Pigs, Jiggers, Electric shocks

An odd day today. Lots of things happened briefly, with long periods of absolutely nothing in between. I write this on a Sunday, my third in the country but today was my first trip to church. I awoke in the Clays guest house, a little granny flat type thing located at the back of the house with its own bathroom, electricity and best of all, lock on the front door. Life is good in the guest house, the bedroom is comfy, the bathroom is private and the lock is completely childproof providing some much appreciated space from the kids. I am, however, learning the hard way to appreciate hot water from the tap. Over our extended two week holiday hot water was there almost all the time and even after a hot day it was nice to have a warm shower. Back here however showers are things best taken between the hours of one and four in the afternoon when the sun is at its hottest and the water is something of a relief. Cold showers, though a bit interesting at the time, I can handle, wet-shaving is a different matter.
I thought I did quite well, took the initiative of filling the kettle and putting it on the stove, used the Bathroom in the house on account of the lack of mirror in the guesthouse bathroom, and locked myself in for a good old de-bum-fluffing. Unfortunately for me I underestimated the amount of water needed and didn’t take into account the hole in the sink plug. The end result being a rather rushed shaving session as the water trickled away before my eyes. Overall I did a good job with the exception of the large chunk of face missing just beneath my nose, ouch, and a random patch of fuzz on my left cheek where I apparently missed altogether. Oh how I miss hot water on tap.
Church at New Hope has changed a lot since my last visit in 2000. I remember it being small and intimate with a few drums and the congregations’ voices doing most of the work. I remember being inspired and really enjoying it. These days it’s bigger and the drums are nowhere in sight. There is a small keyboard and a choir with mikes. To be honest it’s just not as good. It proved to me, not for the first time, that worship is nothing to do with the PA and when you get rid of the old way of doing it in favor of using PA you risk loosing something special. Anyway we weren’t in church for long because Raych Clay is feeling under the weather and so we went home early.
Raych and some of the kids went back to bed so I followed suit. Whilst lying in bed I noticed something on my foot in one of the cracks. I have been paranoid about getting a Jigger since Raychs mum found two in her big toe. For those who at this moment are not squirming in sympathy and breathing through their teeth let me explain the concept of the Jigger…don’t worry I wont leave anything out.
A Jigger is a little critter that lives in the dust waiting for a nice fleshy foot to come and tread on it. When such a situation arises the Jigger goes to work, it latches on and quietly crawls inside the thick skin under the foot. There it makes its home and is courteous enough to bless you by laying its eggs…in your foot. Now the Jigger and its eggs are very small so they can easily pass unnoticed for weeks, especially if you, like me, have developed village feet (village feet are generally black on the bottom, always dusty, leathery and as you have no doubt picked up quite disgusting.) Jiggers are simply little black dots nestled in the warm fleshy parts of your feet where the eggs grow and eventually hatch out causing infection. After spotting this little black dot on my foot that would not go away however much I tried to scratch it off, I went to wash my foot and lo and behold my foot was clean with the exception of my new friend. I was still not convinced though and thought of consulting the Jigger surgeon, Raych, when I remembered she was resting. So, rather heroically I thought, I decided to DIY my Jigger. I found a suitable needle, cleaned it as best I could and started poking around. Long and frankly disgusting and over-gory story short I am now free of said Jigger and eggs but have gained a gaping hole in my foot. Good fun.
After my little Jigger adventure I was recovering when a pig got out. Now I have a theory that a certain things in Africa will be 10 times more interesting then the certain thing in England, however that might look. For instance the bugs are 10 time bigger and the stings hurt 10 times worse (there also seems to be 10 times as many). You get the point. So when I hear a pig had got out I was quite eager to “help out”. I say “help out” because these pigs adhere to the theory in that they are very angry pigs who tend to squeal apparently in rage if you go past the pen. Once I was suited and booted I trekked off across the farm to find Dave (I had been watching him follow this pig further and further away and decided to try and help him answer the age old riddle of “how many Musungus does it take to catch an angry pig”) eventually I found him driving the pig home with large stick in hand (I decided the large stick was a sensible move and picked up a branch that looked amazingly unimpressive but made me feel better) Dave and Isaac the faithful farm dog directed the pig back to the pen where I stood uselessly holding my branch hoping the pig wouldn’t sense weakness (which it did) and try to get past me (which it did). I held firm with my branch pointing at the oncoming swine but it wouldn’t stop, it just kept coming. It charged into my stick and the soggy branch folded before my eyes finally living up to its reputation as amazingly unimpressive. The pig, however, seemed to get the message and moved out of the way and into the pen.
Stuff with the children is generally better. The parents and I had a discussion about smacking them, something I was not keen on because there not my kids so I don’t want to hit them. But it came to my attention recently that certain of the kids have absolutely no respect for me and where beginning to show off just how much they could get away with because Uncle Dan doesn’t smack. What a shock young Jed had when Uncle Dan threatened to smack him and followed through. Although I hated to do it I knew it was the right thing to do because immediately after he obeyed me with no questions asked. A new day dawns in the Clay household!
Finally I will sign off and say God bless to everyone who read this and I hope you are all well. Oh yes, electric shocks, I decided to add that to the title because as I sat down to write it my laptop gave me a shock. I discovered it was one of the screws on the bottom and made a note to be careful. As I set it down on my lap and rested my wrist on the keyboard I got a nasty warm electrical sensation in my hand coming off one of my speakers. Suddenly my laptop was emitting electricity from anything it could find made of metal…in a computer you can imagine that’s not much…yeah right. I dropped the stupid contraption onto my lap where it fizzed some more. I pulled the power cable out and it all stopped. I think there’s something wrong with the plugs in the guest house but I was so offended by my laptops sudden rebellion that I thought I would include it.
All the best
Dan

Flying solo

Today is my two week anniversary In Uganda and as of tomorrow it will be the longest I have spent in Africa. Today I had the unique opportunity of waking Jed and Moses up. This privilege cam about because Raych Clays parents flew home and we went to see them off at the painfully early hour of 6 am. I was keen to get up and see them off regardless of the hour, but Moses and Jed were still asleep so I had the amazingly satisfying task of waking them up before they wanted to arise. The reason for my satisfaction is that every morning at what seems like the least earthly hour known to man, Jed and Mo wake me up just for the fun of it. Therefore when I was awarded the task of waking them up, I couldn’t be more pleased…it felt like Justice was served!
However my joy at having my revenge served ice cold was short lived as I was sad to see the grandparents go. They have been my unofficial guides to life on the Clay farm for the last two weeks and also filled the child care role. Their departure leaves me on my own to look after the Kids from now on. We go back to the farm on Friday and as of the following Monday, battle commences. I'm not sure how to feel about the whole thing really. I have moments with the kids that are really great and I start to think, this isn’t going to be too bad…five kids on my own…piece of cake. Then one of them falls over or snatches a toy away, and all of a sudden it’s the world wide screaming championship with four of the worlds most professional screamers and criers battling it out for the title of biggest pain in the neck. I say four because Moses, the fifth contender prefers to sit out and observe the others whilst pointing out to me, ever so helpfully, that the others are crying by the way Dan, the others are crying, their crying, Dan their crying, Dan, Dan their crying Dan, DAN!
Most worrying of all is that my tactic of sitting back and observing how the experts handle the situation is now unbelievably obsolete. I can just seem myself standing outside a burnt down Clay house with Jed holding a can of petrol and a box of matches looking slightly singed and saying to Dave and Raych, “yeah, he started to play with them, I thought id watch and see what happened for future reference” No, now is the time to step in and remove the petrol. (For those who are wondering and aren’t used to my stupid brand of sarcasm, I have not spent two weeks doing nothing at all and just watching…I spent it doing nothing, watching and reading books, so I have made myself useful!)

The last few days have been spent in Entebbe at a really peaceful guesthouse near the airport. All throughout the day there are planes landing off to our right (but never overhead) and the various missionaries who have lived in Uganda for 500 years and are old hats at this game can be heard saying things like, “That’s the British airways flight from Dubai, its half an hour late” or, “oh the KLM is early…” or, “Well there goes Aunty Jo” For some reason everyone has a complete and working knowledge of the Entebbe flight schedule and funnily enough all the BA flight, whether arriving or departing, flight directly over New Hope and the Clay farm. So there are similar comments most mornings over breakfast and when the Kids go to bed at night.
Tonight is the last night we spend here and I am going to miss it. (For anyone who’s curious the reason it has seemingly taken me 3 days to write a page is we haven’t had any electricity through the plug sockets in all that time. So after I wrote a paragraph or two my battery ran out and I was left laptop-less. Today I had packed my bag, put the useless laptop in it and was heading out to put my bag in the car when the ceiling fan sprang into life. I threw my heavy suitcase to the ground and retreated my laptop, plugged it in and seeing the little orange power light decided to continue writing my Blog to those faithful few who read it. The technology is back with force) Anyway despite the distant sounds of planes doing what they do and various children screaming it is really very peaceful here. We are surrounded on every side by trees and flowers and the birds here are really amazing. I woke up this morning to find a two foot bird that looked like a hawk/eagle of some kind sitting looking at me with my morning hair and bleary eyes. It quickly took off and made a show of soaring round the little courtyard and up into the treetops where we watched each other for a while. Apart from the peaceful atmosphere and the amazing birdlife the food here is excellent as well. Every night we have some variety of BBQ meat, I highly recommend the chicken by the way.
On Saturday I plan to return to New Hope with Dave and discover how the internet works here. If all goes well I should have this, along with various emails, up and out by Saturday afternoon. If I fail this may not get out until Christmas so let’s hope it all goes well! I hope you are all enjoying your weather as much as I am enjoying mine and are all safe and well. God Bless
Uncle Dan

(ps, in case you hadn’t noticed there is a comment feature on this web site and if you look hard enough you should be able to find it. You don’t have to leave a comment if you don’t want to…who am I kidding, leave a comment, its not an option)

A Fathers Heart

I write my first post in a hotel room in Jinja east Uganda. It’s my 6th day in the country and the first time I have got a room to myself! I am currently rudely intruding on the Clays holiday, a holiday which, judging by what I have seen of them so far, is much deserved. Both Dave and Raych clay juggle responsibilities at New hope, the home for orphans, work on the farm, and parenting their five children. As far as I can judge my job here will involve making as many of those jobs as I can a lot easier. My main focus however will be on the children.
Every weekday Dave and Raych leave the house mid breakfast and go to New Hope for a morning of training. While they are gone Jo, the childrens teacher, comes and teaches two sessions with various Clay children and a few others from New Hope. The Parents usually return at about 1 o’clock only to rush out again on various errands and responsibilities. Both parents are usually home for tea followed by the nightly battle to get the children in bed. A few brief moments of relaxation take place here before both parents go off to bed only to be woken bright and early by some fresh faced youngster eager to start a new day. For this daily routine I have nothing but respect for them. And my job, it would seem, is to fill in the gaps with the kids.
I suppose for those who don’t know them a brief introduction of said children is in order. So, starting with the eldest, there is Moses. Moses is very nearly 8 and has instructed his brothers and sisters in the fine art of saying the word ‘why?’ to just about anything. This particular talent has come from his practice using this word whether the context makes sense or not. However as annoying as it can be at times it does show that Mo has an inquisitive mind and occasionally asks some really brilliant questions that the ‘grown ups’ are too polite to ask. Then there is Susanna or ‘Zanna’. Zanna is one of these children who knows the rules, enforces the rules but at the same time does whatever she can to stretch the rules in her favor. She does however have a very kind heart and seems to only really want what’s fair for her and her siblings.
Then there is Jed, short for Jedidia…or Jeddidiah…or something, you get the idea and why we call him Jed. The only thing to say about Jed is that he is not only full of beans, he invented the concept. He bounces around the house all day crashing into things and people quite often coming off worse for ware. Number four is Naomi. Most of the time Naomi is the quiet one but when she has something to say you had better believe she will be heard! Finally Becka is nearly 2 and amazingly advanced for her age. She can almost string a sentence together and has no problem telling you exactly what she needs.
I can’t help but wonder how I am going to cope looking after these kids. Over my stay so far Raych Clays parents have been on child watching duty while I stand by and secretly die inside as I wonder how on earth I am going to look after these little people who fall over, cry, eat, cry, drink, cry, make a mess, cry, fight, cry, cry and cry all by myself when the grandparents leave. In a moment of said dying inside a few days ago I did what any self respecting Christian lad would do in that situation and consulted my Bible. The book fell open at a verse we paraphrased one night in youth group, part of my paraphrase read, “God fills our Gaps and carries us through hard times” well at that point in time I was feeling very gappy and was in need of a lot of carrying. So that is my prayer at the moment, that I would have my Gaps filled by God and somehow we might do some impossible things.
Another thing God has challenged me with in my first week is the concept of having a fathers heart for the kids. I don’t understand why but God speaks to us all differently, for me I don’t get a big booming voice and usually don’t get bible verses. Usually for me I hear Gods voice through my surroundings, and at the moment God is speaking load and clear about Fathers and how he wants me to be one. Now I realize at this point my mother has probably fainted so let me qualify that. I don’t mean in a literal “lets go make some kids right now” type way, I mean being a father to the children and to others who aren’t lucky enough to have a father like Dave. At Soul survivor they speak a lot about “being a father to the Fatherless” and I think that’s what Gods saying to me. I don’t know what form that will take but it’s a step forward. One of the clearest ways God has shown this to me was by how much I miss my own father already. Obviously I miss all my family and friends very much but all I can think about at the moment is how much I love my Dad and how much he means to me. I only hope and pray God gives me the strength and patience to as good a father to these kids as my dad was to me.

Well its night time in Jinja and everyone else has gone to bed. I should probably follow their examples and make the most of not having to share a room with Jed and Mo (The other morning they played who can wake up uncle Dan first…little did they know I had been awoken by them a while ago and was playing dead very successfully until the game escalated to “try jumping on him”) so I will sign off there and wish all you readers the best of health and thank you foe reading this article all about ME!!!
God bless
Uncle Dan