Back in Nabilatuk

18 June 2012

So we arrived back in Karamoja after our break and had a great week being welcomed warmly back by everyone and slowly getting into the swing of our lifestyle here again. Some of the highlights included:

            - Castrations of bulls over 4 years old with only a burdizzo at hand.

            - Abscess lancing on a goat and squeezing out soooo much pus that was inside.

            - Having tea with random people in the community, something everyone loves to do here and of more value to the people than most anything else you could do.

On Friday morning the local tailor (Peter) dropped by after sewing some curtains for our new stone house abode which Summer is making into a home away from home. Peter speaks relatively good English and is one of those old men who just love to tell stories about anything even when they have no relevance to the topic of discussion at the time, often leaving you confused. At one point we were talking about where we all originate from, discussing that America and Australia are on the other side of the world but Germany is only halfway on the other side of the world.
Peter got really excited when I said I was from Aus and said "You are the land of the kangaroos! Tell me, is the kangaroo more like a cow or a baboon?" Hmm... haha, how do you reply to that? I said well it doesn't stand on 4 legs like the cow but it doesn't walk like a baboon either, it hops, and unlike either, it carries it's young in a pouch on its front but like a cow it eats grass, etc, etc. haha :) So you can imagine how the conversation continued until I was told to go and get a picture of a kangaroo for him to see it instead of trying to explain. Probably the funniest question I have been asked here though!

            - Anaesthetic practice with Mojo: So our cat, Mojo, appeared to have broken her leg the other morning. As I am still the only 'vet' person here I figured I should probably try to do something about this. I spoke to Jean in America and she gave me some advice on sedatives to put her to sleep so that I could fix and set the bone, put a splint on the leg and she also suggested a reversal drug to bring her up out of sedation again. I got the medications that she suggested were good for cats (you have to be careful with cats more than dogs); a cocktail of ketamine, butorphanol and domitor with antisedan as the reversal. I weighed Mojo and did the calculations for the correct dosages and pretended to have confidence in what I was doing (more for the sake of mama Miriam than for anyone else) as I prepared everything for the surgery and administered the sedatives. Of the vet things I have done alone here so far, this was the coolest. That is until Mojo woke up again.

copyright M.Lejeune, 2012

So to begin with, within 2 minutes of injecting the sedatives, Mojo was fast asleep. I had Miriam listening to her heart and Summer helping me with the leg. In half an hour the splint was on her hindleg and it was all bandaged. Then she was moved to a quieter place and was given the 'wake up' injection (the technical term). Then within another 5 minutes she had her head up and was looking around the room from the floor where we'd put her on a towel. She seemed shocked at the turn of events that suddenly she had this bulky thing wrapped around her leg but to our suspense she remained still. It didn't take her long to get up and start staggering around the room. It also didn't take her long to bite into the splint and her leg furiously to try and get the splint off. A feat she soon achieved.

copyright M.Lejeune, 2012

 So we had an angry and confused cat on our hands, recently relieved of the weight of the splint, she suddenly turned into a bouncy ball. Man, I have never seen a cat in such a frenzy. It appeared the pain-killer effects of the sedative were still in use as she threw herself around the room trying to escape. If you've ever seen a youtube video of a cat leaping around the room even to the extent of jumping onto a ceiling fan you'll be able to picture the situation. She jumped a metre off the ground in her drowsy state, with her broken leg, onto the window sill, through the metal bars, between the glass louvers, trapping herself between the window and us. Not happy Jan. It took an hour and a half or holding her still, wrapped in a towel to calm her down. I now understand why vets put animals in cages after surgeries!

So in some ways, we are back to square one with poor Mojo. In another light it was not a complete waste of time. I learnt a lot about sedating a cat, about fixing a broken bone and about restraining a cat. But still... poor Mojo.

    - Village life
 On Wednesday evening we went to Kasiapus, a village about 20 minutes drive away that we often go to visit and tell Bible stories. They are very eager to have us pray for their village and we are very eager to oblige and disciple them to know more about our amazing God and for their lives to change from the heart outwards. When we arrived, we realised that we were not the only visitors there! Three Kenyan missionaries had come for a few days as one of them knew the village elder Olum (who works with KACHEP) from ages back. We had a lot of fun altogether chatting, I helped the elder’s wife Maria with milking the cows that had just come into manyata for the night.
  Miriam played dressups with an old woman who brought out her traditional Karamajong skirt-like heirloom that is worn on special occasions. The woman had worn it for her wedding ceremony so it was very old and unique. It isn't commonly worn anymore by the young women of this generation when they are wed. It was a soft leather wrap-around cloth, similar to the material of cowboy chaps with beautiful African beads all over it. After all of this quirkiness, we sat down and Summer told the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal from 1 Kings 18. We had been discussing with Mukisa over lunch the past couple of days the issue in Africa of 'witch doctors' and people calling on other spiritual forces in nasty rituals and practices. In our area it is not commonly talked about but it is there. The topic arose because one of the women who makes lunch for KACHEP, stole 70,000 Ugandan shillings from the office till. This is not the first time she has taken items from KACHEP but grace & warnings were issued and usually she brings things back. Olum, who is one of the local animal health workers for KACHEP said to Mukisa when he heard of the theft, that he could put his herbs around her manyata to curse her. Mukisa then sternly asked what he meant and that he didn't want any of that business here.

So through our discussions and some prayer, Summer came on this story which talks about people who were worshipping a man-made god they called Baal as well as pretending to worship our God, the God of the Israelites. LORD, Father, Son Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit.

So Elijah puts the prophets of Baal to the test and basically says right, stop wavering between 2 opinions, if the LORD is God, follow him, but if Baal is God follow him. They say nothing. Elijah then suggests they get 2 bulls to sacrifice, one for the prophets of Baal and the other for Elijah, but not burn them straight away. They are to both prepare their sacrifices and then pray to their opposing Gods; Elijah for the LORD and the prophets for Baal, praying that their God would answer them and send fire from heaven to burn the sacrifice up. Whichever bull-offering is burnt, that is the true God of the world. The prophets of Baal spend all day praying to Baal to burn the offering they have made for him. At noon, Elijah even taunts them by saying "Shout louder! Surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or travelling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened!" So it becomes evening and they've still received no answer.

Then Elijah says, ok, it's my turn. He restores the altar that had been torn down by the prophets of Baal. Putting 12 stones, for the 12 tribes of Israel, around it and digging a trench for the wood and bull-offering, Elijah then fills 4 jars of water and pours it over the bull and wood, he does this three times til the whole area and even the trench is soaked and filled with water.

Elijah then steps forward and prays to God "LORD God, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and I am your servant. Answer me so that these people will know you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again." Then fire from God the LORD falls and burns up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil and also the water in the trench. When all the people see this they fall to the ground and cry, "the LORD - he is God! the LORD - he is God".

This is a story about the impossibility of worshipping multiple gods. If you are worshipping something else in your life, as well as God, then you are not really worshipping God at all. You are either with God or against him. There are lessons to be learnt about God, humanity and ourselves from this story.

Next week I am visiting another Christian Veterinary Missionary who works 2 hours from where we live. She has just come back from furlough in America and I hope to learn heaps about how she mixes vet work and mission work :) She is currently organising to do a study on the number of animals affected by brucellosis in the area and also the effects of a local plant on milk production. She is working alongside the Karamajong to turn the knowledge that they have known and used for centuries into studied and published results to commercialise local plant products and have them seen as recognised effective medicine for humans and animals, protecting the intellectual property of the Karamajong people so it is they who reap the benefits of the work.