In Which We Celebrate a New Year, See Gross Stuff, and Are Offered a Goat

December 31^st-Januarey 2^nd: Thursday- Saturday

Thursday night the entire mission gathered in the main house to welcome in the New Year. The Myhre’s, another missionary family from south western Uganda visited on there way to Kenya to drop their kids of for boarding school.

About half way through the night Jim and I left for the clinic to go visit those of there. The clinic staff had been telling him about how they welcome in the New Year by burning things. Burn the old things, like Christmas trees. Jim and I arrived shortly before ten only to discover that everyone was asleep already. We managed to rouse Robert, Moses and Susan. We listened to the radio, the top 100 best songs of the year, and played Mexican train. All Ugandan DJ’s have a strange way of talking. They all sound like their constipated.

Just before midnight Jim and I walked back to the mission compound. The moon was nearly full and the fields and house stood out in stark relief against the shadows. At midnight we toasted in the New Year. I toasted with fanta passion soda.

Friday morning Jim, Ben, Leah and I left for Matany, a town several hours north of here, to visit Logiel Mark who is going to school at the Catholic hospital there. The land changes from Nakaale to Moroto. The vegetation thins out and trees become less and less common until they disappear almost entirely. Matany lies several kilometers from Moroto, at the base of Mt. Moroto. The entire village only exists because of the hospital. The hospital complex is huge with wards, and house staffing as well as gardens and a machine shop, plus places for patient’s families to stay and guests. A massive church dominates one corner of the compound.

We met Mark and his friend Abraham. He showed us a little around his school and stuff before we were caught in a rain storm that had followed us from Nakaale. That night while Robert visited his wife, who works at the hospital, and new born daughter we ate and slept at a little inn across the street from the hospital. It was relatively nice except they didn’t have enough food and the bathroom didn’t have a handle, just a hole in the door where a handle should have gone. You could kinda hold he door closed though with your foot. We fell asleep that night listening to Nigerian soup operas blaring away in the next room.

The next morning Jim, Mark and I got a chance to talk. He seems to be doing well here although it has been hard going to a catholic run school. We were able to pray and talk. Soon afterwards Jim, Ben, and I went to the hospital were Jim and Ben really wanted to follow along on the ward rounds. I went because I didn’t want to sit around all morning. We lucked out and managed to get assigned to the surgical ward were, due to lack of a surgeon present severe trauma cases had been stalking up for weeks. It was a virtual parade of infections, gunshot wounds, bloated and swollen limbs and burns. .it wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for the horrible smells that come with it all. After seeing more than twenty male patients I opted out of seeing the female patients and made what I hoped was a dignified retreat with my masculinity intact.

After a tour of the hospital the lack of adequate dinner the night before and no breakfast began to catch up to me. First though Robert wanted to show us the “lagoon”. What the heck? We hiked out behind hospital compound of into the scrub. After what seemed like hours we arrived at a walled compound. This we were informed was the “lagoon”. We peered through the gates and say some few plants and such like growing. We were informed that the sewage from the hospital came out here and fed the plants. Some lagoon. after a torturous walk back into town Robert informed us that the food was still not ready and we walked into town were I was rope into playing two humiliating games of pool before we were allowed to return and eat and Robert’s wife’s house.

We left shortly afterward. We stopped on the way back as we had on the way there and visited Mark’s family. Mark’s father was a little drunk this time then our first visit and wanted to give us a goat. We finally persuaded him to keep the goat and we would return and eat it together.