We are packing this week for a trip to America!  Jonah waffles between being really excited and saying he wants to stay in Gimbie with his toys. We assure him, Lord willing, we will return to Gimbie and his toys.  The other day he packed up a small wheeled suitcase with his favorite toys and headed out the door. Noticing the sudden silence I dashed out doors to catch him, suitcase bumping along behind, over in our neighbor’s yard. He seemed surprised and had no explanation- not running away, not upset- no agenda he could articulate, just traveling….

Today I was rummaging through our small document folder sorting out what needs to come to America or stay. Passports need to go…. driver’s license renewal (license expired in August)…… tax documents which need to be filed….. new Visas needed….. I was busy writing to do lists and organizing and didn’t have much time to play.  Jonah and Maron (Bogalech’s four year old daughter) had just finished playing “kitchen” with playdough.  Maron had left, and Jonah was hyper and wanted to gab. When he failed to keep my attention, he opened his 1969 edition of Childcraft’s  “How Things Change”  and began his usual commentary and questioning. The book includes predictions that “you” (those reading it in 1969, I presume) may live to eat seaweed flavored like steak or mashed potatoes or candy because, scientists predicted, so many people would be living longer there would not be enough regular food to eat. As a solution it predicted fishboys and frogmen farmers would be growing and harvesting tons and tons of food under the sea and thus no one would have to go hungry…. The book also features futuristic houses with robots doing chores, flying cars, and kids commuting to school with “rocket belts.”  Jonah turned to the page entitled “Trains in the Sky” for what seemed the tenth time over the last couple days to contemplate the sadness of it all once again. The page features the dilapidated, rusty remains of a coal burning train, face forlorn, tears in the eyes, and with a futuristic monorail zipping along above it. After much thought, Jonah had devised a plan to rescue the train, restore it, become an engineer, and then take his parents for a ride around the world in the passenger car…… I had lost track of time and Jonah, when I noticed him patiently trying to stuff more items into a plastic sack and asked him what he was doing.  He had collected his stash of “college money” (he has been saving for college for several months now) comprised of various birr, a Russian coin, some American change and a few Euros,  along with a couple official looking ”documents” gleaned from the trash pile, some discarded wallet cards, his ABC flashcards,  and Bible memory verse booklets. He placed them in a basket, threw in a travel towel and told me “these things are going to be for my college Mommy, when we get to America.” He added, to clarify, that he wanted to go to “Daddy’s college” so that Daddy could live with him. The poor little guy seems to pick up on everything, yet sometimes it isn’t until days later that we find out what he has been trying to process in his three year old mind. He could have picked up on our recent discussions of potential Master’s degree programs for Mark. Or, he could think that America IS college, since most of his best friends here have been student missionaries, medical students, and graduates between college and grad school who eventually leave to return to their studies. Later, concerned that Jonah might be afraid Mark would have to leave to get his Master’s degree, we tried to find out what he was thinking and reassure him.  Jonah said “no Daddy, we just need to get on the same plane to go to college… and I’ll share my money with you, Dad…we just need two glass jars to put the money in.”

P.S btw, where are those tons and tons of edible sea plants? We could use some over here.

One morning as I was combing out my wet hair in front of the sink Jonah walked in asking if there were anymore Curious George books. He had been looking at “Curious George Rides a Bike” one of his favorite books. I mumbled something about how I thought there were several more Curious George stories and Jonah replied “yes!”…. “I think there is Mom, I think there is:

Curious George and the Fire and

Curious George Goes to Heaven and

Curious George Flies with the Angels and

Curious George Drinks Tea and

Curious George and the Boat and

Curious George Sleeping and

Curious George Gets Cooked in the Oven and

Curious George Goes on a Hike and

Curious George Comes Back from Home”

At least those are the ones I can remember. I think there were more. It made me laugh. Jonah makes me smile often lately. He loves to talk and talk and talk. The other morning he crawled into bed with me to have his quiet time. Mark was gone to Addis, so I let him have quiet time in bed with me while I read the Bible. Usually, he has quiet time in his own tent. He prays and looks at Bible Story Books and sometimes I hear him making his stuffed cat pray, too. “Dear Jesus, Meow, Meow, Meow”.  This morning he had pulled his stuffed animals, pillow and blanket up onto the bed with me, spent considerable time getting settled and then quietly said “Mommy I think I am getting old and am going to die” I said “yes, most people get old and die sometime Jonah, and likely so will you, but that will be a very, very long time away… you see Mommy isn’t even old yet, you have a long way to go”. But Jonah said “No mommy, I’m getting old and am going to die now, see this spot on my arm?” He held out an arm and very seriously showed me what looked like two insect bites.

Last Friday a distinguished and honorable member of the AHI board arrived from Addis just in time for a bit to eat and vespers. For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call him Dr X. We were about to begin singing hymns when Dr X and two other important gentlemen walked in. After introductions, Jonah hopped up on Dr X’s lap and began his usual get acquainted banter. But soon something went terribly wrong and he began to deviate from the normal small talk. My heart froze as I heard these words come out of his mouth: “How come you have not very much hair up here Dr X?” (pointing to the top of Dr X’s head) “but a lot of hair on your chin?” he continued. Overcoming my initial pallor, and blushing shades of red as I looked around to see several people had noticed Jonah’s comments and were trying to fight back giggles, I tried to coax Jonah off Dr X’s lap. “It’s ok Mom” Jonah said and Dr X kindly said “it’s ok,” too. Dear patient man, likely exhausted from his travels. Jonah continued “I bet you look different than you used to Dr X…. in fact I’ve never seen you like this before” (fact being Jonah had never seen him before). Later after vespers, stories, and a treat of Alban’s lemon sorbet I thought maybe we could escape and put Jonah to bed without further incident, but it was not to be. Jonah was chatting up Dr X again and between giggles (as this time Jonah was being tickled) I heard this: a pause… then Jonah- poke poking Dr X’s belly with his finger “Dr X, I think you ate too much!” Oh dear me, so much for good impressions.

We have been told that our house was built during the Italian occupation (1936-1941). It is constructed of unbaked mud brick and plaster. The back wall has a cracks through the width of the wall across the base, all the way up the right side, across the top and two coming down under the window. The mud bank “holding up” said cracking wall is eroding and there are ant nests undermining the foundation throughout. Mark feared that soon our wall would fall off and I agreed- though he says I am imagining it, I think the cracks have gotten bigger during this last month of rains. Mark began to build a retaining wall to prop up the house. Since our house cannot be accessed by vehicle,  laborers hauled rocks across campus to our yard on pieces of sheet metal suspended with two poles and gripped over their shoulders. The laborers dumped the load of rocks on the bank and a stray rock tumbled down the hill a bit and disappeared into the ground!  The earth had given way to reveal a hidden sewage pit, which had been covered with dirt, leaves and a fragile concrete covering underneath.  I was glad as I looked at the open pit, flies buzzing about it and a stench coming from the depths that Jonah or Bony had not walked across it and ended up where the rock did.

Work began the next morning on a new sewage pit farther down the hill. By afternoon, the diggers had uncovered a sizeable munitions dump. There were various anti personnel bombs and a very large mortar shell with a brass tip. We were standing around inspecting the shambles of our yard that evening when Bobby spotted a long thin black snake wriggling across the fresh dirt pilled to the side of the new sewage pit. Mark ran down to look at it and several workers trailed after, hoes and shovels in hand. Immediately the workers chopped the snake in four places. The workers explained that  the snake must be chopped up, because if only the head was chopped off the body, the snake would grow a new head, come alive again and wriggle out of the ground where it was buried. The workers all agreed the snake was very dangerous, and very poisonous.  Petra (the chaplain) and Kelsey (an RN volunteer) hearing the commotion came running over from the yard next door. Petra, quick to defend one of God’s creatures took the head of the snake and placed it in her refrigerator to be dissected later. She wanted to determine if it was truly venomous (and thus I suspect whether death was warranted).  The next day word was out that Gimbie Adventist Hospital had ammunition.  Mark called in the local police to inspect the stash found in our yard.  The police took an  antipersonnel bomb and the large mortal shell for further inspection. Petra reported finding four fangs and venom sacs in the snake’s head. She does not think it was a Black Mamba, though it was black and venomous. Last week, someone reported killing a green Mamba. I do not have a clue about what is what in snakes around here, but I can always expect with each new day will come a new adventure.

This morning we slept in until 7:00 a.m.. For some reason Jonah didn’t wake up at his usual 6:30 a.m. time and Mark didn’t wake up at 5:30 a.m. being tired because he had been awake during the night with back pain (his leg wound is healing well btw, it started to look infected but we started putting charcoal poultices on it regularly and prayed a lot). I woke up to tiny taps on our glass window. Looking closer, I saw that it was a hummingbird trying to sip nector from our faded chintz curtains. Some of the birds that look like hummingbirds are very large here, maybe the size of a robin with long thin beaks. I don’t know if they actually are hummingbirds. The other day a bird like this was trying to sip nectar from a red sweatshirt hanging on the clothes line. Jonah woke up. “Mommy, I don’t feel very well” he said.  I went in to investigate. He said his waist hurt, probably because he had worn his belt to tight the day before, he suggested. I felt his abdomen, discovering his bladder was distended and took him downstairs to remedy the situation. What a relief that it was something simple.  All being well, I took him back up stairs to bounce on his sleeping Father. “Daddy, he said I put my “tancocks” in, did you put in yours, Daddy?” “Your what?” Mark replied. “My “tancocks”, Jonah replied, pointing to his eyes. It was good for a laugh. Laughing is good in the morning.

We have just finished our 18 day Share Him Evangelistic Series!  The sermons, preached by three local Ethiopian young men in the Oromifa language, drew crowds of 175 to 225. The auditorium was full to standing room only most nights. There were many requests for Baptism.  There were many more adults interested in Baptism who wanted to study more and also those who said they were going to start coming to church. The series was also a blessing for local SDA’s who learned more about the Bible and felt revived. Many had never seen some of the pictures well known to Western SDAs depicting Jesus’s Second Coming and others, including beautiful pictures of other parts of the world. In addition, many of the pictures in each power point presentation were relevant to Africans as they were of different people and places in Africa. They enjoyed the lectures on topics such as Bible Prophesy, Creation, The Holy Spirit, Righteousness by Faith, The Sabbath, Health and many others. Some notes said “please continue the lectures forever, we want to learn more” and many were thankful for what they had heard.  One of the biggest miracles during the Evangelistic series is that for 18 nights it did not rain during the 60-90 minute presentations!  As it is one of the rainiest months in Ethiopia, we have rain intermittently every day and night. We were concerned at first, having the series in the auditorium, as it has a high tin roof which echoes very loudly when it rains, especially the torrential rains we have during this time of year. If  it had rained during the presentation, people would not have been able to hear anything but noise. But, praise the Lord!  It never rained once during the lectures! Five times, it began to rain during the singing and welcome, but each time there was an earnest prayer for the rain to stop and before the lecture began, the rain did stop. After 18 nights of this happening we are sure it was nothing short of a miracle. It is encouraging to see tangibly how powerful God is, and that He cares. But also, not only were the people able to hear the presentations, but it never rained immediately after the meeting while people were walking home in the dark. Since it is cold and many locals are not dressed properly for rain and do not have umbrellas or cars this was a blessing for their comfort.

Mark thought, “well this ought to be interesting” as he donned his new running shoes, some hiking pants, a long sleeved shirt and a rain jacket and headed out into the pouring rain for an early morning jog.  It was still dark, but Mark was not alone- Paul and Petra were meeting him for this run, the first since his wife Trudy (that’s me=) had forbad him to go jogging alone (s/p the recent theft of a camera from two medical students while out on an afternoon walk).  Trudy muttered something in her sleep about the craziness of going running when it is still dark and pouring rain as Mark shut the door.

As he sloshed through the mud at the top of campus towards the Gimbie Highroad, Mark realized that the pavement was no longer a road but a river, and hopped up onto the reddish brown Gimbie-dirt colored cement slab which runs alongside the road, covering a three foot deep trench for street water runoff. The trench was full of swirling Gimbie-dirt colored rainwater, trash and sewage. Mark’s rain jacket was no longer repelling water, but rather soaking it up as he strode along the ditch cover.  He was thinking “with all this rain, do I really need a shower this morning?” as the slab under him disappeared and he fell,  hitting first his left shin, then his right thigh soundly on the opposite side of the gap in the cement slab, and then sinking into the putrid run off. He climbed out, feeling as if he had been hit with a crow bar as he limped along home leaving a dripping a path of blood.

When Mark reached home, he showered and then told his sleeping wife he needed a nurse. Nurse Trudy arose to the task and had just finished cleaning the inch deep gash in his leg when seven month old Sifan (an abandoned baby girl she had been watching for a few days) woke up and began to cry. Jonah was still sleeping. Mark was sent to see Dr Priscilla who prescribed a Tetanus shot, a week’s course of antibiotics and then ordered him up onto the grimy ER examination table. As Mark undressed his leg, first his leather cowboy boots, then his clean white socks, and then unzipping the left leg of his favorite hiking pants, his mind began to wander.  He was thinking of how he had always been warned to wear clean underwear in case of an accident landing him in the ER. But now as he sat in this ER, he felt a spectacle because he had socks at all, and leather boots ,and pants that zipped on the side.  He glanced at the group of sockless Gimbieites gathered around in their muddy plastic shoes.  And, he felt a bit overdressed as he looked at the suture kit which was carefully being opened, to reveal ever so slightly rusty surgical instruments and a faded surgical drape laced with holes.  He wondered which hole in the surgical drape Dr Priscilla would choose to use as she sutured up his wound. After several stitches, Mark was sent home to put his leg up and slow the swelling. As he lay on the bed with his feet up, legs aching, he thought of all the work he needed to be doing, though he was glad at least that he hadn’t broken his leg.

A baby snake which was yellow dropped from the ceiling of the delivery ward during the night.  That is all the information we have on said snake, since the courageous housekeeper who killed it promptly threw it away. I’ve found Ethiopians are in general quite adverse to snakes- and with good reason, I think, in my snake phobic mind……there are said to be many varieties of deadly ones in Ethiopia……a whole cornucopia of sizzling, hissing, treacherous ones, and even aggressive ones like the dread Black Mamba…. Ok, I must say here before I get too carried away, that I have never personally seen a snake in Ethiopia yet, I only know that there is at least a two page list of poisonous ones here (I had done my research before we came, wanting to know what I was up against).  Anyway, the delivery room nurses were in a dither as they are sure that where one baby snake is, there are likely more nearby and their Mama. The nurses have asked Mark to get them out. Now finding a supposed snake nest in a false ceiling over a maternity ward packed full of women in various stages of birthing is not an easy task. One resourceful maintenance employee suggested spraying some DDT up into the false ceiling (yes, DDT is still readily available for spraying into false ceilings here=). Mark tactfully brought up the point that DDT might not be the best thing to have filtering down over newborn babies. But, one cannot exactly dismantle the ceiling over top the patients. It’s really a bit of a quandary. Mark has begun the task of hospital snake eviction by putting up new rat bait, hoping to remove the hospital’s culinary appeal for the yellow snakes.

We sat down to lunch today to our favorite treat -reminiscent of our time in Nepal- Dahl Baht and Tarkati (lentil soup, rice and curry). I say reminiscent, because we can only sort of make it authentic. There is no brown rice or Nepali spice, but in the market stalls of Gimbie one can find garlic, onion, ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander and green chilies and these make for a pretty good vegetable curry and Dahl. We had two 15 year old twin girls and their 10 year old younger sister over for lunch. They came begging for money to Mark’s office this morning. Their mother (who works in the housekeeping department) is in the hospital with Typhoid and has had to spend all her money on medicine. Mark took food to their mother and employed the girls (who are out of school for the summer) doing odd jobs in our yard for the day. They liked the lentils and rice, but quietly pushed the vegetable curry around their plates. I told them this food was from India and pointed to India on the laminated map we keep on our wall. They giggled and covered their mouths.

Times are hard this season for the people of Gimbie. Not only was the coffee crop poor, but electricity is so scarce that concrete is being imported from Pakistan instead of manufactured in Ethiopia and has doubled in price as a result. Because of the high price of concrete, most construction has stopped for the time being, and many people are starving hungry and out of work. Just this morning Mark had 6 people in his office asking for food, money, work, or all of the above. We try to personally employ who we can with odd jobs. There are lots of weeds to cut around campus since the rains started. The Squires of course aren’t starving, especially with all the dried fruit and nuts kind family and friends have sent over! Our large, regular meals are delicious and occasionally tinged slightly with guilt. How can one wholly enjoy a good meal when people one cares about have been without one? So, every day I make extra food and send it with somebody. I know I’m not really making a dent in the problem, but for those people who get a meal that day I’ve made a difference and that helps.

Mark has been busy in his “off work” time coordinating an evangelistic series. We had some donations come in for Bibles and literature as well as a complete set of 26 Share Him sermons! Together with the projector and DVD player donated by Dr Oxenholt we have the supplies needed to begin. Three young Ethiopian men from Mark’s Friday night Bible study are translating the sermons and will preach them in the Oromifa language. This week in the evenings Mark is working with each of the young men on presentations. Share Him sermons are really nice because they can be followed word for word and have pictures to go with each thought, but the Ethiopian men will need to get used to the system of using a laptop to advance the slides and reading the sermon notes they have translated into Oromifa. The series will begin at 6:00pm each evening and will last for 18 nights. There will also be a children’s program with Monica, Stephanie and Renee helping to lead out. Ansley and I (with Jonah) will help watch the five babies at Monica’s house while she does children’s programs each night. People seem excited about it. Already hearing of it, people from at five other villages have asked us do evangelistic meetings in their villages. With the new small portable generator that was just donated we hope it will be possible to do this soon. We also hope that with the combination of DVD player/Projector/Generator, we can do more health promotion teaching in the evenings at all of our outer clinics. We can do health promotion lectures with pictures by hanging a white sheet up from a tree anywhere and running the computer and projector by portable generator( very doable once the rains stop). There are simple things we can get the word out about that could make a big difference. For example, there is the prevalent problem with goiters and iodine deficiency, but an iodine tablet every few months or iodized salt would prevent it.

It’s been cold and wet around here. Our laundry mildews on the line and the hospital blankets take days to dry. Money was donated for a laundry spinner for the hospital and though there aren’t any spinners available right now in Addis, Mark was told more are coming. So hope is on the horizon. After our hot dry winter, being the native California Girl that I am, all this cold rain has me thinking its December, and with candlelight every other evening (out of necessity) it seems cozy, like Christmas. So while I know most of my readers are likely enjoying watermelon, sweet corn on the cob and vine ripened tomatoes at the lake, I’m sipping herbal tea and (when my laptop has enough battery) listening to Christmas music. Mark, I must note, thinks I’m silly but Jonah’s all for it (he doesn’t know the difference). Jonah has been keeping me on my toes- or more accurately on my knees praying for wisdom lately. He is a little rascal……sparing the details here. One fun thing though, is that Jonah’s been spending a lot of time playing with his first ever Leggo set (sent to him by his Aunties)! His dexterity is improving and he is making all sorts of crazy vehicles from the kit. It’s fun to see him growing up to do things we did as kids. We borrowed a yellowing copy of Farmer Boy (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) from Ansley. I wasn’t sure if Jonah would like it yet, being he is three and there aren’t many pictures, but he loves it! It’s fun for me to re-read an old childhood favorite.

Ansley, Renee or Petra have been watching Jonah so that I can spend some time in the outpatient clinic twice a week. This has been a great diversion for me to think as a nurse practitioner again and to volunteer some hands on help at the Hospital. It isn’t easy of course. The pediatric patients sometimes make me want to cry. I haven’t seen enough suffering children in my life not to be quite bothered by it. For example, there is the baby boy with TB and a white chest x-ray, sitting up on his mother’s lap to breathe and whimpering in pain with each breath he takes. His mother puts her breast against his face and he sucks for comfort. His little body is emaciated. His mother looks exhausted. The medicine doesn’t seem to be helping. I think of Jonah and empathize with how desperate this mother must feel.

I’ve been working with Dr Priscilla and we’ve seen everything from TB, HIV, Typhoid, and strange rashes to malnutrition and Leprosy. Lately, there have been many cases of Typhoid and Dysentery. Our hospital census is full. Mark and Midhasso (an Ethiopian/American Pharmacy and Pre Med student) did a demonstration on water purification in the outpatient clinic this morning and gave out two large boxes worth of Chlorination-Flocculation tablets which were donated by a short term mission group earlier this year. People eagerly accepted the tablets. It is not only because the strong rains have flushed the dirty streets which drain into the river where many get their water year around, but also that since the chemically treated Gimbie town water is off when there is no electricity, even those who can afford to purchase town water are forced to use the river water many days. Frankly, those diarrhea bugs are hard to avoid. Many volunteers have also been sick with them lately. Jonah for example, was up much of Sunday night vomiting. Praise God the electricity had come on and we were able to give him a warm bath around midnight when he started with the first round- which had covered him with mess. Poor little fellow- he was scared. His eyes were big as he said “Mommy I can’t breathe and my heart is beating”. I reassured him that what he was feeling was nausea and it would pass. After five or six episodes of emesis (and lots prayers) it did ease, and he was finally able to sleep the rest of the night.

Yesterday afternoon we heard desperate screaming in Oromifa. Bagalech (who was washing our laundry) heard the commotion and dashed out the door, up the stairs and to the sidewalk by the morgue. The neighbor women heard and ran towards the sound. I picked up Jonah and ran to see if I could help, too. It turned out little Bony (Jonah’s friend who lives next door), had been chased by a curious monkey. We were relieved to find he was fine after all, just quite frightened.

A big thank you anyone who is reading this for being persistent in checking for new posts. My excuse for sporadic posts is that it has been quite difficult for me to get online lately. The phone lines have not been working in Mark or Paul’s office for several months. There are two phone lines that work at the hospital, but they are in high demand since in addition to the phone lines being down, internet service is also sporadic and several of the Farangi computers currently have viruses which keep them from being able to connect when internet is working (mine included). I do appreciate all the comments and am sorry I have not been able to respond. Sometimes the internet is too slow even to log on to WordPress. But your letters and comments have been downloaded and are precious encouragement to us. Thank-you!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I think I’ve had a writing block. I’ll try again. I have a squiggly three year old in my lap who wants to “snuggle”. He likes that he is wearing his blue fleecy footed zip up PJ’s with a red fire truck on the front for the first time in many months. It’s cool this morning. Yes, let’s start with the weather. The rainy season has officially (and actually) started now. It was said to start May 15’Th but instead we had five more days of warm sunny weather. The Ethiopians were concerned. We heard whispers of the dreaded word “famine” about the campus as the crops had already been planted and the ground remained dry. Yesterday the storms came. First the strong wind came, whirling about a concoction of branches, trash, and dust; then, the clouds dumped their brimming buckets simultaneously on the mix with the fanfare of thunder and lightning. Then as if exhausted from all that pomp, there was calm. A steady drizzled followed last night. The air is clear and the ground is wet this morning. Hope the rain continues, another famine would be devastating now, with some families already going hungry due to the rising price of food. Also, hope Mark and others are able to make it back from Moogi clinic near the border of Sudan before the batter gets too thick.

Both of our laptops (our connections to the rest of the world) are sick with viruses. Even with good antivirus software, in developing countries, we’ve found one can expect these about as often as one can expect a good case of Traveler’s diarrhea for one’s self. Happily, thus far we haven’t had a gap in intelligent computer savvy volunteers yet; first there was beloved Joel who sadly for Gimbie, had to return to the business of his education, but then a day before Joel left, David arrived, a genius who is at this moment doctoring one of our critically ill laptops. The Lord giveth and He taketh away…..

There are occasions when missionaries have to get over their cultivated sense of decorum. During our time in Nepal, I had to get used to hand washing, then hanging my droopy wet undergarments out on the line across the veranda in full view of all passersby. In Ethiopia, with a three year old, we almost always have clothes on the line in stages of drying. But I thought I was experienced. If I was expecting guests, I would conceal only the undergarments hanging a meter from the front door by deftly moving them under a shirt. But I’ve had to change my tactics. Apparently people do not mind seeing my undergarments. In fact, someone must regard them as a thing of seriously functional value as I do. They have been disappearing. I’ve taken to hanging these valuables up on a line inside the house…and now I’m writing about it. Mission life just might be the real cure for shy persons.

The electricity has been out from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm about every third or fourth day this month. We have learned to shower ourselves and power our conveniences and bake our bread whenever there is electricity. We pray for and baby our ageing hospital generator which holds out to keep the lights on, the oxygen concentrators running and the surgical theater in action at the hospital. We are thankful for our additional water tank which our new pump fills and gets us through at least a day of no power. We have learned to enjoy candlelight at home and the quiet it brings.