A moth the size of a small bird is flying around the house right now, and it sounds like there is a dinosaur outside, but it is actually Chase, who ate something that didn’t agree with him, and it is coming back up as I write. Too much information, I know…sorry…TIA. He is green as the curtains in our living room (think pale lime sherbet). I’m not too worried yet, but I will become so if it lasts too long. Thank God we have connections at the local hospital (yes, the one with no running water or electricity, but I hope they will give us some Cipro if we need it.)
Lots of good things happened today. The weather was really, really nice. We had eggs for breakfast. The electricity has been on all day. We got a poly tank, and Lake Victoria water to start growing algae for our fish farm. Fred is back guarding our house (we are partial, trying not to be, but we are). Here’s an interesting side note about Fred, the guard. He is a very nice young man of 28 (I really CANNOT believe I am calling 28 young, like he’s my son or something, after all, he’s just a bit younger than me-ha!…but I digress). So Hayden is outside talking with Fred, and Fred asks Hayden if we have the moon and the sun in America—he seriously didn’t know whether or not we did. He also tells Hayden that he has heard of the ocean, but never seen it. For some reason, this just hit me as so unbelievable, I really hadn’t thought about it. When the best form of transportation hoped for is a bicycle, of course he has never seen the ocean. But to think that he’s never been educated in a formal sense to know about the moon and the sun and the stars…wow. And we complain if we don’t like the modality our children’s teachers are teaching in, or we think there should be more/less homework, tests, papers, etc. Cherish education, please!
Some very interesting things happened today as well. I went to the market. Not the supermarket (think 7-11 without the name brands, and no Slurpees...), not the little specialized stores that are all around, but the local market, where you feel like you are going underground, like a bunch of ants, scurrying around and carrying out whatever you see that you want. I don’t think I can find the words to adequately describe to you the market, but I wish I could. We went to an electrical store to ask where the plumbing store was, the man went out on the street, called a friend of his to watch his store, and said “Follow me.” We were literally running to keep up, going about three blocks, and all of a sudden, we were at the market. I’ve been wanting to go to the market with Anife, but haven’t yet, and maybe it is a good thing. It is little shanty shacks, probably at least 1,000 of them, stacked right next to each other, with uneven dirt and pavement, and it gets dark because a lot of it has a roof over it, and it is like a maze, not laid out orderly, but dark, noisy, and teaming with people, sights and smells…oh the smells! In the cracks and crevices, there is sewage water running freely through. There are shacks and shacks of vegetables, fruits, meat…yes…every possible part of a cow is hung up (with no refrigeration) to be purchased and cooked. The smell of raw meat is overwhelming…I can still smell it. When we got home tonight, Anife had cooked mincemeat…I couldn’t help but wonder what parts of the cow she had purchased and minced up for us to eat, I really tried hard not to think about it too long…and I ate a lot potatoes tonight! As we wound our way through the maze of the market, we passed tool shacks, shoe shacks, clothing shacks, food shacks, pot shacks, machete shacks, dishes shacks, mops and broom shacks, clothing shacks, scrap metal shacks, and finally, a plumbing shack. There we were dropped off by the electrical store owner, at his friends’ plumbing shack. This man was able to put together just what we needed, in no time at all, and then rush us to a tool shack, where his friend hooked us up with the tools needed to complete the job (the job being a hose bib at the bottom of the poly tank to release waste water in the fish tank). The market is so full of life, sights, smells, textures…I wish you all could have been there with me to experience it, it’s better than the movies!
We intended to put the hose bib on the stove and heat it really hot, and then melt it through the poly tank (kind of a MacGyver move if you ask me…remember that old TV show?), but we have become side-tracked with work related emails, and sick stomachs…we will insert the hot hose bib into the poly tank tomorrow. I can happily report that algae from the lake is growing in our back yard even as we speak (an essential we have learned in the proper feeding of tilapia). The electricity has decided to go to bed for the night, so I think that I will follow its lead. Please continue to pray for direction on the coffee house, a location at this point, is just not happening. It is in God’s hands. Say a prayer for Chase as well, he is suffering tonight.
Ciao,
Cheri
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Adrenaline Surge
We went to Kampala yesterday, to try and secure an air pump and water pump, and identify sources of supply for the coffee shop. It took us ALL day, and we basically learned some things, but purchased nothing. We ate lunch around 2 p.m. in downtown Kampala. We paid to park right in front of the restaurant, sat right there, a guard was there, plus a parking attendant, and somehow, the mirror on our car was stolen. TIA I guess. I have a new phrase to go along with TIA…it is IDC (I DON’T CARE) and I use it at times, such as whenever I tell my children to brush their teeth and they say TIA, I respond IDC. The car ride to Kampala (approximately two hours from Jinja) was great fun. Tim drove, I road shotgun on the wrong side of the road, and kept as vigilant as possible. Driving in Africa isn’t the same as driving in America—trust me, that is an understatement. I have driven around Jinja, and according to the kids and Tim, it should be a Disney ride named Cheri’s Wild Ride…Westin is the only person who wants to ride with me (I guess it’s not right to have a favorite child - but)…come on…I drive just like Tim, only on caffeine. I figure since I have a four wheel drive, why not use it? Potholes can be fun, they launch you! Also, just because I scrape the side of the curb a bit, I haven’t hit anything yet. It is very strange to back up, with a stick shift that is on the wrong side, looking over the wrong shoulder, etc. I think that if we don’t hit anything major, and we get there without too many wrong turns, I have done well. I did get yelled at by a big truck driver whom I had blocked in at the store…TIA I say!
The drive home from Kampala was seriously stressful. We were trying to get home before dark, but we didn’t leave Kampala until almost dark (in part because we also got a replacement mirror for the Land Cruiser…yeah!). Now for whatever reason, people here at night don’t drive with their lights on, and it is all two lane roads, and slow, slow trucks, and people passing them like no tomorrow (which could be true if you’re not careful.) So Tim and I were both VERY vigilant on the drive home. I had a tension headache by the time we reached Jinja. As we turned into our lane, I began to relax a bit, until…(let me give you a background story, two nights ago, three men came to our compound and asked some fishy questions, then the next morning they came again, asking more fishy questions, we suspect they are casing out the joint) a truck came up behind us on our little dirt road with its lights off, and as we turned into our little drive, it cornered us from behind, turned the lights on, and three men with guns jumped out and surrounded our car, while another man with a gun went to our gate and started to try and get in. Talk about adrenaline surge BIG TIME. I was scared beyond words. I thought for sure it was a hold up, and they were going to force us into our compound and hold us for ransom or something. So Tim said, “Should we leave?” and my response was “GET US OUT OF HERE!!!” Thank God for 4-wheel drives, we took off over the grassy hill, squealing away, while a man was running behind us yelling excuse me, excuse me, please don’t leave…once we were past the cornering of the three, Tim stopped to talk to the one man. He was the manager of the guards, our regular guard Fred, was sick, and our new guard didn’t know how to get to our house, so they were dropping him off, and had a truck full of guards they were delivering to their posts—they were trying to be polite and help us into our compound, thus the surrounding of the car. I don’t think they have any idea how much they scared us, they probably only think we are crazy Mzungu’s…which at times I definitely agree with. So, our adrenaline was kicking, but we were safe, and went into the compound and made friends with the new guard. His name is Boniface. I wanted him to be safe, so I told him about the snake that Fred had found. This was his response to me: “M’am, snakes here in Jinja are merciless, as soon as they see you, they will kill you, it is probably a cobra…I will be careful.” I thought a guard was supposed to make you feel better? Boniface didn’t, that’s for sure. So we still haven’t come upon our merciless black snake, but let me tell you, once we do…well…hell hath no fury like a woman afraid of a snake!
Again last night we had no electricity when we got home. In Kampala, we had eaten around 2 p.m., and agreed that I would make some soup when we got home. However, with no electricity, we had no way to prepare food, so we went to bed without dinner. The kids were marginally hungry, and woke up this morning starving, however, we still had no electricity. They ate a granola bar, and it did a bit to tide over their hunger. I shed some tears this morning during my devotions, for my own children who went to bed and woke up hungry, without complaining at all, but even more, for the multitudes of mothers who put their children to bed hungry every night, with no end in sight to the hunger, grateful for perhaps one, under-nourished meal a day. It truly just doesn’t seem right, in this day and age, with the resources and technology that this world has, that people would be starving—and I’m not talking "missing a few meals" starving, I’m talking "skinny, bellies sticking out from malnourishment" starving. Occasionally, I know that I will write things that will make us all feel uncomfortable, hang in there with me please, let yourself have a few moments of feeling uncomfortable, I think that we all need to feel some discomfort, because this is reality my friends. Not our reality, thank God, but the reality of millions of people with whom we share a common sense of humanity. I am reminded of the verse in Proverbs to “Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the down-and-outers. Speak out for justice. Stand up for the poor and destitute.” So please don’t leave me if you start to feel uncomfortable, but let it just work in your heart and you can decide what maybe you can do to help make a difference. At a café here in Jinja, I saw a very appropriate quote: “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Ciao,
Cheri
The drive home from Kampala was seriously stressful. We were trying to get home before dark, but we didn’t leave Kampala until almost dark (in part because we also got a replacement mirror for the Land Cruiser…yeah!). Now for whatever reason, people here at night don’t drive with their lights on, and it is all two lane roads, and slow, slow trucks, and people passing them like no tomorrow (which could be true if you’re not careful.) So Tim and I were both VERY vigilant on the drive home. I had a tension headache by the time we reached Jinja. As we turned into our lane, I began to relax a bit, until…(let me give you a background story, two nights ago, three men came to our compound and asked some fishy questions, then the next morning they came again, asking more fishy questions, we suspect they are casing out the joint) a truck came up behind us on our little dirt road with its lights off, and as we turned into our little drive, it cornered us from behind, turned the lights on, and three men with guns jumped out and surrounded our car, while another man with a gun went to our gate and started to try and get in. Talk about adrenaline surge BIG TIME. I was scared beyond words. I thought for sure it was a hold up, and they were going to force us into our compound and hold us for ransom or something. So Tim said, “Should we leave?” and my response was “GET US OUT OF HERE!!!” Thank God for 4-wheel drives, we took off over the grassy hill, squealing away, while a man was running behind us yelling excuse me, excuse me, please don’t leave…once we were past the cornering of the three, Tim stopped to talk to the one man. He was the manager of the guards, our regular guard Fred, was sick, and our new guard didn’t know how to get to our house, so they were dropping him off, and had a truck full of guards they were delivering to their posts—they were trying to be polite and help us into our compound, thus the surrounding of the car. I don’t think they have any idea how much they scared us, they probably only think we are crazy Mzungu’s…which at times I definitely agree with. So, our adrenaline was kicking, but we were safe, and went into the compound and made friends with the new guard. His name is Boniface. I wanted him to be safe, so I told him about the snake that Fred had found. This was his response to me: “M’am, snakes here in Jinja are merciless, as soon as they see you, they will kill you, it is probably a cobra…I will be careful.” I thought a guard was supposed to make you feel better? Boniface didn’t, that’s for sure. So we still haven’t come upon our merciless black snake, but let me tell you, once we do…well…hell hath no fury like a woman afraid of a snake!
Again last night we had no electricity when we got home. In Kampala, we had eaten around 2 p.m., and agreed that I would make some soup when we got home. However, with no electricity, we had no way to prepare food, so we went to bed without dinner. The kids were marginally hungry, and woke up this morning starving, however, we still had no electricity. They ate a granola bar, and it did a bit to tide over their hunger. I shed some tears this morning during my devotions, for my own children who went to bed and woke up hungry, without complaining at all, but even more, for the multitudes of mothers who put their children to bed hungry every night, with no end in sight to the hunger, grateful for perhaps one, under-nourished meal a day. It truly just doesn’t seem right, in this day and age, with the resources and technology that this world has, that people would be starving—and I’m not talking "missing a few meals" starving, I’m talking "skinny, bellies sticking out from malnourishment" starving. Occasionally, I know that I will write things that will make us all feel uncomfortable, hang in there with me please, let yourself have a few moments of feeling uncomfortable, I think that we all need to feel some discomfort, because this is reality my friends. Not our reality, thank God, but the reality of millions of people with whom we share a common sense of humanity. I am reminded of the verse in Proverbs to “Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the down-and-outers. Speak out for justice. Stand up for the poor and destitute.” So please don’t leave me if you start to feel uncomfortable, but let it just work in your heart and you can decide what maybe you can do to help make a difference. At a café here in Jinja, I saw a very appropriate quote: “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”
Ciao,
Cheri
Mangoes and Flies
I like mangoes…I hate flies…I especially hate mango flies. Let me tell you about them, as I just learned of them today. They are a small fly that lays eggs in your laundry if you leave it out past about 4:30 p.m., then the egg warms on your body the next time you wear your clothes, hatches, burrows in and grows a 2 inch worm inside you. We left our clothes out overnight last night because they weren’t dry…oh joy. So, if you iron the clothes well, it should kill the fly eggs. We went out last night and bought an iron. I felt funny ironing my underwear…but hey!
Yesterday we made progress on securing a location for the coffee shop, please pray that things work out. Today we are headed into Kampala to begin looking for equipment, we are also going to talk to another fish hatchery and see about buying an air pump and 55-gallon drum. Everything happens SO much slower here. If anything, that is the hardest part for me. I don’t like to wait around, I’m a get in there and get it done kind of person. That’s not the African way. It’s more like a slow dance ( I would equate it to country music -not my favorite!), instead of rockin’ to Bryan Adams or Bon Jovi (my style!) So I am trying to learn to slow dance a bit, and learn the lessons that go with the process.
Ciao,
Cheri
Yesterday we made progress on securing a location for the coffee shop, please pray that things work out. Today we are headed into Kampala to begin looking for equipment, we are also going to talk to another fish hatchery and see about buying an air pump and 55-gallon drum. Everything happens SO much slower here. If anything, that is the hardest part for me. I don’t like to wait around, I’m a get in there and get it done kind of person. That’s not the African way. It’s more like a slow dance ( I would equate it to country music -not my favorite!), instead of rockin’ to Bryan Adams or Bon Jovi (my style!) So I am trying to learn to slow dance a bit, and learn the lessons that go with the process.
Ciao,
Cheri
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Of Snakes and Women
Yup, it’s true; one of my biggest fears is here. The guard informed us that he saw a black snake as thick as his arm in our yard. Okay, when the Bible speaks of God putting enmity between woman and snake…well…I have an extra large dose of enmity between me and snakes. I HATE THEM. I had a lizard jump at me when I lifted the lid off the toilet this morning and I screamed. What do you think I would do if I found the snake? Of course my boys’ think it’s the greatest thing in the world now that we have a LARGE, potentially dangerous snake in our yard. Forget playing with fire, now they are moving on to bigger and better things. Bransen and Hayden have knives strapped to their waists, and they are “guarding “the compound with Mr. Fred, the guard. This is when I have to say prayers of protection over my children, and trust that God will put angels around us. Tim, ever the encourager, thinks it is a Black Mamba, the deadliest snake in the world. However, in his words, “Cheri, the bigger the better, it will be harder for it to fit through small spaces, plus if you’re ever going to be bit by a Black Mamba, Africa is the place, because maybe they have an anti-venom here.” Okay Tim, I feel much better now…
Snakes aside, today was a good day. We made progress on the coffee house, as well as the fish project. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the fish project yet, maybe I have, forgive me if I am redundant. One of my biggest passion’s regarding Africa, and especially the vulnerable women and children that we work with, is helping them find a way out of the extreme poverty they are in…instead of relying upon an American donation every month, giving them tools that will empower them to get themselves out of the situation they are in. They are hard-working people; they just don’t have many opportunities or resources. So we heard about a man back east (United States’ east), who feeds his family by raising fish in a 55 gallon drum. He raises catfish, has a faucet on the bottom of his drum that he drains off the scum from the fish, directly onto his garden, which waters and fertilizes the garden, which feeds his family vegetables. Then he takes the scraps from their food, and feeds it to worms, which he then feeds to the fish, which then feeds his family, and the cycle continues…a beautiful picture if you ask me. We wanted to find out if this is feasible in Africa. I don’t know of anyone doing this, but I already have found a way to attach an air pump to solar panels, because obviously electricity is a problem. So today, we went to the National Aqua Research & Development Center. They gave us a tour of their facility; we saw many indigenous fish and were able to ask many questions. The bottom line, they think it is very feasible for us to grow fish in a drum, with proper tank management. So we have many names of contacts for drums, air pumps, and fingerlings (baby fish), and we are going to try and set up a barrel of fish at our house, and work on that project for the next six weeks. Wouldn’t that be exciting if it works? If so, I am going to get a bottom line price to set a group of people up with the fish, and then I’m going to come knocking to as many people as possible to help fund mini fish hatcheries!
The internet set-up man just called and he should be here in 15 minutes. It is 7:20 p.m. on Monday night. I’m hoping it all works out and we should be up and running soon. I’m off for now with my flashlight to search the dark corners of my house for Black Mamba’s. Another chore I will add to my daily list until the hunters in my family can catch and kill a snake! Pray for us, please. P.S. The vegetable soup was met with a fairly warm reception. Hayden summed it up best “Mom, if this were America and you fixed it, it would be the second worst thing you’ve ever cooked, besides the corned beef and cabbage that one time, which was absolutely horrible(it was!)…but since we’re in Africa, it’s pretty okay.” Thank you…I think?
Ciao,
Cheri
Tuesday morning, no internet…TIA. The internet man came, he saw, he left. Apparently, and it sounds like he knew this was going to happen prior to coming, we need a special antenna to get a signal, which he didn’t have, so he will be back at 8:30 a.m. today with the antenna. I suspect that sometime by the end of the day, we will be online. Sleep last night was fleeting. I needed to use the facilities, however, the thought of coming upon an unwanted houseguest in the dark (ie. Black mamba) was more than I could bear, until my need to use the facility was more than I could bear. Then, I used a flashlight, and spent about five minutes sitting on my bed, looking in the dark recesses of the room before getting out of bed. All was well, except by that time, my brain was going…and I can’t always get it to shut off. This morning, I am going with Sam Tushabe and Chase, to identify some properties that are potential sites for the coffee shop. We need a new place, as the place we had planned, fell through while we were in flight. That is not a good thing, but I’m not convinced it was the best location anyway, so I think that this is going to be a situation in which when we look back, we will see that all things worked for good, that is for sure. Sam is meeting with a broker later today, to see what they might rent the sites for, however, if they know a Mzungu is interested, we will get the Mzungu price…not good. Tim is going to wait for the internet man and the special antenna…
It is 2:51 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon and we have internet! TIA! I am going to upload my blogs now.
Ciao,
Cheri
Snakes aside, today was a good day. We made progress on the coffee house, as well as the fish project. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the fish project yet, maybe I have, forgive me if I am redundant. One of my biggest passion’s regarding Africa, and especially the vulnerable women and children that we work with, is helping them find a way out of the extreme poverty they are in…instead of relying upon an American donation every month, giving them tools that will empower them to get themselves out of the situation they are in. They are hard-working people; they just don’t have many opportunities or resources. So we heard about a man back east (United States’ east), who feeds his family by raising fish in a 55 gallon drum. He raises catfish, has a faucet on the bottom of his drum that he drains off the scum from the fish, directly onto his garden, which waters and fertilizes the garden, which feeds his family vegetables. Then he takes the scraps from their food, and feeds it to worms, which he then feeds to the fish, which then feeds his family, and the cycle continues…a beautiful picture if you ask me. We wanted to find out if this is feasible in Africa. I don’t know of anyone doing this, but I already have found a way to attach an air pump to solar panels, because obviously electricity is a problem. So today, we went to the National Aqua Research & Development Center. They gave us a tour of their facility; we saw many indigenous fish and were able to ask many questions. The bottom line, they think it is very feasible for us to grow fish in a drum, with proper tank management. So we have many names of contacts for drums, air pumps, and fingerlings (baby fish), and we are going to try and set up a barrel of fish at our house, and work on that project for the next six weeks. Wouldn’t that be exciting if it works? If so, I am going to get a bottom line price to set a group of people up with the fish, and then I’m going to come knocking to as many people as possible to help fund mini fish hatcheries!
The internet set-up man just called and he should be here in 15 minutes. It is 7:20 p.m. on Monday night. I’m hoping it all works out and we should be up and running soon. I’m off for now with my flashlight to search the dark corners of my house for Black Mamba’s. Another chore I will add to my daily list until the hunters in my family can catch and kill a snake! Pray for us, please. P.S. The vegetable soup was met with a fairly warm reception. Hayden summed it up best “Mom, if this were America and you fixed it, it would be the second worst thing you’ve ever cooked, besides the corned beef and cabbage that one time, which was absolutely horrible(it was!)…but since we’re in Africa, it’s pretty okay.” Thank you…I think?
Ciao,
Cheri
Tuesday morning, no internet…TIA. The internet man came, he saw, he left. Apparently, and it sounds like he knew this was going to happen prior to coming, we need a special antenna to get a signal, which he didn’t have, so he will be back at 8:30 a.m. today with the antenna. I suspect that sometime by the end of the day, we will be online. Sleep last night was fleeting. I needed to use the facilities, however, the thought of coming upon an unwanted houseguest in the dark (ie. Black mamba) was more than I could bear, until my need to use the facility was more than I could bear. Then, I used a flashlight, and spent about five minutes sitting on my bed, looking in the dark recesses of the room before getting out of bed. All was well, except by that time, my brain was going…and I can’t always get it to shut off. This morning, I am going with Sam Tushabe and Chase, to identify some properties that are potential sites for the coffee shop. We need a new place, as the place we had planned, fell through while we were in flight. That is not a good thing, but I’m not convinced it was the best location anyway, so I think that this is going to be a situation in which when we look back, we will see that all things worked for good, that is for sure. Sam is meeting with a broker later today, to see what they might rent the sites for, however, if they know a Mzungu is interested, we will get the Mzungu price…not good. Tim is going to wait for the internet man and the special antenna…
It is 2:51 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon and we have internet! TIA! I am going to upload my blogs now.
Ciao,
Cheri
Time Stands Still
Time stands still when you’re travelling to Africa – at least that’s how it feels. The time: Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Kenya time. 11:00 a.m. Thursday morning, West Coast time. I have officially been up since 7:20 a.m., Tuesday morning. We are on our last leg of the plane trip, waiting in the Kenya airport for a 10 p.m. flight to Entebbe. We will then sleep and move into our house on Friday morning. It has been a really long time getting here; however, we are having a great time. When we landed in Kenya, we were all starving. Somehow, and believe me, this is a miracle in our family, all six of us slept through the meal service. If you know my boys, sleeping through anything that has to do with food, lets you know how very tired they are! We went to Java House in the Kenya airport and had milkshakes, Panini sandwiches; I had a great cup of tea. Kenya has the best tea I have ever had, better than even England – blasphemous, I know.
I have a growing excitement, as do we all, for what we are going to experience in the next six weeks. Tuesday as we were preparing to leave, I got a phone call from Bransen: “Hi Mom, (long pause) I REALLY don’t want to go to Africa anymore” he said with quite a bit of sadness in his voice. Uh oh I thought it’s a little late for that. I knew that he was probably feeling nervous about the unknown, and I knew that I wanted to be there for him, and not negate his feelings, but I really didn’t know what to say. “Well B, we’re leaving in just a few hours you know” “Yeah, but I don’t want to go anymore.” “Do you want to stay home with someone else? You know the tickets are bought, the arrangements are made.” “No, I want to stay home with you…” Hmmm…we didn’t really make a whole lot of progress, it was a running conversation the rest of the day, and he went to sleep still wanting to talk about not going after all. Thankfully, he woke up in the morning with great anticipation. I didn’t wake up that morning, because I never went to sleep. Tim had been telling me all day on Tuesday that he was feeling really good about where we were at with things, and thought we could be ready by 9 p.m. and get a decent night’s sleep. I looked at him as if he were a complete fool, because I know that no matter how hard you try, there are always things to be done. At 2:30 a.m., I was still cancelling the newspaper (thank God for the internet!), calling the police department so they know what is up (thank God for small towns!)
So far I haven’t thought of anything that we forgot, that is large part to my sister, who came over about 9 p.m. the night we were leaving, and talked me through everything, making sure I had thought of everything, then she helped me make a list and we hit Wal-Mart at 11 p.m., for those things we needed that I had almost forgot! Thank you Michelle! We did forget something in Amsterdam…Westin left his sweatshirt in the boarding area, his only piece of clothing that has long sleeves…that’s not a good thing.
While in Jinja, Uganda, we will be doing an assessment of the hospital there, as enroute we learned that GE is going to upgrade that hospital as well. Did you know that the hospital in Jinja, which isn’t a remote village, but a normal town in Uganda, has no running water or electricity? That boggles my mind folks; I know it is just the beginning of the boggling that is going to go on in my mind over the next six weeks. I mean, our spinach is triple-washed before we even buy it for goodness sake, and they don’t even have running water in the hospital. Things that we so take for granted, they don’t have. I’m wondering how anything gets sanitized, cooked, life-saving machines can’t run…what really can that hospital do? We will see, hopefully we will be able to get a water system and generator in place for the hospital, that alone could make a huge difference in saving people’s lives.
Friday Morning: We slept last night at a hotel near the airport; we all slept very well, quite grateful to lay out our tired bodies horizontally. I have elephant ankles…what is up with that? Obviously my circulation isn’t what it should be, but why do I have to worry about things like that…I’m only middle-aged, and everything I read tells me that 40 is the new 25…I don’t think a 25 year old would have elephant ankles just from a long plane ride…someone’s not telling me the truth here!
We are waiting for a ride out to Jinga, where we will get settled into our new house and the village we will spend a lot of time in. I am very excited, so are the boys – we have no idea what to expect and I’m trying not to expect anything, so it will all be well.
I HAVE AN ARMED GUARD OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW…more on that later. Ahhhh…our fearless leader has taken sick. Seriously, Tim ate something bad I think (although I think it is curious as to why we all aren’t sick). He is feeling dreadful…I asked him how he feels compared to when he had Malaria…Malaria wasn’t this bad he says, as his body quivers with a round of nauseous. Okay, seriously folks, Tim was my lifeline for the first few days. He was going to spend the first two days getting us set up in our house, helping me to know my way around town, etc. Now he is lying under the mosquito net, oblivious to everything and the boys are looking at me and telling me I got them into this—now what? Somehow, it is the family consensus that this entire trip was Mom’s idea. I keep reminding them that my idea actually was just that we spend the summer together as a family, it just so happens that Dad is the one going to Africa, so we needed to come along…they aren’t buying it, they still think it’s all me.
Dinner is a problem. We have no refrigerator, so everything we get, we have to get and prepare that day. The market is not within walking distance. Did I tell you all that they drive on the opposite side of the road in Uganda? We have a left-handed stick shift Toyota Land cruiser, and I’m thinking I’m going to have to take it market soon…scary thought. Chase thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world; he wants to go RIGHT NOW…I think we should give Tim a little bit longer to recover.
Now, I am not complaining, but I want to let you know how things are here, so that you can know how it really is. So let me start with our house. It is in one of the nicer sections of Jinga, it is considered expensive by Africa standards. It is in a compound which is nice, meaning there is a gate and a fence all the way around, at night we have an armed guard that walks around…armed as in a great big, scary looking gun (I took him dinner last night, because I want him to be our friend!) Nancy and Sam Tushabe, wonderful Ugandans who run the children’s village we helped to build, and will be in charge of the coffee house, have helped us secure the home and car. So I asked Nancy, why do we need a guard, what is he guarding us from? She reassured me that it was just a precaution, since we are Mzungu (white people), there is a chance someone may want to see if we have something valuable. But she assured me that with the armed guard, no one will bother us. (I could write an entire page on my feelings regarding guns, etc. but suffice it to say that I am being stretched by having an armed guard in our compound.)
Okay, back to the house. It has “proper plumbing” which means that we have a toilet, and a shower (which is a shower head, right next to the toilet, and a drain in the floor.) Sometimes we have water, and sometimes we don’t. We have no water right now in the kitchen. Let’s talk about the kitchen. There are shelves (no cupboards), there is an oven/stove that will work when we have electricity (which I am told is random), we have a small sink that doesn’t have water in it, we have no lights in the kitchen, and no refrigerator. This is going to be interesting. Those of you who know me know that first off, I spend A LOT of time in the kitchen, by virtue of the fact that I have four, growing, hungry boys. We have TWO refrigerators, to hold the milk we go through every week. So this is going to be interesting to say the least. Our beds are three inch foam on wood frames, covered in mosquito net. There is either bird poop or my kids’ think it is lizard poop, periodically on the walls and curtains. I have also found quite a bit of rat or mouse poop, but no vacuum cleaner. I’ve swept up what I can, the rest, well…I am embracing the experience, God help me! It rained last night (that is a whole other story, Tim told me it wouldn’t rain at all, so we have not come prepared for rain, Nancy says that the weather has been weird all year…global warming effects? I don’t know). Anyway, back the rain…I just can’t imagine how they deal with the rain here, because many, many people have mud floors, and tin roofs, and dirt roads, and dirt everywhere, which we all know turns to mud when it rains. We are so blessed, that is what I keep telling myself. We have NO IDEA how blessed we truly are.
So far there is no internet, and I’m not sure when that will happen, we are hoping to get it to our house. In the meantime, I am blogging, and not posting. That doesn’t work too well, but everyone will just get many blog entries when we finally do get internet. We have a new motto since we got here…TIA…it means “This is Africa”. We use it frequently, such as when we realized there isn’t water in the kitchen, or the electricity goes out, or our car is two hours late to pick us up, or something we bought doesn’t work. We actually borrowed the phrase from a movie, “Blood Diamond” which I seriously recommend that you NOT watch the night before you are moving your family to Africa for an extended period of time (note to self!) More later, I am going to join a game of catch with Smarties candy…we Reynolds’ are resourceful!
Ciao,
Cheri
Saturday night: We didn’t drive to the market, but the kids’ and I walked into town. All was well, until we were accosted by a thug, as we were later told. He started with the boys, holding a business card and asking if they had given it to him, then he came up to me, and asked me, then he grabbed me by the waist and squeezed, then I lit into him! Big time! I started yelling at him and pushing him backwards and told him to leave me alone and never touch me again. My finger was in his face, and he backed away fast. It scared me, and when I get scared, I get mean! That soured walking into town for Bransen. He doesn’t want to go again. I kind of feel like I passed my first test and survived. Tim is in bed still, not feeling good at all.
Sunday afternoon: Well, now we know we don’t have any hot water for showers. Brrrrrr…however, I start a big pot of water on the stove, and do the final rinse with warm water to heat me up, it makes me appreciate warm showers! Tim decided to join the living and we went to church this morning, and Nancy decided to “get our feet wet” slowly so she had us go to a church that she thought would be fairly American, run by some missionaries. We get there; they have already started…oops! Anyway, about 25 minutes later, the preacher is finished and says that is all, thanks for coming. We look at each other and Nancy and I tell her, that is even shorter than fast food church in America. So we meet some people, and start to head out, and they look at us weird…you are leaving now? Isn’t it over we asked? Just Sunday school, church starts at 10 a.m. – we weren’t late after all! Then we had a fairly African church experience. Exuberant singing, lots of talking that we didn’t understand, however, the preacher did preach in English and they translated into Lugandan. The boys loved it, and were quiet--whew. After church we went to Two Friends Restaurant for pizza, but they weren’t serving pizza until 6 p.m. It was only 1 p.m. and there was no way we could wait, so we ate other things, and then went up to look at Bujagali Falls and found a place that lets you bungee jump—oh boy! I guess this is what the boys’ were talking about when they said the trip could be fun if I will let it be fun? We’ll see, I’m sure there will be bungee jumping stories, I just don’t know if they will include me as a participant or an observer.
We have met a few of our neighbors. We have a youth hostel next to us, filled with probably 40 children who don’t go to bed until midnight, and get up around 5:30 a.m. I don’t get it? Don’t they need their sleep? I know I do, but 40 children are not a quiet group, that is for sure. They are boarders going to school…the fortunate ones. They work very hard, always washing their clothes, or doing chores, laughing and happy with life! It is truly a sight to see. They are quite curious about the Mzungu’s living next door to them.
We have a young woman who is coming in to help with laundry and cooking. Now this is a new and uncomfortable thing for me. However, I will never be able to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished, and have to do chores the African way. So it is a necessity. As soon as I learned that she has no job, so this is truly a blessing for her, I felt a lot better about it. You should see the laundry she is washing right now…six people…lots and lots. Her name is Anife, and she has trained to be a caterer. In the back of my head, I am hoping she will make a great employee at the Coffee House. She has only cooked us one meal so far, but it was really great! The boys were so thankful and appreciative. I think I need to make them wait until they are REALLY hungry at home, then maybe I can get some gratitude as well…
We spent the rest of Sunday, acquainting ourselves with the town, and continuing to fix up our house and make it a home. The electricity went out around 6 p.m., so I was going to try and cook vegetable soup, but couldn’t—you guess it, back to Two Friends for pizza! Yum. We found out that the two friends are a mother/son duo, Europeans. I thought that was very sweet, my boys were trying to figure out how the mom and son could be friends…
Monday morning: We are going to get internet this morning, try and secure a location for the coffee shop, go to the fish hatchery to talk about tilapia fingerlings, lots to do, I am really excited! I made vegetable soup this morning; it is on the stove simmering right now. No one has tasted it, but I’m thinking since they’ve only had a granola bar and tea so far, they might actually think it tastes good. We ran out of water this morning, and you have to climb up a tower and turn the water on and fill it. Westin drew the short straw and headed up, straight into a hornet’s nest that we were unaware of…five stings later and a big jump down from up high, he ran in the house kind of rattled. The bites were swollen up big, the younger boys came running in also because they were in the back yard playing with fire…did I just say that? TIA! Thankfully, I brought a large stock of Benadryl products. Had him take some, and sprayed some on his chest and hands, and after about two hours, the swelling has gone down. He looked at me and said matter of factly…hey, I guess I won’t die.
Ciao for now, it is time to serve up some vegetable soup!
Cheri
I have a growing excitement, as do we all, for what we are going to experience in the next six weeks. Tuesday as we were preparing to leave, I got a phone call from Bransen: “Hi Mom, (long pause) I REALLY don’t want to go to Africa anymore” he said with quite a bit of sadness in his voice. Uh oh I thought it’s a little late for that. I knew that he was probably feeling nervous about the unknown, and I knew that I wanted to be there for him, and not negate his feelings, but I really didn’t know what to say. “Well B, we’re leaving in just a few hours you know” “Yeah, but I don’t want to go anymore.” “Do you want to stay home with someone else? You know the tickets are bought, the arrangements are made.” “No, I want to stay home with you…” Hmmm…we didn’t really make a whole lot of progress, it was a running conversation the rest of the day, and he went to sleep still wanting to talk about not going after all. Thankfully, he woke up in the morning with great anticipation. I didn’t wake up that morning, because I never went to sleep. Tim had been telling me all day on Tuesday that he was feeling really good about where we were at with things, and thought we could be ready by 9 p.m. and get a decent night’s sleep. I looked at him as if he were a complete fool, because I know that no matter how hard you try, there are always things to be done. At 2:30 a.m., I was still cancelling the newspaper (thank God for the internet!), calling the police department so they know what is up (thank God for small towns!)
So far I haven’t thought of anything that we forgot, that is large part to my sister, who came over about 9 p.m. the night we were leaving, and talked me through everything, making sure I had thought of everything, then she helped me make a list and we hit Wal-Mart at 11 p.m., for those things we needed that I had almost forgot! Thank you Michelle! We did forget something in Amsterdam…Westin left his sweatshirt in the boarding area, his only piece of clothing that has long sleeves…that’s not a good thing.
While in Jinja, Uganda, we will be doing an assessment of the hospital there, as enroute we learned that GE is going to upgrade that hospital as well. Did you know that the hospital in Jinja, which isn’t a remote village, but a normal town in Uganda, has no running water or electricity? That boggles my mind folks; I know it is just the beginning of the boggling that is going to go on in my mind over the next six weeks. I mean, our spinach is triple-washed before we even buy it for goodness sake, and they don’t even have running water in the hospital. Things that we so take for granted, they don’t have. I’m wondering how anything gets sanitized, cooked, life-saving machines can’t run…what really can that hospital do? We will see, hopefully we will be able to get a water system and generator in place for the hospital, that alone could make a huge difference in saving people’s lives.
Friday Morning: We slept last night at a hotel near the airport; we all slept very well, quite grateful to lay out our tired bodies horizontally. I have elephant ankles…what is up with that? Obviously my circulation isn’t what it should be, but why do I have to worry about things like that…I’m only middle-aged, and everything I read tells me that 40 is the new 25…I don’t think a 25 year old would have elephant ankles just from a long plane ride…someone’s not telling me the truth here!
We are waiting for a ride out to Jinga, where we will get settled into our new house and the village we will spend a lot of time in. I am very excited, so are the boys – we have no idea what to expect and I’m trying not to expect anything, so it will all be well.
I HAVE AN ARMED GUARD OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW…more on that later. Ahhhh…our fearless leader has taken sick. Seriously, Tim ate something bad I think (although I think it is curious as to why we all aren’t sick). He is feeling dreadful…I asked him how he feels compared to when he had Malaria…Malaria wasn’t this bad he says, as his body quivers with a round of nauseous. Okay, seriously folks, Tim was my lifeline for the first few days. He was going to spend the first two days getting us set up in our house, helping me to know my way around town, etc. Now he is lying under the mosquito net, oblivious to everything and the boys are looking at me and telling me I got them into this—now what? Somehow, it is the family consensus that this entire trip was Mom’s idea. I keep reminding them that my idea actually was just that we spend the summer together as a family, it just so happens that Dad is the one going to Africa, so we needed to come along…they aren’t buying it, they still think it’s all me.
Dinner is a problem. We have no refrigerator, so everything we get, we have to get and prepare that day. The market is not within walking distance. Did I tell you all that they drive on the opposite side of the road in Uganda? We have a left-handed stick shift Toyota Land cruiser, and I’m thinking I’m going to have to take it market soon…scary thought. Chase thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world; he wants to go RIGHT NOW…I think we should give Tim a little bit longer to recover.
Now, I am not complaining, but I want to let you know how things are here, so that you can know how it really is. So let me start with our house. It is in one of the nicer sections of Jinga, it is considered expensive by Africa standards. It is in a compound which is nice, meaning there is a gate and a fence all the way around, at night we have an armed guard that walks around…armed as in a great big, scary looking gun (I took him dinner last night, because I want him to be our friend!) Nancy and Sam Tushabe, wonderful Ugandans who run the children’s village we helped to build, and will be in charge of the coffee house, have helped us secure the home and car. So I asked Nancy, why do we need a guard, what is he guarding us from? She reassured me that it was just a precaution, since we are Mzungu (white people), there is a chance someone may want to see if we have something valuable. But she assured me that with the armed guard, no one will bother us. (I could write an entire page on my feelings regarding guns, etc. but suffice it to say that I am being stretched by having an armed guard in our compound.)
Okay, back to the house. It has “proper plumbing” which means that we have a toilet, and a shower (which is a shower head, right next to the toilet, and a drain in the floor.) Sometimes we have water, and sometimes we don’t. We have no water right now in the kitchen. Let’s talk about the kitchen. There are shelves (no cupboards), there is an oven/stove that will work when we have electricity (which I am told is random), we have a small sink that doesn’t have water in it, we have no lights in the kitchen, and no refrigerator. This is going to be interesting. Those of you who know me know that first off, I spend A LOT of time in the kitchen, by virtue of the fact that I have four, growing, hungry boys. We have TWO refrigerators, to hold the milk we go through every week. So this is going to be interesting to say the least. Our beds are three inch foam on wood frames, covered in mosquito net. There is either bird poop or my kids’ think it is lizard poop, periodically on the walls and curtains. I have also found quite a bit of rat or mouse poop, but no vacuum cleaner. I’ve swept up what I can, the rest, well…I am embracing the experience, God help me! It rained last night (that is a whole other story, Tim told me it wouldn’t rain at all, so we have not come prepared for rain, Nancy says that the weather has been weird all year…global warming effects? I don’t know). Anyway, back the rain…I just can’t imagine how they deal with the rain here, because many, many people have mud floors, and tin roofs, and dirt roads, and dirt everywhere, which we all know turns to mud when it rains. We are so blessed, that is what I keep telling myself. We have NO IDEA how blessed we truly are.
So far there is no internet, and I’m not sure when that will happen, we are hoping to get it to our house. In the meantime, I am blogging, and not posting. That doesn’t work too well, but everyone will just get many blog entries when we finally do get internet. We have a new motto since we got here…TIA…it means “This is Africa”. We use it frequently, such as when we realized there isn’t water in the kitchen, or the electricity goes out, or our car is two hours late to pick us up, or something we bought doesn’t work. We actually borrowed the phrase from a movie, “Blood Diamond” which I seriously recommend that you NOT watch the night before you are moving your family to Africa for an extended period of time (note to self!) More later, I am going to join a game of catch with Smarties candy…we Reynolds’ are resourceful!
Ciao,
Cheri
Saturday night: We didn’t drive to the market, but the kids’ and I walked into town. All was well, until we were accosted by a thug, as we were later told. He started with the boys, holding a business card and asking if they had given it to him, then he came up to me, and asked me, then he grabbed me by the waist and squeezed, then I lit into him! Big time! I started yelling at him and pushing him backwards and told him to leave me alone and never touch me again. My finger was in his face, and he backed away fast. It scared me, and when I get scared, I get mean! That soured walking into town for Bransen. He doesn’t want to go again. I kind of feel like I passed my first test and survived. Tim is in bed still, not feeling good at all.
Sunday afternoon: Well, now we know we don’t have any hot water for showers. Brrrrrr…however, I start a big pot of water on the stove, and do the final rinse with warm water to heat me up, it makes me appreciate warm showers! Tim decided to join the living and we went to church this morning, and Nancy decided to “get our feet wet” slowly so she had us go to a church that she thought would be fairly American, run by some missionaries. We get there; they have already started…oops! Anyway, about 25 minutes later, the preacher is finished and says that is all, thanks for coming. We look at each other and Nancy and I tell her, that is even shorter than fast food church in America. So we meet some people, and start to head out, and they look at us weird…you are leaving now? Isn’t it over we asked? Just Sunday school, church starts at 10 a.m. – we weren’t late after all! Then we had a fairly African church experience. Exuberant singing, lots of talking that we didn’t understand, however, the preacher did preach in English and they translated into Lugandan. The boys loved it, and were quiet--whew. After church we went to Two Friends Restaurant for pizza, but they weren’t serving pizza until 6 p.m. It was only 1 p.m. and there was no way we could wait, so we ate other things, and then went up to look at Bujagali Falls and found a place that lets you bungee jump—oh boy! I guess this is what the boys’ were talking about when they said the trip could be fun if I will let it be fun? We’ll see, I’m sure there will be bungee jumping stories, I just don’t know if they will include me as a participant or an observer.
We have met a few of our neighbors. We have a youth hostel next to us, filled with probably 40 children who don’t go to bed until midnight, and get up around 5:30 a.m. I don’t get it? Don’t they need their sleep? I know I do, but 40 children are not a quiet group, that is for sure. They are boarders going to school…the fortunate ones. They work very hard, always washing their clothes, or doing chores, laughing and happy with life! It is truly a sight to see. They are quite curious about the Mzungu’s living next door to them.
We have a young woman who is coming in to help with laundry and cooking. Now this is a new and uncomfortable thing for me. However, I will never be able to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished, and have to do chores the African way. So it is a necessity. As soon as I learned that she has no job, so this is truly a blessing for her, I felt a lot better about it. You should see the laundry she is washing right now…six people…lots and lots. Her name is Anife, and she has trained to be a caterer. In the back of my head, I am hoping she will make a great employee at the Coffee House. She has only cooked us one meal so far, but it was really great! The boys were so thankful and appreciative. I think I need to make them wait until they are REALLY hungry at home, then maybe I can get some gratitude as well…
We spent the rest of Sunday, acquainting ourselves with the town, and continuing to fix up our house and make it a home. The electricity went out around 6 p.m., so I was going to try and cook vegetable soup, but couldn’t—you guess it, back to Two Friends for pizza! Yum. We found out that the two friends are a mother/son duo, Europeans. I thought that was very sweet, my boys were trying to figure out how the mom and son could be friends…
Monday morning: We are going to get internet this morning, try and secure a location for the coffee shop, go to the fish hatchery to talk about tilapia fingerlings, lots to do, I am really excited! I made vegetable soup this morning; it is on the stove simmering right now. No one has tasted it, but I’m thinking since they’ve only had a granola bar and tea so far, they might actually think it tastes good. We ran out of water this morning, and you have to climb up a tower and turn the water on and fill it. Westin drew the short straw and headed up, straight into a hornet’s nest that we were unaware of…five stings later and a big jump down from up high, he ran in the house kind of rattled. The bites were swollen up big, the younger boys came running in also because they were in the back yard playing with fire…did I just say that? TIA! Thankfully, I brought a large stock of Benadryl products. Had him take some, and sprayed some on his chest and hands, and after about two hours, the swelling has gone down. He looked at me and said matter of factly…hey, I guess I won’t die.
Ciao for now, it is time to serve up some vegetable soup!
Cheri
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Final Preparations
Today is it...whatever we don't get done, just simply isn't going to get done at this point. It actually is great to be at this point, you know, you have to prioritize, cut out what's not important, pare down. I know there's a bigger life lesson just in that one sentence, but honestly, today, I don't have the time to think it through - ha!
I am not only trying to get us ready for Africa, but we don't have many days after we get home, until Chase leaves for college, and the other three boys start school, so there are so many details I am trying to complete, prior to leaving (like applying for a student loan, the laptop program, a loft-system for the dorm room, changing class assignments before they all fill up, one of Chase's adorable friends last night even insisted he should call his future roommate to make sure they color-coordinate - I seriously don't think those two words have been spoken together in our house until last night, and there will be no color-coordinating, although I think it's a good idea!)
One of the responsibilities I will have while in Africa, is the establishing of a coffee house to help fund one of the children's projects that Assist has built in Uganda. We are going to establish a for-profit business to help fund the children's needs. So I'm gathering as much information as I possibly can on exactly how to establish a coffee business, and what I don't know, I figure I'll learn once I get there. Another task that will be predominantly Tim's, is the assessment of several Millenium Village Medical sites, throughout the region, that Assist is in charge of outfitting and upgrading for General Electric, in conjunction with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and the Millenium Village Project. These are the villages that are being made famous by Bono, Angelina, Madonna, etc. The kids would LOVE to run into one of these celebrities on the off chance they are visiting this summer, wouldn't that be fun? We do have the celebrities ranked in order of who we'd like to see, but that ranking will remain private to protect the guilty (I bet you can all guess who the boys want to meet!) There's actually many more things we are going to do while there, I'm sure they'll get mentioned over the course of time, but right now, I better get busy.
We haven't packed yet. Enough said. We also haven't cleaned the house yet. Hmmm....we also have football, two basketball games, a conference call and two business meetings, prescriptions to pick up, a rental car to pick up, a dog to deliver, sandals to return, protein bars to purchase, friends to say goodbye to...and all I could think about when I woke up was the Bible reading that has been on my heart: "In everything you do, put God first, and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success." -Prov. 3:6 So that is what we are going to try to do. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Ciao,
Cheri
I am not only trying to get us ready for Africa, but we don't have many days after we get home, until Chase leaves for college, and the other three boys start school, so there are so many details I am trying to complete, prior to leaving (like applying for a student loan, the laptop program, a loft-system for the dorm room, changing class assignments before they all fill up, one of Chase's adorable friends last night even insisted he should call his future roommate to make sure they color-coordinate - I seriously don't think those two words have been spoken together in our house until last night, and there will be no color-coordinating, although I think it's a good idea!)
One of the responsibilities I will have while in Africa, is the establishing of a coffee house to help fund one of the children's projects that Assist has built in Uganda. We are going to establish a for-profit business to help fund the children's needs. So I'm gathering as much information as I possibly can on exactly how to establish a coffee business, and what I don't know, I figure I'll learn once I get there. Another task that will be predominantly Tim's, is the assessment of several Millenium Village Medical sites, throughout the region, that Assist is in charge of outfitting and upgrading for General Electric, in conjunction with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and the Millenium Village Project. These are the villages that are being made famous by Bono, Angelina, Madonna, etc. The kids would LOVE to run into one of these celebrities on the off chance they are visiting this summer, wouldn't that be fun? We do have the celebrities ranked in order of who we'd like to see, but that ranking will remain private to protect the guilty (I bet you can all guess who the boys want to meet!) There's actually many more things we are going to do while there, I'm sure they'll get mentioned over the course of time, but right now, I better get busy.
We haven't packed yet. Enough said. We also haven't cleaned the house yet. Hmmm....we also have football, two basketball games, a conference call and two business meetings, prescriptions to pick up, a rental car to pick up, a dog to deliver, sandals to return, protein bars to purchase, friends to say goodbye to...and all I could think about when I woke up was the Bible reading that has been on my heart: "In everything you do, put God first, and He will direct you and crown your efforts with success." -Prov. 3:6 So that is what we are going to try to do. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Ciao,
Cheri
Monday, June 18, 2007
Hanging on to what we love
Indulge me if you would, I am sitting in my house, it's 11:54 p.m., I have a house full of teenagers that I love to the moon, and I realize that when we get back from Africa, many of them will have already left for college, so this is basically the last night they will hang out together as a group at our house. I have a lump in my throat and such joy in my heart for all of the good times and great memories that I have watching, listening and playing with these kids. So if any of you read this blog, know that the time you've spent in our house, has been a pure joy. I'm not blogging anymore tonight, because I want to enjoy the rest of this night with them.
Ciao,
Cheri
Ciao,
Cheri
Friday, June 15, 2007
Starbucks, In & Out, and Cheetos...
What do those three things have in common? They are what I am filling up on as I anticipate six weeks without my family's favorite things. As I ponder my behavior, I really am kind of disappointed in myself, thinking that I must gorge on a bag of Cheetos all by myself (I am actually partipating in that activity right now!), it's kind of like pigging out the night before you start a diet. Almost every night this week my plan for dinner has been "So, what fast food do you want tonight?" The routine has pretty much been Taco Bell, In & Out, back to Taco Bell, then In & Out...you get the picture.
Progress is being made on the plans for our adventure. I took care of some paperwork, put another load of laundry in, then went to Starbucks with some of my favorite pals, because I have priorities! Today was the dreaded day that three of us visited the travel nurse to make sure that we are current on all our shots. I've been to Africa, not all of my children have, so I logically am thinking that they will have to get more shots. We go in, the nurse goes through our files, and comes back with the results. Bransen 5, Westin 6, and Mom a whopping EIGHT shots...hello? What is wrong with that picture? My kids were laughing their heads off at me, "Mom has to get the most..." So I bravely stick my arms out for the nurse, to set the tone for my children, and after four in one arm, and a big stinking ouch typhoid shot in my second arm, I was pretty much wanting to start whining like a big baby and wishing we could stop at six...I didn't, but I sure wanted to. So we are now thoroughly immunized, from everything, seriously.
Then the nurse gave me a great big packet of information for our travels, you know, the dangers we face and precautions we should take. Well, in each country, there are big warnings on every region we are headed to. As I sat in the waiting room for the required 30 minutes post-immunization (to make sure we don't keel over with a reaction, thank you very much), I do the logical thing and pick up the phone and call Tim to discuss the warnings I am currently reading about. This is how the conversation went: "Tim, I'm reading the travel advisory on Uganda that the nurse gave m..." Tim interrupts me "Cheri, put the paper down and quit reading." "Okay, but T..." "Cheri, I'm serious, just put the paper down and quit reading." "Well ya but.." "Cheri, trust me, put the paper down and quit reading, don't worry about it." Hmmmm....I'm not sure that put a lot of confidence into me, however, I am confident we are to go, and I'm confident in Who is going before us, so I am choosing to relax and rest in that knowledge and assurance.
One of my family's favorite quotes, and it is written on our quote board in the kitchen of our house, goes something like this: (best read with a Scottish accent, think Mel Gibson in Braveheart!) "Every man dies...not every man really lives." We embrace that as a family, and I tell my children all the time, to be participants in life, not just observers. I am aware as I prepare for this trip, that sometimes being a participant hurts a bit, and is a little scary, but I'm taking my own advice. More later.
Ciao,
Cheri
Progress is being made on the plans for our adventure. I took care of some paperwork, put another load of laundry in, then went to Starbucks with some of my favorite pals, because I have priorities! Today was the dreaded day that three of us visited the travel nurse to make sure that we are current on all our shots. I've been to Africa, not all of my children have, so I logically am thinking that they will have to get more shots. We go in, the nurse goes through our files, and comes back with the results. Bransen 5, Westin 6, and Mom a whopping EIGHT shots...hello? What is wrong with that picture? My kids were laughing their heads off at me, "Mom has to get the most..." So I bravely stick my arms out for the nurse, to set the tone for my children, and after four in one arm, and a big stinking ouch typhoid shot in my second arm, I was pretty much wanting to start whining like a big baby and wishing we could stop at six...I didn't, but I sure wanted to. So we are now thoroughly immunized, from everything, seriously.
Then the nurse gave me a great big packet of information for our travels, you know, the dangers we face and precautions we should take. Well, in each country, there are big warnings on every region we are headed to. As I sat in the waiting room for the required 30 minutes post-immunization (to make sure we don't keel over with a reaction, thank you very much), I do the logical thing and pick up the phone and call Tim to discuss the warnings I am currently reading about. This is how the conversation went: "Tim, I'm reading the travel advisory on Uganda that the nurse gave m..." Tim interrupts me "Cheri, put the paper down and quit reading." "Okay, but T..." "Cheri, I'm serious, just put the paper down and quit reading." "Well ya but.." "Cheri, trust me, put the paper down and quit reading, don't worry about it." Hmmmm....I'm not sure that put a lot of confidence into me, however, I am confident we are to go, and I'm confident in Who is going before us, so I am choosing to relax and rest in that knowledge and assurance.
One of my family's favorite quotes, and it is written on our quote board in the kitchen of our house, goes something like this: (best read with a Scottish accent, think Mel Gibson in Braveheart!) "Every man dies...not every man really lives." We embrace that as a family, and I tell my children all the time, to be participants in life, not just observers. I am aware as I prepare for this trip, that sometimes being a participant hurts a bit, and is a little scary, but I'm taking my own advice. More later.
Ciao,
Cheri
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
T Minus 6 days and counting
Today is the first shopping experience I had to begin to prepare the family for our great Africa Adventure in which we leave in six short days. Now mind you, it's not like I haven't begun to prepare until today, I started preparing on Tuesday! Seriously, life is so full of events and activities, that I just take it as it comes, and prepare for the next event...finally...Africa is at the forefront. So I spent over $1K (big ouch) outfitting my crew...what did that buy? Well, not a lot when you consider I was buying for six people, and when I broke it down and realized I only spent about $166.67 per person, and that included quick-drying pants and shirts and undergarments, as well as rugged sandals for all...well...I don't feel so bad. Of course, it wasn't evenly spent amongst the six of us, because I needed not only quick drying pants, but a quick drying skirt as well, and a hat (that hopefully won't need to be quick-dried, because that would probably mean I somehow was in the water, and I've heard stories of alligators...so...), and a new pair of sunglasses. Hopefully my kids aren't reading this!
Let me introduce myself. My name is Cheri, I am 29 and SEVERAL months (I'm talking about 144 months), mother of four, wife of one, and about to embark with my family on a six week journey to Africa in which we will endeavor to touch a small number of people in a way that hopefully will make a positive impact on their lives, I know it will touch our own lives. My husband Tim goes to Africa regularly, and all of us except the youngest (Bransen) have gone at least once. Tim is Executive Director of Assist International and oversees the building of children's homes for vulnerable children, as well as the upgrading of hospitals and villages throughout Africa.
Last summer Tim was gone for most of the summer, and we all decided that we didn't like that too much, so we decided to tag along with him (the benefit of many, many airline miles that add up nicely, thank you Northwest Air!) So we are renting a house site unseen, and moving our crew over there to help with several projects. Our crew consists of Tim (the Dad who is as relaxed as any man just having another day in the office), Cheri (the Mom who is as relaxed as any woman embarking with her family to Africa and all the unknowns that can be conjerred up with a VERY active imagination), Chase (the 18 year old recent high school grad who is coming along in search of the great adventure - and he better find it, because he is giving up his last summer with all of his friends before heading out to college), Westin (the 16 year old who is giving up both a lovely girlfriend for the summer, as well as a summer of football, which is going to hurt him once the season starts--he is going to have to do 2500 up-downs to make-up for lost time!), Hayden (the 13 year old, who has mixed feelings about coming, a very tender heart and excited about helping, yet he's going to miss lots of relaxing by the pool, fun with friends, and of course...playstation), and Bransen (the 9 year old, who really has no idea what is going on regarding Africa, except that he's counting on lions, tigers and alligators...throw in some reptiles, preferably if they are in our house and make Mom scream, and he'll have a great summer adventure.) So that is our crew. We leave behind two dogs (thanks G-pa and G-ma and Alexanders!). Tomorrow I will let you know what exactly we plan to do while in Africa. Until then, I have LOTS more laundry to do, bills to pay, things to figure out, more purchases to be made, and at some point, I need to get a little bit of sleep!
I hope this blog will be something that lets those who care into our adventure, so you can send warm thoughts our way, and prayers up for safety and effectiveness.
Ciao,
Cheri
Let me introduce myself. My name is Cheri, I am 29 and SEVERAL months (I'm talking about 144 months), mother of four, wife of one, and about to embark with my family on a six week journey to Africa in which we will endeavor to touch a small number of people in a way that hopefully will make a positive impact on their lives, I know it will touch our own lives. My husband Tim goes to Africa regularly, and all of us except the youngest (Bransen) have gone at least once. Tim is Executive Director of Assist International and oversees the building of children's homes for vulnerable children, as well as the upgrading of hospitals and villages throughout Africa.
Last summer Tim was gone for most of the summer, and we all decided that we didn't like that too much, so we decided to tag along with him (the benefit of many, many airline miles that add up nicely, thank you Northwest Air!) So we are renting a house site unseen, and moving our crew over there to help with several projects. Our crew consists of Tim (the Dad who is as relaxed as any man just having another day in the office), Cheri (the Mom who is as relaxed as any woman embarking with her family to Africa and all the unknowns that can be conjerred up with a VERY active imagination), Chase (the 18 year old recent high school grad who is coming along in search of the great adventure - and he better find it, because he is giving up his last summer with all of his friends before heading out to college), Westin (the 16 year old who is giving up both a lovely girlfriend for the summer, as well as a summer of football, which is going to hurt him once the season starts--he is going to have to do 2500 up-downs to make-up for lost time!), Hayden (the 13 year old, who has mixed feelings about coming, a very tender heart and excited about helping, yet he's going to miss lots of relaxing by the pool, fun with friends, and of course...playstation), and Bransen (the 9 year old, who really has no idea what is going on regarding Africa, except that he's counting on lions, tigers and alligators...throw in some reptiles, preferably if they are in our house and make Mom scream, and he'll have a great summer adventure.) So that is our crew. We leave behind two dogs (thanks G-pa and G-ma and Alexanders!). Tomorrow I will let you know what exactly we plan to do while in Africa. Until then, I have LOTS more laundry to do, bills to pay, things to figure out, more purchases to be made, and at some point, I need to get a little bit of sleep!
I hope this blog will be something that lets those who care into our adventure, so you can send warm thoughts our way, and prayers up for safety and effectiveness.
Ciao,
Cheri
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