And now for a roach story

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Today I was *finally* able to get to the market. It rained Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday last week. I was able to get some things on Friday at the market and then Sunday we stopped by Vicky’s (another story for another entry ;-D ). Monday was nice so I got as much laundry done as possible and hung it to dry. Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday it rained again and then it rained in the night for a long time. Needless-to-say, I was to the point I didn’t have enough related items to put together for a meal other than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which really get old fast. So I took a trip to the market. I had a list of the many things we needed and began working my way through it a little at a time.

The last thing on my list was eggs. I’d gotten eggs from one lady before so I asked if she had eggs. She had none. I asked at another place and they wanted much more than normal for eggs because they were “indigenous” – which, the man explained, meant they came from the village and weren’t imported. And I suppose was as good a reason as any in his mind to make them almost 2000 shillings more than what you’d pay anywhere else.

Finally, I found a lady with nice, big, eggs for 5500 shillings for a tray of them. I asked for two trays and handed her my lovely green plastic trays that James and Osbert found for me so she could fill them. (A tray of eggs is 30 eggs or 2-1/2 dozen. 5500 shillings is just about $2.75.) As she picked up the first egg to put it in my tray I saw at least 5 roaches scurry out from under where it had been. Every single egg was like that. :shudders: But I was committed. Those were now my eggs. I also got a little bunch of garlic cloves from her.

So I came home with those eggs, knowing I was going to have to do battle with roaches as soon as I got home. I was careful where I put the eggs so I wouldn’t get any potential roach eggs on anything. I put all the eggs in the sink and filled the sink with hot water and disinfectant. Then I let them soak.

Meanwhile, TWO roaches had made it alive to our house. :gag: :shudder: They both scattered one way and another and I went after them. They were not leaving my kitchen alive.

“James!” I yelled.

Whack. Whack. I smacked at the roaches.

“James! I need you!” I called again. He was close, in the garage but couldn’t come right then.

Whack. Whack. STOMP. One of them was dead. Jamie came to the kitchen. I told him I needed his Dad and a flashlight. I’d lost the other roach. Elizabeth brought the flashlight and I went looking. It scurried across the wall and behind the transformer sitting on the counter. I moved it. SQUASH. The other one was dead.

Then I had to deal with cleaning the eggs. The disinfectant has worked and I didn’t find any eggs or anything. Then I pulled out the garlic. Four tiny roaches were on that. So I’m going to freeze the garlic just in case. That should kill any other eggs that might be on those garlic cloves.

Mom, I was thinking of you as those roaches scurried everywhere.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-07-2010

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Greetings! We've been on the field for over a month now, and we're doing great! I've been so busy that the time has just flown by. My principle job has been getting my family settled in a house, which we have done. There was a problem with a property line dispute that slowed things down a bit, but now that's resolved, and the neighbor is putting up a wall around his compound. I have several meters of 7 foot chain link sitting in my garage, and as soon as he is done with his wall, I will be attaching my fence, and running it all the way around my compound. The poles are in place, and all that remains is the wall to complete on our side so we can attach and finish OUR project.

Meanwhile, much has been accomplished. We got the last of the painting done. The tiles are finished. I have a man building screens and doors for the side that shall soon no longer be unfinished. There's a lot of stuff to do in the yard. Right now, we're swimming in mud. Mud, mud everywhere. I have gotten the yard level, and the grass is planted. Since it rains pretty much every day, it will grow quickly. I have removed 4 huge stumps from the yard, and all the trash from construction is gone. Yesterday, I had guttering installed to keep the water from washing us away. The neighbor is going to put a drainage trench (concrete) next to the wall, and this will carry water from my place and his to a drain by the road. I can then tap into that, and funnel all my water away from the yard. Otherwise, the place is a swamp.

It is taking shape, but the land requires a lot of work to get it to the place where my children can actually play. They have been confined to the house for weeks because of all the construction going on. Thankfully, it looks like the end is in sight. It will be good to have this distraction completed so I can focus more on language learning, which is really what I came here to do. I am painfully aware of how limited I am with my ignorance of Runyunkore, and am looking forward to alleviating that ignorance soon.

Pray for us. I am going to the capitol next week to meet with Dan Olachea and observe his Greek school and translation team. I am going to have to adapt the process for Hebrew so I can begin translation work on the Old Testament. He and his men have done a fine job, and are nearly finished with the New Testament translation into Runyunkore. While there, I can take care of some bureaucratic stuff, and possibly pick up our stove and dryer, if we have the money, and if they have them in stock (last time they did not). We have been line drying our clothes, and the stove the Stensaas' lent us is working well. So, if we have to continue as we are a while longer, it is not a problem. Pray for our health and safety, as always, and pray for the souls of Uganda!

Ratted Out

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Continuing the rat saga:

This morning it settled in to rain for several hours. By late morning it was pretty much done and the people building the wall next door got back to work as did others who are doing things around our property (mainly Mordecai, our night guard who has managed to get hired to do several other jobs for us, like planting grass and digging a compost pit among other things – I don’t know when our night guard sleeps except at night when he is supposed to be guarding).

Not long after the rain stopped Osbert came and got James. Turns out a rat had fallen into our compost pit! It was a bigger rat than the babies. Mordecai went into the pit to get it out. James kept telling him to kill it. But Mordecai didn’t want to. Neither did Osbert. But Mordecai was having trouble getting it out of the pit. James got video of the whole thing. It was crazy! Finally, Mordecai managed to lasso it, haul it out of the pit and take it down to the driveway area. They still didn’t want to kill it so James did the honors. *shivers* We got to watch the whole thing on the video James took. *shivers again*

Turns out, it was also a baby and the adults can be 3-4 feet long. *gasp, horror* They are a variety of pack rat. Sigh. So now I have TWO kinds of rat to worry about.

Oh, and there is a snake living in our hedge. So I have to watch for it when I go to hang laundry. Lovely. Snakes really bother me!

Funny story about that, too. Monday nights here they have a ladies Bible study at church. It starts at 5:30PM and is done by 6:30PM. I usually walk there and back. Monday night, Pastor Robert’s wife, Annette, taught (she is the usual teacher). She shared about the many snakes which have been coming into their house. I guess she doesn’t like snakes any better than I do! LOL. So then it was done and I walked home. At home there was a load of laundry on the line and I totally forgot about it until it was completely dark outside. I hurried out to get it, trying to be careful not to step in any of the “land mines” laid in our yard by the neighbor’s dog. Some of the things on the line were socks and I hurried to get it all in before getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Suddenly, something soft and odd feeling landed on top of my foot. I screamed. Then I reached down and felt. It was some of those socks! LOL! Oh, how I laughed at myself! I had snakes on the brain and just thought that was what was on my foot. I heard someone else chuckling at me as well and it was the night guard, Mordecai, sitting in the yard doing something on his cell phone. He thought it was hilarious that I’d lost it so badly over a sock or two.

Addendum: After James read this blog entry, he admitted that he had been pulling my leg. It actually *was* an adult rat. I guess when Osbert saw that I was believing James he started going along with him and telling me about how they carry off large pieces of metal and shoes and things.

Oh and yes the word “gullible” really is written on the ceiling! 😀 And we shall continue to look for the ROUS’s – Rodents Of Unusual Size.

Aw, RATS!

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Yesterday I heard Elizabeth and Gaelin outside talking to each other.

“Oh, get it off him!” I heard Elizabeth say.
“The ants are hurting him!” Gaelin said.

I listened for a while and couldn’t figure out what was going on. I thought they were pretending something until Elizabeth ran to the kitchen window (I was working in the kitchen) and said “Mommy, there is a little baby animal out here that has fire ants on it and I think they are hurting it! Its a baby mouse or something.”

My ears perked up. A mouse? I know they have mice here but baby mice are so *small*. However, baby rats weren’t quite so small and were equally abundant.

I hurried outside and saw that the “baby animal” was indeed a baby rat. Ew! Gross! But I still didn’t have the heart to kill it. It was a baby, after all! James was gone but his Ugandan helper, Osbert, was working on some stuff in the unfinished part of our house. So I went to him.

“There is a baby rat behind the house and I can’t…..” I couldn’t finish the sentence – ‘kill it’. We’d just had a conversation a couple days before about women being too soft hearted. So I made some reference to that.

“I cannot do it, either.” he replied, with the same look on his face that I knew was on mine – knowing a task needed done but not having the heart or the desire to do it because it just seemed distasteful.

So he went around to the back of the house where Elizabeth and Gaelin still were and picked it up between two sticks and took it and threw it in the road. The deed would be done, whether by the ants or by a vehicle, but not by one of us.

Later that evening, I heard the neighbor’s dog outside our kitchen window again. There were actually two dogs out there and they had *another* baby rat and were playing with it – picking it up and dropping it over and over and it was squeaking and squeaking. Other squeaks were coming from somewhere in the sweet potato plants behind our house. Auuuugggghhhh! The night guard came over and asked if there was a problem so I pointed out the rat and he disposed of it in short order.

But I could still hear those squeaks – off in the distance – until late in the night – rats that are just waiting until they grow big enough so they can get in our house and really and truly freak me out.

Truth is, most of the squeaking I was hearing (and can hear tonight too!) was probably the geckos that chirp and squeak to each other and we encourage them to live in and around the house since they eat pesky bugs like roaches and mosquitoes and other bugs. Hopefully I’ll sleep better tonight than I did last night, though!

Radio West

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Yesterday morning we woke up to a thumpTHUMP, thumpTHUMP, coming from somewhere outside. It sounded like the back beat of rock music. It grew louder and louder and didn’t stop. By 10 AM I had a headache from it. I went outside to hang some laundry on the line and Boaz came over to talk. Turns out it was a local radio station – Radio West – celebrating their 11th anniversary. They had set up a big stage with lots of speakers in a field about 3/4 of a mile away. Other vendors had come up as well and were selling food and drinks, including liquor.

Sometimes there would be talking, sometimes music, sometimes we could hear the crowd that was growing. By evening they had started playing what sounded like reggae and sounded like the same song over and over again, only with different words. Yes, by this time we could hear the words, too. People were screaming and cheering. About 9PM they put off fireworks. It was quite the display! We could see most of it over the hill that we live on.

The music continued into the night. We live in a cement block house and we could hear the music and the words with the windows closed and the doors closed! It finally got quieter over all (though at times it would get loud and wake us up) around 2AM. Then it completely stopped around 6AM. Blessed silence! We drove by the field this morning and it was literally covered over with litter – plastic bags, cups, bottles, papers and many other things. They were taking down the tents but people were working hard to clean up the mess. Probably in a couple days there won’t even be a sign that this all happened. James pointed out that at least the clean-up provided a job for someone. How’s that for optimism?

At church this morning I learned two interesting cultural things. First of all, if people drop trash at a funeral, other people won’t clean or pick it up for fear of having bad luck. Second, they say that if a pregnant woman eats sugar cane her baby will come out striped!

Gaelin is running a little fever today and is quite cranky. Guess it’s an early bedtime for him for sure! I think they are all tired from last night. They colored pictures for us to mail back to people in the states. Now to just figure out how to mail something. James has before and will be able to show me. The post office isn’t far from here and I know where it is. As far as I know we haven’t gotten anything from the states yet as we haven’t been here long enough.