All our adventures as missionaries, past and present.

On Having a Baby in Africa

/in /by

As you've likely heard, Brennah LaDynne Huckabee was born March 6, 2011 at 2AM Uganda time. When we told our families they told others "My niece was born tomorrow!" 😀

Having her here has been quite the experience all around. It put me way out of my comfort zone. First of all, in the states I know who to call and what to do to go about getting prenatal care. Here I didn't know anyone. After asking around a little, a Dr. and hospital were recommended in Kampala. I made an appointment and saw her last fall. We really liked what we saw at both the hospital and with the Dr. It looked like a "real American hospital". As we talked with her, though, she kept asking us why we were driving all the way to Kampala to have our baby. She recommended a good hospital in Mbarara for us to check out. I didn't really want to. In my mind having as close to an American experience with the whole thing as possible was my goal. Each time I saw the Dr. she said the same thing – that we should check out the hospital here in town. Still I wasn't convinced.

However, as the time drew closer and I realized how little I enjoyed trips to Kampala, the idea began to seem a little more appealing. Not to mention the fact that the Dr. wanted us to come and stay in Kampala around my due date until she was born. Its very expensive for a family of our size to stay in Kampala even for a day or two, let alone for more than a week!

So James and I went and saw the hospital here – Mayanja Memorial Hospital. What we saw impressed us. It was very clean, very organized, all the staff that we met seemed knowledgeable in their job. The rooms were very nice! So, after much prayer and thought and consideration, we decided to try for the delivery here, rather than in Kampala. The midwife we met and saw there said, "We'll see you soon! Just come in when you are in labor!" If only it were that easy!

So we waited, and waited. The due date came and went. We kept up with my blood pressure and stuff and all was well but no baby was born. On Monday, February 28, James and I talked and I asked him "At what point do we do something about this instead of just waiting?" He replied, "Let's give it until Friday. If nothing has happened then, we'll see what the Dr. suggests." So Friday I went and saw the Dr. at the hospital here. They couldn't get a good feel on the babies position or size and since I was past due they wanted to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that the placenta was alarmingly calcified and that we needed to deliver the baby right away. I suggested waiting until Monday but he didn't even want to wait that long. He told us to come in the next morning and they'd start the induction then.

Next morning we arrived at 9AM. However, one of the Drs that they needed to be there didn't arrive until almost 11AM so we sat and waited for a LONG time in our room. Then they assessed me and determined that we had to go the long road – half of a little pill that should help things get ready and maybe even start labor if my body was ready to do that. So I took that half of a pill. Within half an hour, contractions started. They weren't super painful but they were there. After six hours, at 6PM, they checked again. No significant progress so they gave me the other half of the pill. WHAM! In 30 min. The contractions were coming very hard and very regularly! I couldn't hardly believe how fast things went then. By 10PM I was 6 cm. dilated and by 12:30AM I was complete. However, the Dr on duty in the night didn't want to check me until 2AM!!! James told the nurses they better get him before then or we'd be delivering that baby without him. 🙂 At 1:30 I started pushing. I was so tired that it was hard to work with my body to finish it. After a couple pushes I was finally able to start to feel and remember what to do. By 2AM she was born. It was such a relief to hear her little cry and to have her laid up on my chest for me to hold and touch. Then they took her off to clean her up and finish things with me.

There are so many things that were quite different than the other deliveries I've had in America. For one thing, the nurses and midwives kept coming in to make sure I was eating and drinking. I was encouraged to eat all the way to the end of the labor process. For another thing, they were avoiding as much as possible doing anything intrusive. They never even suggested an IV. We were pretty much left alone except for brief visits to check my blood pressure and the baby's heart rate. And after all the clean-up from delivery was finished we were left to sleep until morning. It was wonderful!

We've been having random water outages and I guess Saturday was one of those days. So the hospital was without water by the time I finished delivering. They did have water that they brought in so I got a sort of sponge bath, but there wasn't water for a shower or anything. By next morning the water had been turned back on and we had some water for flushing toilets and washing hands and stuff. It was interesting to say the least!

The morning after Brennah was born, several total strangers came to visit us to see the Mzungu baby. Since white people don't have many babies (they think) seeing one who did was quite the novelty. Three ladies came to visit and all wanted to hold her. Then, a little later another lady and man came in to see her. It was pouring rain outside and kind of chilly, but I had Brennah wrapped up and warm with a hat on. Still, they thought she was cold and kept telling me that. They said she needed a "shawl" which is a big heavy fleece blanket. Whew! It made me hot thinking about it for her! I just kept telling them she was fine. Even the Dr. told me not to let her get cold and to wrap her well. Sigh. I told him I'd had babies in America where it was MUCH colder than here and she seemed fine to me. 😀

Our discharge was super easy. James paid for our bill and we were free to go. Less than 12 hours after she was born, we were home and able to rest in our own beds and be around our family. It was really nice! The kids were so excited to meet her and she seemed really content as they took turns holding her and we got pictures. She still really likes to have them all around and tries as hard as she can to see them. It is so precious to see all of the kids so excited about their new sister.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-07-2011

/in /by

Brennah LaDynne HuckabeeAs you can see, the 2011 model Huckabee has arrived. Our sixth child, Brennah LaDynne Huckabee was born at 2AM on March 6, 2011, right here in Mbarara, Uganda. Her and Anna are doing great. The birth went smoothly and without complications of any kind. Thank you all for praying about it. Anna has always had trouble getting labor going without chemical assistance. We had decided that if nothing happened by Friday we would go see the doctor. As it turned out of course, nothing happened, so we went in Saturday morning and began the process of inducing labor. We used the private hospital here in town (Mayanja Memorial), and I'm quite glad we did. I can't imagine going through the exhausting process of driving to Kampala, enduring the exhausting process of having a baby, and then having to drive all the way back. This was so much better. We live five minutes from the hospital. If I needed something, I could run back home to get it or to check on the kids (one of the other missionaries has a teenage daughter who volunteered to watch the crew while we were gone. She is such a blessing). When we needed a meal, I could send one of my employees to get some food from one of the local restaurants. Then, the very next day, since there were no complications, we could come home. Plus, it was super cheap by American standards. The whole experience couldn't have been more positive.Mayanja Memorial Hospital

Having an infant in the house again is fun. The kids are beside themselves with excitement. They don't remember Gaelin when he was a baby, so they are enjoying getting to know their new little sister. Elizabeth is digging getting to have a little sister. She prayed for her, and God answered. Pray for our new little girl.

Pray for rain. We have been getting more rain lately, but not in the quantities that will be needed for growing crops around here. It will get unbearably hard for folks in Uganda if the drought continues. Pray for the preaching, the growth of the churches, and the English class we are teaching out at the refugee class. Pray for our continued study of Runyankore.

God bless you all!

Water and Labor

/in /by

Mbarara Pump HouseGot a bit of a scare yesterday. I read in the local paper that the water in the Rwizi river was getting low. This is the river that supplies Mbarara with it's H20 llifeline. We are in a drought at the moment. The rain we should be getting this time of year, we're not. I decided to go and check it out myself. So, I drove out to the local pumping station to take a look. Wouldn't you know, I passed Julious, a fellow I know from the early months here (he did a lot of the electrical work on the house). He happens to be an employee of the National Water and Sewer Department. Thanks to him, I got a full tour of the facility. The water in the river is a bit low, but it's not at the catastrophically low levels the paper made it sound. The only way we will run out of water here is if Bushene runs out, and they have been getting plenty of rain. However, that said, the lack of rain is going to hurt a lot of people who depend on their gardens for food. Pray for rain. 

Anna has been in labor all day. She ate some pineapple, which is supposed to help advance labor in some cases. It seems to be helping her. We went for a couple long walks today to keep things moving along. Pray that things continue, and conclude with a baby tomorrow. 

In other news, our mutual parents finally got the Christmas packages we sent in October. Sigh. It's not actually Uganda's fault this time. There has been an embargo on foregin mail in the US for months now, thanks to some mail bomb threats. Ah well, Christmas in March, right?

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 03-02-2011

/in /by

Greetings! This is actually the second time I've tried to write this. A couple weeks back I tried to write an email, and at the end, before I could save it, some bizarre javascript error happened and erased the whole thing. Needless to say, I was angry enough to beat a manatee to death with a snow shovel. I figured I'd better wait awhile and cool off so I could write an email and actually be Christlike at the same time. Then, in the interim, I got busy updating the website and just now got it all to the point where I can start blogging again. So, here we are.

No baby yet, although I hope to be able to communicate that news soon. Anna is QUITE ready to give birth. She made her goal of having Brennah's birthday land in March and not in February, which is top heavy with birthdays already, but now she'd like to be done please. Pray the labor will endure and result in a healthy birth, infant, and mother very soon.

We are doing well with our language study. Runyankore is a complex Bantu dialect with phonemic lengthening (almost tonal), 3 past tenses, 2 future tenses, and multiple cases that change the prefixes on everything. It's progressing, but slowly. Unless you're willing to fake tongues with the Pentecostals and spend several hours barking like dogs at 11 PM on a Saturday night, there's just no quick or easy way to reprogram your brain to speak another language. I try to be patient with the process, but it just feels so slow sometimes. The really awkward thing is how the Swahili we're learning out at the refugee camp keeps intruding into the mix. I'll find myself totally unable to remember the Runyankore for something, but the Swahili will be all I can think of. Aggravating.

I tell you, I'm very glad I went to BBTI to get the training in Phonetics and Linguistics I did. It has made the whole process a LOT easier than I suspect it otherwise would be. It helps in the English class I'm teaching at Ngarama an awful lot as well. Because I know what parts of the mouth are needed to make specific sounds, I can show the mostly Congolese people I'm instructing exactly how to make, for example, the 'r' sound. This involves circumflexing in American English, and tangles their tongue as badly as multiple flapped 'r's in a row does for us. We know what to listen for when learning speech, and how to replicate those sounds very well, so we can attempt to speak the language properly without a foreign accent. Our goal in all this of course is effective communication for ourselves, to preach the Gospel effectively without translators, and to bequeath literacy to them, to grant them true priesthood of the believer by learning to read the Bible for themselves. Those 10 months of hard work in rural Texas are continuing to pay eternal dividends. I honestly think the speed with which we have adapted to living here was largely facilitated by the cultural and language training we received at BBTI. It was well worth the financial and time investment. I am personally very grateful to the Cobbs and Alfords and others who labor in isolation in Bowie, TX to equip missionaries like me to be a success on the field.

I'm enjoying preaching, and being involved in the ministry long term in one place. Deputation bounces you around too much, so you never get to really scratch the surface on the Biblical text as thoroughly as you would like. It's good to be involved in people's lives long term as well, helping them reach the goals God has for them, equipping the saints as servants of Christ. We are prospering here in the sun and pleasant climate of Mbarara. We eat well, we live well, and we're all as healthy and happy as can be. It is deeply satisfying to be busy about the thing God intended you to do. Getting regular sleep doesn't hurt either. 🙂 I am very grateful for all your prayers, and for your financial support, which is continuing to make all this possible. I anticipate great things in the future, because I serve a great God.

God bless you all!

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 01-24-2011

/in /by

Hello again! It's been a busy few weeks. We got a welcome visit from Debbie Guimon, a member of our church in St. Louis, and a missionary to Uganda herself. She brought her son Matthew and her niece SaraBeth. It was so great having them here. I know our families and church family were wishing they could be the one coming, but they sent their love through Debbie. She brought many things that we needed and cannot get here, and also some very unexpected surprises. We have the greatest family and church family in the world. I find myself having to keep thoughts of them out of my mind because of the emotions of missing them those thoughts create. It's painful. We love it here. We're adapted here. There's aspects of American culture that I do not miss, at all – yet, I miss the people so very much. 

Probably the single greatest thing we got was the Betty Luken flannel graph set. We are teaching the children now, and I am teaching English. Having large, colorful, well done graphics to use with the children and with the English class is such an incredible help to us. Thank you so much Gary and Gloria! Thank you for all the spices, and the Kool-Aid, and the Ranch dressing mix, and the pens, and the innertubes, and the chocolate, and the CHEESE! It was like Christmas all over again. When I think how much work, and how much love went into getting it all ready for us and sent to us, it humbles and overcomes me. We love you guys, and all our supporting churches. We have the very best of people backing us, and it is such a blessing and encouragement to us.

Getting Debbie was an adventure. It was our first solo trip to the Capitol. We have good maps, and we have been a few times with the Bassett's, who used to live there, and they were able to show us where everything is. We drove out to Entebbe in the dark (not fun at all) to get her, and got there just in time. The trip back went well the next day, and we had a good time of fellowship here with her and the missionaries who were available at the time (the Stensaas' were gone to Kampala for some emergency dental work).
 
Going to the Capitol always has an element of risk. I successfully got her and her gang back to Kampala to meet Phyllis Hall and continue their grand Ugandan tour. Then I met my mechanic Ssuemko to pick up a generator (it's been a long time coming and very needed to protect our freezer full of food against extended power outages). He was going to Masaka (halfway between Kampala and Mbarara) to work on Matt Stensaas' car, so I offered to give him a ride. This decision turned out to be providential, because just outside of town we got in an accident.
 
It's miraculous that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. The roads are atrocious here. They're poorly maintained. Erosion chips them away on the edges, thus making them narrow. There's lots of hills and blind turns, 20 year old trucks that have to creep up the hills in 1st gear, and pedestrians and bodas (motorbike taxis) everywhere. So if you, a mzungu, get in a wreck, it's automatically your fault. We came to one such a hill, and there was the obligatory petrol truck taking it's sweet time climbing the hill. The guy in front of me decided to overtake (pass). I followed him because a) he could see if anyone was coming, and b) there was a wide shoulder there where I could get over if someone did come. He merged in, and sure enough, here comes a car. So, I got over to let him by. For some reason, he panicked and also dodged onto the shoulder. By that time, there was a vehicle to my left, and a dirt hill to my right, so all I can do is hit the brakes. We were on loose soil, so of course, I skidded right into him. My car was only minimally damaged, and nobody in either vehicle was hurt, but his vehicle was totaled. I couldn't call Anna to let her know initially because my stupid phone was being twitchy that day (Ssuemko let me borrow his later so I could let her know what happened and that Ethan and I were okay).
 
So began the messy process of accident resolution in a 3rd world country. The cops (the real cops, in the urban camo uniforms and the AK-47s) showed up to secure the accident scene (directing traffic and discouraging a mob from forming and lynching the white guy). Then the traffic police (white uniforms) showed up to do their part, which is to complicate things and create confusion. We gave the folks in the other car a lift back to the station, and began negotiations as to how much I would have to pay for the damages – I was on the wrong side of the road, so I am at fault no matter what. Ssuemko totally saved the day. He was able to examine the guy's car and accurately diagnose the damage, and then call his parts supplier to get the exact costs of the parts. Then he negotiated with the traffic police as to how much bribe, er…., administrative costs I would have to pay to keep from being hauled off to court, which would have been catastrophic – he minimized that cost. Then, he negotiated with the other driver to minimize those costs (he was wanting approximately $1000, and we got him talked down to around $700). Then, he got him to sign the document that goes in a file there and says that I have paid for the repairs and he absolves me of all further liability. It was a God thing entirely. If he had not been with me, the whole thing would have been much, much worse. All this took until 6 PM to resolve, and I still needed to get Ethan and myself home.
 
Then began the journey home. I had Ssuemko drive to Masaka so he could feel and listen to the engine. No worries. We had to stop and adjust the headlights, because they were crooked and weren't lighting the road ahead well. I delivered Ssuemko to Keith Stensaas' place (Matt was having car troubles of his own, a cracked head gasket among other things), and then I began the drive back. Driving after dark is suicidal here. It is pitch black dark, everywhere. There is no ambient light, no streetlights, nothing to help you see, except your brights, which you must keep on so you can watch for pedestrians. In this country, there are people on the highway at all hours. Walking. Riding bikes. Riding motorcycles. In dark clothes with no reflectors or taillights on the bodas. Trucks are parked by the side of the road with no lights or warning reflectors of any kind. People get killed all the time here in accidents involving cars, and yet they still keep doing it, no matter how dangerous or foolish it is. It took me 4 hours to get from Masaka to Mbarara (normally a 2 hour drive) because I had to drive so slow. I almost passed the road that leads home because it is so dark you cannot read the signs, what few signs there are. I white-knuckled it the whole way home, and then collapsed into bed shortly thereafter. Needless to say, I won't be taking any more trips to Kampala if it can be avoided, and I will definitely not be driving after dark again. 
 
In other, more pleasant news, the English class in Ngarama is progressing well. The training we got at Baptist Bible Translators Institute has been invaluable. All I have done is adapt the same process I have been using to learn Runyankore and am using it to teach them English. There is no translator. I point at things and say the English word clearly, multiple times, and they repeat. I draw pictures on the chalkboard, and yesterday, I had the Betty Luken stuff as well. We have a mixture in the class. Some have a little English, and can read and write. Most have zero English, and cannot read and write at all. The phonetics I learned at BBTI allows me to identify which parts of the mouth they need to use to make a particular sound (R's are the worst), I show them how to do it, and then we practice. I'm really focussing on pronunciation. I want them to be able to speak English like an American when we're done. English is the Latin of this country. It's the language of education and business. It's how the wide variety of tribes and dialects are able to communicate with each other. Giving them English, and literacy along with it, is therefore a tremendous gift of knowledge, because it will make a way for them to improve their life, of which the greatest is the ability to read the Bible for themselves. Meanwhile, I am learning Swahili from them, along with the Runyankore we have been studying. As I told them on Sunday, I am teaching them English, but they are all my Swahili teachers. Anna is doing a great job teaching the children (another great opportunity to learn Swahili), and I am preaching in two preaching points. The ministry is going well and we are making good progress.
 
Pray for Anna and Brennah. The pregnancy is doing great. We have visited a local, private hospital here and will likely have the baby in Mbarara rather than Kampala. It's safer to do so (elections are coming up right near the due date), less stressful, and much, much cheaper. Our doctor in Kampala recommended the hospital we will be using, and having toured the place and interviewed the staff, I am satisfied that it is safe for us to have a baby here. Pray the birth goes smoothly and without complications. Continue praying for our safety and well being here. Pray for our health and finances. Pray for the ministry, that folks will continue to get saved, and that we will have the wisdom to lead them spiritually and teach and preach from God's word. Pray for our language learning as we move into more advanced concepts in Runaynkore, and look to eventually having to learn Swahili and French. Thank you all for your many prayers, thoughtful notes and care packages, and for your love and care for us.