Sometimes things can be so hectic and I go to bed every night thinking that the next day I have to post a blog about what happened. However, the next day something else happens and the list of blogs get longer. So, in order to keep this blog from becoming a novel, I'll just give a little glimpse of the chaos in one week, July 23 to 27. :)
Saturday: things were going along pretty smoothly for the first half of the day. I had told the boys that the next time we had popcorn, they could make it because the girls had always helped - so this was the day. Unfortunately, just after noon, one of our teachers came to the door with her son, who's 18 months old. Floyd and I got to the door to see that he had blood on his clothes and it was coming from just above his lips. After cleaning up a bit, we could see that stitches were probably necessary. She and I loaded in the car and Floyd had the forethought to suggest that Tyler go with me (he's my constant helper, so I probably would have thought of it eventually). Sure enough, the little guy needed stitches. It was a good thing Tyler had come along. Tyler held his head, I held his legs, and the mom held his hands/arms to keep him from making the situation worse as the young nurse worked hard to put in the stitches with what had to be the dullest needle I've ever seen!
That certainly made for a long night, as we got home just as the sun set. We stopped in town and got little Sanchez a soda, which brought a bit of a smile. As he and his mom walked to their house, he said, "good night madame" in the cutest little voice. :)
Sunday: I had to preach for Floyd because he had been working on a project off site on Saturday and it would require some more work on Sunday (it was time sensitive and couldn't be put off). So, I gave a sermon on The Faithful Centurion. We ended with a fun song and a challenge to the children to ask every person they met along their daily path whether or not they know the Lord as their savior. Church ended and all was well. The kids had their afternoon Bible study and then it was time to make popcorn since we didn't get to do it on Saturday. Needless to say it isn't really fun to help 20 boys try to make popcorn for 80 people. They are just too full of energy. Add to that, many of them fear the dogs and the popcorn machine is in our back yard laundry room, and they all want to explore everything around the house.
Now, we finally finished making popcorn and got it handed out to everyone at the school by around 7:30 pm. I had better get started on supper because we still had to eat. As we sat down to eat around 8:15, Floyd says, "weren't you suppose to make some cookies today?"
AHHHHH!!! The next day the kids were leaving for a week at camp and parents had volunteered to bake cookies. This is not the US, snack and treats are not easily acquired outside the capital or very large cities. Since I was sending 3 kids to camp, I offered to make two batches of cookies - that's 6 dozen!!
So, I am hoping to be done by 11pm at this point. I start pulling out my ingredients and realize that both types of cookies I planned to make required one ingredient that I had ran out of earlier in the week. Now, I searched through cookbooks and recipe pages to find something for which I had all the ingredients. I did manage to come up with 2 recipes, one of which I had to look at my "substitution chart" and was able to make it work. So, at 11:15 pm, I sat down with 6 dozen cookies packed and ready to go.
Monday: Not much to say here. We loaded in the car first thing in the morning and hit the road. The kids were blessed with the opportunity to go to a week long camp for ex-pat/MK teens (MK = missionary kid, ex-pat = someone living outside their country of origin). The camp was on the shore of Lake Victoria in southern Uganda. We stopped in the city for an early lunch at 11am and kept driving. We got their and dropped the kids off about 2:45 pm. Floyd and I used the latrine, jumped in the car, and headed back home.
We reached the capital about 5pm, realizing that we would need to eat supper and it would be dark before we made it home. Recall that driving here at night is very dangerous and is avoided in as many cases as possible. Since it was just the 2 of us, a hotel at our preferred place would cost only about $19, so that definitely made the choice easier. We decided to get some supper, see a movie, and stay at the hotel. The spontaneous date night was a nice surprise. We saw the new Legend of Tarzan movie (click here to read the unique experience of seeing a movie about native Africans in a theater in Africa, full of Africans).
Tuesday: After sleeping at the hotel, we took advantage of being in the city to do some necessary paper work that Floyd would have had to travel to the city to do this week anyway (title papers for the car we bought last year only had one more step to be completed). We go that done, grabbed lunch, and headed home.
As we reached the next to last village before ours, we could see a huge smoke cloud in the distance. Floyd said, "that looks like it is at our place." Now, keep in mind, it is common for people to burn rubbish, the remains of their harvested land, and other things. A fire is not uncommon, this one just seemed really big. We knew that some crops had just been harvested in the last week, so we thought maybe that's why it looked so big.
We pulled up to the house and 3 ladies and a man were standing just outside the dorm building. At first, it seemed normal, but suddenly I had the odd feeling that they were looking at the fire and it wasn't a normal situation. Rather than going in the house, I just walked down to them, asking, "who's controlling that one." Sure enough, it was a fire gone wild. Floyd and the two men still remaining behind went to help. I grabbed the camera and followed shortly behind (they wouldn't have let me help anyway). This fire started around mid-day and was finally put out just after 5pm. Click here for some photos and video footage of the fire.
Wednesday: This day was pretty simple. I spent an hour or two at the sewing machine mending and repairing some of the girls' uniforms that had been damaged or were loosing seems. From what's left of my memories, it was a fairly normal day after that. The power went out in the afternoon. (I later saw on Facebook that the electric company said it was a problem that affected most of the country and they hoped to restore power ASAP.) After supper and every thing was done, Floyd and I sat on the back porch enjoying the beautiful scenery that surrounds us and the cool night temperature. We were thankful that the only "issue" was a power outage. :)
Thursday: This was day was also pretty simple, but not completely without issue. One of our older boarding girls started her period for the very first time (sorry guys). It wasn't a big deal to me, but no one was prepared to help her and she was the first student to have this experience here. Of course, that was the easiest to deal with. We also found out that some of the food had been used up before expected, so we had to make a run to Kapeeka for food for the school. I also had decided that I needed to make some bread. I prepared the dough and set it aside to rise. You can imagine my panic when I remembered the dough at 9:15pm. I had to do the second part of kneading, shaping, and letting it rise again. Floyd and I watched a show on his computer while it sat for the second rising. I finally finished baking bread not long before midnight.
Friday: We left the house early in the morning, shortly after sunrise to go pick up the kids. This made me glad for the fresh bread because I made a pb sandwich for the road. :) We had already arranged with the camp directors that we may be an hour or more later than the pick up time because of the great distance, but we actually got there only 8 minutes after pick up time and they were still gathering their things from the cabins/tents. We got the kids and they were full of great stories to share and new nicknames. We loaded back in the car to make the trip home. Again we stopped in the city for lunch (I'm so grateful that food is not expensive here!) and the kids went between sleeping and talking about their experiences all the way home. (You can check out some pics of the fun and the beautiful scenery in southern Uganda.)
We made it home before supper time but the excitement had not ended. While we were gone, the wellness teacher had to take a boy on a boda to the clinic. He was diagnosed with measles. (it is not vaccinated for here). Forunately, one of the matrons (dorm moms) has cared for people with that sickness many times and never had a problem, so she's caring for him and keeping him away from the other kids. (by the time I'm getting this posted, he is finished with treatments and doing well)
Around 8:15pm, the head mistress came to the door to drop off papers to be photocopied. As she handed me each one, I realized that they needed all of these copies for exams the next morning. They had failed to plan ahead. So, I spent the next hour or so making photocopies. (again, something that simple is a relief!).
Needless to say, life is an adventure!
Saturday: things were going along pretty smoothly for the first half of the day. I had told the boys that the next time we had popcorn, they could make it because the girls had always helped - so this was the day. Unfortunately, just after noon, one of our teachers came to the door with her son, who's 18 months old. Floyd and I got to the door to see that he had blood on his clothes and it was coming from just above his lips. After cleaning up a bit, we could see that stitches were probably necessary. She and I loaded in the car and Floyd had the forethought to suggest that Tyler go with me (he's my constant helper, so I probably would have thought of it eventually). Sure enough, the little guy needed stitches. It was a good thing Tyler had come along. Tyler held his head, I held his legs, and the mom held his hands/arms to keep him from making the situation worse as the young nurse worked hard to put in the stitches with what had to be the dullest needle I've ever seen!That certainly made for a long night, as we got home just as the sun set. We stopped in town and got little Sanchez a soda, which brought a bit of a smile. As he and his mom walked to their house, he said, "good night madame" in the cutest little voice. :)
Sunday: I had to preach for Floyd because he had been working on a project off site on Saturday and it would require some more work on Sunday (it was time sensitive and couldn't be put off). So, I gave a sermon on The Faithful Centurion. We ended with a fun song and a challenge to the children to ask every person they met along their daily path whether or not they know the Lord as their savior. Church ended and all was well. The kids had their afternoon Bible study and then it was time to make popcorn since we didn't get to do it on Saturday. Needless to say it isn't really fun to help 20 boys try to make popcorn for 80 people. They are just too full of energy. Add to that, many of them fear the dogs and the popcorn machine is in our back yard laundry room, and they all want to explore everything around the house.
Now, we finally finished making popcorn and got it handed out to everyone at the school by around 7:30 pm. I had better get started on supper because we still had to eat. As we sat down to eat around 8:15, Floyd says, "weren't you suppose to make some cookies today?"
AHHHHH!!! The next day the kids were leaving for a week at camp and parents had volunteered to bake cookies. This is not the US, snack and treats are not easily acquired outside the capital or very large cities. Since I was sending 3 kids to camp, I offered to make two batches of cookies - that's 6 dozen!!
So, I am hoping to be done by 11pm at this point. I start pulling out my ingredients and realize that both types of cookies I planned to make required one ingredient that I had ran out of earlier in the week. Now, I searched through cookbooks and recipe pages to find something for which I had all the ingredients. I did manage to come up with 2 recipes, one of which I had to look at my "substitution chart" and was able to make it work. So, at 11:15 pm, I sat down with 6 dozen cookies packed and ready to go.
Monday: Not much to say here. We loaded in the car first thing in the morning and hit the road. The kids were blessed with the opportunity to go to a week long camp for ex-pat/MK teens (MK = missionary kid, ex-pat = someone living outside their country of origin). The camp was on the shore of Lake Victoria in southern Uganda. We stopped in the city for an early lunch at 11am and kept driving. We got their and dropped the kids off about 2:45 pm. Floyd and I used the latrine, jumped in the car, and headed back home.
We reached the capital about 5pm, realizing that we would need to eat supper and it would be dark before we made it home. Recall that driving here at night is very dangerous and is avoided in as many cases as possible. Since it was just the 2 of us, a hotel at our preferred place would cost only about $19, so that definitely made the choice easier. We decided to get some supper, see a movie, and stay at the hotel. The spontaneous date night was a nice surprise. We saw the new Legend of Tarzan movie (click here to read the unique experience of seeing a movie about native Africans in a theater in Africa, full of Africans).
Tuesday: After sleeping at the hotel, we took advantage of being in the city to do some necessary paper work that Floyd would have had to travel to the city to do this week anyway (title papers for the car we bought last year only had one more step to be completed). We go that done, grabbed lunch, and headed home.
As we reached the next to last village before ours, we could see a huge smoke cloud in the distance. Floyd said, "that looks like it is at our place." Now, keep in mind, it is common for people to burn rubbish, the remains of their harvested land, and other things. A fire is not uncommon, this one just seemed really big. We knew that some crops had just been harvested in the last week, so we thought maybe that's why it looked so big.
We pulled up to the house and 3 ladies and a man were standing just outside the dorm building. At first, it seemed normal, but suddenly I had the odd feeling that they were looking at the fire and it wasn't a normal situation. Rather than going in the house, I just walked down to them, asking, "who's controlling that one." Sure enough, it was a fire gone wild. Floyd and the two men still remaining behind went to help. I grabbed the camera and followed shortly behind (they wouldn't have let me help anyway). This fire started around mid-day and was finally put out just after 5pm. Click here for some photos and video footage of the fire.
Wednesday: This day was pretty simple. I spent an hour or two at the sewing machine mending and repairing some of the girls' uniforms that had been damaged or were loosing seems. From what's left of my memories, it was a fairly normal day after that. The power went out in the afternoon. (I later saw on Facebook that the electric company said it was a problem that affected most of the country and they hoped to restore power ASAP.) After supper and every thing was done, Floyd and I sat on the back porch enjoying the beautiful scenery that surrounds us and the cool night temperature. We were thankful that the only "issue" was a power outage. :)
Thursday: This was day was also pretty simple, but not completely without issue. One of our older boarding girls started her period for the very first time (sorry guys). It wasn't a big deal to me, but no one was prepared to help her and she was the first student to have this experience here. Of course, that was the easiest to deal with. We also found out that some of the food had been used up before expected, so we had to make a run to Kapeeka for food for the school. I also had decided that I needed to make some bread. I prepared the dough and set it aside to rise. You can imagine my panic when I remembered the dough at 9:15pm. I had to do the second part of kneading, shaping, and letting it rise again. Floyd and I watched a show on his computer while it sat for the second rising. I finally finished baking bread not long before midnight.
Friday: We left the house early in the morning, shortly after sunrise to go pick up the kids. This made me glad for the fresh bread because I made a pb sandwich for the road. :) We had already arranged with the camp directors that we may be an hour or more later than the pick up time because of the great distance, but we actually got there only 8 minutes after pick up time and they were still gathering their things from the cabins/tents. We got the kids and they were full of great stories to share and new nicknames. We loaded back in the car to make the trip home. Again we stopped in the city for lunch (I'm so grateful that food is not expensive here!) and the kids went between sleeping and talking about their experiences all the way home. (You can check out some pics of the fun and the beautiful scenery in southern Uganda.)
We made it home before supper time but the excitement had not ended. While we were gone, the wellness teacher had to take a boy on a boda to the clinic. He was diagnosed with measles. (it is not vaccinated for here). Forunately, one of the matrons (dorm moms) has cared for people with that sickness many times and never had a problem, so she's caring for him and keeping him away from the other kids. (by the time I'm getting this posted, he is finished with treatments and doing well)
Around 8:15pm, the head mistress came to the door to drop off papers to be photocopied. As she handed me each one, I realized that they needed all of these copies for exams the next morning. They had failed to plan ahead. So, I spent the next hour or so making photocopies. (again, something that simple is a relief!).
Needless to say, life is an adventure!
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