Hey everyone, I am just writing to
give you a bit of an up date since the last post. This week we had a car
problem! Unhelpfully, Summer and I know as much about cars as we do about
astrophysics and when you are out in Karamoja, that is not always a good thing.
Don't worry yet though, it has a happy-ish ending but I am considering trying
to squeeze in a mechanics course to go with my vet degree!
So, on Tuesday this week we headed
out to the village of Naboru's husband. Nabor is a KACHEP employee with the
chicken project as well as a neighbour and friend. Her husband, Akol Paul had invited us there
to thank us for helping Nabor when she and her newborn baby were diagnosed with
tuberculosis about a month ago. We helped with some medicines and food for her
while she was sick. When we finally arrived at his village, through the torrential downpour of rain that was happening as we drove through the mud, he brought us a large and handsom he-goat and wanted our approval of it. He was going to give us one of the biggest of K'jong honours, to slaughter a goat for us! The men made a fire out of wet thorn bushes and roasted the goat on top, resulting in a delicious smokey flavour. So we had smoked goat, danced with the women and then had a Karamajong slumber party in a mud hut, sleeping on cow skins. Paul, not a Christian, has 5 wives all of whom have different huts but we slept in the 1st wife's hut.
In the morning, we headed out to the vehicle as we were going back to Nabilatuk to plan for Thursday's program.
On Thursday we had planned a 'Keeping Healthy Animals' day at a village we hadn't had much contact with before. The theory behind the day was that the men of the village live too far from Nabilatuk township and so don't bring their sick animals to us, they just buy antibiotics from town and carry them back to their villages. The problem is though that the people here are mostly all illiterate and so unfortunately can't read the directions on the back of the medicines and don't really know how much meds to give. So very commonly they are under-dosing their animals, leading to bacterial resistance and they end up having to bring their cattle to see us anyway. Our aim was to spend the day teaching on the basics of doing a physical exam, estimating weight, common diseases and available treatments, just to give them a bit more of a knowledge base in their strive to keep healthy animals!
As we all piled into the truck to go back to Nabilatuk, Summer tried to start the car and it gave a few pathetic whines but never sparked to life. She tried again, with the same results, so we popped the hood and saw that one of the wires coming from the battery was smoking. So, imagine if you will, us, two whites and four K'jong, in a broken down car, in Africa's version of whoop whoop. Thankfully we were able to contact OPC, our neighbourly mission friends who live an hour away. They drove to a semi-central point that we both knew, we walked 10 km to meet them and then directed them through the bush to the village and our car. Thank you God for mobile phones and friends. We were towed to their compound and made the executive decision to postpone our 'Keeping Healthy Animals' day for another day, hopefully in two weeks time.
Jesse, an engineer, and son of my mission leader from CVM, worked on our car for the rest of Wednesday and some of Thursday and worked out that it was a short in the positive circuit of the battery and when we turn the car off, the short drains the battery. So by disconnecting the battery every time we turn the car off and then reconnecting it again we can use the vehicle, but it's not great. We are driving down on Saturday to a mechanic to get it properly fixed (praying!).
By around Thurs lunchtime when we had realised all of this we headed back to Nabilatuk to pack some more clothes because all we had with us were what we had from our village stay and we smelt. Badly.
When we arrived, it was to find that our neighbour had died and a funeral was going to take place that afternoon. We were worried that the afternoon rains would catch us on our drive back to OPC, but it was all fine in the end. We attended the burial, giving the family a sheet to wrap the old man's body in. It was so sad in particular because the daughter had drunk her sorrows away and was wailing at an excruciating volume. You know when you're in a situation where one person is doing something a bit out of the ordinary, and everyone knows it. I was a bit like that and it made me feel sick to see her sorrow so on display. Not that it was wrong for her to show her anguish, of course, just that I had never seen someone in so much obvious emotional pain, people usually do a good job of hiding their true feelings.
So although we are fine, it hasn't been the week we'd planned.
We know 100% that God is looking out for us and protecting us through these things but it is still a bit disappointing to be out of ministry action for a while, while the truck gets fixed.
We hope, however, that we can use the time to go up north to Kaabong and Lotim, where the team was originally meant to move to and still might. Summer has some business to sort out there before next year and I've never been and am a travel monkey so I'm along for the ride!
- Pray for safe travels on the road on Friday and that the truck would get easily sorted out.
- Praise that God had help and provision for
us in our time of need and that we now know of this problem before we were really out of reach.
- Pray for the villages we won't be able to
get to for our Bible studies next week that they would continue on without us.
- Pray for our trip up north, again for safety
on these crazy crazy roads and for a good, efficient time of business and for a
bit of fun as well.
"In their hearts humans plan
their course, but the LORD establishes their steps."
Proverbs 16:9
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