Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

Spent the day telling stories with teachers – such fun! I feel very privileged and honoured to work with the teachers at Mercy’s Village Primary School in Gulu. Today the topic was storytelling, here’s a story map as part of the teacher preparation time (can you guess which famous traditional tale it is?) One of the highlights of the afternoon was hearing The Three Little Pigs being told in local language and English. Can’t wait to see this being used in the classroom! Tomorrow we look at reading levels and guided reading: we’re stepping up a gear!

Mercy’s Village has been with me since the beginning of my journey and it is exciting to see them moving onto new things! The phonics curriculum is fully immersed into school life so my remit for this week of training is: ‘Reading: Life After Phonics’ – took a while to prepare for that one, but it was worth it!

Jody

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After church on Sunday I was chatting with one of the church leaders. I told him we wouldn’t be there next weekend since we will be going away to celebrate our wedding anniversary. (Here it is quite normal practice to have to explain why you didn’t attend if you were away. As it was we missed the week before because of Australia Day celebrations. We were asked in the middle of the service where we were and if we had greetings from another congregation. Ahhh? Greetings from Australia!) Anyway, after telling him I had been married for 17 years his next comments were very enlightening: “And you’ve got nothing to show for it? So what’s the point of being married?”

Enlightening in that this says a lot about local culture. What he was meaning is that since we do not have children (which he knows) we have nothing to show for our marriage. So why should we even be married? What’s the point of being married if you do not have children? After several attempts at giving a rebuttal to this logic it soon became very clear that I was getting nowhere and the subject was changed. The saddest thing about this conversation was that this is a leader in our church, and that ninety five percent of the church would agree with him wholeheartedly. It’s actually not his fault for thinking this way, his perspective is an ignorant product of his culture. He is one of the stalwarts of our church and we have developed a pretty good relationship him (possibly why he feels he can say such things, although Acholi people are as blunt as the back of an axe) and this changes nothing, maybe just a green light to hit him with a few clangers of my own…

Maybe this will be the next topic for one of us to preach on.

Dan

On Friday I went to visit a very good local friend of mine. We have a close relationship and she certainly follows local cultural practices by being ‘frank’ and forward with me.

I don’t necessarily think I have put on that much weight, but what an on-slaught I received this time. She calls me my maiden name ‘Spencer’ (just easier for locals to pronounce). “Spencer, you are now fat! Spencer you have gained weight! Spencer, you have seriously grown fat! Everywhere! Even here (points to neck), here (points to arms), everywhere!” (Daniel at this point is laughing himself senseless, but thankfully denied that any of this was true afterwards).

Even when I hopped on the back of the motorbike to leave, she yells out: “even the tyre of the bike is going down!”

I know she had the best of intentions when saying these things. It’s a compliment locally, means I look really healthy and happy.

Life isn’t always smooth sailing, no matter where you live!

Just want to share a couple of the little bumps that are on the surface at the moment.

1. Printing some new teaching reading manuals. I have tried to print about 400 manuals from Kampala (better quality there… one would think). The sample looked great! But when the books arrived, the cover was smaller than the pages, significantly smaller! How does that even happen? And then on closer inspection, some of the pages were upside down or not printed at all. Hmmmm. Sent them back down to Kampala. Got another sample sent up. For some reason this sample manual had the pages chopped off at the side, quite a considerable ‘chop’, so a lot of the text was missing. Hmmmm. Now trying a third attempt…
2. There is a girl who helps us a little with washing the clothes and mopping – I know, awesome hey! One of the perks of living in Uganda. We did have a blip in our relationship when she ate some of our treasured chocolate from the UK. Thought we had moved on from this though, after a big discussion about stealing and trust. Today, after she finished cleaning and just before leaving, she tells me that she is heading off to catering school. Well that’s exciting! Although would have appreciated the heads-up a little bit earlier. A little later, when about to put my sunscreen on, I discovered that the one-litre pump bottle was gone; along with my face sunscreen. Replaceable, but not in Uganda. And sometimes it’s not the actual item that really annoys you, but the principle and how someone you had trusted has let you down.

Here is the front page of the rules and regulations for the ‘Irish’ (anything that resembles a potato here is called Irish) vegetable section in the local market. It appears as though gossipers get off a little light, however if you are in love with another stall holder then it’s game over!

Thanks to technology, we had our first ‘informal’ Skype meeting for the new board members of READ Uganda – Skyping with Uganda, Canada and Australia. It was an early morning for Canada and a light night for Oz, but it was lovely to kick-start the year with the new board and pushing ahead for some exciting things with the project. Planning on making things more formalised to help achieve a bigger vision.

Over time we grow to know ourselves better. One of the parts of my character that has started to rear its ugly head recently is selfishness, and specifically with certain types of foods (namely: Haribo brand sweets, chocolate and cheese, not necessarily in that order, but specifically chocolate and cheese from the west). I have become like a scrooge during the depression, rationing out gifted Haribo packets with great self-control. Who would have ever thought that an opened packet of sweets could last that long? Marriage vows of sharing become a little more grey: “you have the licorice, I eat the Haribo, that’s how it works around here” (and besides, I don’t like licorice so win-win for me!) Chocolate, unfortunately, has to be consumed in one sitting: too hot for rationing out over more than one hour. Short-term advantages there. Cheese, oh cheese, you are my stumbling block… I really do like to share you with friends nearby, but I like you to always be around, close to me so I can always know you will be there if I need you. There’s no win-win there. Just me, the selfish cheese girl. I am aware of this ugly trait, of last night I was adamant not to change, but today, after some pointed reflection time, perhaps one of my New Year’s resolutions this year is to be more generous with cheese – I will try!

Jody

A huge thank you to all our friends, family and colleagues for all your prayers and the love you have poured out onto us this week.

Dan is now improving! The first lot of medication didn’t seem to kick the malaria. On the third and final day of treatment he was still feeling pretty jolly shocking, so we went to our local health centre where the incredible Tash Brice is volunteering. Tash (a nurse from Down Under) has given Dan incredible care and attention over the past few days. After a blood slide showed there was still a small percentage of parasites in his blood, she gave him some IV fluids and a stronger malaria treatment intravenously. She then called to our hut for two ‘home visits’ yesterday to give him further malaria treatment via injections. This treatment is a lot stronger, and it goes straight into the blood system.
Dan is now walking around and giving his doting wife some cheek, certainly the signs of being on the road to recovery. He is feeling a lot better, however still quite weak. Small steps, good rest and a good diet to come! 
Praise God for:

• All of you who have been there for us (even on the other end of an email or Facebook message, it’s been great!)
• The incredible Tash Brice who is certainly a God-send to us and Gulu
• Dan making good progress

Dan and his worried nurse Ned.

Dan recently posted how he had helped out a couple of kids struck down with malaria. Ironically, when he had picked them up and took them to the health clinic and hospital he didn’t realise that he also had malaria!

We thought Dan was getting a cold/flu, typical running nose, etc. And although his legs were a bit sore we put that down to a recent charity run. He returned home yesterday afternoon feeling terrible so we tested him  with a rapid diagnosis test (RDT) we had at home and it was positive. Thankfully our Kiwi doctor friend had insisted in the past that we had a malaria treatment course on hand in case of an emergency (you’re the best Nick!) We also have an Aussie nurse on speed dial and she helped us walk through the early treatment (thanks Tash!)

He had a pretty high temperature yesterday, however today it has dropped a lot. The meds seem to be kicking in! Praise God for governments and charities who have subsidised these drugs to make them so readily available here.

So… in case any of you are wondering, what is malaria and how do you get it? It’s a disease of the blood that is caused by one particular type of mosquito (the female Anopheles mosquito) – and one bite is all it takes. Once you are bitten with an infected mosquito, then the parasite enters your body. It then multiplies in your liver, and roughly two weeks after entering it bursts into the blood stream where it infects red blood cells. If untreated, it can be very bad (and even fatal), but – hey we are treating! An unaffected mosquito becomes infected when it bites (feeds on) someone with malaria.

Thanks to billions in funding from governments and NGOs around the world, malaria treatment is easily available here

Some may suspect he wanted a few days to watch his latest DVD series, but he would never admit that!

The rapid diagnosis test. A line through ‘C’ for control means positive.