No Place Like Home

Ruby Slippers (Photo credit: ZakVTA)

I just sat down to lunch, yeah, at 3:15pm. We've already had quite a day. My sandals gave me a nasty blister on my toe, which kept getting worse, so after Daniel finished school we headed for the house (we are staying at a friend's house down the road for a few days while we pack and move.). We were supposed do actually DRIVE to the house so that after packing for a few hours, I could return here to cook supper, bringing back my dirty laundry and the items we will need between now and when we move into our new home. My car decided it does not like this moving thing and it is not going to run anymore. So, blister and all, we walked to the house, discovered I had forgotten the key, walked back, returned with the key, and proceeded to pack until I ran out of boxes and realized I had forgotten to eat lunch and maybe that was why I felt so tired. Um, there's a lot of stuff still.

On the way back to my friend's house, the first time, I spotted the reason why I am packing in the dark in 94 degree weather with no fans or a/c. This is my power line. It's hard to see the details because I took this with my cheapo phone but that is a broken bottom of an office chair wedged between the wires to keep them from touching each other. The blue and white you see are plastic grocery bags that have been tied around the cable to "repair it." Throw in a few tree roots and you have my power line.

Here's another section of my power line, just a few meters from where I snapped the first photo.





I will miss my neighborhood and being close enough to walk to see most of friends. I will not miss my power line.



Saturday the vet came and spayed our 7 month old kitten. He was supposed to come to check on her the following Monday but never showed. By Tuesday morning she still had not eaten and was lethargic. Her breathing was rapid and noisy. I called the vet and told him I was anxious about her and he said he would come. He said "today" but he showed up on Wednesday. By that time, she had improved a little on her own but still sounded raspy. He gave her antibiotics and went on his merry way. Today she is much better. Lunch break is ending so here's one more photo. Next post will be from the new house!

This is how we keep our cat from licking her incision. I cut the ends off a clean tube sock. She is obviously humiliated at having to wear David's half-sock.  That's why she won't show her face for the camera.

Quitch Yer Caterwaulin!

Lily and Elliot

Lily, our seven month old kitten, is in heat for the first time. She was supposed to have been spayed in August but somehow I kept forgetting to call the vet. She's roaming the house, completely obsessed. Now I know where the term "caterwauling" comes from! Oh my! She is a very petite cat and it is hard to believe the amount of noise she is capable of making. The last two days we've had her crying in the house, at least two males crying on the porch, and the parrot doing a fair imitation of all of them. A regular cat symphony. Thankfully, the vet is coming today for another front porch surgery (see The Vet for explanation).

As I laid in bed at 4:30am listening to the cacophony, in my stupor I began to think about cats, and God, and people. I thought about all the times I have whined to God, cried out to Him or acted self-centered and obsessed. I thought about all the times someone else around me has acted self-centered, or whined, and given me a clear picture of what I must look like when I behave that way. Oy!

When the neighborhood cats are doing their caterwauling on your porch while you are trying to sleep, after a while you lose patience and frustration grows. You want to throw a bucket of water on them or something to make them quiet down.

I'm glad God never says the kind of things to me that I have said to/about my cat (and admittedly, my kids):

"Can you believe it? She's little but boy can she make a ton of noise!"
"Can't you see I'm trying to rest here? Tone it down a little!"
"Aaaaaagh! Stop the whining!"
"Where's my water gun?"
and one I heard when I was a child, possibly from my grandmother: "Quitch yer caterwaulin!"

It's a house!

Hooray! With ten days left on our current lease, we finally have a house! It needs some work/repairs and a good scrubbing, but with some TLC we will soon have it feeling like "home."

The focus now is on getting the house ready for us to move into it, and we are grateful for Matthew Lind to help with that since time is short and David is working at the hangar during the day.

For now excitement is taking a back seat to other emotions: relief at finally having a place to go and whatever the opposite of enthusiasm is (anti-enthusiasm?) at packing, moving, all the cleaning, working and unpacking. We are also feeling gratitude for those who spent time helping us find the house, for those who prayed for our search, and for the help we have to get the house ready.

More photos and info later!

Mussolini for Dinner: Ten Cool Gifts!

tortellini (Photo credit: scottfeldstein)

When I feel down in the dumps, I often turn to the Psalms and to my favorite praise music, making them prayers from my heart to God as I read and sing. This past week as I was feeling discouraged and asking God for help, encouragement and direction, the Giver of All Good Things responded lovingly and generously, beyond what I deserve.  Here are some of the gifts I received this past week, in order of my random thought patterns.

1. New friends – I met a lovely Christian woman, her father, and her new son this week and got to spend a couple of hours getting to know them. They are passionate about missions and it was a real treat to get to connect with them.

2. Generosity – This same family brought enough clothing, formula, and medicine for the orphanage to fill my trunk! My daughter’s school had a drive for the orphanage also and collected lots of food, clothing, and toys. There were many other instances where I was blessed by seeing people show generosity toward others.

3. Letters from home (well, emails, really)! And an email from my son!

4. Unexpected help – We literally had no clue how to look for a house here or what questions to ask a potential landlord before we made a decision on a house. In our prayers we told God, “we don’t know what we are doing or where to look.”  He sent a friend with experience in house hunting to help us!

5. Pumpkin! – Our new friends brought us a few gifts also, including REAL PUMPKIN! We are all very excited about having pumpkin pie with real pumpkin. We did a little happy dance in the kitchen!

6. Electricity – I don’t understand how our old cable keeps going other than God must be sustaining it. We’ve had more than the usual amount of electricity and it has been a nice break.

7. Prayers – Lots of people have let us know they are praying for us! We know God hears and answers, and knowing that folks are praying is encouraging to us.

8. Closeness – As the housing options have been narrowed down, our family has had to talk a lot about what is important in a home to each of us, what is not important, how we are all feeling about everything here, and we have grown closer. It is always a gift when your child desires to share their heart with you, especially as they grow older and more independent.

9. Possibilities! – We don’t have a house yet, but we have a couple of possibilities! Both have pros and cons and neither one is a sure thing yet, but we finally have found a couple of places that we know we could make work for our family.

10. Humor – Always a great gift! I wish I were better at making others laugh. I am sure it looked pretty amusing to our guard and my family when the parrot escaped, as I tried to catch her without getting bit. She actually chased me across the porch trying to bite my toes! Picture a grown woman feeing from a naked, running parrot! And if you want to know how the mind of a boy works, just give him a stack of cards from an Apples to Apples game and listen to him as he goes through them:

“I thought Mussolini was a kind of noodle.”

“If Dick Cheney was our vice president, then who was the bad guy in True Grit?” (That would be the character Tom Chaney.)

After being told that Al Gore was vice president with President Clinton: “you mean Hillary?”

Two Stories to Every Side

I feel as though a lot more time has gone by since my last post than actually has. In addition to our two cats, our hermit crab, and the chicken that adopted us, our menagerie now includes an African Grey Parrot. That's her in the photo. We don't know why she is almost naked. I do know from having pet birds in the past that a bird that is stressed or bored will over preen and/or pull out its own feathers. The African Grey is a very intelligent species and needs a lot of attention and stimulation to keep them entertained and happy. We plan to buy or make some toys for her cage and spent lots of time nurturing her.

We've learned some interesting things about her already. For one, she bites. Hard. She drew blood her first day here. For another, she likes peanuts. A lot. We've been experimenting with various foods to find out what she likes to eat. So far peanuts are her number one choice, followed by palm nuts, mango, papaya and cabbage. Also, she has quite a repertoire of sounds and at least one comprehensible word: "hello." She can do several whistles, including cat calls, and perfect imitations of the following:

a cat
an owl
the little toy plastic whistles that the police buy and use here
a chicken
a car horn, this was pretty impressive. She totally fooled us.
a person laughing
a magpie, we aren't so impressed with this one
the loud and squeaky wheelbarrow they use everyday on the construction site across the street

We are really hoping that we can find a house and move before she has time to learn how to imitate the neighbor's Guinea fowl, or their constantly crying baby, or their habit of screaming their guard's name loudly.

Speaking of moving, here's an update on our housing situation and a Cool Beans story. After a wonderful week of having power almost constantly, Sunday morning our line went out again. The story from the electric company on Monday was that 25 meters of line was burnt and needed to be replaced. A year ago we paid $75 for three meters, so we figured that to mean it would cost $625 or more. We have to move in less than four weeks, so we told them we could not pay for that. There are other people on the line but it seems like our family is often the only one willing to pay for repairs. We resolved ourselves to having no power until the move.

Fast forward to yesterday. I had caught a stomach bug from David and hadn't been eating, which caused me to wake up with a migraine on top of the nausea. Then I couldn't get the generator to start. I called David and he came home and fixed the generator and took care of Daniel, including making sure he did his school work, so I could go to bed. In the midst of all that the guys from SNEL came and told us their "new assessment" (sound suspicious?) of our power situation.

"That story was for the birds!"

The new verdict was that only ONE meter needed to be replaced and it would cost $100.00. David gave them $20, partly since we knew it was only $20-$25 per meter just last year and partly because it was all we had on hand. He told them that should cover our share and to knock on the other gates if they needed more money. Amazingly, by 6pm we had three phases of electricity for the first time since May. By 7:30 we were down to two again but we were still happy. If it lasts today, we will have made our money back on what we would have spent in generator fuel and we will have had a cold refrigerator, hot water, and a dryer. We are hoping and praying it lasts until we move. I still have a headache today but not a migraine anymore, more of a residual effect that is slowly wearing off. I wanted to share all this because I know lots and lots of you were praying for us yesterday and we could tell. Not only did God take my migraine away and enable David to get the generator running, but He gave us electricity when we thought it was impossible!

Also we MAY have found a house. We are trying to line up a meeting with the landlord and our program manager and work out an arrangement that both parties can agree with. I won't go into details on the house until we know if it's the one. Thanks for praying for us!

Mundele, moi!

I’ve been visiting the orphanage for over a year, and I think that FINALLY, some of the kids have learned my name. Every time I go, the kids ask me my name and I tell them “Maman Nancy.” They always call me “mundele,” which sounds kind of like “moon-deh-lay.” Depending on the tone used, it can simply mean “foreigner,” or “white person,” or it can be derogatory. Friday, Daniel and I went to the orphanage and took our friend Roz along. I made a batch of bubbles and took them with us to entertain the kids. After a while, I stopped blowing bubbles and let the kids take turns blowing.

The kids do not take turns well. Pushing and shoving commenced, along with cries of “mundele moi!” That loosely translates to “hey white lady, pick me!” If I didn’t respond quickly enough, a couple of the kids in particular would yell it louder and slap or pinch my arm. Finally I got tired of that and I turned to one of them and said “pas mundele! Maman Nancy.”  It took them a few tries to get the pronunciation, but pretty soon about 15 kids were loudly and repeatedly chanting “Maman Nancy!” They were having so much fun with their chant that they forgot about shoving each other around so I went with it. The whole thing was pretty amusing.

My car overheated on the way home from the orphanage and blew a hole in the plastic water reservoir, so long distance driving is out for the time being. Between that and the fact that we have to be out of this house by the end of the month and still haven’t found a place to live, I am not sure when I can get back to the orphanage. I’m going to have to step up the packing and house hunting, but the realtor says he has no more places to show us within our price range. Please pray for our search for a home and for our search for what we need to repair the car. Also a matter of prayer, I suspect our cable is burnt again because once again we are without power while everyone around the corner from us who is on the same power line does have power. We just paid for repairs on that cable and the new electricity lasted about a week. 

Sometimes when a lot seems to go wrong at once, I want to act like the orphans and yell to God, “Hey, pick me! Pick me for your blessings!” I know He has blessed me, in amazing ways and in abundance. Sometimes, though, I am impatient like those kids and I want Him to answer my prayers in my timing, meaning immediately, instead of his timing.