Larry the Lizard, and life on the compound...

As I was taking my laundry down from the line today at lunch, one of the new neighbor kids popped in with his freshly caught, fingernail-sized lizard.

He asked if I wanted to play.

Living on this compound of pilots and other AIM support-based missionaries is quite different from my home in Sudan, but I'm taking it for what it's worth. There's something wonderful in being surrounded by families who put Christ at the center of their lives, and who have long made Africa their home. I hope I can learn a lot from them in the next weeks.

So far, working with the media team has been good. The whole focus of the ministry has now been thrown on to the recent events in Kenya, and finding "Christ in the Chaos." It's already opened up one opportunity for me to talk with a pastor with an amazing story, and I hope it's only the first of many.

The fellas I work with on the On Field Media team are a blessing, and they're truly gifted in what they do. I was reading Mike's blog just now. He really knows how to write. I encourage you to check it out. You'll see how I pale in comparison to the real masters!

I'm missing Sudan, my roommates and our friends. This big empty flat can seem a bit lonely at times, so I'm anxious for the team to come in from home. Emails from Pattie, Kim and Doris really make my day. I'm comforted that they could be here in time for my surgery next Friday. The idea of doing that alone isn't all that appealing. I hope the roads are safe enough by then, that I'll be able to make it up to Kijabe.

On that note, keep praying for Kenya and her church. They need your prayers.

Friendly faces...

Laudina hates the camera. She really does. But she was a good sport about letting me take some pictures before I left, so I could look at them and think of her while I was gone. You hardly ever get the women smiling, especially showing teeth. They do this strange angry-faced, stick-straight pose. I have no idea where they got it from. The army? Beats me. Anyway, I love it when my friends laugh... It's great. :)

This is Laudina, "Iye!"-ing Pattie for teasing her by taking pictures when she didn't have her angry face ready. ("YOU!") Hehe. You see, however, Thomaso was bringin' it in full force.

Little moments...

Someone here at the guesthouse asked me the other day what my best moment was in Lopitland so far.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to pin down one "best moment."

But this moment was pretty good.

After a stressful couple weeks, and after two delays of the flight I was already anxious about, I was ready to crash for a bit. Monkey peeked into my room--she has lots of good fun flying in and out of our curtained doorways--and climbed up in bed with me.

A pretty great moment.

(Pattie snuck in later and took this one. I've forgiven her for such invasion of my privacy. ;) )

That Girl (in the Mu-Mu)

Exhibit A: Mu-mu.

Also...

I should add that I'm not in danger where I am in Nairobi. I don't want any of you good folks at home a'worryin' for no reason.

It seems the worst of the chaos has passed in town, and most of the stuff you're hearing about is probably happening up country or in parts of the city I'm not in.

I think the biggest danger I face is that of death by boredom.

Yes, boredom.

It's become alarmingly clear that I have almost no friends in Nairobi. Outside of Chanda, of course. And I spend about 97% of my day just hoping that he will call or stop by. That's truly pathetic.

Tomorrow is Saturday, when boredom can be particularly lethal. So be praying. :)

Make that a trilogy...

Well, everyone, I have surgery again in two weeks.

Surgery to take the pins and wires out of my shoulder.
The pins and wires that are moving around and causing a lot of problems and pain.
The pins and wires that probably should never have been there in the first place.

Interesting, right? Yeah. I sure thought so.

After bouncing around Nairobi for the past few days, getting opinions from different doctors, I let an American at AIM’s Kijabe Hospital cast the deciding vote. He says he wouldn’t have done the surgery in the first place—“not even on a Major League pitcher”—because it’s not worth it. Imagine those words hitting your ears after you’ve spent more than half of your yearly income on flights and accommodation and medicines and appointments and the like for this dumb thing.

I confess I didn’t take it well. I ended up leaning against a tree trunk in a small, out-of-the-way graveyard outside the hospital, all alone, crying—sobbing, really—and dialing Lara’s number, though it was 1 a.m. there. Definitely one of my shining moments in Africa.

But, that’s that. I won’t go into all the details, but I guess there are different approaches to fixing a separated shoulder, and I just happened to get the guy who thought this was best and gave me some not-exactly-accurate information. And then he had absolutely ridiculous ideas to fix the problem. Something akin to whacking the protruding pins back in with a rubber mallet. (Not exactly that, but close.)

But, bygones. It’s all out of my hands now, and it could be that things are simple from here. I just have to endure the pain for another two weeks, then I’ll be in in the morning and out in the afternoon up at Kijabe. And hopefully not on any more detours to my healing and blooming MLB career.

Until then, I’m going to team up with the On Field Media team early, Lord willing, so at least I’ll be of some use while I’m forced to stay in this city.

Sideshow slideshow...

Now, let's see if this works. I put up a little slideshow over there -->.

And you can (probably) click here: Andi's pictures.

Now, I'm still working on organizing them. They're sort of a mess. And apparently the Flickr powers that be have declared you can only have 200 pictures without paying. So... look while you can, before I change them out.

Also, a confession.

It's become obvious that I have far too many pictures of Ellen.

It's just that she basically lives at our house, you know? That, and I love her. And many others...

**OK, I tried to put these in some sort of order... We'll see how this goes... Still working on it...

Idule no bongi...

Emininga inya bino-no-no. Emininga iyohoi. ;)

Picture princess...

Pattie and I just went a little wild with the camera one day, that's all...

Village views...

Lately, I've been spending more time just hanging out with Abuba and some of our other neighbors. It's been really nice. We laugh a lot. Like we are here. I love it when Abuba laughs. Though I guess she's often laughing at me...

Paula is getting older. She's beautiful.

Thomaso, playing shy. He's really a fierce cow herder...

Great Goat, Heinrich's 30!

Heinrich turned 30 last week.

It was a pretty big deal. :)

The guy has been dreaming of a birthday BBQ for literally months. But I think it turned into a bit more of a nightmare than he was ready for.

It took three days to track down a goat, with lots of false starts and failed hopes. But, he did finally drag one home and--umm--butchered it on his kitchen table. You can imagine Doris as she told me this over the radio...

So, everything was set for one amazing night. But then Heinrich got a bad fever. Can you even believe it? He's never sick. And then it rained. Poured even. You know... in dry season. Haha!

But, Heinrich is a trooper, and the man really wanted the BBQ to happen, so it did. We had a great time. HK stuck it out as long as he could, left for a nap, then came back for more. Like I said, quite the trooper.

Happy Birthday, HK!

This picture is hilarious.

Tobias, manning the grill. Turns out Tobi is a perfect gentleman, by the way. He's a huge help 'round here.

What's more adorable than a baby gnawing on a goat rib? Only baby Joy gnawing on a goat rib.

Speaking of babies... Jen had to cut my goat for me, since my shoudler is still a piece of junk. Just one humbling day after another 'round here. But, hey, we got MEAT!

Pictures...

Hey gang. I added a handful of pictures to go with some older posts. Enjoy!

Pattie Chapati...

(We are such) Suckers

More drama at Christmas...

But this was the good kind of drama.


Cath and Martin put together a really nice drama for Christmas this year, based on the story of Job. They did a great job of bringing in music and making it culturally appropriate... Well done, team.

Maandazi's with Mary...

Mary came over, and we made maandazis. Yum!

You've got a little schmutz right there...

Franco was quietly double-fisting it all night. Way to be, Eddir.

Mama Ellen

They've started calling me "hotonye Idule"--Mama Ellen. Haha.

Get to the point...

In Lopitland, if someone is being naughty, or maybe just funny, or if you just want to make fun with them, the people have this way of saying "Iye!" or "Ette!" all drawn out like. (Umm... Like... "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-YE!")

Well, Kim and I do that to Ellen sometimes when she's being Ellen, and we often point, too. Ellen started doing it back to us recently.

And that's what she's doing here...

Also, there's this old guy, David, who comes by every night and straightens the bamboo in our fence at this certain spot. He always shakes his head and talks to himself while he does it, probably cursing the children who are constantly parting the bamboo and making the hole. I'll give you one guess who the main hole-maker is.

January

Howdy, howdy! Here's my January prayer letter! Just give 'er a click and it should get big for ya.

Checking in…

When did I write last? Who knows?
I did squeeze out a prayer letter this week (that’s always a big accomplishment), and Ginger (my “U.S. Missions Manager”) seems to be all over it.
I’m not sure what I’d do without my stateside team. Bunch of superstars, they are.

Dropping Bombs…

Mary has come over nearly every morning this week to sit and take coffee with me. It’s been nice, though sometimes I struggle with what to say. My vocabulary is so limited, and really, our common ground so little, even after a year and a half of being here.
Today the topic turned to the war. She told me about fleeing to the bush up higher on the mountain with all the other women and their children. They were hiding from the planes that came and dropped bombs twice a day. I guess the men slept in the villages, dodging the bombs when they came. It’s such a strange for me to think of, this area being attacked. I can’t really fathom what strategy there would be in that, as the Lopit really don’t have much to do with anything. But I suppose war isn’t known for its tendency to make sense. Quite the opposite. She told me about Kakuma (refugee camp in Kenya) and the U.N. and their ratio cards and things. It’s strange to think that she went through that, and that people here have gone through much worse, but you wouldn’t know it from just being here. They rarely talk about things like that.
I asked her if she’d come get us before they escaped up the mountains if planes started dropping bombs again. That’s become a favorite question, because they’re appalled by our very asking of it, as if they’d leave us here! Haha. But it was an easy segue to their new favorite subject—when are we leaving and, more importantly, are we coming back.
A different kind of bombshells. ;)
A day doesn’t go by without someone asking those dreaded questions. It’s easy for Pattie; she knows she’s coming back. But I haven’t a clue. I don’t know where I’m going from here.
It’s funny, because just last night, Pattie was asking me about Campus Crusade, because I mentioned I’m considering doing at least an internship with them, stateside, for a while. And I was getting all excited talking about their vision and their method and what it would mean to me to go back to the ministry that brought me to Christ, that fed me and grew me, and eventually sent me out. And I thought, maybe this is what God has for me next!
Then Mary is telling me it’s good if I come back. And, better, come back with a husband, so I can have children here and our kids can play together. Ugh, Mary! So cruel.
Anyway, ya’ll can be praying. I’ve got six months left here on TIMO, and I want to “be where I’m at,” so to speak, as much as possible. But there are already a lot of questions about what comes next. If you hear anything from God about it, let me know. He’s about the only who hasn’t voiced a direct opinion on the matter! ;)

Streaking, pooper-scooping, and other adventures….

As I sat doing my quiet time this morning, I was cognizant of a presence at my window. I should have been, as my desk abuts the window frame, and the little shadow of a face belonging to this presence wasn’t but a couple feet from my own face, which was buried alternatively in my journal and Romans.

It was Night, one of the neighbor girls, testing the feeling of her tongue against my tattered window screen, and earnestly watching the movement of my pen and the bouncing of my somewhat-out-of-control curls as I preformed what she must know as my morning ritual. You might know it as my quiet time.

I’m often baffled at the rapt audience we have in the Lopit people, especially the children.

But, then again, I guess we are a strange lot, and sometimes I even find myself thinking of our mud-house life here as a lot like an episode of Seinfeld.

Take yesterday, for instance. As Kim and I were stirring our coffee in the kitchen, we saw a giant cow—astray from the trail nearby—trot by our kitchen window. Oh, what fun! We both dashed outside, hollering, trying to shoo it around the house, down the craggy path and out our gate. What a spectacle for the Lopit children, already perched on our front-yard rocks, ready for that day’s show. And a show they did get. It wasn’t until a few minutes into this gleeful-yet-frantic cowgirling that I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing I was still in my pajamas—shorts and a tanktop. I might as well have been running around in my skivvies. I yelped and ran back inside, to the tune of the giggling children.

Or take later in the day, when we found ourselves peering down our longdrop toilet, by the light of my headtorch. Pattie accidently shattered our water filter that morning and threw the pieces down the choo. We didn’t realize for a few hours that on that shattered filter was a little plastic piece, necessary to hook up our new filter. A curious situation indeed. Perhaps more curious was the bamboo pole/wire/kitchen cup contraption that we eventually used to pull that precious filter from the depths of that stinky hole. I can’t say our choo has ever echoed with laughter like it did yesterday afternoon, as our two blonde heads bumped and hollered at each other as we balanced that chunk of clay between our two poles and slowly pulled it out, holding our breath—more in concentration than against the smell.

So maybe I should wonder less at the children’s fascination with us, and wonder more at how we make it work out here—three single American women, living in a mud house, on a rather forgotten and remote mountainside in South Sudan.

Soap on a rope…

At the moment, Kim is trying to convince Pattie to try a bite of this neat soap Pattie got, because Kim is convinced it looks like that candy, Dots. I’m a little worried for poor Pattie, as Kim can be furiously persuasive sometimes.
“They even SMELL like Dots!”
Meanwhile, Francis (who we gave the English name “Grasshopper”) is outside, singing a song… about himself. It goes something like this: Lopit childish garble, garble, garble, “Grasshopper!” garble, garble, “Grasshopper!” garble, “Yo, yo, Grasshopper!”

Stickbread, the Sequel.

On New Year’s day, we thought it would be a lot of fun to share our new stickbread treat with the neighbor kids.

So, that afternoon, I and a handful of my favorite kids—following me much as a string of ducklings follow the mother duck—dodged and poked around in the bush, searching for good skewer sticks. I should say: I searched for the skewer sticks; they would sort of pick up any scraggly little thing, hold it up and ask if it was good.

That night I warned Laudina we were coming to make her some bread. She laughed at me when I told her. And she laughed at me even more when we showed up in her hut with our sticks, strange dough and goofy smiles on our faces. She has this way of saying our names and shaking her head with a funny grin. I get the idea she thinks we’re crazy.

So there we were, with Thomaso and Jessica, perched right on the edge of their cooking fire, trying to maneuver these long sticks we brought around the big clay pots, piles of sorghum and other random things crammed in the hut, and doing our best not to make fools of ourselves.

I doubt we succeeded in that end, but we did get some bread made, though Laudina just held the queer thing in her hand and laughed at us. Whatever the case, we eventually were outside, sitting in absolute darkness under a starless sky, cooled by the dry season wind on our faces, and laughing with our dear friend as her children drifted off next to us.

Mirror Images…

Ellen’s joy is currently found in walking around in my sandals, “helping” me type or finding small, dirty objects to stick in my keyboard. Naturally, I prefer to the former to the two latter, but am always at risk of allowing any, as a hapless victim to her tiny little grin.
I’m sitting in our front yard now, computer in my lap and children at my elbows. Ellen is so dirty, she—and I’m not exaggerating—brings the flies.
It was a mistake to get the slick, glossy screen option on my computer, as I can hardly type now, with the kids all around, jumping and dancing and giggling at their faint reflections in the white canvas of my Microsoft Word document.
What a blow to a journalist suffering from writers’ block would that be, to have children so thoroughly enjoying the blankness of your next assignment!

Slightly Discouraged

I’d say a good way to discourage me is to put me off my bicycle, into the hospital and back in Sudan doing physical therapy.
But I’d also say a BETTER way to discourage me is to do all that, then have it five weeks later and me still in a lot of pain.
I’m back to left-handed typing tonight, on account of being back in this terrible immobilizer contraption—by my own doing, in an attempt to make my shoulder stop hurting, if only for a little bit, and at the cost of sweating buckets. (It’s very hot.) I’ve had moments where I feel like there are knives in my shoulder, but the last few days, it’s been like that quite a lot. I probably just did too much and have brought this on myself—even more frustrating.
Anyway, just pray for patience—I’ve never had much in the area of injury, and the well is running a bit dry!

Kenya

I never would have thought that our security concerns would have come from outside Sudan—imagine!
I’m sure you’ve heard what’s going on in Kenya. We are also aware (or becoming so). Kim and I are listening to the BBC now, in fact.
I’m not sure how things will affect us exactly, but be praying for wisdom in how we act in light of the stuff that’s going down over there, since Kenya has always been a sort of lifeline for us.
More when I know more…

When does dead mean dead?

Yesterday the sound of wailing was added to the sound of my watch’s alarm going off in the early twilight of morning.
It wasn’t such a surprise, this sign of a funeral, because our neighbor kid—Monday—has been sick for a while. In fact, you might remember her as the girl who in November “died” and was “resurrected.” (That would make this funeral number two.) She also lived on the same compound as Tito, the little boy we lost not a month ago, and next door to Ichol, who died on Christmas Eve. Kim and I have been watching her, and even got her mom to take her to the clinic, but it seems they didn’t do much for her either.
I slunk out of bed, tossed a mu-mu over my pajamas and climbed up the path to her mom’s compound.
My fear was confirmed on the way there by a simple exchange with Laudina.
“Who?”
“Monday. Monday is dead.”
So I went and sat with the other women as they cried (“Oye hito! Oye hito!”/“A child has died! A child has died!”) and thought more about life and ministry here, as the twilight turned into dawn, and then I came back home.
The day didn’t get much better from there, as I was puking most of the morning and sleeping much of the day, but it took a curious turn that afternoon, when Mary came for tea.
We asked her if she’d been to the house of the funeral. She said yes, Monday had died, and now they had taken her to Sohot. Her heart is still beating, like this (and she pulsed her hand, from fist to splayed fingers).
She died, but her heart is still beating?
Yes.
But she died. Last night, she died.
Yes.
But her heart is still beating, like this?
Yes. She died, but her heart is still beating.
They’ve taken her where?
To the witchdoctor, in Sohot.
Got it.
Again, a concept of Lopit thought that finds no place in the organization and thinking of my Western mind. And what, then, of our Gospel message? What does it mean for Jesus to die? Was he dead, as in DEAD dead—what I think of as dead—or was he dead like Monday was dead (this time, or last time)? And what does it mean for him to be raised from the dead? Does that land with its full magnitude? Or is it an every-day thing, not in any way remarkable? Consider, this girl “died” and “lived again” not once, but TWICE.
So, these questions were raised among my other thoughts, thoughts of a creeping something—something akin to fatalism of the Lopit, I guess, before it was checked by truth. I don’t know why our kids keep dying—closer and closer to our inner circle of friends—and I don’t know why everything we do doesn’t help.
Kim got stung by a scorpion that night—this is how our days go lately, heaped with things—and nearly at the same time, the wailing started up again. (Funeral number three, if you’re counting.) I figured Monday had finally passed, and, when I went by the next morning to offer my sorrys, the small mound of freshly placed dirt next to the house, next to the fading mound of Tito, told me I was right.
Or, at least, I hoped I was right.
Because the alternative is really horrifying.

Happy New Year!

We shared a quiet New Year’s Eve with Heinrich, Doris and the two teachers last night.

Heinrich and Doris invited us over, and—I’m telling you—they really know how to make a mud house a home. They’ve built a little sitting area out in back of their house, so we sat out there on grass mats and under the stars. Doris set out some candles, balloons and cold sodas; Heinrich lit a cozy little bonfire. These days, it’s rare that we get to share a relaxing evening with one another—let alone one full of laughter—so this was a really special night.

Would you believe we didn’t have a Lopit audience at all? It certainly was peculiar. The village was abnormally quiet, and left us all to our quietly festive selves. What a blessing.

In the course of the night, Kim and I were able to unfold some of the mysteries of our culture to our wonderful hosts. Earlier in the day, Heinrich had chanced to see a measuring cup at our house, which apparently, to them, was the key to unlocking a whole slew of culinary secrets. He said they’d always wondered, when our American recipes called for a cup of such-and-such, WHICH cup exactly we Yankees were talking about. Admittedly, there are a whole bunch of different size cups out there. Touché.

Doris taught us how to make “stickbread” over the bonfire, which proved to be lots of fun, especially when Ruth’s stickbread kept sludging off her rather elastic skewer stick. It became a sort of game, dodging that doughy missile as she flung it about, trying to get control of her stick amid fits of laughter. (No one was injured in the making of said stickbread.)

In turn, I taught our dear German counterparts about the greatness of s’mores—ingredients compliments of a one Danzania, TIMO Tanzania extraordinaire. I’m afraid the long-awaited unveiling wasn’t all it could have been—we were, by that time, absolutely stuffed full of stickbread, and any s’more is incomplete without the original Hershey’s chocolate and graham crackers. (No graham crackers in Africa.) But I feel I’ve done a good thing, passing along such a cherished treat.

I know I’m going on, and there’s no way I can fit this seamlessly into this blog, but I have to tell this story. Heinrich and Doris brought up the fact that in nearly every movie I lend to them, there is some sort of Thanksgiving celebration. They said they’d never realized how important it was, and asked a few questions, including, “So, you get dressed up for your Thanksgiving celebration, yeah?” And, Kim and I, thinking he meant dressed up in nice clothes, answered in the affirmative. But then Heinrich asked Kim what she dressed up AS.

Wait. What?

Upon reflection, I remembered the last two movies I’d lent to them—Stepmom (there’s a big children’s thanksgiving play, with all of them dressed up as pilgrims, Indians or some kind of food for the feast) and Must Love Dogs (she’s a preschool teacher, and the kids have a pilgrims/Indians feast, I think). Hence comes the misunderstanding. Hahahaha. No wonder.

Culture is such a funny, slippery thing.