parting of the red tape

"Parting of the Red Sea" - version 1

permission to be, please.

when you are guests in a country, you have to play by your host's rules.  What happens when your host doesn't actually know what it's rules are?  bureaucratic red tape chaos.  When you are a new country, you have the privilege of making your own new rules.  It's great.  Freedom = choice.  BUT when this freedom is found in a context like that of South Sudan, in an African context in which organization is NOT a cultural strong suit, freedom = choice = mayhem!  With no strong centralized process, every office takes the opportunity to call its own shots and every person in every office takes the opportunity to call their own shots depending on, well, who knows what, depending on the color of the shoes they're wearing that day or the number of full matatus that passed by them that morning on their way into work, I have no idea really.  It takes "getting the run around" to a totally new level.  Totally contrary information from every person you talk to, spending days going from office to office, desk to desk, as the amount of money that you owe in order to play by the rules goes up and up and up...

when you have even a single bone of organizational capacity in your body as a missionary you find yourself in the role of pursuing logistical issues for your team.  Like the African context, the missionary context is not one of organizational strength.  I'm a nurse.  I'm pretty good at following rules/directions.  It's a professional liability not to be.  But when you don't know what the directions are, things get, well, let's just say "complicated."

Our team has been trying to play by non-existent rules for several years now, and it's kind of exhausting.  Our operational certification as an NGO expires in October and in like good missionaries we are trying to gather what we need in advance and be prepared for the mayhem that awaits us in Juba.  It's a really long story, which would probably bore most of you, but it involves wading through the sea of red tape and trying to figure out what our hosts rules are and how we need to go about playing by them...NGO's need to employ a certain percentage of national staff and have work permits and we are an NGO but we partner with the church and what does that mean for our status with the government, and what if our goal as an organization is to strengthen and equip and encourage South Sudanese in already existing positions NOT to create new positions that will then one day cease to exist...we are willing to pay our dues but what if we are being charged dues without explanation of what they are for, or being charged for fees in years that the country did not exist...and the list goes on...

But there is hope at the end of the tunnel.  The week in which we were trying to make decisions as a team about how to move forward we had a guest - WHM South Sudan's Miri Moto compound has become a tourist destination believe it or not - soon you'll be able to find us on Yelp! - and this particular week we had guests from Maridi and Uganda taking their R&R time with us - the guest from Maridi overheard us discussion our dilemmas and recommended we talk to his team leader who had recently sorted through similar issues...anyone able to shed ANY light on this chaos was very welcome, so I gave Leah a call...I don't even know Leah's second name...I just know she is an American living in Maridi and leading a team there.  But that's more than enough to elicit a phone call.

Who knew.  Leah is a rock star.  I mean, not a REAL rock star, but a South Sudanese red tape rock star for sure, which is actually just as cool as a REAL rock star.  She informed me of their team's very recent saga which had come to completion in the last few weeks due to help from another large missions agency in country..."AAAHHHHHH!!!!!" - I'm pretty sure the angelic music was audible.  Turns out I have a nurse friend who works for said large missions agency who happens to be in Canada at the moment, which happens to be 8-10 hours behind us right now...and who happened to be online at that very moment...*unashamed plug for the Facebook chat function - never know when it might come in handy*...and you'll never believe this, but with Facebook chat and international emails between 3 countries on 2 continents, within 30 minutes my 2nd South Sudanese red tape rock star friend, Christiane, had hooked me up with a word document of exactly what we needed to do...yes, a word document...4 pages of pure gold!  Pure gold that outlined step by step, bullet point by bullet point what we needed to do to pursue registration as a Faith Based Organization...which seems to fit who we are much more than an NGO which puts us on equal par with those giants of UNICEF and WFP and such...did I mention there were contact names and phone numbers?  Did I mention there were scanned copies of the application form?  UN-BE-LIEVABLE! A registration that supposedly negates our need for work permits (ie. saving us literally thousands of dollars) and gives us approval for 1 yr multiple entry visas...incredible...seems too good to be true in fact...all of my bosses (Bishop here in South Sudan, and Michael Masso from the USA) grilled me on the legitimacy of such a thing...but I had done my homework...well, my friends had done their homework and I had read their answers so-to-speak, and it seems legit...for real!

Just the night before I had been at my wit's end, fed up with trying to figure out the system, fed up with trying to ask "permission to be" from people who didn't seem to want me to be...my teammates had tried to tell me it was going to be okay, but I wasn't quite sure.  I was kinda worried we were going to be kicked out of the country...for real.  The next morning my teammates prayed, and within hours it all came together...I was interrupting the teacher training going on with texts of excitement..."call me at your earliest convenience" I told Bethany, our fearless interim team leader at the time..."What is it?!" she said when she found her earliest convenience...and I launched into the kind of unbelievable saga of the morning...Now, I'm not sure about your feelings about prayer, honestly sometimes I'm not sure either, but this seemed like a pretty direct answer...I could hardly contain myself...and usually I have no problem containing myself...containment issues are not really a Lutjens problem...

But ladies and gentlemen, the saga is not quite over.  If you believe that prayer moves things, then I'd appreciate you take up our cause in your prayers...Bishop took our FBO paperwork to Juba on Friday, and hopefully passed it along to an ECS logistician....

• pray this logistician, Mawa, would be willing and ready to process our paperwork for us
• pray that the Bureau of Religious Affairs would be willing and ready to accept our application without delay
• pray that the BoRA would readily give us an approval letter for the Ministry of Interior
• pray that the Ministry of Interior would readily accept the BoRA letter and give us an approval letter for 1 yr multiple entry visas for our whole team
• pray that in fact, this registration/these visas negate our need for work permits in a very above the board way

I've never been so amazed.  Makes me a little more willing to pray big....but I need your help.

"Parting of the Red Sea - version 2"

home away from home: Uganda

• the spazzy excitement of banana tree leaves everywhere you look; 
• lingering 2.5 hour oil lantern lit and burning mosquito coil accompanied dinners at mexican resaurants with teammates who are coworkers as well as friends and, well, family too, at the end of a long day of details and travel; 
• 5 straight hours of paved road; 
• the amazing goodness of a leg of chicken roasted on a stick eaten standing by the side of the vehicle while your teammates use the favorite toilet location along said 5 hour stretch of paved road;        
• the swamps of Dr. Seuss-esque papyrus tufts; 
• the dukas with goat ropes hanging by the door; 
• the Kalita and Link buses rumbling by as they pass you on the one lane "highway"; 
• familiar phrases used and questions asked in the market and the ensuing stumbling/stuttering over words which have since been replaced by those of other east african languages in my brain's "language bank"; 
• discussions around the Rwenzori View family style dinner table with inquisitive Icelandic journalists traversing the country; 
• the familiarity of old teammates and ease of falling back into days of life shared; 
• the conversation that ensues over the loud hum of old 4x4 vehicles whose radios/tape decks are long broken as you "zoom" along the one lane highway unable to break the 100km/hr mark in the aging vehicle, saving you from the traps of the traffic police in their bright white uniforms as they wait in the valleys and around the bends for a reason to wave you to a stop; 
• the familiar and tiring complications of decision making and bill settling when traveling as a group of 6 single women, and the pauses of thankfulness for said women making it all worth it;
• the wind whipping through your hair on the back of strange man's motorcycle you voluntarily ride back to the hotel during rush hour traffic and the gasps and "eh!"s that ensue when the trust you put in this stranger's ability to get you from point A to point B in one piece is somehow broken around every bend; 
• the appreciated airtime acct balance notifications at the end of every MTN phone call/text message; 
• the refreshing treat of a cold Krest Bitter Lemon nearly everywhere you go; 
• the luxury of hour long phone calls to parents costing less than $5, 
• candle lit "last supper"s in the magical ambiance of Mediterraneo;
• and, of course, the ever present goodbyes...

lost {and found} in translation

“You know how every week we do communion at church, they also recite the Ten Commandments....(hear recitation of 10 commandments in Moru), well I’ve had those phrases repeating in my head all day today”...Larissa said, as we were gathering for dinner one night this week.

Nope.  I had no idea that the liturgy for Holy Communion sundays included a recitation of the Ten Commandments. 

 The liturgy in the church Larissa and I go to is done completely in Moru.  There are Moru prayer books, this is the EPISCOPAL Church of Sudan, remember, so every Sunday is a prescribed liturgy.  I chose our church because of all the churches in the area, this is the one with the most Juba Arabic translation used - due in part to it’s proximity to the Army barracks and the area of town where there is a high concentration of “returnees” from Khartoum.  But it’s usually the announcements and the sermon that are translated...not ever the liturgy.  So, I usually mentally check out, standing and sitting at the appropriate times, but also smiling at the cute babies that are invariably sitting around and staring back at me...or on my better missionary days I try to make use of the time to pray for the church and for God’s work in hearts through the liturgy and Word being preached...I’ve always been quite content going to a church service I couldn’t understand...because it means that I have the privilege of worshiping with brothers and sisters who are worshiping in their own tongue...you know those parts of Scripture that talk about “every nation and every tongue”...what joy there is in the experience of a small sliver of that.  It’s not always a terribly spiritually enriching experience to have absolutely no idea what’s going on...what’s being said/prayed/sung...actually most times it’s not, but for the privilege of worshiping with “every nation and every tongue”, it’s totally worth it...even when it’s 5 hours long and when I’m falling asleep doing the head bob/jerking awake thing...or when it’s really really really hot and it seems there’s no air moving at all inside the mud and thatch building.

But today, I understood every word.

Jess is in from Ug to visit, and Scott was preaching about sex at the english service at the Cathedral so I went with Jess and Bethany to support Scott in speaking boldly about  something the Moru church is reluctant to talk about.  He did a GREAT job.  He presented what God calls us to in love for us and about what he calls us not to do out of love for us, and about the forgiveness and grace and mercy God offers to us.  Balanced, clear, simple, truth.

But the unexpected bonus was that at the english service, the liturgy is the same as at my church, but it’s in ENGLISH (shocking, I know).  And it was a Communion sunday, so i got to hear what is actually said in the Communion liturgy (including the Ten Commandments).  But there’s so much RICHNESS in the liturgy and this time, I could understand EVERY word...well, *almost* every word...after the visitors introduced themselves the leader said, “we warmly and hardly welcome you...” I looked confusedly over to the prayer book Jess was holding for us to share...not hardly but HEARTILY :)

But other than pronunciation issues, the richness of the liturgy really encouraged my heart today.  So much that I stole one of the prayer books (it doesn’t have a cover, so I have no idea what it’s actually called) - shhh, bad missionary...I promise, I’ll return it by next week!  But I wanted to be sure to go back over what was said:

Particularly fitting for today’s sermon topic:

“Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen”

and after each of the Ten Commandments the people say:

“Amen, Lord have mercy upon us, and make our hearts to obey your law.”

and then the Sh’ma - a harken back to my semester in Jerusalem and the important role of these words in synagogue liturgy and messianic congregations:

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord, you shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength...”

and in the preparation for the Lord’s Table:

“We do not presume to come to this your Table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies: We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your Table.  But you are the same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy.  Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink His Blood, that we may evermore live in Him and He is us. Amen.”

and the hope we claim:

“Christ has died.  Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

and the richness continues page after page...

I wonder if it’s so rich to me because it’s so new...I had a conversation with a friend in the US about communion and his insistence on the “best” way to do it...he thought the “best” way was the way I’ve done it all my life...but for me, sometimes that way has lost it’s meaning or poignancy because of it’s regularity and habit in my life.  For me, the most meaningful way to do it is the way most other people grew up doing it...because it’s new and fresh to me and it makes me think about things more to do things in a new way.  For that reason, this whole missionary life is so very rich.  We are ever doing things in a new way...having to think about what we think of, or how we feel about, these new ways and why...

Today was one of those new ways.  The old liturgy was “new” to me, found in translation into my own tongue, whereas before it was lost on my deaf-to-Moru ears.  Rich. Wealth IS mine.

on story

Have you ever dove head first into something you’d never done before, having absolutely no idea if it was going to work...if you were going to be any good at it...if people were going to “get it”?  We do just that for a living here at World Harvest Mission South Sudan.  We learn new languages in new ways, we have conversations with new people in said new languages, we get new ideas from said conversations and try new things in our ministry fields, we approach new partners to find new people to work alongside as we try said new things, we get more new ideas from said new partners and mesh their ideas with ours...there are seasons in which everyday feels like an experiment.   I’m in one of those seasons now...you leave the house and have no idea what is going to happen, whether what you set out to do will be what you actually do, whether what you actually do will be of any help to anyone or instead a complete disaster...

I feel like we’re still in our toddler years as a team - well, I guess I should speak for myself, after a year and a half here in Mundri, I feel very much a toddler - 

“how far I can walk while holding onto this table? do I need both hands on the table? do I need any hands on the table? whoah, no hands, okay, this is cool, but wait, what do I do now?  you seem to be saying take a step...but clearly you must have missed the fact that I have no hands on the table, so steps are out of the question....whoah?!?!? boom.  bottom’s down.  Bummer.  Literally.  Should have tried taking that step.  Ah well, next time.”

Africans love a good story...they love telling them, hearing them, passing them along...evidenced most often by the effectiveness of the “bush net.”  Who needs the internet when you’ve got the bush net.  When you tell your neighbor, while out in the cool of the morning brushing your teeth with a stick that yesterday you stuck in the thatch of your roof to save for brushing again on a rainy day, that you heard that the gun shots last night were from a drunk soldier who got in a fight with his wife because she didn’t cook meat for dinner, by the time you get to your garden, your garden neighbor will say to you, “hey, did you hear that those shots last night were from a drunk soldier in a fight with his wife because she didn’t cook meat?”  Word gets around.  fast.  Usually the first several minutes of an encounter or greeting with someone will involve telling each other stories or “news” the other may not have heard since you last saw each other...

Even their speech patterns are in story form...it’s beautiful.  I love it.

I love stories too.  Always have, always will.  I used to ask my parents to tell my favorites from their childhoods to me at bedtime...mom’s about ice skating in the winter, and dad’s about setting his bed on fire...those were my favorites.  They would tell them the same every time, and if any detail differed from what I remembered from the last time, of course I asked for clarification... “but last time you said...” - have to get the details right :)

When you ask about rainbows here, yes, the rainbows that we put on stickers and nursery walls and sunday school materials, the rainbows that small children doodle at knee high arts and crafts tables all over the United States, well, here you will get looks of terror and stories about snakes and dust blowing and people turning colors and pregnant women running for cover inside the nearest tukul...everyone I’ve asked tells the same story...it’s part of their cultural heritage...local lore, told around fires at night while the family lies on mats too hot to go inside until the last possible moment...

What if the creation story was told around these fires...what if the wonder of David in the Lion’s Den or Esther and the King were requested by children because of their amazement and intrigue.  What if the women and children who don’t get to go to school, who never learn to read, who cannot open their Bible to meet God in His words on the pages, could know the stories anyways and pass them down from generation to generation?  What if stories they’ve heard read painfully slowly in church by people who struggle to read in their own language and read in a fairly monotonous voice while trying to focus on every word, could be told and heard and remembered in a way that was new and exciting and actually sounded like a story, a story that actually happened once upon a time many years ago in a place not so much unlike their own...

This is Melissa and I’s hope and prayer...we long for these women and children here, who are our friends, to know these stories, to be able to fall back on them as truth when they wonder what really is true, to be able to marvel at what God has done in years past and what He is able to do today. So, with the ability to lean on the work of our WHM colleague George Mixon and his years of experience doing just this with several tribes and people groups in Kenya, Melissa and I decided to start telling the story of the Bible in a chronological way, story by story, week by week, with women at Melissa’s church.  It’s not a new idea...it’s a method called Chronological Bible Storying and has been used with aural cultures all over the world. 

But this isn’t just anywhere, this is rural South Sudan.  We aren’t trained CBS story tellers, we’re just Heidi and Melissa.  Would anyone come? Would people be able to engage in the story even if it’s broken up by translation? Would people be able to hear the stories afresh or would they just roll their eyes and yawn at a story they’ve heard read over and over in church like we so often do?  Would they understand the questions we asked to engage them in learning about the story? Would they be able to hear it well enough to tell it back to us (since the point is for them to be able to go home able to tell the story)?  We had no idea.  But we wanted to give it a whirl.  And so we did.  We memorized the story (Creation, from Genesis 1), scheduled a day, made an announcement in church, and showed up when we said we would...everything else was a shot in the dark.

By all measures the world uses, it was an epic fail.  Our first scheduled day, we ended up going to “coming out” prayers for a new baby who was born near the church, so we didn’t even end up doing the story.  Fail? Nope. We had a blast with a group of our friends and women from church, celebrating the new life God had brought safely into the world and blessing this new life.  And her name?  Melissa.

Next attempt the following week.  How many people came? A grand total of 2.  Fail? Nope.  It was one of our best friends and a lay leader in the church who is an active leader in the Mother’s Union (women’s group).  It turns out it was great to be able to try it out in a small group on our first attempt, and it created a great opportunity for them to feel comfortable asking questions and laughing at ourselves as we stumbled over the use of 3 languages between the 4 of us.

Did we tell it “right?” Nope.  You’re supposed to memorize the story and tell it in the audience’s heart language yourself - we told it in english with spotty translation by our friend and hoping they understood enough. Fail? Nope, it put us on learners’ level with them, not the high and mighty teacher who knows everything.  Laughing our way through explaining things in Moru and Arabic as we went along, we were all equals.

Did they “get it”?  Nope.  They kept interrupting the story and asking when people were going to be created, and also wanting to follow along in their Moru Bibles they had brought.  Fail? Nope.  At least their questions and interruptions meant they were listening, and were they illiterate like the method is established for? Nope, not these 2, but do they have much connection between a real live story and the book they carry in their UNICEF plastic bags for protection to church every week?  No, and this was a great opportunity to refer them to the story in their own bibles when they did have questions and wanted to be able to talk to family members about the story...connecting the story they could now tell, and the words on the page that they can read.

Could they retell the story back to us after we went through the whole things twice?  Nope, not even day 1 of creation.  Fail? Nope, we got to go through it all several more times with them as we prompted and helped them memorize the story too, in a way that seemed manageable and applicable to them, and encourage them along the way.  So, by the time they got it down, they were super excited and proud of themselves.

Did we have a super deep discussion about grace and how God’s gift of it to us is evidenced in this story, like the method stipulates?  Nope.  Did we even talk about grace? Nope.  Still too abstract for these folks I think.   Maybe down the line a bit.  Fail? Nope.  Did they have a question of their own that really brought home the main point in the whole story?  You betcha.  The mother’s union leader asked “Since woman was made from man’s rib and therefore she’s less strong and less educated and not as important, why is that?”  Whoah.  Right on, sister.  We got to talk with them earnestly about how that couldn’t be further from the truth, that in fact “both male and female” were made in His image and were both given rule and authority over the earth they were given dominion over, and showed them the words in their own bibles...in fact, before they left, the same woman said, “now we have discussed and learned new things and we can go home and tell this to our families.”  

Fail?  No way.  

Melissa and I marveled at God’s hand in the whole thing all the way home on our bikes...amazed that despite all apparent “failures” He still managed to work through us...broken method, broken people.  So thankful.

God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.

on longing

This longing, this ache, is a work of redemption - it’s what this fallen life is supposed to feel like...this longing is it what I was made for.

The longing - the desire for “unity, communion" - reflects the image of my God - He longs for the same.  The ache - the physical bodily struggle with the incompleteness of that desire, is appropriate and faithful and good but NOT what I was made for...not what we were made for.  We were not made for incomplete desires, for lacking wholeness - but that is where we are, broken and aching to be complete...fixed...whole.

In being single, and living this crazy missionary life, there is, in me, a longing for partnership in sharing it with another person.  Another person who is in it for the long haul with you, where you go they go, where you stay they stay.  We have this to an extent with teammates, they know how crazy the life is, and why I even call it “crazy.”  They know the paradoxes of joy and frustration.  They know the things about culture that are hard to explain in words.  They learn to know you, they learn to know what ticks you off, they learn what you’re sensitive about, they learn what kinds of movies and music you gravitate towards.  But there is a place in which this knowing ends; in which coming and going and change happens - when we least expect it and could never have predicted it; in which there is a lack of shared experience of situations/circumstances on both sides of the proverbial pond; and its in these places where loneliness puts its feet up and makes itself at home.  Its inevitable, it’s part of the “crazy” of this life.  It’s not an organizational failing, it’s not a lack of foresight, it’s not anyone’s fault, it just is.

The thing is, this longing...this desire for unity and communion exists in every stage and phase of life.  It’s not a thing that people without spouses have cornered the market on.  Having a spouse means longing for knowing and being known more deeply; having children means longing for them to know and be known, love and be loved, rejoice and know contentment and health and “success” (whatever that looks like for them); not being able to have children means longing to have them and the ability to be fruitful in the ways that God created our bodies to be able to do so; not having a spouse and not longing for one means longing for communion and unity in the community around us, and with God and many other things as well. We were made for longing.  Lisa Graham McKinn says it well, 

“In our fundamental longing for unity, communion, and consummation, we simultaneously reflect imago Dei and, whether or not we know it, we are yearning ultimately for the One who can satisfy our deepest longing to be known and loved.”

Somehow this is comforting.  It’s comforting to know it’s a “supposed to be there” experience, not a “you’ve got something majorly wrong with you” experience, it is a “positive” experience, not a “negative” experience. It’s comforting to know a camaraderie across the details of such an experience.  It has given me a new found sense of unity with my friends and family whose lives are so very different from mine.

I think this is one of those things that I’ve possibly been hearing my whole life, but it’s been just now that I’ve really *heard* it, that my heart has really engaged with it.  There has been freedom in the hearing.  Freedom to long without being so angsty about it all, freedom to talk about it because it’s something everyone can relate to in one way or another.

Not that I have it all figure out, or anything, don’t get me wrong.  McKinn also says the following:

“Living in grace bridges the chasm between our longings and our inability to satisfy those longings.  We have a yearning that ultimately only God can satisfy, yet God extended grace to humanity by creating us with a desire for relationship that extends to others.”

Okay great, key phrase seems to be “living in grace”...what the heck does that mean?  Or better yet, look like?

Something she says later on makes me wonder if this is a *part* of the answer:

“Henri Nouwen speaks of compassion as being able to sit with those who suffer.  We do not much care to sit with suffering but would rather escape it, using Advil to escape physical pain and TV, movies, daydreams, shopping, and a variety of addictions to escape emotional pain.  To extend grace is to be willing to sit with brokenness rather than escape or fix it - to look at and own our failure.  God redeems and restores that which is broken and calls us to be hands and feet of mercy, easing the suffering of others.  We learn something of our human condition and our need for God when we sit with our suffering and with those who suffer.”

Hm.  I think she’s onto something there...not yet sure of what exactly, but it’s rattling around in my head and heart and it seems to ring true based on my experience of sitting with those who are suffering and in my own...

That suffering’s not going anywhere really, it just looks different for everyone and different in different stages in life.  McKinn again, 

“...the woman whose hemorrhaging Jesus healed had spent twelve years seeking help.  Part of her journey wards healing was to crawl toward Jesus in the midst of a throng of people where she hoped to touch the hem of his robe.  Some of us will be crawling still until we reach heaven, where all symphonies are completed, all wounds are healed, all tears dried.  Sometimes we need to receive a grace that allows us to endure and embrace suffering from which we may never be healed in ways we hope...when we accept suffering and embrace our incompleteness, we experience more fully the grace of a God who invites us, woos us, lures us into communion with God and others.”

Crawling until heaven? whoah.  maybe.  hm.  whoah.  But symphonies completed, wounds healed, tears dried?  Sign me up.

4 women and a compound: Episode 4: "Kalas already!"

It was one of “those days.”  

p90x is a routine of sorts in Mundri, believe it or not.  It’s a good workout and with community built right in here, you usually always have some sort of accountability waiting for you to get out of bed.  Wonder if Tony Horton ever imagined working out with a bunch of missionaries in South Sudan...?  anyways, I digress.

So Bethany and Melissa and I are kicking some Yoga butt in the pyot (a little gazebo like building for greeting people and meetings and such - that also doubles from 6:30am - 7:30am or so as Fitness Mundri).  And about 2/3 of the way into the work out, Bethany glances outside and see’s our friend Sirius running around outside.  not even 8am and we’ve already got a problem...and not even 12 hours after the 4 of us spent previously chronicled hour trying to contain the silly dog and he’s out again.  Clearly we have some work to do on our dog containment skills.  So, Bethany and Melissa get working on trying to find the dog’s escape source and fortify it - loading wheelbarrows with cinder blocks and large pieces of plywood...while I try to reign in the cute and not-so-little-any-longer son of a gun.  

cute and still little Sirius

He’s gone over near Bishop’s where he knows they through their food scraps into the bush and wash their dishes in basins on the ground that are great for sitting in, etc.  I saw that Ferida had a tea kettle on the fire for morning tea and I had visions of the dog bounding over the fire and knocking boiling water all over her...ai yi yi...but I tried my best dog sweet talking skills (sorely lacking unfortunately - babies, got it; dogs, not so much) and very sorry attempts at the sweet whistling that seemed to coax him back the night before...no dice.  So, I was back to picking up the dog around the middle and carrying him back to his pen...or at least I was back to *trying.*  Let’s just  avoid all the here and there and back again with my several attempts and just say that after about attempts at kneeling and letting him smell/lick my hand and then slowly reaching to pick him up, I was bitten with an accompanying growl no less than 4 times...not playful nips like I’m used to with him, but genuinely angry back lashes.  Half of those times he broke the skin and I’ve got a nice half moon scar of his top set of teeth along my left index finger.  Good times, good times. 

friendly nips I had the misfortune NOT to experience

I was frustrated, and went to ask for advice from the other girls as they were reinforcing the fence... “food might work” Bethany suggested...brilliant!  Sacrificing the little bit of  leftover refried beans and cheese from our burrito dinner the night before, with some help from a friend, James Wani who lives next door, I got the son of a gun lured back into his pen and even managed to put his collar back on nice and tight while he ate, without getting any chuncks take out of my hand in the process.  The other two finished reinforcing, the dog was collared and tied, the gate wired shut in 3 places, “surely he won’t be able to get out this time,” Melissa said.  I kept my mouth shut.

Late in getting on with our days, we showered and ate breakfast in turn, all gathered around the island in the kitchen at one point talking about what exactly, I can’t remember...Melissa glanced up and out the window from her bowl of pineapple and then did a double take... “do we know this guy?” she asked.  Bethany and I followed her glance and both agreed we did not as he walked briskly and energetically towards the kitchen door next to us, carrying his hoe. Our conversation paused as we all took note of the man’s strange mannerisms and body language.  He walked directly towards the door, pressing his face against the screen and trying the door handle (never have I been so glad for that usually frustrating mal-functioning door handle) without success.  He asked how we were in Arabic, I think.  We told him we were well from inside the house (usually NEVER greeting people through a closed door), and asked him what he wanted.  Back and forth we went with him: he would assure us he had just come to greet, we assured him we had in fact greeted him and that he now needed to go, he played the “I don’t understand what you’re saying”-dumb card, and Melissa or Bethany responded again, this time in Moru.  He threw some English in there, so did we...now 3 languages are in play and we still have no idea what is going on with this guy...is he drunk? is he “not okay in the head?” as they like to say here...unsure, but we were in fact sure of the strangeness of the interaction.  As we continued to attempt to ascertain why he had come, Bethany ducked out the back door and went over to Bishop’s where she found Joseph and James and the night guard standing by the garden talking.  All three of them followed her back to the house when she them what was going on.  While they are approaching, Melissa and I have ascertained that in fact what this guy wants is a wife.  “Ana deru mara” was the actual statement.  “I want a woman” he said.  Aha.  Okay.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  “Lakiin aniina ma deru rajil” I replied.  “But we don’t want a man” I lied...every one of us would love a man in our lives, but not this one, or any other drunk AND “not okay in his head” man I might add...high standards, I know.

Turns out this guy is the night guard’s nephew and was coming from his home, on one side of our compound, and headed to his garden to dig on the other side of our compound...and I guess thought picking up a kawaaja wife along the way would suit him just fine on this particular morning.  Little did he know, this was not the morning to mess with us...Sirius had already tried his luck and lost, and this guy was second in line.  Thankful for the James and the night guard’s help and stern/firm words to our new “friend,” we locked the door, avoiding his second attempt to come into our house un-invited, and spite his escalating temper and hostility, they managed to send him on his way to his garden telling him that since he doesn’t know us and we don’t know him, this is not the place to greet us, that he can greet us at the office if he’d like, but not to come back to our door.  

We all just looked at each other unsure about what had just happened...and laughed (what else can you do in that moment, you know?!).  A drunk and crazy man we’d never seen or met before had just told us he was looking for a wife and tried to come into our house looking for one...bizarre.

We regrouped, finished our breakfasts and got ready to get on with our day - unsure of what the rest of the day might bring.

Melissa and I got on our bikes and went out to visit our friend Mary.  It was great. We found her digging in the garden next to her house, she paused and started the fire for making tea for us (a hospitable welcome you don’t even bother to put up a fight about because, well, frankly, because you’ll loose).  We got a couple plastic chairs from her tukul and put them in the shade near the fire.  We plucked greens and chatted with her about the news of the week.  The sun went behind the clouds and the thunder began rumbling closer and closer to us...Mary was sure it wan’t going to amount to anything and went to do a few more things in her garden and we continued plucking greens.  Then we heard the rain in the distance... “Awadiya! Ita asuma!  Motoro gi ja asa!”  [Awadiya! Listen! The rain is coming, now!].  We gathered up our chairs and the fire (in a little charcoal seguili stove of sorts) and took them inside her tukul as she finished up her work.  The rain came, we were dry inside her newly re-thatched tukul, and she made us slimy greens with mushrooms (!) and linya followed by tea as the rain came and went a few times.  Then I got a call from the friend I was supposed to meet in town at 2pm...I was late, so I gulped down the rest of my tea with mint leaves and we got back on our bicycles and rode home in the mud and rain which had stopped and started again while we were inside eating...Melissa stopped at our compound and I continued on into town...already muddy why not just continue on.

I had made a plan with my 20year old or so friend in P6 to read after school so he had already started in on The Cat in the Hat when I got to Scott’s house to meet him.  I was a hot mess, covered from head to toe in mud (bike kick-back) and wet from the rain.   I took my Chaco’s off at the door and took a towel Scott directed me to and put it on the chair before I sat down, hoping not to dirty everything I touched.  Tata struggles with nearly everything in life and knowing a bit about what that must be like, I love doing what I can to encourage him in those things he does manage to do somehow.  Cheering him on at the end of each page, after each word he sounds out or remembers the looks of, he smiles and reads nearly 2/3 of the book before he stops and says we should continue next time.  Faster than the last time we read, I’m encouraged and so is he and he grins ear to ear as we set a time to finish up.  Back on the bike to head home...more mud...young guys pretending to run me off the road with their bikes, folks laughing as the muddy white girl rides by, calls of “I love you, my wife” and following laughs from another passing crowd of young guys as they repeat the line in celebration of their friend’s creativity (?!) as they walk/ride on behind me...can’t wait for the day to start anew tomorrow!

Dinner was luckily a north african soup Melissa was kind enough to help me chop veggies for...perfect for a rainy day...we sat around and reviewed the craziness of the day as we sipped from our bowls.  I went back down into town (this time driving the vehicle since it was dark) for bible study at Scott’s...it was just what I needed to hear, that nothing is too big/too hard for God...heard some of the news in town, showed some pictures of Carrie’s wedding, got back in the vehicle and drove home, dropping a few guys off near their homes along the way.  

When I arrived back at the compound, the light glowing from above the table in the team house welcomed me back and I found Larissa and Melissa working on a puzzle.  Stopped to tell them how Bible Study went, check in on the puzzle progress, then started out the other door towards my house...as I close the team house door, “WHAT is THAT?” Melissa says, and I pause.  “Oh. my. goodness.” Larissa follows.  I head back inside and their both shining their headlamps on a long black skinny snake curled up on the floor next to the window seat...just chillin’ like it was entirely natural for it to make itself comfortable there.  Closest to the door, I went to the choo for the panga, came back and handed it to Melissa.  She’s the resident “snake killa.”  Standing on a chair next to the slithering creature, she bent down and hacked away until she eventually severed it’s head and halfed it’s body length and it stopped moving.  A snake.  In. the. house.  Seriously?!  Today?  What?!

not the one, but close enough....

Kalas.  Enough. Really, that’s enough.  Today has been enough, thank you.  I climbed into bed, inside my mosquito net, and quickly passed on into a dreamworld where I also prefer there not to be snakes and dogs on the loose, and where I also prefer that men I don’t know not try to come into my house and prefer not to be covered in mud and heckled on the road, but when your days are like this one, often your dreams are no escape.  

until next time....

PS - you should know that more than one week after the record setting bad dog morning, the dog has NOT ONCE escaped his pen, the drunk and crazy guy paid us another visit, this time on Sunday afternoon during team worship so Scott was around as well, this time also far more intoxicated than the last but somehow we managed to convince him to go by heading for the phone and threatening to call Bishop if he didn’t leave as we’d asked...you live and you learn in this life...

PPS - Today is Saturday.  John and Jenn arrive back in Mundri in 5 days.  So, our days as “4 women and a compound” are numbered...maybe the series title will change to “1 man and his harem” or “5 women and their sidekick” or something of the sort... ;)

4 women and a compound: Episode 3: "Critters threaten coup"

highways of biting ants.  Need I say more?  I think not, but I will anyways.

Impali are NOT our friends.  They travel in highways made up of themselves - thousands upon thousands of them in a river undulating with crawling ants.  Yich.  It's rainy season, and I guess they like that.

It's 4 am, and I've gotta go to the bathroom.  I drag myself out of bed, futzing around next to my bed trying to find my headlamp, then wander out of the house and across the compound to the latrine.  Somewhere in the "across the compound" portion, I must have put a foot in or near one of their highways.  The only way I knew was that suddenly as I approached the latrine, I begin getting bites on my legs inside my PJ pants...I'm now a bit more awake than I'd like to be, yelping and "oo, ee, ai!"ing the rest of the way to the latrine and a bit fearful of the extent of my interruption of their movement...I have been in rooms with people who, having just come in from  outside, have suddenly dropped their drawers while yelping and slapping their legs and jumping around while being bitten all over by impali.  So, I take care of my latrine business as quickly as I can and return to my house with my headlamp pealed for the impali highway I must have disrupted.  Noting it, I managed, this time, to step over it and move as quickly as my sleepy self could carry me into my house.  Still not quite willing to wake all the way up, I decide that PJ pants are pretty optional in the sleeping process and especially when they have biting ants inside them, so I dropped them as soon as I entered and climbed right back into my bed.  Before I fell back to sleep I heard Larissa get up on the other side of the wall and decided that the roommate-ly thing to do would be to warn her about the impali on the way to the latrine - she seemed to appreciate the warning.

That was last week.  Yesterday, around bedtime, the impali were threatening to take over the team house, this time, also in Melissa's pants.  She used the pantry as her changing room as she tried to find the culprits.  I emptied one of our 2 cans of doom in the doorway and they seemed sufficiently intimidated, which I was thankful for.  "Take THAT!" impali.  We have one more type of ammunition in that arsenal, kerosene and water that gets poured as a wall around whatever you want to keep them out of.  I like still having another option for the next time they strike...

The threatened impali coup yesterday followed on the heels of the lovely black lab puppy's threatened coup only a few hours earlier.  The dinner bell had rung, I was waiting with my hot minestrone soup for everyone to gather.  "Heidi, did *you* let him out?!" Melissa hollers from outside.  "Let who out?" I immediately responded, and before the words were finished coming out of my mouth I knew what she meant.  Sirius must be on the loose.  We've been back on the compound no more than 11 days and maybe we were getting a little too used to not having him tearing through newly planted gardens, sitting his muddy rear/paws on clean chairs, tearing holes in our skirts, sitting in the neighbor's dish water basins...he was in his pen and being cared for by John's friend coming everyday to put food and water out and such.  Just when we had let our guard down a bit, he came tearing through the compound in the rain, a muddy mess.  "No, I didn't let him out."  Bethany went down to see how he may have managed to get out of his pen.  I decided the only way we were gonna get him back in was to pick him up and carry him down there.  In the protection of my rain coat, I picked him up and moved as quickly as I could down to his pen.  Bethany was sure he hadn't gotten out the door somehow, and after we put him back in and tied the door especially securely, we noticed that the cinder blocks stacked next to john's house at the end of the dog's fencing were pushed to the side and the fencing was curled back.  As we inspect how we might repair it, just when we thought he didn't have any new tricks, he jumped the full height of the fence, almost freeing himself again.  I used the fencing to secure the cinder blocks, but if this dog can jump the fence, we are flat out of luck...we checked and double checked everything and walked back to the team house anticipating our meal of hot soup.  Before we even reached the team house we heard "ba dump - ba dump, ba dump - ba dump" behind us and there he was dashing past us heading for the team house - looking back at us once as if to say "ha! take that!"

Melissa and Larissa come out, Larissa fuming due to further damage to her garden in the process of his tearing around the compound in his few minutes of freedom before we figured out he was out.  The 4 of us head down to the pen and scheme about how best to secure the place - preventing all further escape artist demonstrations.  In the end it involved bamboo poles, fencing, cinder blocks and in the end chaining his collar to the fence and tying the door closed in 2 places.  We all walk away slowly, all pausing at the same time to look back at the black eyes looking yet hopefully back at us, "Take THAT!" we said, hoodlum arm motions and all. "4 women and a COMPOUND" Larissa said to caption off our efforts.