Aw, RATS!

/in /by

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

/in /by

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.

The Dog Peed on My Homework!

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Today I went to get the kids school books out. I’ve been putting them up every afternoon but didn’t yesterday, thinking they would be fine where they were sitting until we needed them today. Sometime in the night the inside dog must have marked them. They smelled awful! Thankfully, only about 5 of the books were gotten. First I disinfected them, then I set them out in the sun to dry. Then I brought them back in for a while and used eucalyptus essential oil in some water to “wash” them again. They smell moderately better. I’m almost to the point of just dripping the essential oil right on the pages to see if it helps it go away! Anyway, because of that, Ethan and Elizabeth both had a good excuse for not finishing their school work today – the dog peed on it!

I guess all the dogs were busy in the night. During the night the puppies tore up their bed and ate part of it! Boaz, the grounds keeper here, was NOT happy with them.

Today the power has been out for several hours. It isn’t a huge problem since it is light outside. But there was a load of laundry in the washer that only got half done. It was working on filling for the rinse cycle and can’t finish beyond that. I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to hang it to dry – if the power comes back on tonight.

The kids found a gecko in the play room and named it Jeffery. Funny kids! It is so tiny – not even the size of one of my fingers. We can hear them chirping all night and they eat the bad bugs that would or could cause problems in the house – like mosquitoes or termites. So we pretty much let them be and encourage them to live here.

“Chance” meeting?

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Remember the young man from my last entry? Yesterday, Jamie and I went into town to do a little shopping. We walked down from the Stensaas’ house. It isn’t far, a little over a mile. We found the grocery store easily but I was having a little trouble finding the produce market. As I walked slowly along, looking for the correct alley, I turned around and there stood that young man. Humsa had seen us as well and we greeted each other. He asked if I had talked to James and I told him that I had. I told him that James still wanted to meet him and the best way would still be for him to come to church. He helped me find the market and then I showed him where the church here in Mbarara is. He promised to come to church. We parted when I needed to make one more stop in town.

We walked to church last night. Along the way we fell in with Florence, a lady from the church whose Muslim husband forced her to leave. When we got to church we looked for Humsa. He wasn’t there yet and church soon started. We sat toward the front and I wasn’t able to see those who came in late. But he came! Pastor Robert preached a good sermon that included the gospel very clearly in both English and Runyunkore. After church I introduced Humsa to James and our helper, Osbert. James talked to him for a while. What he really wanted was to have someone sponsor him into America. I shouldn’t have been surprised about that. But even so, we talked with him for a while, brought up religion and then made sure that he had a Runyunkore John and Romans and then got to talk to Pastor Edgar. We had to leave before they were done talking since we were walking home and wanted to arrive before dark. As it was, it was almost completely dark before we got home. I hope I “run into” him in town again to find out how it went. Or maybe he really will come to church on Sunday like he promised. We’ll see. 😀

Today I had laundry to do. It was bright and sunny outside so I got started early. The water flows in very slowly so it takes almost 2 hours to wash a load of laundry. Then I’ve been hanging the laundry on the line to dry. One load of laundry will be dry by the time the next is done in the washer. After lunch I put a load in the washer before cleaning up the lunch dishes. As I worked on the dishes I noticed that it was getting windy and that a storm was coming up. I stopped what I was doing and hurried outside to get the laundry off the line before it rained. Sometime in there, the electricity went out. But I didn’t notice that it had (there are many windows so we don’t use the lights until evening).

I went to check on the washer and found that it wasn’t filling. Hmmmm…. Mrs. Stensaas had told me that sometimes she had to fill the washer with a pitcher and water from the kitchen sink. So I found a big bowl and poured more water in the washer. But it still wouldn’t run. Hmmmmm…. What was going on? That’s when it occurred to me that the electricity was out! Ah HAH! 😀 So the laundry got to soak for a long time. Some of it really needed it. LOL. The electricity came back on just in time for me to clean up the kitchen from supper. So the load has been completed and tomorrow morning right away I’ll get it out on the line to dry.

Ah, the fun of living in Africa. 😀

Interesting conversation

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Today I had an interesting conversation with a young man. He came up behind the children and I as we walked from the Stensaas’ house to the house we are renting so they could see it. He greeted me like most Ugandans do “Hello, how are you?”

“I am fine” I replied, as is expected.

He told me that he wanted to be our friend and read to our children. I told him that we didn’t need him to do that. I read to them. He told me they were unruly and needed supervision. Um, yeah. I supervise them, believe it or not. (And surely they aren’t *that* bad!) He went on and on and we went around and around. I told him that he needed to talk to James. He asked me if I feared my husband. Not really. He also told me that my husband hates Ugandans. Hmmmm. Interesting. He’s spending most of every day with Ugandans and learning as much about them as he can. I told him that. Finally, I told him that he could meet James at church tomorrow night. I told him when the service time was and, to the best of my ability I told him where the church was. He didn’t quite have the service time correctly and somehow got the idea that he had to be our religion in order to “read to our children”. I tried to explain that coming to church was the only way to meet James and that there would be other mzungus there and many other Ugandans. I wish I’d had one of the Runyunkore John and Romans with me but didn’t even think about taking one on our short walk. Next time I’ll have to be more prepared.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation. I hope I didn’t blunder into making some sort of terrible cultural mistake.

The work on the house is progressing. They’ve been clearing the land and today brought in sand for concrete. Tomorrow they will start digging post holes for the fence and will begin installing the gate. They will also be working on finishing the unfinished side of the house (ceilings and walls), and do things like installing hot water heaters and changing out the floor toilet for a “mzungu” toilet. 😀 Though I’m pretty sure Gaelin would have liked the floor toilet better. LOL.

I also went shopping with Mrs. Stensaas today. It was really fun. Having gotten a better idea of where things are in town, tomorrow I’m going to attempt a trip to Pearl (the local grocery with the best prices) on my own. We’ll see how that goes and how lost I get. It will definitely be interesting! 😀