in the emergency room yesterday, and when I saw her, I knew that they had waited too long, that she probably wouldn't make it. She was so malnourished, and I could see in her eyes that she was just tired of fighting.

As I left the ward, the family carried the baby out, and I listened as the wailing got more distant. I sat at the desk and cried a little longer, not sure why it bothered me so much. Two of the nurses I'm working with tonight had come in to hear what all the wailing was about, and they had watched me take the IV out. Once I was finished they left and went outside. I saw them not five minutes later, sitting outside on a bench talking and laughing with some other people, and I'm not sure why, but it just made me feel so upset.

I hate that when someone dies, everyone here just goes on about whatever they were doing before as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe it's just because they're so used to death. I don't know, but it just upsets me. It feels like a life should be worth more notice than that. It seems like that baby deserved more than just a passing glance and a moment of silence. And at the same time, I know that it's not good to dwell in the past, and no amount of grieving or hours of silence will bring that baby back. In the end, it's probably better that she died; she was tired of fighting, and now she can rest. But I just can't shake the feeling that a life should be worth more notice than that.

Post Note: Once again, I can't find the verse I want. I know that the Bible says that we should not mourn like those who have no hope. And like I said, it's probably better that the baby died for her own sake; but I know that her mother is hurting, and that is why I was so upset that life just moved on with no notice of her pain.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. Because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners... to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. Isaiah 61:1-3

Just Tired

2009-02-16T08:04:00.001-05:00

Do you ever feel like the world's falling apart? Maybe not necessarily just your world, but the world. That's sort of how I feel at the moment.

A while back I got news that one of my nursing classmates was in a pretty bad skiing accident. She was in the ICU on a ventilator for a while, and I know that she was getting better last I heard, but that was a while ago.

Toward the beginning of my time here in Africa, I was told about someone I had known who was diagnosed with cancer that had spread all throughout her body. She was in her twenties, fairly recently married, and was a missionary in Korea with her husband. She died a few months after being diagnosed.

Last night I got to talk to my mother on the phone, and she told me that one of my cousin's wife just died unexpectedly last Thursday. She was in her thirties and had two kids, and one of them found her in the morning and couldn't wake her up.

On top of that, the baby that I named died last night also. She had many health problems from the time she was born, so it wasn't completely unexpected, but it was sad nonetheless.

Two of my friends just recently lost their grandfather unexpectedly.

The list goes on.

I know that people say this all the time, but I really don't think that this world can last much longer. I recently read through Isaiah for my devotions, and the other day I read one of the most comforting verses. I can't remember exactly what it says and my Bible is in my hut at the moment, but I think it was in Isaiah 57, maybe verses 1-3... Anyway, it basically says that when the righteous die, it's one way that God is sparing them from evil. After reading that, I couldn't help but think, "Maybe God is starting to take people out of this world to spare them from what's about to come." Perhaps that combined with the fact that Satan knows his days are numbered and they're drawing to a close, so he's attacking for all he's worth.

Either way, I can't help but think that time is short, and praise God for that. I'm tired of seeing people in pain. I'm tired of watching people hurt and not being able to do anything. I know God is tired of it too, and I'm sure He is even more anxious for all the pain and hurt to be finished than I am.

Post Note: I apologize if this was a depressing post. I just had to write to get things off my mind. And despite the way that things sound in this post, I promise you I am far from depressed.

A La Fleuve

2009-02-15T06:39:00.001-05:00

It's starting to get really hot again. One morning, at 8:30, the thermostat outside the middle house read 80 degrees, and that was in the shade. You can imagine in the middle of the afternoon out in the sun how hot it is. And this is only the start...

One thing that's nice about it warming up though is that we have a lot more motivation to go to the river. Swimming is so much more fun when it's actually hot outside. So two Sabbaths ago, James and Sarah decided that we were going to make a big trip to the river with a bunch of the neighbor kids. Sarah, Jason, and Stefan took the horses and a few kids with them, and the rest of us piled into the van.

It was insane. We counted how many people were in the van-- 10 in the front (5 adults and 5 kids) and 17 in the back. I sat in the back with one of our chaplain's kids on my lap, and man was it hot. And bumpy. Thankfully it was a fairly short trip.

I had so much fun at the river; it was probably the best trip I've had there. At first, Ansley and I were playing with a bunch of the younger kids who can't swim and were sort of afraid of the water. Then kids started asking me to ferry them across the river, which was kind of funny because the river is now so low that most of them could probably walk across themselves. There's just one spot that's maybe a little too deep for some of the younger ones.

James had brought a frisbee, and at first people were just throwing it around, but then James decided that he wanted to play ultimate frisbee. It was so much fun. If you've ever played football in knee-deep snow, ultimate frisbee in knee-deep to waist-deep water is very similar. It's amazing how difficult it is to run in water, but diving for the frisbee is much easier in water than on ground. My legs were so very sore from running in water.

Anyway, the whole day was a blast, and afterward Ted, Ansley, and I walked home while the van took everyone else back. We had a nice long walk and some good conversations. Yet another great Sabbath in Chad.

Epic Fail

2009-02-09T12:58:00.002-05:00

So. Last Monday I tested positive for malaria. I tried Nim tea to cure it on Tuesday. It didn't work. After talking to Gary and Wendy, I upped the dose and took more concentrated Nim tea on Thursday. I felt pretty good on Friday, but by Friday night I was kind of miserable.

All weekend long I went back and forth between feeling sort of bad and feeling fine, so I finally decided to get tested again today. Before, I had 0.05% malaria. Today it was 0.10%. From this I have learned several things:

1. Nim tea does not work to treat malaria for me, but I have a theory about what it does do. Maybe I'll explain later.

2. Don't experiment with treatments for malaria. Just take Quinine and get it over with.

3. Malaria is one sneaky little parasite. It's kind of like playing peek-a-boo with a pathogen.

He Gave His Blood

2009-02-06T06:45:00.001-05:00

February 5, 2009

I walked around the corner to the benches outside the lab. My eyes were met by a thin, but strong Arab woman with a large, gold nose ring sitting on the bench, squeezing a stress ball as the blood flowed from her arm into a blood bag. I smiled at her, and she smiled back at me, not at all shyly. But when I sat down next to her, her smile was replaced by a look of slight shock.

She motioned to the needle in her arm and then pointed to me as if to say, "Are you here to give blood too?"

I smiled, pointed to my arm and then to the blood bag while nodding my head. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when she, in great excitement, started chattering away in Arabic to her relative on the bench next to her. She then asked Anatole, the lab guy, if I was going to be giving blood for her sister, and he assured her that I was indeed going to donate for her sister.

Her smile got even bigger as she looked at me with grateful eyes. I just laughed and smiled back.

I watched her wince as Anatole pulled the needle out of her arm, and I motioned and said in French, "That hurts!" (they use a 14 gauge, small garden hose, needle connected by tubing to a blood bag, and it burns worse to take it out than to put it in). She clicked her tongue and nodded in agreement.

Then it was my turn. Anatole started prepping my arm and searching for a vein. I turned my head because I can't stand to watch the needle go in. The Arab woman nodded her head and motioned for me to look away. Once, I turned my head back because Anatole was asking me a question about which vein he should stick, and the Arab woman quickly shook her head and "told" me to turn my head away, that I shouldn't look. I laughed, but complied and turned my head so that I couldn't see. She put her hand up as a shield just to make sure I wasn't looking.

As I squeezed the stress ball to pump my blood, the rest of the family came over, and she excitedly explained to them what was happening. I just laughed again; I was amazed at their excitement. They starting talking amongst themselves, and then Anatole translated and told me that they were thanking me. It's amazing the conversations you can have without ever speaking any words.

Anatole pulled the needle out when it was finished, and the woman next to me cupped my face in her hand and said, "Merci, merci," probably the only French that she knew.

I sat there for a little while so that I wouldn't pass out, and I just listened and watched the family. At one point, the Arab woman's relative next to her reached over and touched a little bit of my hair. I smiled and turned my head so that they could feel my hair. People here are so intrigued by Nassara hair, it's so different.

There's something so amazing about giving blood in Africa where you can see and know the patient that it's going to help. I have never in my life enjoyed giving blood so much as I do here.

Unfortunately, the woman I was giving blood to is very sick. She had already had two bags of blood before her sister's and mine. She was pregnant with appendicitis, and Dr. Bond had done an appendectomy on her-- very dangerous while pregnant. After surgery she just wasn't recovering, she was in a lot of pain and just looked so tired.

James decided to give her some more blood and take her back into surgery to see if he could figure out what was wrong, which was the reason I was giving blood.

That night, Ansley came into the middle house and said, "Guys, please pray for the little Arab woman. She's just not doing good." James couldn't find what was wrong, and ended up taking her baby out to try to give her a fighting chance at life. We stopped to pray in a group right then and Ansley went back to work.

As she left, I began praying silently to God; I was upset at the thought that this woman might die. "God please, let her live. I gave my blood for her, please don't let it be for nothing."

I stopped, astounded by the depth of what I had just prayed. How must Jesus feel? I can imagine Jesus leading, praying the same prayer for me, "Father, please, I gave my blood for her. Please don't let her go." And then the thought went further.

That's how I feel about each of my children.

Each person that I come into contact with, is someone that Jesus gave His blood for, a gift that He doesn't want to have been in vain. Whoa. Shouldn't my prayers for their souls be just as earnest as my prayers for this Arab woman's life? Shouldn't I be doing everything I can to make sure that my Jesus didn't give His blood for nothing?

All these thoughts have opened my eyes to the value of the people that I am working with here. And the value of every person in God's sight. I thought about how upset, how sad I would be if I had given my blood to this Arab woman, and it made no difference. Then I realized that all I had was a needle in my arm for a few minutes to very cleanly 'donate' my blood. Jesus spilled His blood. It wasn't a pretty, clean process. Jesus gave His blood to the point of death. How much more precious a gift to be wasted, and how much more deeply He would feel the loss if it made no difference in the life of someone He dearly loves.

God, help me to treat people's lives with the value you place on them, let me see with your eyes.

Voyage

2009-01-29T08:43:00.005-05:00

I don't even know where to begin. I'm sitting at TEAM, a sort of missionary hotel in N'Djamena, and I've decided that I want to write about our voyage today because man, was it exciting.

Ansley's dad is coming to Tchad for a visit. So, Ansley, Levi (the hospital chauffeur), and I set out on a journey from Bere to N'Djamena to pick him up from the airport and run a few errands.

We all walked to the market this morning to find some clandos to take to Kelo. Ansley and I shared a clando and strapped our two bags onto the back. We were pretty cozy (it always is with two people on the back of a clando), but not uncomfortable.

I felt so liberated riding on that clando. I love riding clandos (clando is another name for a moto… just in case I've never explained that before). It's seriously one of my favorite things to do, but I only get to do it when we go on trips, and it's a bit expensive. Well, expensive for Chad; it's about 2500 francs, which is the equivalent of $5, for an hour ride to Kelo. Anyway, I love riding clandos cool wind blowing in your face, sun shining brightly but not too hot, and miles of African expanse before your eyes. Amazing.

Toward the end of our trip to Kelo, the clando started making a funny noise that sounded an awful lot like the tire rubbing against the underside of the moto frame. Sure enough it was, and so we stopped and took the bags off the back to reduce the weight. It still made some noise, but we made it safely to Kelo without much problem. Once we got there, we had to wait for Levi and his driver to show up, which was a little nerve wracking because Levi had taken the bag with most of our money, passport copies, and phone. Thankfully he came within 5 or 10 minutes and then we had to figure out how we would get from Kelo to N'Djamena.

Usually we take a bus, but there were none and we would have to wait. Our other option was a little van packed full of people that would be hot, sweaty, and pretty smelly. We decided to wait, but while we were waiting, we met a friend. Abdoulaye, one of the shop owners from Bere's market walked over to us, and started talking with Levi. Next thing we know, we're walking up to a little four door Toyota and piling in.

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. Before we piled in, I asked Levi, "Do you think there's a bathroom around here?" knowing that likely the answer was no. But God bless Levi. He went to someone's home and asked if I could use their bathroom, and they said sure. It was a little weird because it was different than the toilet area we have at my hut.

At my hut, we have a little closed off area with a hole in the middle. At this house, there was no hole. And they gave me a little plastic kettle thing full of water, which I thankfully didn't have to use because Ansley had thought to bring some toilet paper. Anyway, that was an interesting experience…

So we piled into the car Levi, Ansley, Abdoulaye, and me in the back, the driver and some other guy in the front. I started out on Ansley's lap, but soon realized that this would not last long. So, the driver pulled over and I got to sit up in the front seat with some guy. I pretty much sat on the console and just put my legs over on the passenger's side.

Amazingly enough, I was really tired and kept almost falling asleep. But when my head would start nodding, one of the Arabs would poke me and wake me up. They kept telling me that it wasn't good to sleep. I was confused, but whatever.

Then all the guys in the car started eating something small and reddish, and Levi broke off little pieces for me and Ansley. He warned us, saying that it was really bitter. Ansley and I, both highly confused as to why they would eat something that they knew was bitter, decided to try as well. You only live once, right? I chewed and chewed, trying to have the courage to swallow the dry, bitter nastiness in my mouth. I finally choked it down and wondered at how anyone could eat such a thing.

As I sat there, I started to have a little stomach-ache and nausea. Apparently it wasn't sitting well in my stomach. Then, something popped into my head. I remembered going to the market with a girl here named Pidi. Some woman was with us and was trying to get us to buy some of these little reddish things, and Pidi said, "No, don't buy it. You don't eat that if you're Christian." I had been confused at the time, but I trusted her knowledge over my own.

At this memory, I was slightly horrified. What had I just eaten that Christians are not supposed to eat?? I relayed my memory to Ansley, and she said, "I bet it's some kind of stimulant."

I asked Levi about it later, and sure enough, it is. He said it was called cola, and that if you eat it you won't sleep. He said that sometimes when he's driving and he's tired, he'll stop and buy one, but he doesn't eat it all the time because he said that it's habit-forming. No worries, I promise I won't ever eat it again.

Anyway, we got to Bongor after maybe two hours of driving, and so we stopped to eat. Levi kindly helped Ansley and I find a restaurant that would have vegetarian dishes. When I say vegetarian dishes, I mean a nice saucer full of chopped tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and hard boiled egg all soaked in peanut oil. This is the dip that you get with a long, fresh baguette.

After lunch, Ansley and I waited in the car while at a "service station" of sorts where we got air in the tires and filled up on gas. As we were sitting in the car, random people would stare in the window at us, either from a distance or up close. I lost count of how many people came up to the window and asked us for food or money. It was hard, but we had to say no because if we gave anything to one person, all of Bongor would be crowding around our window begging for food. One woman came up to the window and began asking us if we had anything for her children. This is one of the things I have come to hate about being in crowded places; there are so many people who ask you for things, and they may or may not actually have need of them. But whether or not they do have need, I almost always have to refuse them because I just can't give to everyone. If you give something to one person, others see it, and soon you have a crowd of people demanding that you give them something too.

After Bongor, we drove a little ways and stopped again. The driver informed us that we were stopping for prayer time. We stopped at a little mosque, and the three Arab men went out for their prayers. Ansley and I thought it was really cool that they were so dedicated to God that they would even stop in the middle of a journey to have their prayers. Perhaps I ought to learn some commitment from them.

We set off again, this time with Ansley in the front seat and me in the back between Levi and Abdoulaye. It was definitely not dull. Being squished between two men who are talking loud, fast Arabic in your ears is an experience not to be missed if you have the chance. Especially if you understand very little of Arabic and the only words you can catch are American, Nassara (white people), Dr. Bond, Dr. James, and hospital.

But what I enjoyed more than listening to their Arabic was the times when they would suddenly start talking French in order to ask me or Ansley a question. We had some pretty interesting conversations, and they usually started with, "A chez-vous, en Amerique…" which means at your place or home in America. The funniest question that he asked was, "How much is the dowry for a woman in America?"

I laughed, and then told him that there wasn't one. In complete shock, his eyes got wide and he said, "You mean they're free? You don't pay anything?" I confirmed this information for him, and then explained that usually the bride's father would pay for the whole wedding and that could be pretty expensive. I think that made even less sense to him because here, the men pay a dowry price to the father of the bride, so for the father to pay for the wedding seemed a little backwards to him.

We then talked about the dowry price for a wife here, which is apparently 500,000 francs (exchange rate in dollars is about $1 for every 500 francs, so you can do the math if you choose). Then we talked about how here men can have up to 4 wives (my goodness…). He asked us if men had more than one wife in America, and we told him it was against the law. He was slightly bewildered by this, but then I posed the question, "Isn't one wife enough trouble?" He kind of laughed, but I don't think I convinced him of the virtues of having one wife.

Then Ansley asked, "What if a woman wanted to marry three men?" The whole car full of people erupted in laughter. Of course, they didn't take her seriously, and Abdoulaye began explaining to me that that was ridiculous because women are only worth a half of a man (what he was saying is really difficult to translate…). Oh well, guess you can't change the world in one conversation.

Later, I asked Abdoulaye if women here were allowed to drive because I have never seen a woman driving. He laughed and told me that lots of women drive and that I would see them in N'Djamena. I told him that I knew how to drive a car, but not a moto, and he was a little surprised, but then he asked, "On te donne?" as he pointed to the steering wheel. I laughed and said that I didn't really want to drive here.

While we were driving, we actually had several little safari moments. No, we didn't see any lions or zebras. But we did see a ton of camels! It was actually really funny because we were talking to Abdoulaye about the fact that there aren't any camels in Bere, at which point he insisted that Ansley should buy one because camels are much better than horses. We all laughed, but almost every time we would see a herd of camels he would tell her again that she should buy a baby camel and that it would grow up for her to ride.

By the way, camels are quite possibly one of the most awkward animals I've ever seen run. It was pretty humorous to watch them run off the road when we were honking the horn. Some of them weren't too bright though and just stood there staring at us for a good while before awkwardly trotting off.

Once we got just outside the city limit, we were stopped by a group of gendarmes (local military). There has recently been a ban on charcoal (the main thing used to cook here) in the capital city, so they've set up check points to make sure that no one smuggles any in. A while back, they actually burned several vehicles that were carrying charcoal; we saw what was left of the frames of some of the vans.

So we all got out of the car while the police searched our vehicle for charcoal. I was actually surprised by their kindness. When I brought out one of Ansley's and my bags, they told me to put it back in the car because they didn't need to check it. I suppose they figured that two white girls wouldn't have any reason to smuggle charcoal into the capital.

As we were getting back into the car, one of the men told me and Ansley that we were pretty and that we should marry some Chadian men. I laughed a little nervously in response and quickly got in the backseat.

Anyway, that was our eventful voyage. We were dropped off at some intersection inside the city, and we walked to TEAM to settle in for the night. More adventures in N'Djamena to come…

P.S. I apologize for the length of this post… but I didn't want to leave anything out.

Majoie

2009-01-29T08:43:00.004-05:00

I want to write about one of my favorite patients that I've seen at the hospital. I think you'll like to hear about her.

When I first arrived in Bere, way back at the end of August, she was already here. I was intrigued by her. All day, every day, she sat in her bed with no smile on her face, nearly expressionless. From the start, I decided that I would make it my goal every day to make her smile.

You may wonder why she didn't smile. I can tell you. Her name is Majoie, which in French means "my joy," and she is about 7 years old. She was in a small accident where she broke her right femur, and broken femurs are extremely difficult to fix here in Chad. But, we do the best we can with whatever walks in the door, and so James had made a sort of traction to help the bone heal straight and in the right place. This meant that the little girl had to stay in bed, in the same place for at least 2 months. Seems like reason enough for a little gloominess.

Each day, I would come and talk to her and try to get her to smile. I brought her a picture and crayons to color with one day, but she refused. She didn't want to. So, I colored it and taped it to the end of her bed. Day by day, she started to warm up a little bit more, and I could even get her to give me a half-smile most days.

Then, one day she asked me for a picture to color. I gladly found another one and gave her some crayons to color with. We posted it on the end of her bed, and the collection of pictures grew with time.

Majoie became more and more friendly each day. She would invite us to eat with her sometimes, and she would call us over to her bed and talk our ears off! Sometimes, I had trouble trying to get away so that I could finish my work because she would call me over to talk.

Little Majoie was very soon a favorite of all the nurses as well as some of the other patients. We all spoiled her; we would bring her little treats, do her school work with her, read to her, give her empty bottles to play with, and all kinds of things.

Her grandfather and grandmother were also favorites at the hospital. They were from N'Djamena, which is far, far away, so her grandparents camped here at the hospital for 3 months so that her parents could go home to work and take care of the other children.

Her grandfather was so kind. There were so many times that he would translate for me with another patient, or he would give water to other patients. He was well respected by all the other patients, and he could often convince them to go to the pharmacy and buy their medicines after I had argued with them for the past 15 minutes. Anyway, the whole family was wonderful.

By early December, she was taken off of traction, and we began to teach her to walk with crutches. At first she was terrified to leave her bed. I think she was afraid of falling. But with a little coaxing, we could convince her each day to walk a little bit farther, or we would carry her outside so she could sit in the sunshine. We all loved walking with Majoie and her crutches. And I would tell her, "Majoie, quelque jour, tu va courir encore" (some day you are going to run again).

Then the day came when it was time for her to leave. Ambivalence abounded; I was so happy to see her up and walking with crutches, so happy that she was healed, but I was also very sad to see her leave.

The morning that they left, I had been working the night shift, so I came over to the van to see them off. I said my goodbyes to Majoie's grandparents first, and then to Majoie. Her face was downcast; she did not want to be leaving all of her new friends.

"Majoie, est-ce que tu peut sourire?" I asked in an attempt to get her to smile.

She shook her head no.

"Pour moi?" I pleaded.

A half-smile crossed her face briefly.

I hadn't seen Majoie and her family since that day that they left in mid-December. There we were in the capital city, and I had her grandfather's phone number. I called him up.

He answered the phone, and when I said, "C'est Kristin de l'hopital de Bere," he responded with a warm greeting and asked how I was doing. I explained that I was doing well and that Ansley and I were in N'Djamena and we wanted to come for a visit. He said that we were welcome and we set up a time.

Levi, Ansley, and I took a public van to their house, but arrived a little bit early. Majoie was still at school and her grandfather was out at the market, but they would be back within half an hour. So for 30 minutes, we ate peanuts and talked to her grandmother, who is also very sweet.

Then, I heard the little kids in the yard start yelling, "Majoie! Majoie!" and I knew she was home. I watched the gate and saw Majoie, dressed in her school uniform, walking in without any crutches and with only a slight limp. It was so good to see her walking.

Her grandfather came in shortly afterward and we all sat down and caught up with each other. He bought us sodas and bananas, and we gave them the oranges that we had bought for them.

Majoie was suddenly all shy again, and we could hardly get her to smile, much less talk to us very much. As we talked to her grandfather, we found out that not only could Majoie walk without crutches, but she could run.

Praise God.

Capital Shopping

2009-01-29T08:43:00.003-05:00

I'm lying on the bed at TEAM again. I wanted to write about what we did today, but didn't know where to start, so I asked Ansley, "What did we do today, Ans?"

"Market," came the response.

Big sigh. "The market here is so overwhelming. I don't want to write about it."

So that's that. I'm not going to write about the market; maybe some other time. Or, when I come home, if you want to hear about the market in N'Djamena, ask.

Lazy Days

2009-01-23T15:26:00.001-05:00

Lately working day shift at the hospital has been pretty lax. Most days, we have about 5 staff working with 20 ish medical, surgical, and maternity patients. I've been blessed to be able to work the last couple of days with Emily-- her taking care of the surgical patients, and me taking care of the maternity patients.

One day this past week, there was seriously nothing to do. All the dressing changes were done, vital signs taken, and we were just waiting for noon to come so that we could give the medications. As we sat in the nurses office wondering what to do, one of us said, "Why don't we get the guitar and sing to the patients?"

It has been a long time since we've sung to the patients, which used to be a weekly Sabbath afternoon activity. So we excitedly ran over to the middle house to grab the guitar. When we got back, we had to figure out what to sing. We sang "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High" and we also decided to sing "God is so Good" because it's simple and Emily knew it in Nangjere, and we both know it in French.

We set out on our mission, and began singing to the patients. They loved it! They were laughing and smiling the whole time. At one point, we were in the maternity ward singing, and we told them to sing along with us if they caught on. So, two of the ladies began singing with us. Then we asked them, "How do you sing this in Gumbaye? And how do you sing it in Arabic?" They were more than willing to teach us, and we thought it was awesome that we were learning a song in so many languages. I now know how to sing "God is so Good" in 5 languages, almost 6, but the Moundung language is really hard and I keep forgetting.

After the maternity patients, we moved on to the isolation ward where there are some AIDS patients, tuberculosis patients, and sometimes pneumonia patients. While we were singing in there, one of the patient's family members, a very large, outspoken lady, started singing to us in French. We thanked her and said that she sang very nicely. That was all the encouragement that she needed to get up, stand right in front of us in our faces, and sing the song again. We laughed and thanked her once more for her beautiful song, and went outside to sing to some more people.

As we were walking out, one of the Arabic women who had heard us singing in the maternity ward motioned for us to come with her. We followed her to her grass mat on the sidewalk outside the ward where a few other Arabic family members were sitting. She wanted us to sing for them. So we did.

We sang "God is so Good" in Arabic for them, and then taught them to sing it in English. It was such an awesome experience to have these two Arabic women and one Arabic man singing "God is so good, God is so good...." It just made my heart so happy to be there with these people that I can hardly communicate with, praising God in different languages.

Kouma Koura

2009-01-23T15:10:00.001-05:00

Working night shifts is rarely fun. Some nights are not as bad as others, but for the most part I would say that I don't like working night shifts. Honestly, who would voluntarily work 17 hours straight, from 3 pm until 8 am the next morning taking care of 23 patients all by themself and actually enjoy it? Maybe I paint too dark a picture. I shouldn't complain because it's usually not that bad; it's just not something I look forward to.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that last night (Thursday night) was one of the most miserable night shifts that I've worked yet. It's funny because when I was getting on work, I had a feeling that things would not be good when the nursing student began giving me report because the actual nurse was busy with maternity patient, especially when I asked him questions about the patients and he repeatedly responded with an irritated, "I don't know." It also didn't help knowing that the two people I was scheduled to work with both had malaria. Emily ended up not working because she felt so awful, which left me and Augustin, who was feeling much better than the day before when he was getting IV Quinine.

By the time I had gotten report on all the patients, it was already 4 pm, and they were lots of problems to solve. Two IVs needed to be restarted, some patients had just gotten out of surgery and the family wanted explanations on how to give the medicines, one patient's blood sugar was in the 500s and the insulin was locked in the fridge, which only the lab guys have a key to (they go home at 3 pm), and the list went on. I had the most awful time restarting the IVs, and I had to prick one woman about 5 times before I got a good vein.

I didn't finish giving out the six o'clock medications until 10 pm, at which point I began to give the nine o'clock meds. By the time I finished those, it was 11:30 pm and I figured I might as well go straight into giving midnight medications. Needless to say, at that point I was so tired, physically and emotionally. But I finished the meds and was able to get some sleep between 2 am and 4 am, when I began the morning medications.

Here's the crazy thing. Throughout the whole night, inside I could feel the stress mounting; inside I felt like I wanted to burst into tears or just pack up my stuff and go home right then. Usually when I feel this way at work, it's easy for me to get irritated at the patients' family members who come up to me while I'm in the middle of doing something. I can't begin to count how many times I'll have someone come up to me while I'm starting an IV or drawing up some medication and say, "The water's finished," or "The water's stopped," or "S'il vous plait, j'ai te besoin (Please, I need you)." And when they do this, it's difficult for me to be patient and not snap at them. But last night, despite my inner turmoil, I was surprisingly calm, polite, and helpful. I astonished myself; and I am pretty sure I can credit it to my many prayers that I sent up before and during work for God to give me patience and get me through the night.

In fact, every once in a while, while I was walking somewhere to give a med or find a patient's family member, I would send up a quick prayer, "God, please don't leave me. Please, just help me through this night." It honestly didn't give me much peace. It didn't seem to make me feel any better inside, but I know that God was with me and was keeping me calm.

When morning came, and I was busying myself with giving out meds and taking vital signs, I was thinking about how tired I was and how glad I was that my shift was almost over. Then a tune popped into my head, and I started humming it to myself as I was working (the patients probably thought I was a little crazy). It's a simple song that I've learned in several languages since being here, and when it came into my head, I was actually singing it in Nangjere, not English.

As I walked about singing, "Kouma Koura, Kouma Koura, Kouma Koura, Kouma kong koura," I realized the significance, I realized why I was singing that song. You probably know the song in English: "God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He's so good to me." I think God put that song into my head to remind me of how good He is. To remind me that He stayed with me all night and that He got me through the night, just as I prayed He would.

Amniotic Fluid Anyone?

2009-01-18T07:13:00.001-05:00

I can't remember if I wrote a blog about 6 liter lady or not. So I'll give a brief description just for background purposes. A while back we had a lady come in to deliver her baby. Most Chadian pregnant women are large, but not very large. They could be nine months pregnant and look like they're about 6 months pregnant.

Anyway, this one woman came in, and she was huge. I looked at her and wondered if she was going to have twins. We had some trouble finding the baby's heartbeat, but we could hear it. Her water hadn't broken yet, and she was fully dilated, so Augustin came and was going to artificially rupture the pouch of water. We got a basin to empty it, got her all ready, and he poked a hole in the sac.

As I watched it drain, I wondered if it would ever stop. I had never seen so much amniotic fluid. By the time it was finished, we measured it, and there were 6 liters of fluid, which is an incredibly large amount. After all the fluid drained, we could hear the baby's hearbeat fine, and she was significantly smaller in the stomach area. The birth continued normally and I don't think there were any more problems.

So yesterday, Sabbath afternoon, I was summoned to the OR for an emergency c-section. As I walked in and saw the woman lying on the OR table, I immediately thought of 6 liter lady. This woman was, believe it or not, even larger than 6 liter lady. We were doing the c-section because at first they couldn't find a heartbeat for the baby, and when they did it was about 80 beats per minute. A normal fetal heart rate is about 140 beats per minute.

We had a new missionary come in on Friday evening whose name is Caroline. She's from Loma Linda and was an orthopedic nurse there. Dr. Bond had her come in to the OR so that she could get some good experience (what a first day of work....). We use different shoes in the OR to cut down on tracking in germs and to keep the environment in the OR more sterile. So, Caroline had no shoes, and I let her use mine. This meant that I was going in barefoot, which we are allowed to do, but I don't usually do.

Dr. Bond allowed me to scrub in as second assist (Dr. Jacques was first assist), which meant that I was standing right next to him to help him hold back retractors, hand him instruments, and other helpful things. I was watching intently as he made incisions through the different layers. Then he got to the layer just before the baby, and he went to rupture the amniotic sac. No sooner had he made the cut than a stream of amniotic fluid literally burst out, showering everyone and flooding the floor. I had tried to turn my head, but must have been just a little late because I got the brunt of the shower; fluid went in my ear, inside my face mask, soaked the top half of my scrub shirt, and I found myself standing barefoot in a puddle of amniotic fluid and blood, with the bottom part of my scrub pants dripping as well.

To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. Everyone else was also rather shocked and wet themselves. Even Ansley who had been doing anesthesia at the head of the table got a pretty good shower.

Unfortunately, the baby came out barely alive. I un-scrubbed to help revive the baby. We must have worked on it for 20 to 30 minutes with no results. We tried everything-- chest compressions, ambu-bagging, oxygen, suctioning, stimulation-- but all to no avail. Every once in a while he would take a deep gasp, but he wasn't breathing regularly, and his lungs were full of amniotic fluid (he must have aspirated some of it) that we just couldn't drain no matter how much we tried.

At one point, his heart rate stopped, and we almost gave up. But it came back at about 40 beats per minute. So we continued reviving. It was really difficult to decide when to stop, but eventually we just knew that there was no more that we could do. The whole time we were working with the baby, I just knew that he wasn't going to make it, but I kept hoping.

It was a really sobering experience, and difficult to deal with. Thankfully the mother was alright, but it was still really sad not to have been able to save the baby as well.

Divine Preparation

2009-01-13T12:37:00.001-05:00

I truly believe that before I came to Chad, God was preparing me for my experience here. Some of you may recall my nighttime adventure from last summer (if not, you can find the story on my other blog- onlymymuse.blogspot.com); I have recently come to believe that that was one of many preparation experiences.

Quite often, when I leave the hospital to go home my family is already sleeping. It gets dark here around 6 pm, and my family is usually in bed by 8 or 8:30. I happen to be a night owl, which has been difficult here, and I usually stay up until 9 or 10 at night. About a month ago, I came home one night in the dark to find that our gate was not only closed, but locked with a small deadbolt from the inside. What to do? I figured that I had about three options:
1. Knock on the door, wake someone up, and be let in
2. Try to reach through the small opening between the wooden
door frame post and the brick wall to unlock the gate
3. Attempt to climb the brick wall

I didn't want to wake anyone up, and I really didn't want to try climbing the wall in crocs and scrubs. So, of course, I tried to squeeze my hand through the opening. I managed to stick my arm through the hole and got to where I could almost just reach the deadbolt, but my arm couldn't bend at the right angle for my hand to get a good grip on the lock. I tried this for about 5 minutes, readjusting my arm every once in while, but with no success. The only things I had to show for my effort were a few scratches from the wooden post and the bricks.

I still didn't want to wake anyone up, and I still didn't really want to climb the wall. But desperate times...

I'm not very good with giving estimates of distances and heights, but I would say that the brick wall is maybe an inch or two short of 6 feet tall. I am not terribly tall, have no experience with rock climbing, and there were not exactly any good footholds. You can probably imagine how silly I looked trying to scramble up the wall in the middle of the night by headlamp light. I got up with fairly few problems, but as I sat perched on top of the brick wall getting ready to descend, several thoughts went through my head. First I thought, "I hope no one in the house wakes up and thinks that I'm a thief coming in, or worse, I hope no other locals pass by the road and think I'm a thief trying to get in." My very next thought was actually somewhat humorous; I remembered the Bible verse about people who don't enter through the gate being thieves and robbers ("I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a robber" John 10:1), and then I really felt like a criminal. As I was shifting my weight and turning so that I could climb or jump down, I immediately thought, "Oh no. What if I fall and break my ankle or something? Then I will have to wake someone up, which is the whole reason I did this- to avoid waking someone up!"

Praise God, I made it down with no injuries, and there were no observers of my "criminal" activity. Since that night, I have had to climb over the wall many, many times. I've actually gotten quite proficient, although I still very much dislike climbing the wall. After the third time or so, I actually told Hawaa and my family that I had been doing this, and they looked at me in amazement, laughed, and said that I should just knock on the door and wake them up. I have not taken their advice, and will continue to climb the wall whenever the gate is locked.

There's more to the story though. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked Hawaa why they lock the gate, why they don't just shut it. She told me that sometimes animals try to push the door open in the middle of the night and she doesn't like that. That seemed to make sense to me, but I didn't realize that it was a big problem, especially because pigs and chickens come in the back of the yard through a small opening in the toilet area anyway.

One night recently, I was walking home late at night, and I was rather tired. As I walked home, I prayed, "God, I really don't feel like climbing the wall tonight. I'm so tired. Please let it not be locked."

As I came upon our gate, I looked, and much to my surprise, not only was the door not locked, but it was a little bit ajar. "Odd," I thought, "but nice. Thank you God."

I had just finished thinking this and entered through the gate when my light fell upon an extremely fat pig standing about five feet away from me. I must have startled him as much as he startled me because he squealed and charged straight at my shins. Luckily, my reaction time was short, and I jumped to the side just in time as the pig ran past me and to the gate. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, this was a very fat pig, and when he tried to get through the gate opening, he got stuck, which only made him squeal all the louder. Despite this small difficulty, he made his escape and left me staring wide-eyed at the gate opening with my heart racing from my fright.

I now know why they lock the gate and am glad for it.

In all seriousness though, I do believe that God gave me experiences in the States before I came here to prepare me for my work in Chad. When I worked as a nurse in America, I ended up on an Oncology (cancer) floor. The job was perfect for me-- my nurse manager worked with my school schedule more than I ever could have hoped, the people I worked with were so sweet, and because of the type of floor it was, people were more open to being prayed with despite it being a non-religious hospital. But I remembered thinking, "Why oncology? That's not really something I want to do for the rest of my life."

Working with cancer patients was emotionally draining for me. I cried several many times while at work, and often I would come home feeling exhausted physically and emotionally. Dealing so closely with death and suffering was hard on my heart.

As I prepared to come to Chad, I thanked God for my experience with oncology because I knew that I would be encountering death and suffering much more often than I ever would in the States. Unfortunately, it has been true; since I've been here, I have had to deal with death, with suffering that I can't fix, and it has been so difficult for me. But again, I thank God that He knew what I would be seeing here and that He gave me my experiences with cancer patients and their families to help prepare me for the work here in Chad.

Praise God for divine preparation.

Spiritual Warfare

2009-01-08T11:58:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, January 7

It's amazing how quickly things can change here. One day, I can be so full of energy and joy, and the next I'm down. Lately I haven't been getting much sleep because I've been working in surgery (the bloc) and helping Dr. Bond see patients. Plus with Ansley being sick, I've been staying with her at night. Unfortunately, today I woke up late and wasn't able to have my God time in the morning before work. As I walked to work, I prayed, "God, no matter what happens today please be with me. Please help me to have strength."

Satan has been working overtime among each of us and I think he must have heard my prayer this morning; we've each had our separate struggles and overwhelming challenges, and today was the worst it's been in quite some time. I reached my breaking point today, again.

I can't even describe all the things that worked together to make it happen, but I think it was a combination of lack of sleep, other people being short with me, lack of food, being slightly overworked, and not feeling good. I don't know what's wrong with me (it's not malaria, I got tested), but yesterday I had a headache so bad I wanted to cry (I did later, but not just because of the headache), and my stomach has been upset, and I've had very little appetite.

In any case, it was one of the days when I felt like giving up. As I walked home late in the evening, I started talking to God again. I wanted to go home. I was tired of fighting, tired of withstanding Satan's attacks, tired of even asking for strength to go on. Sometimes I get that way- I feel like a failure as a Christian, as a nurse, as a person - and I know that it's just Satan getting me down. But even with that knowledge, it's hard to keep moving, to keep praying, to keep trusting that God will pull me through.

Thankfully, I'm here with an amazing group of student missionaries who encouraged me. After talking with them and having a good cry, I felt a little bit better, though still tired and weary of fighting. It's times like these that I really enjoy reading Paul's letters. I'll just include one of my favorite excerpts:

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-- and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:23-25

Surgery

2009-01-06T14:21:00.004-05:00

As I led her into the operating room holding her IV fluids and trying to reassure her that everything would be fine, I thought to myself, "This can't be happening."

Monday was my first day working on my own in the operating room, and though I was nervous, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I had mostly been running anesthesia-- giving drugs for sedation, taking vital signs, and fetching things as they were needed-- but Dr. Bond had also let me scrub in and assist for one surgery.

That night however, I was more nervous and tense than I had been all day long. This surgery was different: we were operating on Ansley, one of our fellow SMs. She had been having stomach pain for the last three days, and Dr. Bond thought all along that she had appendicitis, but waited for surgery because neither Ansley nor Dr. Bond wanted to do needless surgery. But finally, Monday night, he decided that the waiting had to end and operation was necessary.

I helped to prep Ansley for surgery, all the while feeling like it was a horrible dream that we would all wake up from any moment. Although, my feelings were no comparison for the thoughts and feelings running through Ansley's mind.

We got her sedated, and Dr. Bond began with many prayers before and during surgery. I was very glad to be doing anesthesia because it put me right by the head of the operating table where I was free to hold Ansley's hand and let her know I was there. As Dr. Bond worked, we could feel the tension through the silence. He successfully found and took out her very inflamed appendix with no problems. I was so thankful for how smoothly the surgery went.

While the whole surgery was rather intense and surreal, there was a little bit of humor as well as a large amount of blessings. First the humor...

One of the drugs I gave Ansley for sedation is something called ketamine. Ketamine is known for its strong side effects; many people on ketamine will say things that they would never say on a normal basis (sometimes bad words, sometimes they talk bad or tell secrets about people they know, etc.), or do crazy things like burst into song at the top of their lungs. It's really rather unpredictable what will happen to a patient on ketamine. Needless to say, Ansley was rather worried about what she might say or do while on ketamine, especially with so many of her close friends in the OR (Dr. Bond, Emily, Jason, and I were there along with a Chadian nurse).

Ansley did really well on ketamine, and was actually pretty silent for the majority of the surgery. However, toward the very end, she began to speak. Once or twice she said my name, mostly because before she went under she knew I was there and had made me promise not to leave. But one of the first things she said was, "Finis ici?" (French for, finished here?). We were all a little surprised that she spoke in French.

"What did she say?" Dr. Bond asked in surprise. I laughed and told him that she was speaking in French.

Once we were finished and were cleaning her up to take her out of the OR, she asked me (in rather slurred speech), "Was my appendix good? Or was it bad?" I reassured her that it was bad and that the surgery had been necessary.

Not two minutes later she said, "C'est bon, ou c'est mauvais?" (French for, is it good or is it bad?" referring again to her appendix. I kind of laughed and said, "It was bad, it needed to come out."

She must have asked me at least 20 times whether or not the appendix had been bad, because before going into surgery one of her biggest fears was that the surgery would be for nothing, that her appendix wasn't really the problem.

What was even funnier than her repeatedly asking was the fact that as she came more and more out of the sedation, she would say, "I'm sorry, I think I've asked you that before." And at one point, Dr. Bond was teasing her a little bit and speaking to her in French a little, to which she replied, "Dr. Bond, don't make fun of me, I'm on ketamine." Which of course made us all choke back laughter for fear of inciting anger.

Now for the huge amount of blessings involved in the whole deal. First of all, we were so blessed to have an actual board certified surgeon here to perform the surgery. On top of that, one of the nurses who happened to be working the night shift was Simeon, one of the OR room nurses. Beyond that, Monday had been my first day in the OR by myself. Previously, I had worked with Ansley in the OR as she was training me in to do anesthesia. If I hadn't spent that day in the OR, I would have been no help at all when Ansley needed surgery, and we would have had to call in someone else to do anesthesia. In addition, Ansley's very angry appendix was still very much un-ruptured, her oxygen saturation never went below 95%, and there were absolutely no problems through the whole surgery.

God is ever faithful.

Syrup in the Butter

2009-01-01T14:23:00.001-05:00

So this is ages and ages old. But it's a lot lighter than the other blog I'm posting. Enjoy :)

Sabbaths here in Bere are quite fun. We've made a tradition of making Sabbath meals together after church. One Sabbath we decided to make pancakes because we found this Mennonite "Cook with Less" cookbook that had a recipe for pancakes and syrup.

We made some absolutely amazing pancakes and had so much fun doing it over a charcoal stove. We put almond slivers, hot cocoa mix, and cinnamon, in varying combinations, in the pancakes as we cooked them.

As we were eating the pancakes, we would put margarine on them and then the syrup. Once, Jacob accidentally dripped a little bit of syrup in the margarine container, and I said, "Aww..." to which he replied, "Eh, it's just a little syrup in the butter."

I'm not sure why, but we found it to be rather funny, and we decided it would be our new phrase. So now, whenever something goes wrong, we just shrug it off, and say, "It's just a little syrup in the butter."

PS Jacob, we miss you lots :)

Worlds Apart

2009-01-01T14:16:00.001-05:00

So... I was thinking about the things I've seen here, and I wrote a poem. Not anything special, not revised. Just wrote it because I was in the mood. Sadly, each line has a real story behind it. Hopefully I can write about them later; they're certainly not ones that I could forget.

Worlds Apart

Bony arms and love starved eyes;
Gaping wounds and blood soaked clothes--
Sights no eye should see
No eye has seen...

Ragged breaths of a dying child,
A mother's wails for her unmoving son--
Sounds no ear should hear
No ear has heard...

Why doesn't my father want me?
I wish that death would come--
Thoughts no mind should process
No mind has conceived

Radiant faces, streets of gold, life-giving stream,
Ringing laughter, pain-free abundant love
What God has prepared for those who love him.

Civil War

2008-12-16T11:09:00.001-05:00

Don't let the title scare you... Back in October (the 11th) there were some minor conflicts between some of the locals that I wanted to write about. So, no worries, all is well and I was and am perfectly safe.

Saturday, October 11 started out as a typical Sabbath in Chad; we went to church and afterwards we went back to the middle house where we cooked our meal and ate together. At about 4 pm, we went over to sing songs to the patients like we usually do. As we finished in the main wards and made our way over to the tuberculosis ward, I heard Sarah say, "Someone carry those two women into Urgence." I looked at the women lying on the grass mats. They looked like they were sleeping, and I was confused about why we would take them to the ER. Jason, Jacob, and some others started carrying them in, and somehow through the confusion, I heard someone say that they had head injuries.

When I walked into Urgence, I saw a young man sitting on one of the exam beds with a deep gash on his neck and blood soaking his pants. Looking at the large wound and the amount of blood on his pants, I was surprised that he was still upright and conscious.

All of us, including Stefan and Nathaniel (non-medical student missionaries), donned gloves and began to work. I took vital signs and tried to assess some of the women. One was pregnant and had a head injury, so we checked the fetal heart rate, started an IV, and transported her to the operating room.

Everything was crazy. Luckily, or I guess I should say Providentially, we had just received a large shipment of 1 liter Ringer's Lactate fluid. So Stefan filled a box with IV catheters, tubing, and IV fluids for us to use. We went through them so quickly.

At first I worked with the pregnant woman with a head injury. Her breathing was ragged and fast, and I tried to open her airway with a jaw thrust as best I could while Abel cut her braids, shaved around her wounds, and cleaned her head. When I had been told that she had a head injury, I had no idea how she got it or what kind of injury it was. But once Abel cut her hair, I could see two 2 1/2 - 3 inch stab wounds on the left back side of her head. In addition to those wounds, she had cuts on her arms, a cut above her eye, a bad bloody nose, and her face was swollen and bruised from being beaten. I watched as Samedi sutured her stab wounds, and I kept trying to make sure she could breathe well. James told me that she was about 32 weeks pregnant so if things went bad, we could do a C-section to save the baby. Thankfully, she remained stable, and I went to help with other patients.

There was an older man who was also badly wounded; he had knife wounds as well-- one right under his left eye, one on his right lower leg where the knife had actually broken his bone, and several other small wounds. He was lucky that the knife just barely missed his eye. Another young man had a chest wound that was really deep. Stefan held pressure on it while the man waited his turn to be sutured. An older man had a knife wound in his back. Both were lucky that their lungs were still intact.

But I think that the most critical patient was a man who had multiple gashes on his back and arms, and one large wound on his left side where something that should have been inside was not. I remember seeing him lying on a metal stretcher vomiting while they were trying to put an NG tube down. I thought it would be a miracle if he made it. I found out later that it was a miracle that he survived. James said that the knife had punctured a hold in his diaphragm and should have punctured the spleen, but somehow miraculously missed.

That night I stayed at the hospital until midnight helping with the wounded people.I think there were a total of 18 people who came through the hospital. Seven died before they made it to the hospital. While I was taking care of people, I was in a numb, unthinking, get-things-done mode. But once I got home, I stood in our yard and tears fell freely. I stood there for a long time just crying and talking to God. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how any human being could be so brutal and unfeeling, no matter how angry they were.

I laid down on my cot, and sleep came quickly. When I woke in the morning, I laid in bed and images of each of the wounded people flashed vividly through my mind. I began to cry again and wondered how God, who knew and loved each of those people infinitely more than I did, could stand the pain of seeing his children fight and treat each other so cruelly.

When I found out the cause of the fighting, I was even more amazed. An Arab cow herder's cows were grazing in a Nangjere farmer's rice field. They exchanged heated words, things got out of hand, and the Arab stabbed the farmer in the back. The farmer fell to the ground, and his family thought he was dead (he wasn't). So his family started rounding up people to strike back at the Arabs. They went running through the village and market shouting, "They killed our brother." The Nangjeres then started attacking any Arabs they saw, including a bunch of pregnant women leaving the market. Throughout the night, attacks went back and forth, and the injured came in waves to the hospital. At some points, we were told that Arabs were going from
home to home attacking any Nangjere people they found. I later found out that Bruno and I were the only ones who slept at home that night; all of the girls went over to the hospital and spent the night at Andre's (the CEO of the hospital) house because they were afraid.

With all of that said, I want to say how I saw God work through this experience. The Nangjere man who was most critical actually survived his wounds. One day, Sarah and I were talking to him while he laid outside on a grass mat getting fresh air. Sarah said she hoped there would be peace now, and he responded, "What kind of peace? I did nothing to provoke an attack." Apparently he had been fishing when some Arabs attacked him from behind. He and Sarah talked some more, and through the course of the conversation Sarah told him that God must have big plans for him because it was a miracle that he survived.

Beyond that, the whole experience strengthened my conviction that God is love. People always ask how a God of love could allow such awful things to happen to innocent people. But it's because God is love that He allows it. Seeing those He loves so much cause such pain to each other must tear God's heart to pieces. Yet He endures the pain because He knows He has to allow the universe to see that Satan's accusations are false.

If I were God, and the people I had created and loved so deeply were causing me so much pain, I would be tempted to say, "I've had enough. I can't stand this pain any longer," and I would be tempted to just put an end to it all. But God in His love endures the pain. He endures because He wants so badly to be with as many of His children as possible.

African Update

2008-12-07T14:05:00.001-05:00

I am sending out an e-mail for Kristin to let everyone know that they are having different problems that have prevented her from posting any blogs. They are hoping to resolve these issues soon so hopefully you will hear from her soon.

Susan

--
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." ~Hosea 2:14

Merry Thanksgiving!

2008-11-29T14:47:00.004-05:00

I can't remember the last time I was as thankful on Thanksgiving as I was this year. I really felt so blessed, and Thanksgiving actually turned out to be a strange mix of birthday-Thanksgiving-Christmas, or it seemed that way anyway.

I guess first I should start off by telling the story of our most recent packages. Last Tuesday, Stefan and I had planned to take some clandos to Kelo so that we could pick up packages since we knew we had some with Thanksgiving food in them. He had asked off of work from Andre, the CEO, and I had off because I had just worked the night shift, so it was perfect. Unfortunately, the morning of, James talked to Stefan and pretty much told him he couldn't go because he was here to work and he shouldn't be taking off of work. Needless to say, we were really bummed, and immediately began making plans to see who could go on Wednesday since we were determined to get our packages before Thanksgiving.

Ansley and Emily decided that they would go since they wouldn't be working on Wednesday morning. I ended up talking to James later that day (Tuesday still), and I told him the plans. It was really odd; he began really discouraging us from going and giving me all kinds of reasons that we shouldn't go. He told me that he was going to N'Djamena early next week and he could get them then, and it didn't really matter which day we celebrated Thanksgiving on, and all kinds of things. And he kept saying, "Man, I wish you guys had reminded me when I went to Moundou the other day; I could have picked them up in the car on the way back."

That evening, Ansley and I were sitting in the middle house, and James came over and started trying to discourage Ansley from going again, but we were unbudging. Finally, he said, "You guys really shouldn't go because all of the packages are sitting in a pile on my living room floor."

We were stunned. "You're kidding me, right?" was my first response. He assured us that no, he wasn't kidding, and he had been lying through his teeth to me to try to get us not to go. He told us that he had planned to put all of the packages on a stack in the middle house on Thanksgiving morning along with a note that said, "Merry Thanksgiving!" He wanted so badly to surprise us. So he told Ansley to come up with some kind of excuse as to why she couldn't go with Emily. She did, although, she said she couldn't lie to Emily, so she told her what had happened. When they told everyone that we weren't going to be able to get the packages before Thanksgiving, everyone was pretty let-down.

But it was worth it. Thanksgiving morning, James stacked all the packages in the middle house (there were something like 14 packages total) with a note that said, "Ho, ho, ho, Merry Thanksgiving! I tried to get them down the chimney, but it was a tight fit. Might try cleaning it out." It was pretty fun.

So we got our packages! One of mine was a birthday package from home, which was amazing! And I got a birthday package from some friends back at Southern too (thanks guys, you totally made my day). And someone that knows Jacob's family had their school send packages with a whole Thanksgiving meal in it! It was totally amazing. So we made plans to have a huge Thanksgiving meal at James and Sarah's house that evening along with some of the other volunteers-- Gary and Wendy Roberts (pilot and wife), Steve Rose (cool guy who's working with Gary for 3 months), and Jeremy and Annie Smith (two nurses working with Gary and at the hospital).

We had so much fun making all the food, which all turned out to be absolutely amazing! It was the best meal I've had since leaving home. And we had SO much food! We ended up with leftovers. Here's what the menu was: Mixed nuts and craisins for appetizers, antipasta (which was amazing!), corn, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with gravy, salad, cranberry sauce, bread with seasoned oil dip, two kinds of stuffing, and fri-chik. For drinks, we had cold apple cider and fresh limeade (we have that a lot here since limes are easy to get), and for dessert we had chocolate meringues and ginger snap cookies with this amazing pumpkin-spice whipped cream dip. We even had table decorations-- a huge pumpkin/squash thing (thanks to James), acorns and leaves (Jacob's mom sent them), and little corn kernels. Oh, and the pumpkin spice candle that my mom had sent me earlier.

Before we ate, we each took five kernels of corn and participated in a variation on a family tradition of Jacob's. We went around the table, and each of us got to say five things we were thankful for, one for each kernel of corn, and as we said them, we would throw our corn kernel into the pumpkin squash thing in the middle of the table (there was a slice missing because we cut it out to eat it).

Luckily, I had just taken my last dose of Quinine Thanksgiving morning, so my hearing and appetite were starting to come back. I ate so much food!!! Which was especially amazing because for the last week I had been so nauseas from malaria that I could only eat like five bites of food at each meal. God is good.

After we ate, we sat around and talked for a while and listened to music. Then we started cleaning up (I can't remember the last time I've washed that many dishes!). Finally, we decided that we would end our Thanksgiving with a nice round of games till midnight. We played Settlers of Catan (one of our favorite games here) for a long time while we drank hot chocolate (yes, we like hot drinks even in Africa), and when midnight struck, we turned on the Christmas music! Once we finished our game (which, by all means, I was set up to win, but James won out of sheer luck because 3s were rolled like 7 times), we decided to play a game of Citadels, which is another of our favorite games. We ended up staying at James's house until 2 am! And I had to work the next morning. But it was definitely worth it.

Oh! I almost forgot... While we were eating, Ansley read us Lincoln's speech that he gave when he made Thanksgiving an official holiday. I had never read it before, but it was so very fitting and inspiring. It really made me think about what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about; it's more than good food and a good time with friends and family, it's a time to really focus on giving thanks to God for his guidance and providence in our lives.

So here's to Thanksgiving in Chad-- one of the best, most blessed times I've had in Chad yet.

Birthday Addendum...

2008-11-26T12:27:00.002-05:00

So, there was one thing that I forgot to write that I did on my birthday: I gave blood! I was really excited that I was able to give blood on my birthday because I've been wanting to give blood since I got here, but haven't had the opportunity. Apparently my blood type isn't in particular demand here.

Funny thing is, almost all of the student missionaries here are the same blood type: O+. This is a good thing because people with O blood type can give to any other blood type, so lots of the SMs have given blood multiple times.

Anyway, I was happy to give blood, but it was a bit of an experience. Never in my life have I given blood with such a large needle! It hurt quite a bit because it was a 14 gauge needle, which is like a small garden hose, and they missed the first time they stuck me. Luckily I had just eaten a large meal and drank a lot of water, so I was pretty well prepared. However, when I was almost done with giving blood, I started to feel nauseated and my hearing started to go, which are two good indicators that I might pass out. I am quite happy to say though that I did not pass out. And I was fine after giving blood too. But, I'm pretty sure that giving blood and then getting malaria soon after that were the reasons that my hemoglobin was so low recently.

Oh, I almost forgot to say why I gave blood. There was a 5 year old girl in pediatrics who had a hemoglobin of 3.8 g/dl, and her father didn't have the right blood type to donate (he was AB+ and she was B+). Her name was Emilie :)

A Fond Farewell

2008-11-25T09:12:00.002-05:00

We recently lost one of our student missionaries. He went back home to Denmark, and we were all really sad to see him go.

The Friday before our bike trip, we all went over to Nathaniel's house for the "feast" that we were having in honor of his departure. I wasn't really sure what a Chadian feast entailed, but I knew that we would at least have a good time spending time together. When we got to his house, we all sat around in chairs and on benches just talking with everyone, which was really fun. All of us student missionaries were there, except for Ansley because she was working, and Sarah, Andre and his family, Augustin 2 and one of his sons, and then there was Nathaniel's African family (Daniel, Justine, and their two sons).

After being there for about an hour, we had prayer and the feast began. We started off with this flat peanut dough-bread and sauces to dip it in. It was really, really good! I was even surprised to see that they had made two sauces-- one goat sauce, and one sauce for the vegetarians. After that, we had a course of boulle with sauce.

I don't think I've ever explained Chadian food before. There seem to be some staples here: boulle (boohl) and bruille (bwee). Boulle is the typical Chadian meal here, and it's this strange loaf of cooked stuff. I'm still not sure what all is in it. Likely, some flour, millet, sometimes rice, and who knows what else.

Eating boulle is an experience in itself. There's a large bowl shaped loaf of boulle, and usually everyone washes their hands, breaks off little pieces of the loaf, squishes it into a nice dipping shape, and then dips it, fingers and all, in the sauce. Since there were so many people, we just cut off small portions of the boulle, and poured some sauce onto our plates.

After boulle, we talked some more. Daniel gave a very nice farewell speech for Nathaniel, and then we headed off to Friday night worship.

The party continued after worship as a bunch of us went back to Nathaniel's house for a bonfire. Nathaniel built the most amazing, pathfinder-worthy fire while Emily played the guitar and sand, and the rest of us talked and sang as well. It was really funny though, the oldest son in Nathaniel's family, Yanique (maybe 6 or 7), kept saying, "Ca c'est pas bon!" (that is not good!) as the smoke from the fire drifted into his face while Nathaniel was fanning it.

Once the fire was pretty much going, we tried to sing songs that all of the Chadians would know as well. At one point, we taught them how to sing "God is so good" in English. This was one of the coolest things that happened that night; after we taught it to them in English, they taught it to us in French. And then, they proceeded to
tell us that they knew it in other languages too. I think we sang it in five different languages all together. We sang it in English, French, Nangjere, Gumbaye, and Arabic. It was amazing.

Then as we settled down, Emily brought out the sweet rice that she and I had made earlier that afternoon. It tastes so good! It's just sticky rice made with milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and sugar. It was a wonderful treat to end the night with. We still stayed and talked for a little while after that, and Nathaniel made a speech for Daniel, thanking him for everything. All in all, it was a wonderful night, and a perfect way to wish Nathaniel farewell.

Birthdays

2008-11-25T08:32:00.007-05:00

Last week I had my birthday, and I thought I would write a little bit about what we did on my birthday, and I also thought it would be a good opportunity to write a funny story about someone else's birthday.

For my birthday, I was really excited because I didn't have to work until 9 pm, so I had the whole day free to do whatever I wanted. We decided that we would do a big meal all together to celebrate my birthday and Maria's birthday, which was the day before. So Ansley, Emily, Maria, and I all prepared the food. We had cucumbers with salad dressing, and big franks! Both my parents and Jacob's parents had sent us canned veggie meat, so we were able to have hot dogs with onion, mayonnaise, and ketchup that we had found in Lai on our bike trip. The meal was wonderful! And then, Ansley, Maria, and I made cookies. Sarah and James let us use their oven, and so we made some interesting cookies... We didn't have butter, so we used peanut oil, and we only had a few small eggs, so the cookies ended up tasting like slightly crumbly peanut butter cookies. They also had craisins and pecans in them! They were really good.

So that was pretty much what we did for my birthday. Then, that night I had to work the night shift, and boy was that a memorable night. Ansley and Augustin 1 (there are 2 Augustin's here) had been working and were supposed to pass the patients off to me and Gilbert. Unfortunately, Gilbert was really late, and we weren't really sure if he was going to come. He did come eventually; he had just overslept.

During change of shift we had something happen with one of our pediatric patients that affected me a lot. I can't explain why it affected me so much, and it doesn't make much sense, but here's the story.

We had one 3 year old boy in the urgencie room with tetanus and some other problems (probably malaria). Tetanus causes your body to have muscle spasms, and it's very difficult for your muscles to relax. Not many of our patients with tetanus survive because there's not a whole lot that we can do for them. We give them some medicine called Diazepam to try to relax their muscles, and there's an anti-tetanus medicine but we don't have it here at our hospital. The muscle spasms make it very difficult to breathe since your breathing is controlled by the diaphragm, which is a muscle.

So this boy had really ragged breaths, and he was having almost constant muscle spasms, they just wouldn't let up. And while Ansley, Augustin 1 (one of the local nurses), and I were standing there, he stopped breathing. So Augustin started doing chest compressions. I had never seen this boy before, that night was the first time I had seen him. I don't know what it was, but I just felt overwhelmed. I started crying silently and praying. It didn't make any sense, but I just started praying hard, "God, not him. Don't let this baby die." I even asked God to let him live, as a birthday present for me, which in retrospect seems kind of a silly thing to ask God.

Finally, he started breathing again. And the muscle spasms returned. And as we left his bedside, I thanked God, but I began to think about that baby and how tired his little body was from fighting. I prayed again that God would let him live, but then I prayed that if that wasn't best, that God would do what He knew was best.

About 20 minutes later, Gilbert came to find me and told me that he had died. I was really upset, but in some ways, I was glad for him to have rest. But it still doesn't make any sense to me why I was affected so deeply by this boy that I had never laid eyes on before, and why I had this overwhelming sense of not wanting God to let him die. That was the beginning of a long, long night shift. Generally on the night shift, we are able to sleep in between doing our work. We make sure all the 9 pm meds are done, and then we can sleep until midnight, do the midnight meds and vital signs, and then sleep until 5 am meds and vital signs. This is if all goes well and there are no emergencies.

By the time we were finished with the boy with tetanus, it was already 11 pm, so there wasn't much time before midnight meds. I decided that I would organize the registers where we keep record of what patients we have, and then I started the midnight meds and vitals. As I was finishing with the last patient, a man came up to me and said, "My sister, there is a delivery" (he said it in French of course...). So I told him to wait a minute and I would be right there. But I remember thinking, I can't do anything about it anyway-- Hortence, the mid-wife, is the only one with a key to the delivery room.

As I came to the end of the hallway and was almost outside, I heard the very familiar sound of a woman in labor. Very shortly after that, I heard the sound of a baby crying, loud. I turned the corner outside on the sidewalk, and was slightly shocked by what I saw. There was a woman squatting on the ground next to the sidewalk, and her husband was crouched down next to her holding a very agitated newborn baby.

I ran fast to get Gilbert over in pediatrics, and when I told him what happened he started running back toward the woman and her family. I wondered what on earth we were going to do because all the clamps, scissors, and bulb suctions were locked in the maternity room. Luckily, Gilbert had gone over to Hortence's house when the man and his wife first came in, so he had just come back with the key.

I sat down on the sidewalk next to the man and his wife and tried frantically to get the man to let me cover the baby with something, but he was rattling off some agitated French that I couldn't understand. I kept trying to cover the baby because it was cold outside and newborns can't regulate their own temperature anyway. Finally, Gilbert found a clamp, clamped the cord, and then cut it, so I took the baby away from the father and started covering it up. We moved the woman and her baby into the delivery room, and I began to work on taking the baby's vital signs and measurements. At one point, I remember turning around to see how Gilbert was doing with the mother, and I was met by a shocking sight. There was Gilbert with half of his hand inside the woman, doing his own little curetage sans anesthesia and sans sterile technique. I asked him if the placenta was complete, and he showed me that it was, so I'm not 100% sure what he was trying to do.

Just as we finished up all the care for the newborn and the mother, Hortence walked in looking like she had just rolled out of bed. She was about to ask how dilated the mother was when she noticed the newborn baby all wrapped up on the bed. Here's the exchange that happened between us:

Hortence: She already delivered?
Kristin: Yep.
H: Who delivered the baby, you?
K: Nope.
H: Gilbert?
K: Nope. (I smiled)
H: Well then who?
K: The father.

At this point, Hortence gave me the most shocked expression I've seen on a Chadian's face yet. It was pretty funny. So I explained to her what had happened. We moved the mother out into the maternity beds, and then Hortence insisted that we clean the delivery room right then, just in case someone else came in that night. Chadians do not know how to clean very well. Their idea of cleaning is pouring bleach water on everything. So Hortence began flooding the room with buckets of water and handed me the little thing they use to scrape the water outside. This was counterproductive; as I was sort of sweeping the water out, she was pouring more water onto the maternity bed, which then flooded the floor that I had just cleared.

Being very tired, and not wishing to continue with the counter-productivity, I just stood there until she finished. At that point, she grabbed the scraper thing and started sweeping the water out herself, which was fine with me because at that point it was almost 2 am, and I was tired and my throat was getting more and more sore.

Luckily, there were no more emergencies and I was able to get about 3 hours of sleep that night. What a night, and what a birthday.

Sick...

2008-11-21T19:28:00.003-05:00

So, I thought that you deserved some news that was not horribly outdated. Here's the first of a few.

So apparently Africa and I haven't hit it off so well. I am, yet again, sick.

Last week on Wednesday or Thursday (12th or 13th of November), I started having a sore throat and thought that another cold was coming on. I lost my voice (still don't have a voice...), and had all the normal cold symptoms- runny nose, sore throat, etc. But it just wasn't going away, and I started feeling wheezes in my lungs.

I talked to James on Tuesday... Bronchitis it is! Or at least that's what James is treating it as. So, I'm taking medicine, and to fix the wheezes in my lungs, he prescribed me some salbutamol breathing treatments. It has definitely been an interesting experience to use the nebulizer here. I've never had to do anything like that before, and I don't like it. When I finish with the medicine, I feel like I've just downed a shot of straight caffeine because it makes my heart race and I get all jittery. No good.

That night I started to get a fever, and I thought, "This can't be good..." All day Wednesday, I felt absolutely miserable. I had a fever all day long, severe nausea, headache, achy muscles, and just in general felt drained. I took a malaria test, but it came back negative. Sometimes we get false negatives, but I decided not to take the medicine just yet. I think I'm going to get re-tested on Friday if it persists. I may just start taking the malaria treatment anyway even if it's negative again. We'll see.

Lest you think that this is a completely negative blog, I will add here a blessing. We had been planning a big bike trip for a few weeks now, and it was supposed to happen this past Sunday. I went to bed on Saturday night not feeling any better- still had a very sore throat, coughing, runny nose, etc. But on Sunday morning, I woke up feeling so much better! I still didn't have a voice, and I was coughing a little bit, but I decided that I would go anyway.

We had an absolutely amazing time! It was one of the best times I've had yet in Chad. I'll have to write about it in a separate blog, but it was super fun. And I was so blessed because I was able to go, and I actually didn't feel bad all day long. We biked for probably a total of 40 km that day and went swimming. I know God must have been with me, helping me to have the energy and the health to go, and I am so very thankful.

*Post note: It's now Friday. I got re-tested for malaria, and while I was at it, I did some other tests too. The last three days I've been really fatigued. I haven't really had energy to move around much, and I was trying to figure out why, because usually I don't get that way with fevers and such, at least not that bad. I began to wonder what my hemoglobin was because I had recently given blood and stuff, so I had that checked too. The results? Malaria it is. And my hemoglobin was 10.3 g/dl (normal is somewhere above 12), so that explains the fatigue. So I got some malaria medicine and some iron pills. That ought to fix me up real fast :D I'm actually trying a different medication than Quinine this time... I have to take four pills twice a day, and it's only for three days. But I still have to take Doxy for a week. And while the new medicine lacks many of the side effects that Quinine brings, it most definitely makes me very nauseated and is probably the most disgusting thing that I've put in my mouth since entering Chad. No joke. But life is good.

Bike Trip!

2008-11-20T20:52:00.005-05:00

More current news! Are you in shock?

November 16, 2008

As I mentioned before, we had been planning a bike trip for a while. Originally it was going to be a three-day camping trip, and Nathaniel wanted to be able to meet families around the area. We had to make some changes, and we ended up deciding that we were going to bike to Lai, a slightly larger village that's 18 km away.

Sunday morning, we all met over at the middle house with bikes, backpacks, and lots of excitement. Each of us had borrowed bikes from random different people, and I had arranged to come to work late that evening because we wouldn't be back until late evening, and I was supposed to work at 3pm.

We finally got everything ready to go a little bit before 9am, and took off. It was a beautiful day-- sunshine, clear skies, and a nice, constant breeze. We couldn't have asked God for a better day to go.

I guess I should explain who exactly "we" included. There were six of us total: Nathaniel, Emily, Jacob, Ansley, me, and Daniel (the father of the house that Nathaniel stays at). Daniel was nice enough to endure the teasing from other Africans that he was hanging out with all the "Nassara" (white people). It was really fun to have him along, and it came in handy several times to have a local with us.

The trip there was not particularly eventful, but it was so much fun. We had some good times joking around with each other, taking pictures and videos, and other things. Emily had brought a harmonica, so we had fun with that. One person would play for a little bit, and then do a hand-off to another person while we were biking.

Once we got to the river, we had to be ferried across to get to town. This was definitely the most sketchy "ferry" system I've ever seen in my life. We paid 300 francs a piece to have ourselves and our bikes taken across in a long canoe-resembling tree trunk. Funny thing was that it was sewn together in places with really thick string (or very thin rope), and there was actually one man whose job was to bail out the water as we made our way across the river. There were also two people "rowing" with large bamboo type sticks that they used to push against the bottom of the river (so it really wasn't terribly deep). We were all very thankful to make it across with no problems and some good laughs.

Oh, and while we were getting in, another man came up to ride along with us, and we recognized him! His name was Paul, and he had been a patient at the hospital here for a long time. I had gotten to know him pretty well while he stayed at the hospital, and so had Jacob, so it was really cool for us to see him there and get to talk to him again.

After we got across, we biked into town, and decided to find a place to eat (it was about 11:15 when we got to town). Daniel helped us find a restaurant that would serve vegetarian food, and we all sat down for a nice meal. Restaurants here in Chad are very interesting. The one that we ate in was essentially a little closed in hangar, complete with thatched roof, and a large grass mat on the ground for you to sit on. They bring your food out on large, round platters with plates. We all had bread and a dipping sauce. The meat-eaters had a goat sauce, and the vegetarians had an interesting sauce composed of oil, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and onions (which was surprisingly very good). We also splurged and had cold drinks. Although, my drink turned out to be
disappointing; it looked like a strawberry soda, but it tasted an awful lot like bubble gum, which I don't like. But it was nice to have a cold drink.

After lunch, we decided to bike around town for fun. So we biked around for a while, just taking random turns whenever we felt like it. One funny incident from our exploration... Here in Chad, it is not uncommon to see two guys walking hand in hand, which has taken some getting used to. So as we're biking down one street, Nathaniel and Jacob start talking about this, and they started holding hands while biking down the street (they're true Chadians now... I'll have to write a blog about qualifications for being a true Chadian later). Ansley was in front of them and decided that she wanted to get a video because it was so funny, but when she went to do so, she ended up crashing and they nearly ran into her! In her defense, it really was the most graceful fall I've seen yet- she managed to walk/run out of it, but then collapsed on the ground in laughter.

There wasn't much interesting there, but it was fun to explore. There's this one bus stop (we think that's what it is) where there's a large cement thing that has paintings on it and distances from Lai to other villages. I think it's the closest thing resembling Chadian public sculpture that I've seen yet. I wish that we had gotten a picture of it, but maybe some other time. We also saw the hospital there (which looks very big and official next to ours), and we saw a funeral procession while biking through town.

After we finished riding around, we ended up at the river (a ways away from the ferry route) where it was less crowded, and we decided to go swimming. It was at this point that we realized how very sunburnt we all were. Nathaniel, Emily, and Jacob ended up swimming all the way across the river (maybe 1/4 of a mile?) and they had fun jumping off little cliffs into the water. I got tired after swimming halfway out to the sandbar, and Ansley decided to stay closer to the shore. So, I sat down on the sandbar and soaked up some more sun and cool water.

Then three random guys swam up to me, sat down in the sand across from me, and started talking to me. I was kind of irritated at first and kind of hoped that they would go away if I didn't start conversation. But alas, they were disposed to talk, and they initiated conversation. But it actually turned out being a nice conversation. They knew some people from the hospital, and we talked a little bit about religion (one was Catholic, one was Muslim, and one was an Evangelical Christian of some sort).

When we finished swimming, we went to the market where we shopped around for different things. And then we headed back. At this point, I was pretty tired. We had some issues with the ferry on the way back. Luckily, this time the boat was not sewn together, and there was no need for a bailer. However, they tried to charge us
500 francs a piece instead of 300 (people here try to rip off white people all the time and give us higher prices because they think that we're rich). So Daniel had a nice heated argument with one of the boat steerers. But it all worked out in the end.

On the way home, things were going great until we got about 6 km away from Bere, and my bike chain fell off. It fell off three times in a row before Nathaniel decided that some extra repairs were needed. He gave me his bike (which was too tall for me to ride, so I walked it) and told me to go ahead while him and Jacob fixed mine. The chain actually ended up breaking and they had to fix it. While I was walking Nathaniel's bike, several people asked me if I was ok, and a few stopped to help me, which is funny because I didn't look like I was in distress, I was just walking the bike, but no one offered to stop and help Nathaniel and Jacob who were slaving over a
broken bike chain in the sand. What can I say? I guess I just exude the air of "damsel in distress."

So we made it back without any major problems, and I was only a little bit late for the 6pm medications, which turned out to be alright because there were very few patients and I got them all done quickly. But I was most definitely exhausted by the end of the trip. Oh, one other funny thing (Christy, Emily, and Andrew will find this particularly amusing). Ansley decided that all of us deserved special awards for the trip.

Emily won the mountain-biker award because she just looked the part, and her bike looked more like a mountain bike. Nathaniel won the safari-man award because of his funny touristy, safari hat. Jacob and Ansley both got the stuntman award (Ansley for her several graceful falls, and Jacob because he'd randomly go no hands and very nearly wipe out). And I got the ghetto bike award because my bike was really ridiculous with only one pedal, a really messed up seat, broken brake handlebars (no Chadian bike has brakes by the way), and a loose chain. Oh, and Daniel got the intense Chadian award because he's pretty much one of the only Chadians we've seen who would go on an 18 km bike trip with 5 crazy white people.

After our trip we were all quite sore; we couldn't sit down comfortably for a few days (Ansley, Jacob, and I all got bruises from our bike seats). But I think we all came away with a deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It was an awesome trip.

Theory of Fearlessness

2008-11-20T18:06:00.002-05:00

This is just a small excerpt (with some slight changes) from an email I wrote, but I thought I would post it here. This is my theory of fearlessness.

It's funny; I think I've always been really fearful of lots of things. When I was little and dad and mom would leave at night even if it were just to go to the grocery store, I couldn't sleep until I heard the door open and them come in because I was afraid that something would happen to them. And even in college, there were lots of times when I was afraid of different things.

But I think that just before coming to Africa, like at the end of last semester in school, I began to realize that God had plans for me, and that he would keep me safe. I came up with a theory that has helped me not to be afraid while I'm here. It goes something like this: I don't think that God brought me to the middle of Africa just to die; I believe that He brought me here to do His work and to spread His love. And, even if God did bring me here to die, my life is in His hands, and there's no better place to be.

God has a plan for me, and I have no need to be afraid of anything that comes my way or that might come my way because fear is wasted energy when the God of the universe holds you in His hands. It's helped me to remember this a lot of times. There have been so many opportunities for fear since I've been here-- there are pit vipers here, I walk home every night by myself in the dark, the small war, and lots of others-- but I don't think I can really remember being scared except for when I was riding the horse and fell off. Even then, I think I knew that I would be ok.

I'm not saying that nothing bad will happen to me, because bad things do happen even to those who love God. But, I have no need to fear what will happen to me because ultimately, my life is in God's hands.

Dangerous Prayers

2008-11-20T13:01:00.006-05:00

Again, outdated, but it's news...

October 20, 2008

Today I didn't work at all because I have been switched to the night/evening shift until the end of October. So the way that it works is like this: One day completely off, the next day from 3pm - 9pm, then the next day 9pm - 8am. And you just cycle through that schedule. The nice thing is that i get about 2 days off each week, and there are two other nurses working with me.

So, today I was off. This afternoon Stefan decided to go riding, and I thought I would go for a ride on the other horse on my own. Ansley helped me catch Pepper, but he was being really stubborn and kind of feisty. His attitude made both of us a little nervous, so I decided not to ride. Besides, I kind of had a bad feeling about going, but I couldn't explain why. A little later, Sarah came and asked me if I wanted her to help me catch and saddle Pepper so that I could ride. So I changed my mind and decided to go.

Just as we were saddling him, Stefan came back on Bob. Unfortunately, Bob had little motivation to go fast, and Stefan didn't get much of a ride. So Stefan decided to go out riding with me. We started off at a nice slow walk. Then we got the horses to go a little faster. Sadly, when we got to one stretch of road there were a lot of kids, and Pepper gets very skittish around kids. I guess the kids here think that it's fun to scare the horses, so Pepper does not like children. Oh, I forgot one thing. Just before we had gotten to the kids, Pepper was running to catch up to Bob, and a tree branch (the end of a tree branch) rammed straight into my eye because I didn't have time to duck. At that point, I called up to Stefan and said, "I think we're going to have to go back now." I told him what happened and that I was seeing spots in my left eye. But then it started getting better, and I could see alright despite my eye hurting a lot.

So I said that we could keep going. As we got to where the kids were, Pepper started getting nervous. Stefan told me to go ahead a little way to the crossroad and wait for him there while he tried to chase the kids away. When I got to the crossroad, Pepper decided that he didn't want to wait, and he bolted. I tried to get him to stop or slow down, but he was flying. I've never in my life gone that fast on any horse. I started to get really scared when I realized that he wasn't going to slow down. Also, this was my first time riding with an English saddle, so my balance wasn't very good.

I began to pray because I just knew that I was going to fall off. Sure enough, I flew off the left side, landed on my lower back, and rolled. Sometime when I fell, I also managed to hit my head and left arm/shoulder. As I laid there, I wondered if I should try to get up or not, but thought to myself, "No, Stefan will come soon, and he'll know what to do," which was kind of a silly though because Stefan is not really medically minded, and I'm the nurse. Then I realized that I wasn't sure if I could move my left leg even if I wanted to. This brought a new fear that it might be paralyzed, which was actually kind of silly to think because I could still feel it.

Finally, I saw Stefan coming on Bob, and when he got to me, he asked if I was alright. I told him I wasn't sure if I could move, but I would try. So he gave me a hand up, and I discovered my ability to move, which was exciting, yet painful. We walked ever so slowly back to the hospital, which was luckily not far away, though I don't remember much of the walk except for a lot of pain. Once at the hospital, I explained a little of what happened to Ansley and some others. Then I went to take a shower and see what injuries I had. Thankfully, it could have been much worse. I took inventory and found that I had a scrape above my left eye, a swollen and bruised left eye, scrape on my lower back, very swollen lower back, and sore legs. All very minor, non-threatening injuries, praise God.

I walked slowly home for dinner after my shower. While I was walking home, I started to get really nauseated and felt like I might pass out. I told Berthe and the girls what happened. Then I laid down on my bed to wait for food. It was at this point that I began to cry, and I told God that I didn't want to be here. As I laid in bed, I began to try to go through what had happened, but some parts were fuzzy, and I couldn't remember. So then I began to worry that I might have a concussion, but I didn't think I had hit my head that hard, and I didn't think that I had lost consciousness. And, another odd thing, from the time I fell to the time I got home, it all felt like deja vu. I felt like I had dreamed all that happened before, every detail.

Anyway, here comes the cool part of the story. As I laid in bed crying and thinking I didn't want to be here, I thought, "No. Wait. This is just another of Satan's schemes to discourage me." And then I remembered my worship and my prayer from this morning. This morning I had been thinking about the fact that I don't praise God enough, and especially when situations are bad. I felt like I had been complaining a lot and I don't always have the most positive attitude. So this morning, I sang some praise hymns, read some Psalms of praise, and prayed that God would teach me to be like Paul- praising God in every situation.

Once I remembered my worship, I began to sing the Doxology hymn and prayed. I decided that I would have a good attitude and not complain. And once I started singing and praying, I actually began to feel joyful and at peace; it was really amazing to feel God working so clearly. Beyond that, I realized another blessing in all of this. When I was eating my dinner a little later, I noticed that my back hurt a lot less if I was sitting up straight. Since the beginning of this past summer, I've been trying to work on having better posture. So as I sat up very straight and ate my dinner, I thought, "wow, now that it hurts to slouch, maybe I'll make even more progress with my posture." As soon as I thought this, I laughed and thanked God.

Looking back, I've thought of some other blessings and things to be thankful for. First of all, I didn't break any bones, and I wasn't paralyzed- both huge blessings. Second, I feel reassured in my theory that God didn't bring me to the middle of Africa to die (I'll have to write later about my theory of fearlessness). It was also a blessing that this happened on my day off, and I don't have to work until tomorrow afternoon. Finally, I realized that it was really good that I didn't go out riding by myself the first time because had I gone alone, things could have been much worse. So, be careful what you pray for; prayers can be a dangerous thing ;)

Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Baptism By Fire

2008-11-20T12:28:00.005-05:00

Ok, this is exceptionally outdated. I wrote this in my journal and just haven't gotten around to typing it up. But this is how I got started working in the hospital.

My second Sabbath in Chad was quite memorable. I was walking to church, and it was fairly cool since it was still morning. As I came to the corner of the hospital where I turn to walk to the church, I saw some people with their large bull cow. These cows are some of the most miserable creatures I've ever seen. They're so gaunt, and they are what I imagine the seven cows representing famine in Pharoah's dream looked like.

An older man was telling a little boy (about 7 or 8 maybe) to get the cow. When the boy went to grab the rope, the cow got angry and started rushing the boy with his horn (the cows have huge, long horns). I watched in horror as the cow tossed the boy several feet in the air with his horns. The boy landed hard on the ground, and I'm really not sure how he managed not to get trampled. But somehow the boy scrambled away, and I ran over to check him out.

I didn't see any broken bones or wounds, but he was bleeding from his mouth. I frantically tried to motion for his family to carry him to the ER (Urgencie), but I think that they were in shock. I decided to run to get James, but I couldn't find him. Fortunately, by the time I finished looking for James, the family was taking the boy over to the hospital. I decided that there wasn't anything else that I could do, so I went on to church.

Church is kind of difficult here because I don't understand everything, but it's getting a lot better, especially now that I have a French hymnal and I'm learning more French. This particular Sabbath was more difficult though because in the middle of the service it started pouring down rain. So there was rain pounding the tin roof of the church, and it was almost deafening. All of us SMs had decided that on Sabbaths we would make lunch together and eat together after church. So we all went to the middle house and made egg sandwiches-- toasted bread, mayonnaise, scrambled eggs, and tomatoes. It was definitely interesting learning to cook
over a charcoal stove, but the food was amazing!

Once we were nice and full, we decided to play a game of Bible Bananagrams. That was so much fun, and it was really challenging to use only Bible words. In the middle of our second game, James came in. I was definitely surprised by his reason for coming. The hospital had been having trouble with one of the nurses not showing up to work, not doing his job, and giving patients wrong meds. Apparently, he had decided that he didn't want to come to work this Saturday, so James asked me if I would work his shift from 3 pm to 9 pm.

Needless to say, I was not very happy to have to work on Sabbath, and I was scared because there was so much I didn't know about how the hospital works. But I went. And I worked. It ended up not being that bad. It was definitely challenging and tiresome, but I think it was good for me. I think being thrown into work and out of my comfort zone was good for me because I was forced to learn fast. Maybe baptism by fire is the best way to go.

God Is Faithful

2008-11-13T21:35:00.003-05:00

Once again, I'm writing about experiences from a long, long time ago. So I hope that you don't get confused since this is old... One day, I will catch up and you will be able to read about current happenings for me in Tchad. But for now, I figure any news is good news.

September 20
I can't even begin to write down all the ways that God has been faithful to me since I've been here. But I wanted to write down a few specific things that have happened so that you can see how God is working.

The first has to do with my devotions. I really felt impressed to read in Hebrews, so I did. I don't think God could have chosen a better book for me to read at the beginning of my time here. One day in particular I was really not wanting to be here; as soon as I woke up, my first thought was, "I don't want to be here. I want to go home." That morning I read Hebrews chapter 6. All of it was encouraging, but verses 10-12 really gave me the strength to hold on. It says:

"God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised."

That's certainly not been the only time I've felt God's providence in my devotions, but it's one that I wanted to share.

Another small way that God was good to me has to do with the weather. It's rainy season right now (well, it was in September), so it rains quite a bit. One morning I was going to take my shower, and I could see storm clouds and hear thunder. I said a quick prayer asking God to hold off the rain until I was done with my shower because it was already cold (yes, it gets chilly here) and I didn't want my clothes to get wet. It wasn't until I had just finished my shower that I began to feel little raindrops heralding the storm that broke loose not five minutes later.

I mentioned before that there was one day that I really didn't want to be here... Well, there have actually been quite a few of those days (there were at the beginning anyway). It's not always even because life is hard or different here; some days I just wake up and don't want to be here. Other days I have reasons for not wanting to be here. But whatever the reason (or lack of reason), I try to pray for strength and encouragement. And God always comes through. He always gives me something to turn the day around and to give me perseverance.

One day I was irritated because my French was still not very good. The language barrier makes the other nurses not trust me (not really a problem anymore), and it makes everything more difficult. That morning, one of the nurses I was working with, Samedi, told me out of the blue that my French was getting better. And recently, several of the other nurses have told me the same thing. It's very encouraging to hear.

My French is still improving, and I think it might be a process that continues until I leave here. But lately I've been able to have mini conversations with people that I work with, and as I've gotten to know them a little better, it's given me more reason to want to stay. So as you can see, God has been good to me. And this is just a small sampling of his faithfulness.

God is so good, God is so good
God is so good, He's so good to me

*Post note: This was something I wrote in my journal a long time ago. Since then, God has proven faithful in even more ways, my French has
gotten much, much better, and I've come to love the people here. I work with some really amazing people, and I love the family that I live with. I have truly enjoyed getting to know the people here, and as much as I know I will love going home, I know that when I leave Tchad, I will miss each of the people here so very much. I've been able to have good conversations with a lot of the people and have made a lot of friends here. It seems like everywhere I go in this life, I will always be missing someone dear to me. I can't wait for the day when we can all go to heaven to live together forever, and I will never have to miss anyone again. Come quickly, Lord.

--
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." ~Hosea 2:14

Malaria and Quinine

2008-11-13T21:09:00.001-05:00

I thought that it's about time that I write a bit about malaria. Before I came to Africa, I was really worried about getting malaria, and to be honest it kind of scared me. Thankfully, I am no longer afraid of malaria; nothing like facing your fears to get rid of them. So, here's a bit about malaria.

Originally, I was going to keep score-- me versus malaria and giardia. Now, I'm not so sure because I have a feeling that the statistics might be discouraging.

I ended up getting malaria eleven days after arriving in Chad, which is funny because it takes 7-10 days after being infected to show symptoms. So I must have gotten malaria the first or second night here. Since then, I've had it two more times, each about 2-3 weeks apart. What can I say? The African mosquitoes must love my sweet, American B+ blood. I'm just hoping that I don't continue to get malaria every 2-3 weeks for the rest of my stay.

The first time I got malaria, I remember thinking that it wasn't that bad; a headache, a fever, and a little nausea. But after my second round, I took that thought back. It really isn't pleasant at all. The second time, not only did I have a headache the whole time and a fever for a day, but I also ended up being extremely nauseated for 3 days straight, and I had really bad stomach pain. Oh, and I ended up having a bad cold at the same time (thanks Stefan...).

To be completely honest though, I think that what's worse than malaria itself is the medicine used to treat it. Quinine and Doxycycline. Doxy just makes you really nauseated (as if the malaria didn't do a good enough job), even if you take it with your meals. But Quinine has a long list of awful side effects.

First of all, it causes you to have ringing in your ears. Constantly. It doesn't go away until you're finished with the medicine. Beyond that, it muffles your hearing, so you're constantly asking people to repeat what they just said.

Another side effect is evident in your stride. Quinine tends to make you dizzy, so sometimes it's difficult to walk straight. And good luck if you try to stand up too quickly; you just might find yourself face down on the ground. Usually I tried to take one dose of Quinine just before I went to bed (you have to take it three times a day) so that I would sleep through some side effects. But one time, I took it at 9 pm, went to bed, and woke up at 11 pm to use the bathroom.
Unfortunately, I forgot that I was on Quinine, and when I got out of bed, the world began to spin, and I almost fell into the wall.

The final irritating side effect of Quinine is what it does to your blood sugar. Quinine very effectively lowers your blood sugar. I was not aware of this the first few days that I took it, so when I would take my afternoon dose, I usually hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. So by about 2 pm, I would get really shaky, weak, and tired. Luckily that side effect can be easily remedied by eating something. But I learned pretty quickly not to take my Quinine without eating.

So, all in all, malaria isn't that scary. It's certainly not pleasant, but it's not frightening anymore. However, I've noticed that it seems like the times that I most want to go home are the times when I have malaria... Go figure.

--
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." ~Hosea 2:14

The Crew

2008-11-05T12:14:00.005-05:00

I thought that it would be good for me to write a blog about all of the other student missionaries who are here with me because then when I refer to them in stories, you can have an idea of what they are like and who they are.
First there is Stefan. He has been here since July, and we have been very appreciative of his French skills. He took both elementary French classes before coming here, and since he was here for two months before us, his French is very good. It was really nice because he was able to kind of show us the ropes and help translate for us. Stefan amazes me in other ways besides his French skills too. He's the youngest of all of us (19 years old), but he has such a positive outlook and a bring-it-on attitude. He's on his fifth round of malaria right now, and he's had giardia with malaria once, but nothing seems to phase him. He also seems very confident and sure of God's leading and ability to take care of things. While he's here, he's working as the accountant/administrator's assistant because he's an International Business major at Southern. He's a really good guy, and I've enjoyed getting to know him.
Jacob was the oldest until Ansley came. He's 22, and he's a pre-Med student from Southern. If it weren't for Jacob, I might not have made it on the plane to come here. I met him at the gate for our flight from Dulles; I had been crying because I just said goodbye to everyone, and I was really having second thoughts about leaving. But when I saw him, he was smiling, and excited, and he began talking about Africa and all the plans and things he couldn't wait to do. He was so enthusiastic that I couldn't help feeling somewhat reassured. I think that Satan wasn't very pleased with Jake's enthusiasm and positive attitude because when we first got to Bere, Jake had an awful start. He got really sick the second day he was here; he was vomiting, had to get IV fluids and spend his second night at the hospital, and was just generally miserable. I think he seriously considered going home (who wouldn't with a start like that?), but we all visited his house and tried to cheer and encourage him. We prayed a lot for him. Things have been much better for him since then, and he's been a big blessing here. His enthusiasm is back to its contagious self.
Next there's Jason, who is an EMT, pre-Physician's Assistant student from Union. I think he's 21 years old. He has also been extremely positive, and is always ready for adventure and new things. Kind of makes sense to me since he's an EMT and he's taking the International Relief and Response program at Union. Jason has also had his fair share of attacks from Satan. It seemed like any time he would try to jump in and help with something, it would be taken the wrong way. And, Jason didn't feel very useful at first because he was not a nurse and he didn't know French. But things have turned around a lot for him; he's learned a lot of French, and he is most definitely making himself useful.
So, for the first 5 weeks that I was here, it was just me and the guys. There were some other short term volunteers that I want to write about too, and then I'll write about the others who have come since then. Dr. Bond (his first name is James…) is a surgeon from the States who comes to volunteer every once in a while, and stays for a month or so each time. He's a funny man. And somewhat hard to read. The first time I met him, he pretended not to know English and made Klevin (another volunteer) translate. At first I insisted that he knew English, but finally decided that I would play along. It was kind of fun. He ended up being a blessing in disguise in one way. One day, I was really frustrated with him because I thought that he was expecting way too much of me too soon. His expectations were truly unrealistic, and it irritated me so much that there was no way I could live up to them. But after some thought, I realized that he was trying to push me for my own good, which was nice because a lot of times I don't push myself hard enough.
Then there was Gabriel, Dr. Bond's son. He's a 25 year old pre-Med student at PUC. At first I thought he was extremely shy, but I'm not so sure now. He had malaria when we got here, so I think that might have had something to do with it. But he's really nice, and he's very good at soccer. I'm glad that I got to know him a little bit.
Last of the volunteers that were here when I first got here is Klevin. I think he's also 21, but I can't remember for sure. He's from Brazil and is in Med school in London. I think he's planning to be a missionary doctor when he finishes, and he said he might come back here to work some. He has also considered working in the Amazon doing mission work. Klevin is a truly amazing person; I admire him a lot. He's the kind of guy that everybody loves because he's sincere and every word out of his mouth is encouraging or praising God. When he left, all the hospital workers kept asking me when he was coming back. He's going to make a good doctor someday because he really cares about people. Even though I had only known him for a little over a week, I was sad to see him leave because he was like a brother to me.
Those were all the people at the beginning of my time here in Bere. Since then, we've had some more long term volunteers come (and a lot of short term volunteers too…). Nathaniel is an engineering student from Denmark, and he's 22 years old. He is super fun, and I'm really sad because he's leaving in about 2 weeks. Right now he's teaching at the elementary school, and he's been teaching them how to sing "If You're Happy and You Know it," and when they sing, I can hear them over at the hospital (the school's not very far away, but still…). Nathaniel inspires me because he learned French so quickly, and now he visits with lots of different locals and gets to know them. He's also very funny and likes to play jokes. A bunch of us recently went to a holiday celebration near the market (more on that later maybe), and I went with my family here. As I was standing around talking with Berthe, I suddenly felt someone grab the bag on my shoulder, and I spun around real fast and was startled, and there was Nathaniel smiling and laughing at me because he had scared me. He's also quite adventurous, and we're hoping to go on a biking trip soon, but we'll see if it all works out, and I'll write about that later. One more thing about Nathaniel, I almost forgot. He amazes me because he has had just about every illness (not even joking) that you can get in Chad, but each time he has been so positive. I have never seen anyone as sincerely cheerful when they are sick, and I mean really sick. He had some really bad vomiting a few times, and when he was finished throwing up, he would come back and would still have a smile on his face and be like, "Oh, I'm alright. It's ok."
There's also a Danish girl, Maria, who just came a few weeks ago. She's 18, just graduated from high school, and will be going into medicine. She's very sweet, and at first she was quite shy. But she's definitely opened up some and we have fun talking and doing stuff together. She's really nice, and she's always willing to do whatever needs to be done. She recently helped paint one of the hospital buildings, and she goes around at the hospital on different shifts and helps out so that she can learn and be helpful. She's only staying until December though, and that's kind of sad.
Next is Ansley! Many of you already know Ansley, but I want to write about her anyway because I'm so glad she's here. Ansley and I went to high school together, and then to Southern together. She's a 23 year old nurse, and she is super positive and cheerful. She is forever encouraging me and the others here as well. She also has kind of taken the mother role, and she takes care of us when we're sick and fusses over us. She's sweet. She's also very fun and always prepared for whatever life throws her. There have already been so many times that I've been glad that she's here, and it's only been 5 weeks since she got here. One night I spent the night in Ansley's hut with her, and boy was that a memory. It was blazing hot, and there had been some unrest in Bere (I'll write about our little civil war sometime soon…), so we slept with the door closed. I slept on the grass mat on the floor with Ansley's mosquito net draped across me. Well, I guess to say that I slept would not be entirely true. I woke up at least every hour because it was hot and I was so itchy. I was really confused about why or how the mosquitoes would be biting me so much despite the mosquito net. I later discovered that I had actually been attacked by a bunch of sand fleas! You should have seen my arms… I looked like I had a skin disease. So, I didn't get much sleep at all that night, but it was really sweet of Ansley to let me stay with her. Not sure if I'll try it again anytime soon though.
Finally, there's Emily. It's kind of difficult to describe Emily; you just have to get to know her. But I'll try. She is a 22 year old student from Walla Walla, and she is pre-Physician's Assistant also. In addition, she is a phlebotomist, but we're making a nurse out of her. Actually, we're making nurses out of almost all of the SMs here. Anyway, Emily is one of the most energetic, cheerful, friendly people I've ever met in my life. She's just so full of life and love. I've already had so much fun getting to know her and hanging out together, and I know there will be more fun times ahead. Another cool thing about Emily is that she's very creative. She likes to design clothes, and before she came here she made a bunch of t-shirts that were Chad themed to raise money for her trip. She likes to sew a lot, so a lot of her clothes have some personal touches, and it's really fun.
As you can tell, we have an absolutely amazing team of missionaries here, and that's not even all of the missionaries here; those are just the student missionaries that are around my age. We've also had lots of short term people come through, older couples, middle-aged people, and then there's James and Sarah (the doctor and his wife who's a nurse). I wish that all of you could meet each of the people I've gotten to know here, but I guess you might have to wait until we get to heaven. God has called some amazing people to work here in Chad, and I feel so privileged to be able to get to know them and to work with them here. Words can't describe how much God has blessed me here.

My Family and My Hut

2008-11-04T05:52:00.001-05:00

I recently wrote this to a class of third and fourth graders who are sponsoring me while I'm in Africa, so I figured I would go ahead and post it here as well. Enjoy :)

Hello from Africa!

Some of you had some questions about what it's like to live in a hut, so I thought that I would tell you a little bit about my family here and where I live.

I live with a family here in Bere, and the mother and father have 10 kids! The father's name is Pierre, and the mother's name is Hawaa. Pierre works at the hospital giving people the medications that the doctor tells them to take. Their oldest son's name is Innocent; he's 25 years old and he's not at home right now because he's studying to become a nurse like me. There are two girls who also don't live here at home, and their names are Elodie and Bernadette, but I've never met them since they live in other villages. So those are three of the kids who don't live at home.

Of the children who live at home where I am, Bruno is the oldest, and he's 18 years old. I don't see him around very often, but he's very nice. Berthe (pronounced like Bertha) is 15 years old, and I have a lot of fun talking with her. She really likes to sing, and she sings in the church choir almost every Sabbath. Next is Ruth, who also sings in the church choir. She is 11 years old, and she is very funny, but she doesn't talk as much as Berthe. Then there is Anne, and she is 8 years old. She is very daring and likes to go swimming at the river and ride the horses we have here at the hospital. Esther is 7 years old, and she is very good at math. She's a little bit shy, but she also likes to dance and sing. Dorcas is 5 years old and she just started school today. She is a lot of fun too, and she's very smart. She can already speak three languages! The last of all the children is Bezalel pronounced Bay-zah-lay), and he's just 2 years old. He doesn't talk very much yet, but he's very funny because he always wants to be doing whatever his older sisters are doing, even if they're just going to school. So that is my family here in Africa.

Living in a hut can be lots of fun, and it's a lot like camping. Inside my hut I have a cot with a net that hangs over it to protect me from mosquitoes at night, and I have a table and a chair. It gets really hot inside the huts during the day, so I don't usually spend very much time inside. But at night time, it can get cold so I have a
nice, warm fleece blanket that I cover up with when I sleep. Every day I wake up to the roosters crowing outside my door. After I get up, I go over to our well and drop a bag tied to rope down in it to fill up my bucket. I take the bucket over to the corner of our yard where there's a grass wall set up as the shower room. Once I'm in there, I take a little cup to pour the water on myself and I wash up. Sometimes it's really cold in the morning, but usually it feels really nice when it's hot outside.

After I take my shower and get dressed, we have breakfast as a family. When we cook food here, we have a little wire basket that we put charcoal in and make a fire, just like you would for a cookout. The food here is pretty different than what we eat in America, but I'll have to tell you more about the food later.

Love,
Kristin

The Long Ride

2008-10-24T07:03:00.004-04:00

Sorry... This actually got sent before I was finished writing it, so you guys only got part of the story. We'll try again...

August 27, 2008
After my 30 minute nap, the day began. The bus we rode on was very odd. All of our bags were loaded on top and strapped down, and then we were seated. When the bus looked full, the driver started unfolding hidden seats from who knows where. What I thought was my armrest folded down and became another seat. As you can imagine, it was pretty crowded. And Africans here don't necessarily smell very pleasant. The ride itself wasn't bad except for the smell and the music. Amazingly enough,the bus had a TV screen that opened down, and we watched an odd mixture of American rap and Chadian comedy shows. We made one stop before Kelo to drop off some people, and when we stopped we got some food. My first encounter with Chadian food wasn't
all that bad (although, I couldn't eat very much because I wasn't feeling very good). We had long baguettes with some kind of peanut-based toppings that looked suspiciously like meat (it wasn't). In the middle of eating,we realized that our bus had started pulling away and honking its horn. So we ran for it while all the locals laughed. Apparently that's a common tactic to get everyone back on the bus because we certainly weren't the last people to board. When we got to Kelo, we managed to get all of our bags while Stefan haggled with the mototaxi (clandos) drivers. It was horrible. They all circled around us like a pack of hungry wolves.Thankfully, Stefan speaks French well, and he was able to get everything worked out. So we strapped our carry-on luggage on the back and climbed on behind each of our drivers. Coming to Africa,I know I'll have a lot of "firsts." Riding a clando (like a motorcycle) in a skirt was definitely a first. It was interesting and so much fun! I think our drivers were racing each other because they kept trying to pass each other. We got to stop every once in a while to wait for Jason's driver though, because he was slower and less experienced, and he kept running off the road. Things were made even more exciting by the fact that there were often large, muddy puddles in the road to be dodged. At one point, my driver had very carefully guided our clando to the edge of the road to avoid a particularly big puddle when all of a sudden, there was a huge splash! I gasped in shock at the cold, dirty water that had spattered all over me. Somehow, Jason's driver had just driven fullspeed right into the puddle, soaking all four of us. We all looked at each other and burst into laughter.
It was at that moment that I knew everything would be okay. I'm still not sure how or why I felt that way, but somehow I felt reassured that all would be well. Funny how God can use even a puddle of mud to make me feel better. The rest of the trip was uneventful and somewhat relaxing. Total travel time was around 7 hours. The whole experience made me realize that sometimes you just have to laugh at life, even when it splashes your face with mud.

The Long Ride

2008-10-05T15:58:00.001-04:00

Welcome to Africa

2008-09-27T07:42:00.004-04:00

I'm finally sitting down to type out something to post. I've now been in Africa for a month! I'm really enjoying my time here, but it certainly isn't easy, and there are times that are not quite as enjoyable. For now, I'm going to write about when I first arrived in Chad. I have a lot of other things to write about, but I figured it would be less confusing if I write things chronologically.

August 27, 2008
The plane ride was really, really long. Total travel time to the N'Djamena, Chad (the capital) was 23 hours. We went from Dulles, VA to Rome, Italy, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and finally to N'Djamena, Chad. I was traveling with two other student missionaries: Jacob, a student from Southern, and Jason, a student from Union. When we arrived in Chad, the air was moist and warm, and inside the airport there was a welcoming party for us: a small throng of mosquitoes.
They buzzed around us in a visible cloud that seemed to scream "malaria is coming!"Once through customs, some locals grabbed our baggage and passport, which made me really nervous. We tried to tell them to leave our bags alone so that we wouldn't have to pay them, but they were very insistent. When we got outside to the front of the airport, we realized that we didn't have enough small change to pay all of them. We paid them what we had, but they were not very happy. When James (the doctor from the hospital) came to pick us up, he had to argue with them,telling them that we didn't want their help in the first place. That was fun. Then James drove us to our "hotel" for the night since it was about 12:30 in the morning. After we unloaded our stuff, James explained that we'd be leaving at 6:45 am to get to the immigration office, and then to go to our bus. He had to stay in the capital for a while, so Stefan (another student issionary who was already here) would take us on the public transport and James would bring our large bags in a few days. The guys (James, Stefan, Jacob, and Jason) all had one room, and I was by myself in the other room. As I headed over to my room a random stray dog started following me closely. Then I realized that it had started gnawing on my ankle. Never in my life have I been intentionally mean to any animal. Until that moment. I was tired, homesick, and lonely, and having a dog chew on my ankle was not a happy thing. So I tried to kick it away and closed my door quickly. I sat on the floor and started to pack my small bags with enough stuff to last for 5 days, and I found the poem that my mom had laminated for me. It was at that moment that I broke down and cried. I hadn't cried since I left my family at the airport in Dulles, but that was too much. The poem is about an oak tree that stands firm and strong through rough winds, and at that moment I didn't feel very strong. I wanted to go home. And I felt alone. So I prayed. I prayed for strength, and I prayed that I wouldn't feel alone. I also decided to count my blessings, and that helped a lot. A few minutes later, one of my prayers was answered. Jason had made friends with one of the only white women on the plane (he had been trying to find Jacob and me, and he had no idea what we looked like). She had told whoever was picking her up the wrong date.So she came with us to the hotel to try to call someone on James's phone. She couldn't get in touch with anyone, so she knocked on my door and asked if she could sleep on the other bed in my room. I said she could, and I was actually glad to have someone else with me. Her name was Lacey. After I re-packed my stuff, I laid down to try to sleep, but I was mostly unsuccessful. I think I may have slept for about 30 minutes. But the beds were nice, and there was a shower, toilet, and sink. Unfortunately, it didn't make me feel much better. Mosquitoes, ferocious dogs, and loneliness. Welcome to Africa.

Update from Kristin

2008-09-17T10:30:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Chad...

Hello from Bere, Chad!

I've now been here for almost 3 weeks, which is hard for me to believe in some ways. Sometimes it seems like it's been much longer because the days go by slowly.

It's been hard to write emails and post, hence why this is 3 weeks late... I have so many stories to write and things to say, but for right now, I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm here, and that God has proven himself faithful so many times already.

I've been praying for many of you back home as well as those who have gone out as SMs. So you are all in my thoughts and prayers; I miss you lots, but like I said, God has been faithful. Hopefully I will be able to write more later!

Love,

Kristin

--
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." ~Hosea 2:14

Chad...

2008-09-16T14:00:00.001-04:00

Hello from Bere, Chad!

I've now been here for almost 3 weeks, which is hard for me to believe in some ways. Sometimes it seems like it's been much longer because the days go by slowly.

Brief Update

2008-07-25T22:15:00.004-04:00

Here's just a brief update on when I'm leaving and things like that.

I am leaving August 25th from Dulles Airport, and will fly to Rome, Italy where I have a stop over (though I don't know for how long). Then from Italy on to Ethiopia and to Tchad. I think that my flight is scheduled to be in the capital city of Tchad by 12:15 AM on August 27th. So, it's going to be a long flight... Thankfully, there is another student missionary who will be with me on the flight over, so I won't be alone.

I'm beginning to get a little more scared about going because I don't feel that I am very prepared. I know that working at a hospital in Africa will be very different from working on a cancer floor here in the states. Not to mention the language barrier. I took a French class earlier this summer, but that feels so far away from now, and I'm afraid I haven't kept it up as I should have. I reassure myself with the thought that I will pick it up quickly once I'm surrounded by people who speak it.

But despite all my fears, I am still happy to be going. I just need to remind myself that I will not be alone and God will give me strength.

"The Lord replied, 'My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.'" ~Exodus 33:14

"It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect." ~Psalm 18:32

The Beginning

2008-05-22T00:30:00.001-04:00

As you probably know if you're looking at this blog, I will soon be headed to Africa for 10 months. I feel that God has called me to serve Him in Chad, and so to Chad I go. I will be keeping this blog updated (with the help of Kelsey) before and during my travels to Africa. I want you all to be able to keep up with what's going on in my life while I'm gone and to see how God is at work.

I chose the title "Desert Journey" mainly because of the verse that is found in Hosea 2:14. It says, "Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." I chose this as my theme because, as I said before, I feel that God has called me to service in Africa. While, I'm excited about the experience I will have, I have not been fooled into thinking that it will be all roses and sunshine while I'm there. It's going to be emotionally, spiritually, and physically rough. But I know that God will be with me and will speak His comforting words of peace to my soul. My mission is service, but I also believe that God is going to use this experience to draw me even closer to Him, to help me fall deeper in love with Him.

Here are some of the details of the plan so far:
When: End of August 2008 - End of June 2009
Where: Beré Hospital in Chad, Africa
What: Serve as a nurse

More details will follow as they fall into place... Please pray for me.