Maybe you’ve seen those Two Men and a Truck moving guys around town, wherever it is that you live. Blank white truck, basic, barebones black lettering with a black drawing of the outline of a truck or something of the sort, promoting themselves as the kind of no frills company that “just gets the job done and done right.” Well, that’s *almost* the way we roll here in Mundri right now, barebones, minimalist, getting the job done...it’s the “and done right” part that’s still up for discussion. Our goal this month, as a barebones team of 4 women here on the WHM South Sudan compound in Mundri, I’m pretty sure, is just to get it done. If it’s even done “not half bad” that’d be great!
Imagine for a moment, a group of 4 women, living alone on a compound in rural Africa. A compound capable of housing 18 people, responsible for the operation of things like an office, the internet, a kitchen with running water AND power, 2 vehicles, and then the houses we live in. It sounds pretty reasonable for those of you living in the US, right? Right. No problem.
Day T-1 (3 June) = We are in Uganda doing errands and planning to head home to Mundri. Errands including groceries of course, because yes, it is easiest for us to buy our groceries internationally and then pay per kilo for them to be flown to where we live. Bethany talks to Bishop to confirm he can pick us up from the airstrip. Confirmed. He is planning to pick us up. One problem though, the internet has not been working for a few weeks now in the stretch of offices WHM shares with ECS. “We are glad you are coming back because we are sure you will know exactly what needs to be done and then it will work just fine. You see, the computer says that the connection to the network is excellent. But when you try to use the internet - it refuses.” Well, that paper Bethany needs to write and send to her prof, those reimbursement requests we all need to submit for the completion of the fiscal year, those will have to wait. Problem #1: the internet.
Day 1 (4 June) = we get all of our luggage and ourselves to the airstrip at Kajjansi ON TIME, and for some reason there is an additional WHM person booked on this flight who has never planned to be on this flight...no fear...we have extra luggage weight (shocking!), we will just substitute groceries for one of our missing teammates. Problem #2: the extra seat booked on the flight - solved (we were even UNDER by 5 kg!). After the plane is loaded with our luggage we are given the go ahead to get on ourselves by our friendly MAF pilot. One by one we start getting on. Wait, Bethany’s phone is ringing. She shrinks to the back of the line and answers it. “Hello Bishop. Yes we are getting on the airplane now. Oh, the vehicle is broken and will not start. Oh, sorry. What is the plan? Yes we are 5. You think it needs a new battery? No, we are getting on the plane now, we cannot leave someone behind to organize getting a new battery for the vehicle...no, sorry...ok, you’ll see if you can get someone to push it...okay, well, thank you for calling Bishop.” Problem #3: The vehicle won’t start. And we’re not even home to the compound yet. After 3 stops along the way, we fly into our beloved Mundri airstrip and Bishop has parked our vehicle on a smallish dirt mound, the closest thing to a hill in sight, and therefore manages to roll start the car when we’re ready to load in. He drives us home, leaving it running while we unload Scott’s stuff at his place in town, meanwhile discussing his certainty we will have no issue solving Problem #1: the internet, as soon as we arrive. We assure him upfront, so as not to terribly disappoint later, that our particular tech savviness as a nurse, counselor, teacher and agriculturalist, looks like pressing all the buttons that we find and unplugging and plugging every cord and if none of those things work, then we’re up a creek. When the internet doesn’t work you call the internet guys and they come fix it, and when you live in South Sudan, those guys may or may not be in the country, they are only 1 team to support the whole country and well, it may be “some days” before you can get help. If you have a security or health emergency in rural Africa your help is not likely nearby and if you need to get in touch with people who are not nearby, and your internet does not work, you are in trouble. Our car is parked on the only slight decline on our compound, just outside our kitchen windows, and we hope for the best when we turn off the ignition to use the keys to get into the house. Home sweet home.
Spiders and their webs have taken over our team house now unoccupied for 3 weeks, but still, it’s our house - we’re close to unpacking for 3 whole months! Problem #4: critters. We begin sweeping/dusting in our respective houses. In the Shire, Larissa’s got a skink cornered behind a map, armed with brooms, she beats on the map until the skink is forced to run while I attempt to whack him with my broom near the ceiling...oops, there goes his tail, he’s still running, heading for the floor I whack a couple more times and manage to squish him square on...splat...yuck. But high fives, one less critter in the house. We also find more than our fair share of rat turds on every flat surface. We know he’s in there somewhere. My room is bare and he’s not in there, and Larissa is pretty sure she’s got him cornered under her trunks... “do you think we can kill a rat?” she asks. “We’ve got to.” I reply. “But all our best rat killers are gone! Jenn, where are you when we need you?!” “Well, we can only try our best” (that’s what my mom always said so it seemed to fit nicely in the moment on the brink of rat despair.) We arm ourselves again and call in back up. Melissa, aka “snake killa,” comes in and grabs a bamboo rod hoping to go for stabbing action since we’d been successful thus far with whacking...On the count of 3 Larissa pulls out the first trunk...no dice. He’s got to be behind the other...another count of 3 as Melissa is perched above on the bed I’m not yet quite sure where to be, and Larissa pulls out the last trunk...What happens next I’m not quite sure I can put words too...the amount of shrieking and jumping and whacking and stabbing and squishing and more shrieking was...well...it was loud. Bethany added herself to our task force in the process, wielding her own rod. But we weren’t so concerned with volume, only with the death of the rat - which the overwhelming volume of shrieking enabled us to successfully achieve! Woot woot! Surprised by our skill when push comes to shove, we were quite proud of ourselves. Another critter gone and another round of high fives. I did notice that the panga (machete) has been moved to the girls’ shower, which gives me reason to believe the critter problem is not quite yet solved, but at least significantly underway :)
We keep cleaning/resettling into our rooms, but Bethany has not forgotten about problems #1 and #3, the internet and the vehicle. She gets on the phone to America since it’s now late enough in the afternoon that she can do that without waking anyone up. How and from where does one get a new vehicle battery, she asks, and who do we call about the internet not working? Karen punts the battery question to John Sender who, with far too much faith in our understandings of the goings on inside the hood of a vehicle, begins to explain to Bethany that it’s actually pretty easy to fix a battery yourself involving taking it out of the vehicle, pouring acid from something into something else without managing to burn yourself and then let it sit for a while and “when it’s done you just put it back in.” She had to inform him that he in fact lost her at “take it out of the vehicle,” so he is forced to give her the name and contact info of a mechanic in town who could help her buy and install the battery...and Karen informs her that the contact info for the internet guys is somewhere in Michael’s desk drawer in the office, and you know what that means? More critters...critters love drawers...too bad Bethany doesn’t love critters...We decide to save that for another day, armed with some information we eat a lovely dinner, crafted by the lovely Melissa (yes, the same Melissa also known as “snake killa”...multi talented I tell you), with conversation about the possibilities of renting an engineer, or maybe a husband, for a month? and after a lot of laughing head to bed.
Day 2: 5 June - I, personally, have an awful cold/allergy issue at this stage of the game. So, when I head to bed around 10pm, I wasn’t sure when I’d wake up, but I was okay with just sleeping for as long as I could...and I’m actually pretty good at that, so with no alarm set, I drift off into sleepyville. At some point, many hours later, I hear a VERY chipper female Moru voice VERY close to my bed, saying several greetings/questions/phrases in Moru (which I speak VERY little of when I’m awake let alone when I’m sleeping), and without opening my groggy eyes, I manage to mutter an affirmative moan/grunt noise in response to each question and roll over and head back to sleep. I was awake enough to know it was my friend Abao, but I was not awake enough to actually wake up and open my eyes and see whether she was outside my window or inside my room, or interact with her beyond affirmative moans to whatever it was she was chattering on about...She must have given up on my sleepiness and started talking to Larissa who kindly tried to whisper but Abao didn’t seem to get the cultural “someone is sleeping” cues...so she kept talking and talking and Larissa finally managed to walk/talk with her out of the house. Yes, it turns out she had come into our house unannounced and then into my room to greet me, saw me in bed, sleeping, and proceeded to try to greet me and ask me questions even though Bethany said she had already told her that I was still in bed, sick and that she could see me maybe tomorrow :) Love it. Problem #5: friends who miss cultural cues/risking offending said friends by refusing to wake up when they come to greet you while you’re in bed. Problem not really solved, but at least funny in hindsight.
So, while I was still dead to the world in my bed asleep, Larissa was off to the races on our first full day back, teaching her class at the theological college in town. Since one vehicle was down, she started up the other and as she backed out Melissa starts yelling to her to stop. It turns out the car could start (which was a step up from the other vehicle) but one of the wheels was locked and not moving while the other 3 seemed to function without a problem, so it was moving in a circle around that tire...strange...so she gets out and gets on her bike instead, now quite late for class...Problem #6: vehicle #2 broken. Unaware of any reason rear wheels would be locked (pretty sure the 4x4 wheel locking is only the front ones? and even that locking doesn’t actually LOCK the wheels, right?!), we have no idea what to do about it, so we’re down to 0 vehicles. Not a terribly significant problem, we all have bikes, unless we have an emergency of some sort...security or health or something of the sort...but remember, this is South Sudan, no one ever has security or health issues here, it’s fine ;)
Back to Problem #1: the internet. We might be women with few technological and handyman repair skills, but one thing is sure, we know how to use a telephone. Bethany tracked down the internet guys’ contact info (not in fact in the critter filled desk drawers but in the ECS accountant’s office) got on the phone with internet guys in several countries, and finally it turned out the cause of our internet issue was theirs, that they had missed our payment and cut off our service unbeknownst to anyone else. The internet guys did something from wherever it was they were on the phone and voila! we have internet again :) Bethany rocks. Telephones rock. Things getting fixed from a distance without involving several days’ delay and travel, rock. Problem #1: the internet, solved. However, usually on this continent, one problem does not get solved without another arising in the process...while celebrating a triumph over the evil interwebs, and trying to print team meeting agendas, Bethany realizes that the power in most of the offices is out (something which happens when a certain light switch is flipped). What happens when the power is out? You call the power guys...wait...this country has no grid power, so there are no power guys...and the power guys on our team are in the US...what to do? not sure, fuses and such are a bit outside our realm of influence...no printed agendas and make sure your computer is charged elsewhere before going to use the internet...Problem #7: office power is out. You've got to be kidding.
Stay tuned. Problems 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are still outstanding, with tomorrow’s episode surely to include the antics surrounding Bethany’s trip with Simon the mechanic to buy a car battery and install it, perhaps a reaction of some sort from my friend Abao to my incredibly offensive sleeping/greeting incident, and well, one can never anticipate the critters one may encounter in a day...never a dull moment, folks, never a dull moment.
**note: most of this episode is a re-telling of the firsthand story of our fearless interim leader, Bethany Ferguson. So, if you want the firsthand account, soon you'll be able to read her telling here: www.bethanygrace.wordpress.com. But a good story only get’s better with more tellings, right? :) ***
1 comment:
You are brave, brave women. :) So funny, so true...and I'm sure so frustrating. Praying God smooths the way ahead for you.
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