Grand pappy comes to visit

I’m standing in the hanger as it rains listening to the sound of the airplane and watching the sky. I see it. It make a large loop in the sky and positions itself to make its decent to the run way. It has been raining all night and day the muddy clay runway is slick and I pray feverishly that they land safely. I have so many emotions as I watch them land I’m nervous because I’m so excited to see that tall balding white haired man with contagious smile that I call grandpa.

He stumbles out of the tiny cramped airplane and I am the first to rush to him and wrap my arms around him with great joy and I am met with and wonderful scent of home. He smile and makes a couple humorous comments then he continues to makes his way around to greet all the others and them he puts his business face on and it’s time for work. And when grandpa puts on that face everyone knows not to waste time. We load up the bags and head to the house. We unpack him fast and un-wrap all the tools that he has brought and quickly organize them so he can see everything.

We’ve installed and air conditioner in his little room so that he doesn’t sweat to death in our African heat. As I unpack him and make his bed with the sheets that he has brought and they smell of home too…it’s the best smell in the world and it makes my eyes go misty cause itmakes me miss home even more. He grabs what he needs and shouts some orders at people and he’s off to the hospital for that rest of the day.

They come back well after dark and I am surprised to see Freddy one of the locals translators with him. It turns out on their way back they got lost so they just started talking to people but no one speaks English here and they just happen to run into him. So he hopped in the car and helps them find their way back safely. I can only imagine where they would have ended up.

 Carlie and I have slaved away in the kitchen for hours….more Carlie then I… and we are happy with the turnout of spaghetti, garlic bread made from homemade bread and baked eggplant. To us this is a feast from our normal rice and beans. Everyone is delighted and happy and we spend the time catching up and listening to grandpa and Alan talk about building business. When I leave then at 9pm for work they are sitting around the table still doing they thing and when I return at 6 am the next morning they are in the same spot just with different clothes and different food on the table.

It’s another long day for them out at the hospital and their only full day here. They come back part way through the day to make a trip out to the nutrition center to see the progress and the little rug rats that are running around. But after that they are back off to the hospital and I’m back in the kitchen…. grandpa says that where I belong…oh grandpa… That night we sit around the table and we laugh at the wonderful stories of his different trips to other countries and the experiences he has had. He’s been so many places and done so much for so many people and I am inspired.

In the morning he is the first one up yet again and he is eager to make another trip to the hospital to take pictures. When they return we talk about the future plans and the arrival of the Maranotha group that will be coming and about his return in October and if all goes as planned and the container of building materials arrives on time he will be accompanied by Christopher… Oh the excitement!!

We gather his things and we make our way back to the hanger for their departure and we make it just a little late to morning worship. Grandpa is asked to share a thought and like always he talks of his travels and of the wonderful things that he has seen and I am inspired once again by all that he has done. We prepare the plan for departure and push it out of the hanger and we say our good-byes. Grandpa and Alan are forced to squeeze into the back seat of the airplane and I laugh at the sight of them so cramped shoulder to shoulder. As they make their way onto the run way I am sad to see him go and I get the sudden feeling of loneliness as I see them make their way down the runway and into the sky. But I shake the feeling away and smile and start to count the days till his next arrival.

Thanks again grandpa for making another trip into the armpit of Africa. J

Doing some manual labor

Saying Good-bye

Stuffed in the back of the tiny airplane.

Pets

I found a huge scorpion in the house yesterday. So I put him in a jar and named him Hercules.  He is really scary and big and not to mention POISIONESS!!  Athens two scorpions Jeorge Clooney with a J and Curious George both died but she is to emotional to part with them so they are still in the jar.  I guess after being in a jar for two months without food will do that to you. So now we just have the mammoth scorpion named Hercules. Or other pet is an screech owl who lives in the rafters of our front porch whose name is Methuselah.  Janna one of the other missionaries named him.  He is a screech owl, and he sounds like a screaming woman when he screeches at night. The screeching usually wakes me up and I have to go to the door and yell at him to be quiet.  Most of the time it works, and he shuts up.  We also have a huge gecko that lives in the house that I named Simon.  I am pretty sure it’s a female gecko because I have notices a lot of baby geckos lately.  Or maybe it’s the same baby gecko I see every time… not really sure.

Addiction

Athens and I have a developed an addiction here in Africa.  They say the first step in recovery is acknowledgement of that addiction and to seek help.  We acknowledge our addiction and have even mentioned to other missionaries here that we need help. We keep saying how we need to quite, but we are still struggling to overcome this addiction; our addiction to African hand-woven baskets.  It started out innocently enough, with the buying of one basket.  But we couldn’t seem to stop there, or say no.  The minute we see the “basket man” coming we are running for the door with our money.  It is almost as good as a mall trip back home, except for the “basket man” brings the baskets to you!  When he comes he brings an assortment of different baskets; some are big with handles and a lid, others are small and squat and have no lid.  They can be colorful with purple, yellow or red stripes running around the baskets. When we see him coming we never know what kind of baskets he is bringing, which only adds to the excitement of our basket addiction.  We don’t need these baskets, and we are running out of places in the house to put them but still we buy them. We are becoming hoarders!  There needs to be a ten step program to overcoming your addiction to African hand-woven basket.  I can just see it now, “Hi my name is Carlie and this is my friend Athens and we are addicted to African hand-woven baskets.”  Until we receive the help we need to overcome this addiction, there are still places in this house that would look good with a basket.

Malaria- Athens

We just said good-bye to one of our friends not even 24 hours ago and who crawls into bed with body aches, chills and a head ache. I pray I don’t have Malaria. I check my temperature throughout the night, 102.2 SHOOT! An hour later 102.4 OH NO!! I take some ibuprofen and pray that it goes away two hours later 101.9 that a little better but I’m not satisfied, another hour later 101.7. By morning my chills are gone but I’m sweating bullets left and right my bed is soaked and I’ve already changed my clothes once cause I sweat through them. By 7:30 am when Carlie comes home my temp is down to 99.7 but my head is pounding like a race horse. We go to the hospital and both get tested for Malaria. Carlie’s comes back negative. Mine comes back positive .45%. Why do I have to be the one that gets a dangerously high Malaria count the day after someone dies from it? The doctor tells me I need to stay overnight in the hospital on IV Quinine but there is not a chance I would ever spend the night it that dirty rat infested hospital so I say “No thanks, I’ll take my chances at home” I get my prescriptions and head for home with Nurse Carlie to take care of me.

Monday- I layout my medical supplies on the table and Carlie prepares to start an I’ve on me. It takes her 4 trys to get it but she get it and we hook me up to the quinine. I’ve heard horror stories about this drug and im not looking forward to the side effects but right now the only thing I’m thinking about is how I will not be shipped home in a box!!

My head isn’t pounding as hard but it can still feel the pressure up there and my hearing is starting to get a little fuzzy but so far so good.

All my medical supplies.                                                                   

                                                                    



Tuesday- I get up to use the rest room but instead I end up dry heaving over the toilet. My head is spinning and my legs feel like Jell-o. I make it back to bed and lay down but the nausea doesn’t go away it just lessens. I sit up and nothing but green bile comes pouring out. Not the most attractive thing to see first thing in the morning.

Dr. Olen wants me back at the hospital to see how I’m doing but there is no way I could hold on to the back of a Moto. So Darren saves the day by driving us in a car which makes me feel claustrophobic because I haven’t been in one for so long. We make it to the hospital and I am up right just long enough to walk up to Olen with my bucket in hand and then I’m down for the count. Both hands on the bucket in front of me knees on the muddy ground while Carlie and Olen converse over my medical condition. I try one more time to stand erect but fail miserably and just head to the car to lie down. When we finally get back home I spend the rest on the day in bed. Carlie tries to make me eat and I try but not much of an appetite.

Ready to go. Quinine has to be administered
 with Dextrose to help prevent hypoglycemia.

                   

Wednesday- First thing I notice when I wake up is that my arm is sore, swollen and tight. My vein has gone bad. I wake Carlie up to start a new line but I’m so dehydrated and cold that my veins do a vanishing act. She tries 9 times and fails. Finally she calls for Darren to take us to the hospital again and the anesthesiologist get a line started. I stay at the hospital the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon to finish my IV Quinine in the dentist office in the dentist chair. I sleep through the dental clinic. I open my eyes and I see people setting up chairs. I open my eyes again and the room is full of people and patients getting their teeth pulled. I open my eyes a third time and the room is dark and everyone is gone but Marci who keeping a watchful eye on me.

The nausea is gone the IV Quinine is finished I have a little bite of an appetite and I down a yogurt and some rice and egg concoction and I’m sent home on oral Quinine pills for 5 days.

Monday- I’m back to almost normal. My energy is back to normal my head is pressure free and I’ve taken the last of that horrible Quinine. And tomorrow I head back to work. The only thing that is missing is my hearing. But I’m told it will come back gradually. I’m already hard of hearing and Carlie has to yell everything at me. YAY!! I survived Malaria!!!! Story to tell the grand kids haha J

Minnie

Minnie is a fellow missionary from the Philippians. She works for the hospital doing community outreach in the village teaching about health and hygiene. She had been here for a year already and was planning to stay another year. She was kind of quiet and timed but not shy to speak her mind and was always willing to help when anyone asked. She came to the Nutrition center regularly to visit the kids and to help.

On Monday July 30^th she went in to the hospital and got a Malaria test done it came back positive and she decided to keep it to herself and try to get rid of it naturally. She was familiar with Malaria from home in the Philippines. One of the things people take is “Nim tea” as a preventative measure for Malaria. She had cured her malaria before using it and she thought she could do it again. On Tuesday is when she was held up in Bronwyn’s hut. Wednesday she was puking and just about fainted when she stood up. Thursday she was finally forced to go down to the hospital to take another Malaria test and it came back as .75% WOW!!! That was the highest malaria count that they had ever seen. The doctors made her stay in the hospital and by Friday she was having convulsions and in a coma. Saturday she had decreased reflexes to painful stimuli but her convulsions had stopped. By Sunday morning at 1:30 am she was dead. At 5:15 am we all met up at the hanger and sang songs and prayer for Minnie and shared stories about what we would remember and miss about her. Then we watched as they carried her tiny body into the small airplane and took off for N’Djamena (the capital of Chad) where she would be shipped back to her family in the Philippians in a box.

It’s hard enough trying to teach the people here in this village how to take care of themselves and how to keep their children alive. It should be that hard to keep one of our own alive.

The river/rice field

                Just another Saturday afternoon adventure to the river. Relaxation and cool water was in our near future. Hahaha. Not so fast.

Somewhere on our little road trip the river we noticed that the road we were driving on got a lot smaller but we just kept going and we ended up in the middle of a rice field. But Did we give up and turn around to look for the road? Nope!!!  Cause that would have been the American thing to do.  We forged ahead deeper into the muddy rice field in hopes that the road that we were once on would reappear on the other side The farther we drove into the fields the deeper, and muddier the ground became. We were fishtailing it in every direction. And while Carlie the fearless Moto driver she is was just tearing through the field like a mad women not caring whos crop she was destroying. I was on the back holding on for dear life and praying big time that we wouldn’t die.

Finally the inevitable happen Bronwyn and Janna our road trip companions WIPED OUT. They were muddy and burned from the exsost on the bike. (Everyone down here gets one eventually they refer to them as “Chadian tattoos”.) When we did stop to help our counterpart we got stuck as well. I had to push while Carlie drove and when we were final to semi-solid ground I was covered in mud. I lost my flip flops, and had mud up to my knees. I was wearing a black dress at the time and it was completely splattered with mud from Carlies’ back tire and I just could not be happier. What’s the point of living in foreign country if not to have crazy moments like this?

By this point all the locals that are working in the field and those just walking by were all starting to stare at the crazy white people in the middle of their rice field with a moto stuck in the mud. Still not a road in sight we hoped back on out motos. Some of the local children ventured over to see what was going on and we ask for directions. They point to a large grassy wooded area not far and we took it. As we pop out the other side of the trees what do you know the RIVER!!!

First thing I did it wash the mud out of my dress and scan the river for Hippo and Crocodiles. When the coast is clear we splashed around for a bit and spend the sometime laying under the trees relaxing. Every day is an adventure in Chad.

Our Chadian Names

                The people here can’t seem to say Carlie or Athens.    I don’t know why they find it so difficult, but they do.  So my name has been changed to Karolin and Athens has changed to Atens .  They pronounce my name, “Kar-o-lin”, dragging out the o in the name.  They pronounce Athens as, “At-tins”.  I hope by the time I get home I will still be able to respond to my real name.

War Zone- Carlie

Athens and my feet/ankles look like they have been in a war….. and we are not winning.  The mosquitoes seem to only like that part of our body, and seem to bite the most there.  I have gotten bit even on the bottom of my foot!!  We try and not scratch, but the bites will not be ignored!! It takes us a good hour to fall asleep at night because we end up having to spend time scratching our feet!  And once you scratch one bite, you have to scratch them all, and it ends up being a viscous cycle that we can’t seem to break.  The really bad bites that itch like crazy we like to say are malaria bites.  So at the moment I have about 4 malaria bites and counting!!  (For those who don’t know, this really isn’t a sign of Malaria.  We both sleep under a mosquito net, and put 100% deet on.  But Malaria is very prominent here and I am sure I will be getting it again.)

Jorge Clooney

                I have a pet scorpion named Jorge Clooney. He lives in a peanut butter jar. Mon ami (my friend) Everest found him while he was building us a pathway to our shower. He is small and light brown. He likes to play dead and comes alive when Carlie plays with him. Bronwyn dropped him on the ground after she found out that her two pet baby birds died just to get even with me because I didn’t like them. But Jorge Clooney lives on! I gave him a cracker and a caterpillar but the caterpillar just made a nest in the cracker and Jorge doesn’t seem to have any interest in it so I guess ill get a pet butterfly out of the deal.

 We found another scorpion in our house so we just added him to the peanut butter car and another caterpillar but this one has scary red spikes on its back. It will give Jorge a run for his money. 

The dorm (stealing)- Carlie

                This last Thursday I felt like I was a dean in the dorm.  I was doing the morning shift which is 6 am to 1pm and had just finally sat down to eat breakfast around 10:30 when someone started calling my name.  I went outside our fence and one of the moms was standing there crying and seeming upset.  She started rattling off in angry French, gesturing to the woman/babies living quarters.  With my limited French I could only understand a few words, such as money, 2000 Francs, and sleeping.  When I was not able to put those few words in a sentence that made any since, I took the woman to Wendy to find out the whole story.  With the help of a translator we were able to find out that someone had stolen her money, 2100 Francs to be exact.  That the equivalent to about 4 US dollars.  We went back to the woman’s living quarters and had all the women come into the building and then we shut the door and started asking the women if they had seen the money.  All the women started talking at once in their native language, shouting and gesturing.  It was a good thing that our translator was there that day because I couldn’t tell what was going on.  I felt like I was on the set of the show the Real House Wives of Orange County!!  It was total chaos!!  When our French translator informed us that no one was admitting to taking the money we decided to put the building on lock down and search the women’s stuff.  Wendy and the translator started going through the women’s belonging while I stood by the dorm keeping the visitors and masons (who were working on the outside of the women’s building) from getting in.  That’s when I decided that I was going to call the building the dorm.  It reminded me so much of being a RA in high school.  Even though these are adult women with children, I felt like was babysitting a bunch of high schoolers!!  They seemed to feed of the drama and chaos.  When the searching the belongings didn’t reveal anything we decided to strip search the two women on either side of the women whose money was stolen.  But still we didn’t find the money.  That’s when I noticed that during the strip search we hadn’t checked the head wrap of one of the women.  I mentioned it to our translator who took the head wrap off the woman and that’s where we found the money.    The other women went crazy, yelling, laughing and talking excitedly all at once.  I thought that maybe they would be more upset at the women that stole, but instead they acted like this was all a game or something.  Once I opened the doors they went outside and started telling the masons who were working ( who had been looking and listening in one of the windows the whole time), and the other visiting women.  It took a good hour before the women had calmed down, and we could start getting back to our normal daily routine.  The women who stole was asked to leave and we searched all the rest of her stuff to make sure she didn’t take anything else.  We decided to keep her on a outpatient bases because her kid did need our help.  But she couldn’t be trusted to stay at the nutrition center.

Chris (Benjamin Button)

                The cutest baby that looks like an old man so naturally I called him Benjamin Button. He was admitted to the nutrition center on July 1^st as an outpatient. His mom brought him every day so that we could note progress and to make sure she was breastfeeding and that he was latching on correctly.  He was so tiny and you could literally count every bone in his body. There wasn’t much improvement he was to little and weak that it was hard for him to latch on and when he did his suck was so weak that we would make the mother manual express and give it to him with a syringe.  For the five days that he was with us his temperature continually dropped from 97.5 to 95.0 to 93.3. We do our best to educate about keeping baby warm which shouldn't be too hard to do here but in the end the mother takes her baby home and does what she wants. On Friday July 5^th she arrived at our door at 830 am and you could just see that he was going. His eyes were fixed far away and his breathing was irregular and I could hear his heart rate slowing in my stethoscope. So many things were running through my mind but none of them were helpful in this situation. I knew that there was nothing I could do to save this baby but with a crying mom looking at me for help and a frantic roommate (not Carlie) trying to come up with ideas “let kangaroo” she takes the baby from the mom and places him underneath her shirt so they are touching skin to skin. What is she doing?!? “Let’s feed him breast milk” She starts manual expressing from the mother. That’s not going to help!! “Let’s do cpr” ok but then what….. I do cpr for about 15 mins while the mother is crying and Bronwyn is spacing out next to me. With no sign of life, no pulse, no breathing, no heartbeat I finally stop. I didn’t want to but what was I suppose to do…… maybe I’m not as good of a nurse as I thought. Chris died July 5^th on my floor right underneath my hands. He was 2 months old to the day.

Chicken Run- Carlie

Returning from the market with dinner.

                What I am about to write is not for the faint of heart, for vegans or vegetarians. If you are not a vegetarian before reading this you might turn into one after…. It sure worked for me!!  About a week ago a few of us missionaries were talking about our favorite thing, FOOD.  And somehow we started got on the topic of chicken.  I don’t know really how it was decided or whose idea it was ( it could have been mine) but before I knew it we decided to not only buy and cook a chicken, but to kill it and roast it over an open fire.  Janna who is a pediatric nurse at the hospital here is a vegetarian but she wanted the whole chicken experience; buying, killing, plucking, cleaning, and cooking a chicken.  I think all her life she had repressed her carnivore side, and it broke free in Africa.  I won’t lie, I was a full participant in the death of the chickens.  I do not eat a lot of meat and my family rarely if ever cooks meat and I was interested in the whole process in cooking a chicken. The dentist here from Romania is not a vegetarian and had cooked and killed many chickens and volunteered to help us.  It was decided that Janna and I would go to the market and find us a chicken for our chicken cook out.  We had no luck finding a chicken at the market but found a boy outside the hospital who had chickens for sale.  When he brought us the chicken, I was not impressed with it.  It was quite small with not much meat on its bones.  Janna who is a pro at haggling got the boy to not only lower his price but to add another chicken to the deal.  So now we didn’t have just one chicken but two chickens!!  Now the trick was to get home with not only two chickens on my motorcycle but a backpack full of food for the nutrition center women, a bag of beans strapped to the back of the bike, and a side bag full of greens.  So the boy tied the chickens feet together and hung a chicken from each of my handle bars!! Janna and I couldn’t stop laughing!!  I looked like a traveling gypsy with all my bags full of food and two chickens hanging from my handle bars!!  The whole way home I was terrified of falling of the bike with all the food on my back, beans strapped to the back of the bike, and a chicken on each of my handle bars.  In some ways it seemed like the chickens were enjoying their ride, with their wings flapping.  But I was a little nervous that one would try and peck me because their heads hung right above my knees on the bike. Well to keep this bloody and sad story short. … Saturday night we had a chicken party in the rain.  We killed, plucked, cleaned and cooked the chickens.  We were planning on roasting the chickens over our bon fire outside but when it rained we cooked the chickens over a African wire cooker on our porch. I barely could swallow the one bite of chicken that I took, because I could still picture the horrible death of the chickens that I had participated in.  I decided that yes If my survival or the survival of ones I loved depending on the death of a chicken, then  I could kill another chicken.  But for any other reason for killing a chicken I will not participate in.  But for now I am definitely a vegetarian in Africa.  The one good thing about the chicken we eate is that it was probably the healthiest chicken I have ever eaten.  All the animals here in Chad are free range, and not plumped up with chemicals or drugs or kept in tiny cages.

Rain, Frogs and bugs - Carlie

                The rain here is a blessing because the temperature goes down.  But with the rain comes it brings the plague.  The plague consists of thousands of frogs that swim in the puddles on the road, and these flying bugs.  The bugs I have been told are winged termites.  They come after or before the rain, and they come in the thousands.  We have to declare a black out in the house when it happens because they swarm to the light.  One night we had so many in the house that you couldn’t step anywhere without stepping on them.  The next morning the only proof that they were there is there wings. Even the bugs we had stepped on and killed were no longer on the floor, only wings. We spent the whole next morning sweeping and cleaning the house trying to get all the wings out of the house.  The people here eat those same bugs.  They run around catching them, popping them into their mouths like candy.  One morning after a big storm I went over to feed the children and the women pulled me over and wanted me to try some sort of food they were eating.  But when I got a closer look  I found it was the flying termite bugs.  They had roasted them over  the fire and seasoned them to look like a chip.  Even though they laughed and tried to convince me to eat with them, I told them that 6 am was too early for me to be eating bugs!!

I ran over a frog the other day on my motor bike and it made a popping sound like a balloon. After it rains all the frogs come out and decided to swim in the bodies of water that cover the road.  So trying to drive through a puddle without falling over is difficult, but trying not to hit the hundreds of frogs in the road is impossible.