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