School

Grace Primary School - "Nursery, Kindergarten & Daycare."

(Taken in Mbale while Martha was buying groceries...I'd like to get pictures of the inside of Pal's, because it's quite a trip. There's a central shelf in one half of the store that's filled with food (plus food on either side of it), and a main shelf on the other side that's full of Sleeping Baby oil to rub on skin, and other hygiene products.)

Martha and Amy have taught classes off and on at the Alamacar ("Alamachar") primary school, just a couple miles from Nakaale. It's where most of the P1-P7 (?) Nakaale students go. The Wright kids attended at Alamacar for a while, too, but it's hard when the classes are taught in everyone else's second language, which even many of the teachers struggle with. Martha offered to teach a couple of her kids' classes, but then there was the problem of the teachers just not showing up that day - or week - so she was saddled with all their classes. Now she's back to teaching "religious education" classes, though, and has asked if I want to help teach a P6/P7 class when I'm there (the school mentioned they'd like more people to do it). That would be quite a fun (and scary :) ) experience, so I'd like to try it.

Anyway, it's good to be reminded how God can use any situation for his church. Here's what Martha said about Alamacar in her last email: "It's pretty fun. The place is so un-together you can do just about anything! So maybe somehow corruption in the educ. system here can lead to the Gospel being proclaimed. You never know what the Lord is going to do!"

It's true! These kids are getting good English practice, positive attention, and they're hearing where to find the "living water" in a climate of drought.

Scorpions

Chrissie sent an email today telling about her latest adventure: a scorpion got in her bed and started stinging just as she was about to go to sleep. She got away and walked off some of the burning feeling in her leg, then went back to kill it. But it was gone by that time, so she ended up sleeping in the top bunk. Today Maria killed it for her; it'll serve a scientific purpose now when the middle kids look at under the microscope. (They were collecting bugs, but I'm sure a scorpion is more exciting.) Anyway, she says the bites still itch and burn, but not so bad.

There is good news, though. She's been in Karamoja for over a month and hasn't had malaria or amoebas like most everyone else! That is quite an answer to prayer.

I packed up all the science stuff today that Amy requested, and it fits nicely in one action packer with some room left over for packing-material-type things. So there is hope now that I can bring everything else. Also, I bought my ticket. Three weeks till departure is looking a lot more doable now. :)

It's kind of fun shopping for stuff the folks in Nakaale need, although with all the school supplies, etc., it's looking like it might not all fit in the three suitcases/action packers I'll be allowed. Two years ago Bob Wright was in Billings, and said he'd gotten pretty much everything on Martha's list...except he was having some trouble finding Romano cheese. Grocery shopping is one my favorite things, though, so I'm enjoying picking out dried fruit and things. That said, it's a lot harder to find school books and things like that. If you know of a good site where a broad range of used textbooks are sold, please let me know! :) (Thankfully, my dad is going to help out with finding all the more technical stuff - cables and so on.)

The resumed Bible studies in the villages this week went well - Katie said that in Kopetatum, the village furthest away, the kids were still remembering much of the stuff they'd learned three months earlier, before the meningitis started.

Here's what Chrissie says about the kids' study on Thursday - something I can really relate to!

we sang, then practiced the memory verse--about fifty times. the words come too quickly for me to hear and repeat all the sounds. so i just chose one word: ngikingom, seeds. all the kids could say the verse by the end. joyce then explained the parable of the four soils, and we ended with singing and dancing. it didn't even rain on us, though the skies looked threatening.

I'm hoping to buy a digital camera with audio/video so you can see movies when I come back...

Eritrea & so on...

The Wrights lived in Eritrea for a while, maybe 6-7 years ago. Martha wrote her dissertation there, something about language acquisition and Tagrinyan (the main language)? Anyway, Eritrea has been on my African Countries I Know Something About list for a couple years, but this evening it struck me how little I do know about it. I know it very recently won its independence from Ethiopia, but there are border disputes. And I learned from Martha that the capital is Asmara. (The other thing that usually comes to mind is one of Bob or Martha's stories about how they heard screams from cerebral malaria patients in the mission hospital across the street...not a nice way to go if the disease isn't treated in time, and it strikes fast.)

The BBC has a brief profile of Eritrea if you're interested. This is what set of the whole subject for me: BBC Africa's In Pictures about this girl is training to be a runner for Eritrea. I wish her the best of success (as Eric Liddell says in Chariots of Fire)!

My email inbox is pretty full of mail from Karamoja right now (finally! :) ). Sounds like most everybody is getting malaria, but thankfully Bobby Wright seems to be getting it much less often than he used to. The meningitis quarantine ended, too, so Bible studies in the village can start up again. Everyone's pretty excited about that.

Martha sent me a list of stuff to do when I'm there, including help with Mary & Kipsy's school (which I'd been hoping for!), and also some clerical work: "We have a huge pile of info. gathered over the years by the Catholic church's K'jong Cultural Center which they've lent to us so we can scan it...This information would be very helpful to us in learning about the culture. We also need help indexing Scripture references from some K'jong books. If you have some thoughts about how to set up a library database & begin inputting data, that would be a huge help too." She said it would be tedious, but it sounds like a job I'd like, and hopefully I'll learn something at the same time... I don't have thoughts about how to set up a library database, though. Any suggestions?

PS - Blogger's spell check isn't very multicultural. It wanted to change "Africa's" to "appraises."

Mama Chipa with Ruth, Chipa, Hendry, and Chilen.

In an earlier post I talked a little bit about first becoming friends with Mama Chipa. I've been wanting to see her again, but Katie writes that she and the kids have gone to Moroto, where the schools are better. (That's also where she and her husband are originally from.) Apparently she's also going because her husband is tired of her drunkeness and doesn't know what to do. I don't see how this could possibly help her or their marriage, but I pray God uses it for good like only he knows how... Anyway, it's upsetting news by itelf, but it will also be a big disappointment if I don't see them while i'm there! Still, there's usually a school holiday in May, so I'm hoping they'll return for a few weeks at least.

Also, I'm missing Chipa herself. My first summer in Karamoja, when I was in the big house by myself, she would stand on the porch sometimes and call through the screen, "Amanda, ejoka?" And when I'd say "ejoknooi" she ask again, and again...it was quite a game. Today, though, I've been mostly remembering the tea Martha had for a bunch of the women (tea with milk and sugar is ever popular for a treat) right before I left (in 2005). Mama Chipa had been in argument with one of the others, so neither of them came, but M.C sent Chipa, with her baby brother on her back. They both had malaria, so Amy held Achilla (Acile?) Benjamin and Chipa sat in my lap, both of us enjoying buttered bread with our tea. She was felt burning up from her fever, but still I think we were both glad she came. After all, it's not every day you have a tea party...


Joyce and Daudi

This is a picture from the ladies' tea; it's my favorite picture of Joyce and her son (who's named after Pastor David), but the color was very bad so I changed it to sepia.

Theology, the Rich, and the Poor

This actually relates to Karamoja more than I thought at first. There's not just a common feeling of "oh, the mzungus have everything compared to us, so they should give us everything we ask for" (which is a somehow understandable feeling), there's also a jealousy of any Karamojong who has more, even if it's a job - or a chicken. But there is real need; people have medical emergencies, people are hungry. Those are needs the church is trying to take care of as best it can, especially encouraging church members and not just "the mission" to share. So the issues of rich and poor are touchy ones, which need a lot of wisdom, and sometimes it's probably hard not to feel guilty that you can't/aren't doing more.

I think part of the bad feelings comes from the idea that as a Christian, it's not really a good thing to be rich. It is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom, after all. But the rest of the Bible addresses the issue, too.

So finding this post, about the Righteous Poor and the Righteous Rich vs. prosperity theology or poverty theology (with Bono as a proponent), was great - a perspective I want to keep (much as I love Bono and am thankful for many of the things he's doing). Ultimately it's not poverty or wealth that makes one worthy, but Jesus Christ. That's something that can change relationships "slowly by slowly," I think.

It's a very short article, so check it out.

Plowing the fields in Karamoja... This shows the condition of a fairly decent road, what a Karamojong man traditionally wears (a blanket), cows, hills, and the just a hint of the awesome thundercloud cloud formations. The picture is from last summer, when there was a good harvest; this year people are already fearing drought. It's only the very beginning of the rainy season, but they need a LOT of rain for things to grow. If you think of it, please pray that there will be a good harvest this year - and people will praise the God who sends akiru, without the need to slaughter cattle sacrifices.