MISSION: Uganda Email Udpate 03-28-2011

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Mud, mud, and more mud. The rainy season is officially here! Everything is getting green and lush, and my gardens are doing well. We had our 1 year anniversary on the 23rd, which is bizarre to consider. Time has gone by so quickly. I won’t get into the gritty details, since you can read my wife’s blog post A Year in Review here. Everyone is doing very well, including Brennah, who is growing quickly and enjoying her new spot as youngest child. Gaelin is in love I think. He just adores his new kid sister.

Yesterday was entertaining. It had been raining most of the night, and was still raining when we got ready to head to Nakivale. The roads were, of course, sloppy in the extreme. Thank God for 4-wheel drive! We made it to the camp in time, but here is the catch: Djuna, the national Pastor and translator is out sick (Pray for him. He’s in Kampala seeing a doctor, which is how serious it is). He had arranged for another man to come and do the translating for me at Juru. I arrived at the appointed time, and he was nowhere to be found. Turns out, he couldn’t obtain transport because of the the rain and mud. Naturally, he didn’t do anything to inform us about it, by actually, you know, telling anybody or anything. So, I sang the two Swahili songs I know with the kids, showed them picture of Brennah (they hadn’t seen them yet), and then I had to go.

Nevertheless, I got to Ngarama, and found that rain had delayed the start of service there for 45 minutes. I was then in the position to do the Kid’s Service there so that the Bassett’s could get to Sangano in time. Then we had a good English class and came home. Always high adventure here, especially in the rain.

I will be going to Kampala tomorrow to pick up my passport and new work permit, get Anna’s paperwork turned in, and pick up Brennah’s long form birth certificate. Pray all goes well with that. We must have the birth certificate, or we won’t be able to do anything at the embassy next Monday (we’re taking her in to get all her American legal documents squared away). The remainder of the week, we will be at the Uganda Field Conference. Pray everything goes well with that, and that everything goes smoothly with the driving we will be doing. Last time I drove to Kampala, I got in a wreck. I would prefer this not happen again.

God bless and keep you!

A Year in Review

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Wednesday was the first anniversary of us moving to Uganda. It’s been an eventful year and I thought a recap of it might be nice.

March… The month started with our commissioning service. Later in the month we loaded our container and saw that ship off. Then we flew out of Chicago with 26 pieces of luggage on March 22. God blessed and all the luggage made it to Entebbe with us. Matthew Stensaas and Tom Tracht met us at the airport and helped load the luggage. Our plane got in late at about 11:30 PM and then, by the time we’d gone through the line to get our visas and found all our luggage, loaded it up, and driven to the motel it was almost 2AM the next day. We slept a few hours and then got up and going again. We looked at some appliances and then drove to Mbarara with Matt and Keila. The following day we looked at houses and a couple days later decided to take the house we’re currently living in. It needed a LOT of work. Only half of it was finished and that half had a lot of damage so needed repair. James worked out the contract with the landlady and work was begun to finish it. God also brought along a vehicle for us to buy. It needed a new engine but it was the right price and, it turns out, the right kind of vehicle for the ministry we’re working in.

April…. We spent most of the month staying with Bro. and Mrs. Brian Stensaas. James worked hard every day to get the house finished as quickly as possible – mainly he just supervised to make sure things were getting done right. He also ended up making a trip to Kampala to get some of our appliances. We got mattresses to sleep on and then we just waited for it to be done. We moved into our house as soon as it was finished enough for us to live there. We’d decided to have them tile the house and the tile on the finished side was barely dry before we moved in. They had a lot to finish on the other side and that was done about a month later. So we had workers in our house every day starting at about 7:30AM until dark (about 7PM). We also didn’t have a wall or fence around our house because of a disagreement between our landlady and the man next door.

May… May was a busy month, particularly Mother’s Day weekend. We got up that Sunday morning and someone had stolen several of the fence posts we’d put in to have them in readiness for the fence to be put up. James spent the entire day dealing with police reports and all the mess that came with it. The next day, one of our workers was planting some plants around the outside of the hedge surrounding our property and broke a water main. A 20ft geyser of water was opened and poured down our hill, through our house, and around the septic tank in the front. After that was stopped, two walls of our septic tank collapsed. It was weak already and would have eventually broken but the main break revealed the weakness and forced us to repair it sooner rather than later. The day after that happened, we got our dog Teal’c. We’d wanted to get a dog for a while so James was really pleased with being able to get that particular dog. We’re all glad he did. 😀

June… Thankfully June wasn’t as eventful as May. 😉 We butchered a cow in our garage. That was interesting! The other side of the house was finally finished completely and cleaned and we moved the kids into their rooms on that side. We also started language study and then restarted three weeks later when the Trachts wanted to join us in it. Father’s Day Sunday we found out we were expecting Huckabee child #6 and so ensued several weeks of miserable morning sickness for me.

July…. I was quite sick for the whole month and James and Osbert ended up doing most of the cooking. Near the end of the month our container arrived. First it arrived in the country and James had to take a trip to Kampala to clear it through customs. Then they brought it to our house and we unloaded it. We got most of the unpacking done in the next couple weeks. It was so nice to have our own beds and the familiar things from home! It was like Christmas!

August… We got most of the packing done and I began making curtains for the house. I was able to repurpose many of our curtains from the States and use them on the windows here with just a little work. We also started school in the middle of August with the kids and continued our language study. Thankfully, about the time we started school the morning sickness went away and I started feeling a LOT better. That helped!

September… Relatively uneventful aside from the fact that we started going with the Bassetts to the refugee camp on a weekly basis. James had gone with them one Sunday in late July or early August and really loved it. So we all went at the end of August. It was our niche. We all tremendously enjoyed it! God seemed to be directing us into that ministry and so there we are. And we still love it!

October…. We took our first trip back to Kampala. On the way there the transmission went out on our vehicle and had to be repaired. That made the time there interesting in finding transportation! But God worked everything out for us. I had my first Doctor visit while we were there. We were planning, at the time, to have the baby in Nakasaro Hospital in Kampala with Dr. Mbonye. She is really nice but kept recommending we check a hospital in Mbarara. We had an ultrasound and found we were having a girl! We got our third dog – a female Rottweiler – and she’s been fun to have around and great for our other puppy. Calmed him right down! We also had a baptismal service at the refugee camp. I ended up missing it with sick kids but James and the boys really enjoyed it!

November… Our first Thanksgiving here and we hosted it at our house. It was a LOT of fun! We bought two turkeys and had them butchered right in our yard! Definitely a learning experience there!

December… Our first Christmas here. We took another trip to Kampala the first part of the month and were able to get some paperwork taken care of and also find some special things for Christmas. Our church family sent a couple boxes of surprises to us from the states for Christmas and that was so special. It was a very special time for us and, while we missed family back home, we had a really good time remembering Christ’s birth here in Uganda. There was another baptismal service at the refugee camp and this time I got to go! It was great – a very moving service. We got there early and I got to visit with many of the ladies in the church there. It was such a blessing.

January…. We finally decided to tour the hospital here in Mbarara and decided to try having the baby here instead of going to Kampala. It was a big decision for us but we both had peace about it. Debbie and Matthew Guimon and her niece, Sarabeth, visited from America. It was SO good to have someone come from the states! James had an accident on the way back from taking them to meet Phyllis Hall in Kampala. God worked things out with that, helping him have the right people with him at the right time.

February…. Baby was due but didn’t arrive. That’s okay, though. The election took place on the 18th and was relatively uneventful.

March…. Brennah LaDynne was born on the 6th, almost 2 weeks late. Her birth went very well and I’m so glad we decided to have her here in Mbarara. She came before we’d been here a year.

So there you have it. Our first year overview. Sorry this is so long. Thanks for persevering to the end of this post. 😀 It’s been exciting to see God work in the good times and the hard and discouraging times as well. We’re really enjoying being here in Uganda and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! It really feels like home.

A Bit More of the Mundane – Food Preparation

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This part of living in Africa has probably been the most challenging. Before moving to Africa I’d been pretty good about making pretty much everything from scratch. We didn’t buy a lot of mixes. I even made our butter and yogurt from scratch in the states. But I took for granted the readiness of other parts of food prep or the availability of certain foods.

So, upon arriving I had to learn what was available, how much it cost and if that was a good price or not. Our helper, Osbert, has been a huge help with this! I’d take a trip to the central market a couple times a week for our produce. Think of all the open air markets you’ve ever seen in the movies or pictures of 3rd world countries and it looks a lot like that. Each little “eduka” (shop) has a variety of things to sell – pineapples, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, carrots, peas, and we’ve even been able to find green beans! After buying what we needed, I’d bring it home and clean it – soak it in clean (filtered) water with some cleanser in it to kill parasites or other bacteria that our bodies aren’t used to. We buy eggs by the tray – 30 eggs per tray. Every Saturday, a man comes by with lettuces, spinach, and sometimes hot peppers and broccoli. We also have two avocado trees in our yard so for about 3-4 months out of the year we have all the avocados we can possibly eat and enough to give away. That’s a LOT of guacamole.

As you can see, produce is readily available. So we eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies every day. Other things are more difficult to find. For instance, our family really enjoys cheese. When we first arrived, you could have any cheese you wanted as long as it was gouda. 😀 Not long after we got here, the man that sells us the gouda also began making mozzarella. So now we can have “real pizza cheese” on our pizza. 😉

Meat is another thing that isn’t as readily available. Here in Mbarara we can normally get minced beef (ground beef) and pork sausages – sort of a cross between a hot dog and a sausage link. But that is all. We could get chicken but we’d have to buy a whole chicken and have it butchered here at our house and then cook it. They are also quite tough so I learned to use the pressure cooker to help with that! Being Americans, we’re used to planning our meals around the meat. So it was quite the change to plan the meal and then add what meat we had later. After we’d been here about three months, we butchered a cow in our garage. It was quite interesting! Not exactly something you’d do in America. 😀 But it was so nice to have meat more often! Also, we could have different parts of meat – like a roast or steaks and stuff like that.

It’s been fun to start to find things. For instance, last fall we learned of a place in the capital that would deliver meat down to us in Mbarara, just for the cost of the transport on a bus! Through this company we can get chicken pieces – like legs and thighs, lunch meat, and stew beef. The cost is also far less than we pay in the stores in Kampala for these same things. Its been a blessing to have access to this!

Another thing that we recently found was a local dairy that delivers cheese all the way to Kampala. We noticed their label on some of the cheese that we bought in Kampala and decided to check into it. Thankfully, the dairy isn’t far from where we live and we can buy all the same cheese here for less – a wholesale price, vs. retail. For the first few months, if we wanted sour cream or cream cheese I had to make it. But we can get those things from the dairy and it saves me time!

Late last fall, Osbert showed us this HUGE market outside of town called Western Market. We’ve started going there for our produce once a week rather than making two or three other trips to Central Market in town. The produce is a LOT cheaper for us. You have to buy a much larger quantity but it is generally worth it. Also, we’ll get entire stalks of bananas for what it cost us at the central market for a bunch of bananas. It should come as no surprise that we can go through a whole stalk of bananas in a week as a family. 😀

We were able to find our African version of Sam’s Club – called Vickies, after the Indian gentleman that owns it. We can buy bulk items from him for less than what we can get them in the grocery stores. He sells canned goods, juice, bails of flour, pasta, other baking good in bulk (like sugar, salt, baking powder, etc.) and many other things, including non-food items like toothpaste and diapers. We go there about once a month or so, maybe even less but when we go we stock up.

For everything else, we go to a local grocery called Pearl. We can get a lot of the other things we need from them and often, if there is something we’d like to get all we have to do is ask the man who owns Pearl and he’ll order it for us.

So, as you can see, we’re adapting. It takes some planning ahead but I’ve learned how to make the things that my family enjoys and a whole lot more. We eat a lot of beans and I’ve learned to make some pretty good refried beans from scratch. 😉 When I got married a good friend gave me a recipe for spaghetti sauce and I make that several times a month. It makes excellent pizza sauce, too. I’ve also learned to make LOTS and then freeze some of it to make it easier next time. It’s been fun to learn how to speed the food preparation process. No grated cheese here! So my cheese grater is my dear husband. 🙂 Most of the time he is more than happy to help me with that part since it makes it take me less time to get the food ready.

Another blessing has been the seasonings that people have sent us ever since we mentioned the need in November! It’s been wonderful! We can’t even get many of the spices needed to make those particular mixes – I’ve checked! So THANK YOU to all who have sent them! We’re enjoying them tremendously!

I could go on longer but this is long enough. I hope it gives you a little picture into our daily life! We really do enjoy the African food that they have here but there isn’t a lot of variety in it. We eat it a couple times a week normally. But it is nice to have food that tastes like “home” and it has been a journey to get to the place where it really does taste like home.

On Having a Baby in Africa

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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

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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!