And a cockroach in a Christmas tree..

I was driving home in the rain today, after trying my 3rd ATM unsuccessfully because of a widespread power outage caused by a rainstorm overnight and most of this morning.  Coming up over the hill I met a group of boys running wildly towards me, screaming and shouting in panic.  What on earth, I thought!?  But then three stray dogs rounded corner with their teeth bared behind them at full speed and trying to think quick I started honking like a wild woman and driving towards the dogs.  They gave up pretty quickly and turned around, but the boys never stopped to check.  I can imagine they’re still running all the way home!

That little pit stop made me stop and think of all the things I encounter every day and never think twice about.  The things that are so routine for us now, but might entertain you a little bit on this rainy afternoon :)

Last Sunday afternoon, just after Matt had arrived home from the airport, the kids (well, and me too) convinced him to drag the Christmas tree down from the shed and as we set it up in the middle of the living room, it kind of started to move!  I was screaming, Fred was screaming and the giant cockroaches were leaping out of it and all over the floor before taking off in every direction!  Theo grabbed the can of Doom spray and started after them while Matt took the tree in segments out side and gave it a good shake and spray down..  That still didn’t stop me from finding some critters in it while I was putting up the lights… It’s cockroach free now, but honestly…  I’m a little bit weary every time I get close to it.  Maybe best to admire it from afar this year!

It thinks it's being sneaky by freezing when we locked eyes, but I saw it twitching it's antennae at me...

I encounter stuff every. single. day that makes absolutely no sense to me…  but I love it!  It’s a great story to tell, and no one ever believes that my power pole could catch fire, or I’d end up chopping off puppies’ umbilical cords with a kitchen knife, that Matt would get up in the night to check something and step on a dead, headless snake.  I never believed I’d get bitten by a homeless man or end up in a fender bender with the mayor.  But it’s true.  It happens, and no one blinks an eye.  There’s a popular saying here, “You don’t ask "why" questions in Africa” and I can see how that makes sense.  But the why questions are what challenge my way of thinking and my way of looking at things, and the things I see and the people I meet are what make life so interesting (and amazing!) here.

The puppies that I delivered over the course of 26 hours with the help of one of our teammates and a kitchen knife!

You often see lots of weird things on the backs of Bodas, but this was a first for me.

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Who let the dogs out?

Once upon a time, in our early days in Uganda, we went for a drive.  We wanted to get the feel of Kampala, learn the routes to major hospitals (in case of a seizure) and get comfortable with the roads and surroundings.  Charlee, amazed by the cows, boda-bodas, and general different-ness of everything she was seeing from the window, shouted, “WHAT MOVIE IS THIS!?” from the backseat. Since then, I’m sure there has been something almost every day that causes me to have the same exact thought. 

Somedays, life feels like a drama.  There are tears before school, sleepless nights, long days…  Somedays, its a tear jerker.  Its easy to be overwhelmed by things - situations that don’t change, despite trying and trying to help, little people that need fed and the general feeling that I was born into an easier life, one that gave me lots of privileges and first world problems, and it doesn't seem fair.  

Lots of days it’s a semi-cheesy, lovey-dovey made for TV movie.   But more often then not, life feels more like some sort of over the top, out of this world comedy.  

I love Uganda.  I love the people and the friendliness, the constant movement, the overall brightness of life here.  But over the last 3 years, my brain has been altered to expect the unexpected, and sometimes God knows that’s exactly what I need to lighten up a dreary day.

This morning started like every other..  pack lunches, dress kids, walk them up to the petrol station at the end of the road to catch their ride to school.  Theo and I made our way back home, checking out different beetles and ripe avocados we found along the way home.  We play soccer in the driveway, until someone knocks on the gate.  

Here’s where the unexpected comes into play.  I open the gate, and find Alberto, a local “door-to-door salesman” standing there (not unexpected).  The unexpected part is that there were about 15 chickens on the road behind him.

Cue the dogs.  They run at full tilt into the street, herding chickens this way and that, barking insanely.  Theo and I are running haphazardly behind them, trying to catch dogs, while they try to catch chickens.  At that point, people walking on the road start screaming over my shouts of the dogs names, as the dogs - looking as mad as possible - run in circles around the strangers.  Finally, somehow, the chickens, dogs and Theo all run through my gate and I’m able to lock ALL of them inside!  

The culprits, none the worse for wear after this morning.

Now there is a tornado of chaos around my house.  Every once in a while, a dog gets close enough to pluck a mouth full of feathers from a chicken’s behind and spit it onto the concrete.  I’m still running around like crazy, catching a screaming hen (can they even scream?) every once in a while and banishing it back to the street.  

Finally, with only one - now mostly bald and traumatized - chicken left, the dogs caught it and pinned it to the ground.  GREAT!  I thought.  I can get them… sneaking up from behind, I grabbed each by the collar while they fought tooth and nail to get away from me.  I had to almost drag them to the guard house where I could lock them in while I saved the last pitiful piece of poultry….  but what I didn’t factor in was that in that our wrestling match while holding collars must have cut off the airway of the big dog…  and she passed out.  Mass panic ensues again, as I’m sure I’ve just accidentally killed the dog.  What will the kids say!?  What have I done!? 

Thankfully after only seconds, she snapped back to life, vomited on the ground and the small dog stepped in to clean up the mess :(  I locked them up, called over the wall to our neighbour for help, and help arrived!  Together, with Theo - who was now carrying a small pipe (where did he get a pipe from!?) - we caught the semi-hairless chicken and released it back to the wild of Makindye hill while a pound of feathers blew serenely across my yard.

Unexpected, yes.  Out of the ordinary, no, not really.  I’m so thankful for this life - the good, the bad, and even the crazy.  Because it’s in the aftermath that we can really sit down and laugh…  tears running down our faces and the bright side of all this crazy can cheer us up during a dreary, weary, seemingly never ending month of May.  

  

The evidence is still blowing around the driveway.

Here's what we've been up to - Our Spring Newsletter

The Hunt (and we're not talking the Easter Egg kind)

The events of this past month have been hard.  Really hard, and the tension is still running pretty high around here.  The final straw in this series of very unfortunate events leading to my mega melt-down happened this past Thursday.  

I lost Theo.  And not just for a minute, either.  For almost an hour.

The kids are on Easter break, we were invited out to dinner at a friend’s and I needed a couple of things to make a cake to take with us.  I dressed the kids, did the tooth brushing regime and sent them out to get their shoes on while I quickly brushed my own and hunted down my wallet.  5 minutes later, I’m standing in the middle of the compound with two children with shoes on, one missing.  

Fred and I searched the house, calling “Theo!” in every room.  We offered sweets if he would come out.  We dug out suitcases from under beds, searched closets, cupboards, drawers.  

After 20 minutes, the panic set in.  We checked the oven, the fridge, the washing machine.  I scaled the water tower to make sure he hadn’t wiggled his way up there and fallen over the wall.  I climbed under the car and checked up inside of it. We checked the pit-latrine at the back of the property, praying he hadn’t fallen in.  Still no Theo.  

30 minutes. Full fledged panic.  No Theo.  No noise, no movement…. nothing. 

I called a couple of friends from our team here - Guys!  Theo is missing… I can’t find him anywhere.  I cried into the phone.  He must be here, he can’t get out of the compound.  They came, we searched again…  and Charlee drops the bombshell.  She says she let him out of the gate.

Fred was off like a shot - running full speed down to the boys house to check if he had gone there to play.  The construction workers across the road all confirm that yes, the baby did go up towards the main road.  The girls run, calling his name and Charlee is crying now, “I miss him so much!”.

We called the office manager from our Makindye office and she got in touch with the LC, who started to mobilize a search party on the hill.  45 minutes have passed.

Everyone was out looking for Theo, and I stayed at the house with Charlee just in case he came back.  Minutes felt like eternity.

And then…  from down the hall there’s a thump, just barely audible.  And I find him buried in a pile of laundry in the closet.  

Until that very moment, I have never felt such anger and joy at the same time.  I also don’t think I really knew the full toll this month has taken on me…  on all of us at the house.  Fred said afterwards, “This was the scariest day of my life”, and I would agree..  along with the long list of other scariest days, Theo’s disappearing act, Charlee on life support, and another one, that’s also not so far in the past yet. These are big sadnesses that sometimes I think will never pass.  

It took a 3 year old hiding on me to bring me to my knees.  In the midst of one of the most intense months of my ‘adult’ life; of stress and waiting and unknown and fear, Theo’s stunt got me to pray.  Like, really pray and be thankful that we’re here, together and all are OK. 

Now Easter weekend has me thinking, that all sad stories can have Happy Endings.  And even when you think that a Happy Ending isn’t possible, it can rise up from the dead and be better than anything you ever thought possible.  And that is something that I’m willing to wait for.

Happy Easter from Matt, me and these crazy kiddos!

Chaundra

The Mango Tree

We live in a concrete jungle.  The driveway is hot, and sometimes it burns my feet as I trot across the paving stones to open the gate when the kids get home from school in the afternoons.  We’ve put in lots of flowers, and I even grew some bougainvillea over my little coffee corner…  but my shady solution for the mid-afternoon basketball game heat and dinky car races along the garden’s edge was a mango tree.

I bought it the first week we were living here, from a lady selling plants along the side of the road.  We put it in a clay pot because it was so small and sad looking, but within months it sprouted to life and found it’s home in the front garden.  I tied it to a pole to keep the dogs away and trained it to grow out to drop some shade onto the pavement.  And it grew.  And grew.  And grew…  and I love it :)

Our mango tree, still in it's pot (far right)

But after a crazy storm one night that filled our bedroom (and my face!) with water while we slept, the landlord came for a visit and she saw my beautiful, little mango tree standing outside the window.  

My view from the "coffee corner" of the kids playing football one afternoon in the driveway
(mango tree, far right)

Now she says it has to go.  It has deep roots, and it will ruin the foundation.  

There have been so many things I’ve loved in life that haven't been good for me, and giving up those things up always really hurts.   Even when I know in my heart it’s time to let go, it is still hard.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to give up more still - but I can trust that there’s a bigger plan - and something better will come out of it.  

Because the foundation is important…  and in the long run it is for the best.  Because those roots run deep, and the foundation is far more important than the mango tree.