.

Overheard at our table...

2012-01-25T02:22:00.000-08:00

James on homemade ketchup:

"Wow Mom! This ketchup tastes great!

It tastes so tomato-ey... I bet this is the ORIGINAL recipe!"

Tomatoes in ketchup?

Happy thought indeed! (to borrow an Elizabeth Bennett phrase)

The next day from a guest...

"These peanut butter bars taste real, like they will put meat on your bones... What flour is in them?"

"No flour."

"No flour at all? But how do they get so light and fluffy?"

"Eggs."

I find it hard not to smile to myself when people are astonished that food tastes REAL. It is real.

Sad to me that real food, whole food, isn't easy to find... couldn't we all just move to the French countryside?

And I'm so thankful for farmers and gardeners who work hard to grow and make real food.

Peanut butter bars recipe here.
We skip the cocoa and use raisins for 'everyday' cookies.

Keeping up with the Jameses

2012-01-20T23:32:00.000-08:00

Most parents who homeschool seem to want one of two things: To give their child all the good parts of a 'normal' education (without wasting their time on the stupid parts), or to unschool them and let them follow their own interests and motivations to in-depth studies of just about anything. These are gross over-generalizations, and we could get into details, but let's not. We are fans of the idea of traditional school - as long as it involves Truth, just in case you were getting worried.

The one thing that both Kent and I struggled with in our school years was feeling bored. There are only so many days you can sit in your sixth grade honors class watching the substitute teacher mispronounce the weekly French dictation. One day I logged over two hours of doing nothing while my teacher tried to deal with discipline issues. I have vivid memories of watching in utter disbelief while she (into her 60's) actually tried to chase down my unruly classmate - a hyperactive 12-yr-old boy. Around and around the room they went. The rest of us got little but entertainment out of many a school day.

(Insert Disclaimer here: I do recognize that social development is not a waste of time, and do not promise to homeschool forever - one year at a time.)

All that to say, one of my motivations for educating our children well is not wasting their time. Childhood is short enough already.

All three of our kids are 'smart' and often I feel it is less my job to teach, than to direct their energy and get out of their way. We've been too easy on them allowing them to answer things orally instead of writing things out (and complaining), so the rest of our year is going to be 'writing intensive'. The first day of school in 'writing instensive-land', James was going to earn a game of chess with his Dad after school as a reward. He happily wrote all morning long.

We came to Greek mythology, and it was time to study the contest between Arachne and Pallas Athena (both good weavers and proud... you can probably guess who lost and was banished to spinning webs...).

"Oh Mom. I already read it."

"Really? When?"

"Last week sometime." (and proceeds to describe every detail of the story)

"So, how far did you read?"

"To the end."

"You finished the Greek mythology book for the year?"

"Yep. And the American history book too."

The speed, voracity and accuracy with which he reads, no devours, history and math books scares me. He has corrected me on the details of Old Testament history! He reads it super fast and then can recall every detail. Freaks me out. I have to remember that God has great plans for these gifts and I need to direct here and there and then just get out of the way! Looks like he also stole the Roman history book off my desk this week and finished it when I wasn't looking.

Not sure what he will do with a head full of history and math, but I suppose we don't really need to know yet... During his Asperger's diagnosis last year, they told us he was "charming and very bright" but his scores (as is normal) were vastly varied. Working memory: 90, Visual processing speed: 135, etc. With the improvements in his diet and the elimination of quite a few distracting sensory issues, came a faster clarity of thought (still pauses before multiplication/division facts) and less difficulty focusing during school.

He finished his afternoon jobs/chores, and curled up on the couch with a book about traps to set for a chess opponent.

At the big match of the day, they enjoyed setting up our new hand-carved African soapstone set. They began playing. I could tell Kent was wanting to go easy on James. At some point, he bailed on that plan and tried to save his game!

James played him well into the end-game and was 1-2 moves from a stale mate when he lost. Kent is no casual chess player; he played on a chess team (albeit years ago). There I admitted it. Kent lettered in chess. James blew him out of the water and challenged him with a real game at age 9!

I think both of us will have to have supernatural wisdom in raising and keeping up with James.

Source

2012-01-15T07:59:00.001-08:00

It's a French word, you know: source. We borrowed it.

Here it can mean the 'well' or 'spring' that drinking water is drawn from. Even if local folks have city water pipes (they provide brown water about 50-60% of the time), they often continue to haul water for drinking/cooking from a more trustworthy source.

This month the preaching roster at our Congolese church has been focused on provision. Last week was about God's provision of manna in the desert. Kent was asked to preach today on Exodus 17 and the provision of water to the people. As he was preparing his sermon in between linguistics sessions, deadly cholera was making it's way into town.

Apparently, there was a cholera epidemic here in the 1970's that killed tens of thousands of people. Entire families disappeared. It is not a small thing that cholera is 'back in town'. People have been tracking it through different locations for some time, and it has now arrived. This morning sandwiched in between announcements about the youth mission trip and choir leader's meetings, there was also a page-long infomercial about hand-washing, vegetable preparation and other ways to avoid cholera. Seems we just got through the pervasive 'un-ease' about elections and now this?

It was the perfect time, as it turns out, to think about the 'Source de vie' we have in Jesus. Moses struck the rock and the people had the water to live. Not just any dirty water. Pure water. Life-giving water. They got life. Paul later explains that Jesus is that Rock. He is struck. We get life. For something that pure, we have to go to the Source.

Held

2012-01-13T00:08:00.000-08:00

I am trying to do 10 minutes of deep pressure/holding with James each evening. I don't always feel like following through, but he reminds me. And it's good for both of us. It's been two weeks and this pseudo-poem as been swimming in my head lately:

He eagerly scrambles into my arms.
They can hardly hold him anymore.
A boy barreling full-speed ahead toward the teen years.
Proud to be as tall as Mom's shoulders.

But we have ground to recover.
We must go back before we go forward.
His eagerness reminds me of his toddlerness.
The ruffling of the blond hair.
The holding was necessity then.

But we forgot.
He ran.
He went numb.
He forgot the feeling, the loving.

I try to hold him tight enough.
To squeeze his numbness out.
Feel this holding.
Feel this loving.

You are loved.

And my arms go numb.
Numb with the holding.
Taking on his numbness, I begin to feel less.
He begins to feel more.

It is a daily gospel.
He who takes on our numbness.
So we can feel.
So we know we are loved.

Muck & Mire

2012-01-10T00:55:00.001-08:00

The fun 'feet' blog picture we've been using as a header has bothered me for a few reasons. Don't get me wrong - it's cute and fun, but it was taken during a lovely vacation at the beach in Kenya. And while, I like to look at it and remember our lovely vacation at the beach, our life here in Africa does not boil down to a vacation on the beach.

And it's not in Kenya.

Let's just be abundantly clear, life in Congo is grimy, dirty and full of bugly realities (as many of you notice on facebook). I had to remind the boys to wash their hands this morning before breakfast because they had been touching an almost-dead rodent. When we wash these feet, the tub turns brown with dust and mud for a moment. Life is messy.

Everyday.

In every way.

Life is messy anywhere in the world because of humanity. People hurt each other. Lies. Hypocrisy. Selfish gain. Vain conceit. Here we add to those mud, bugs and life without vacuums or wipes. Messiness of another layer. Speaking of layers, most people here put curtains over their bookshelves because the dust accumulates so pervasively that a book can be ruined without ever being used. I store our future school books inside two XXL Ziplocs in a sealed plastic trunk.

Convinced?

What better blog header than mud?

Mucky reality.

And a pineapple in our backyard.

And a friend's brightly colored skirt.

There are gorgeous things that come out of the mire!

Progress

2012-01-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple months since I shared our diet and progress here. People often ask, "What do you eat?" "How long will you stay on this diet?" "How is James doing now?" I've updated 'Our Diet' page with details about what is going on - now that our family has been completely grain-free for 6 months. I also listed lots of links of other bloggers posting stellar grain-free recipes. I could not have survived this year without their help!

Here are some of our highlights:

**My allergies to egg, avocado and almond are completely gone (I suspect my reactions to black bean, and milk powder are as well, but I haven't yet challenged them.), and I can eat them everyday without any reaction at all. My occasional insomnia and heartburn are also completely gone. I'm able to take fewer antihistamines for airborne allergies.

**Our family has only had one cold in 6 mos and none of us needed antibiotics.

**James continues to feel more and more tactile sensation each week. He has regained the ability to hop on one foot easily, and the coordination to run faster than his brother again! He got a trampoline for Christmas and spends time on it everyday.

**His eczema is 95% gone. He has grown 3 inches, lost 12 lbs. and has much more energy.

**He is also much less 'stuck' in routine. If we change the schedule for our school day, he doesn't mind - just goes with the flow (which hasn't happened for about 6 years!).

**The days of emotional meltdowns are not our 'normal' anymore.

There are no words to thank God enough for James' progress this year! Last night I held him wrapped tightly in a blanket (still loves deep pressure!) next to the Christmas lights.

He began to tear up.

Such a sweet spirit.

He said he was just so happy.

And so sad at the same time.

I asked what the sad part was.

He said, "I'm sad that I didn't feel this or like [being held] for so many years."

I think he can see now that he was missing out on the emotional connection that goes with cuddling for most kids. He stopped cuddling around age 3 - he didn't like to be touched. He grieves that now 6 yrs later, which is a healthy thing to process.

Looks like we have a few years of cuddling to catch up on!

Remembering 2011

2012-01-01T01:41:00.000-08:00

I didn't take this time of holding the ebenezer, remembering the year as He laid it before us, last year - we were savoring a visit with family in the US... Sad that the last backward glance at a year of living and loving was here in 2010. Two years later, our life here is SO different!

But how to quantify that?

What was 2011?

If I had to choose one word, I would have to say 2011 was a monumental year for Kent, this work and our family.

The year language development work exploded here in Bunia with 10 different language communities.

The year Kent became a Linguistics Consultant and helped teach a graduate-level tone course.

A year of long-sought-after solutions for our son's health.

The year we entered Autismland, and found our way.

Another year of taking homeschool 'on the road', moving, packing, settling and moving again.

The year I learned to quilt!

The year Joel finally lost a tooth (actually 5 teeth are now missing at once!)

The year we dared to go 100% grain-free.

The year Kent started commuting on a motorcycle.

The first year we really grew our own food.

The year we finally understood our sweet James and watched him come out of the fog.

The year we finished renovating our tiny kitchen.

The year our living room doubled as a ballet studio.

Another year to enjoy this beautiful, bug-filled country (only 1 bat, 4 grasshoppers, several crickets/cockroaches and several hundred ants and mosquitoes made their way into our house this year - much fewer than previous years!)

The year we had to learn how to cook and eat all over again.

The first year of my life that I crossed food allergies OFF my list!

The year Joel became a great reader.

The year everyone began learning piano, French and Latin in earnest.

The year Anna started and aced kindergarten math.

The year we grew close to Congolese friends.

The kind of friends who make you want to sit on stools around the cooking fire all evening 'chewing the news' as they say in Maasailand.

A year to taste and see that the Lord is good.

2011

A year of paperclips on our paper timelines.

Monumental.

A year mixed of storms and clear skies.

A year rooted in His steadfast love.

A year to hold fast to faith in Him who works all things for good.

A year that could have broken us,

but strengthened us instead.

It's Raining!!!!

2011-12-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

Watching People Help Themselves

2011-11-30T23:26:00.000-08:00

I heard from our worker this morning that his daughter (who was bitten by a rabid dog last Sunday night) is doing better and better. She slept well last night, and is in school today, in part because exams start tomorrow. Praise God!
But there were two people at his church bitten by the dog (the other 26 people go elsewhere, or not at all), and I was anxious to know what happened to the other as well. She was a widow who was bitten on her way to a prayer meeting (I think Sunday morning), and she had to money for the vaccine. As I first heard her story, it broke my heart to think of a widow in this war-torn country, who would die of a dog bite because she couldn't afford the (highly subsidized) $75 for the vaccine. I wanted to help, and I asked what she would do. Our worker said that the church was taking up a collection, and they would see what they would do.
I wasn't inspired by that answer, imagining that the church might come up with $10, but nothing like what was needed. I've been thinking a lot about trying to help the poor, but causing damage, and I didn't want my issues (including my desire to help) to make things worse than they already were --but I wanted to do something. By the end of the day, I resolved to challenge them to come up with $50, and I would cover the rest. That seemed like a nice balance of doing something, yet not taking over what they might be able to do for themselves. But I would need to wait and see what they could (and would) do first...
But today, when I asked, I found that the church collection received $40, and the family pitched in to cover the rest! I was so glad to see God caring for the widow through his church, and doing it without a hand out for help. I'm a bit sad to not have helped, but it is better this way, I think. The church now knows more of what it can do to help itself, the woman now has another reason to thank God for His provision, and her family has seen that the church really does care for them (I don't know how many are Christian). And I get to know that this woman, attacked on her way to pray, will not die because of it.

Rabies & Balloons... Except Not

2011-11-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

Over dinner just now our family discussed just how wild a day we have had, and Kent asked, "Are you going to blog about this? Because if you don't, I will!" You see, I had a peaceful, quiet extra Sabbath day of rest in mind. Today is national election day. Voters are out in large numbers and exit polls seem to sound positive about the experience. None of our regular folks were coming here to work all day and the house would be quiet. I thought I might even wear pajamas all day!

Except not.

Very late last night one of our friends came by on a motorcycle taxi in a frenzied panic because his 7-yr-old daughter, Deborah had been bitten twice by a rabid dog. By the time he told us the whole story the dog had been on the loose in his neighborhood 'across the tracks' 12 hours, and had bitten 16 people! We sent him to the hospital and told him to return right away if they didn't have treatment in stock. He was so scattered, he forgot his daughter's middle name. I would have too. It sounds like one of the little friends she was playing with on a placid Sunday afternoon was bitten in the head and was already showing dangerous signs of rabies. Who knows for sure if it was panic or rabies, but neither are good. And the dog is still out there.

In case you hadn't thought of rabies as anything other than a shot at the vet for your pet, it is alive and real, killing 100% of its victims slowly in a matter of days, weeks or months. I am not a huge fan of vaccines, especially for non-essentials like chicken pox, but rabies?!! I praise God for the science that created that vaccine! It saves countless lives. Unfortunately, it costs about 10 times the normal family's monthly rent. Take your monthly rent/house payment and times it by 10. Pay that 'out of pocket'. Would you do it? Of course you want to save your child's life! But how do you pay that off when cash is required, there are no banks or credit cards? Congo has a friends-and-family network for such a time as this. Works beautifully! Well, we hoped as they didn't return last night that he found treatment at the hospital.

Except not.

He was back with little Deborah this morning. The hospitals don't stock it. It is not a very stable vaccine, needing to be kept cold (nearly impossible here!) and is therefore expensive. We were able to make some calls and verify that there was indeed a supply in town that would be available tomorrow morning. Deborah will get her shots. We are all thankful. My Mama heart was very proud of my kiddos all praying for her and for the medicines to be found, and then making her snacks and drinks while she listened to the men calling all over town, working for her life. The teeth marks in her upper arm are very real! Sadly, by the time they left the dog had been on the loose for about 20 hours and had bitten 23 people (that they know about) - many of them children.

Without any workers today, we had hours of handwashing dishes, cleaning floors, etc.

Except not.

All these tasks require WATER! Our water tanks are empty today and we are using large bins of water hauled over from a friend's house. The boys pitched right in and we finished most of it before 9am - in time for school! Meanwhile, James discovered a large rat we trapped in the pantry. While we are thrilled to kill another one (8-9" long without the tail), we overlooked his passing for probably 24 hrs and had a stinky trap to deal with (to be fair, the boys in the family had a stinky trap to deal with...) =).

SO not a lazy day off! It was time to teach school.

Except not.

We still had to eat! In between instructional moments, I cracked 41 eggs, chopped 6.5 onions, baked a double-batch of raisin cookie bars, baked 2 quiches for tomorrow, made 2 salads, brewed two cups of coffee, heated up leftovers, gutted and sliced up a huge papaya from our backyard, made a thermos of tea for our night guard, and a pot of rice and meat for him as well. How ever will I do it when they are teenagers?! It's probably not more than most busy Moms, but I felt a bit like I was on a roller coaster. Or maybe one of those funky carnival rides where you don't know which way you will turn next...

We tried to decorate our tree too. We got the lights up yesterday and were looking forward to pulling out a few favorite ornaments...

Except not.

We took them to the US last Christmas, and the best ones didn't make it back into the right storage box, so they are MIA. Mommy fail.

This evening Joel was on duty as 'dinner helper'. In searching for a replacement bottle of gummy vitamins he found a huge bag of skinny balloons stashed away from Kent's balloon-making days. You didn't know I married a balloon artist?? It was Kent's introduction to missions - making balloon animals for kids. He's pretty good too! So Joel convinced Kent to make him a 'light saber' balloon. Anna quickly ordered up pink poodle.

Except not.

After the 4th attempt popped, we resigned ourselves to the fact that these balloons sat in a box for one year too long and were basically worthless.

Except not!

Anna discovered that by tying 8 long pink balloons together at one end, she could make an 'octopus'! And the rest of the evening was spent making various octopi, sting rays, and jelly fish in various balloon colors. Maybe we'll hang THEM on our tree! =) Anna's two favorites were white and pink, and at least one was named Princess. Why not Princess the Pink Octopus?

When life gives you popped balloons... make an octopus!

So our not-at-all-lazy day at home today turned into some kind of carnival ride full of twists and turns. And I'm so proud of my kids taking all those left-turns in stride! Two months ago, a day like today would have included hours of emotional meltdowns. Today we rolled with the punches. We took the left turns. We hauled our water. We helped our friends. We were content in every kind of circumstance. I'm just so thankful.

Got any old balloons? You know you should make an octopus! And smile.

My First Exit Poll, and Other Stuff that Happened Today

2011-11-28T11:21:00.001-08:00

OK, it wasn't a real exit poll, but I was very interested to know how the voting went today, so I asked the night guards when they came on shift. I was able to ascertain that:

There were MANY people voting.
They ALL got a chance to vote.
There were no problems at the vote whatsoever.

I imaagine some places in the rain forest might have had more logistical issues than we had here, but so far, this is a major non-event. We'll see what happens when they announce the results. :-)
In other news, one of our workers knocked on our door last night, as his daughter had just been bitten by a dog presumed rabid. I say 'presumed' because it hasn't been tested, and because the community has no intention of trapping it and boxing it up for 10 days to see if it dies. I mentioned that this course was advised, but there seemed no interest. After biting some 23 people (probably mostly children, like this one), the community wants it dead as quickly as possible --which I understand. The last rabid dog (some time ago, and not here, but close enough to be known of) bit some 60 people. I was told that at that time an aid group donated the vaccine (some $600 for a full treatment, per person), without which people probably would not have either access or means to buy it (the father of this one girl just moved out of a house he was renting for $13/mo. into his own, making a major difference in his ability to make ends meet).
Last night he took her to a clinic, then passed our house on the way to another. He had been told (rightly) at the clinic, that his daughter needed the rabies vaccine, but that he didn't have any. So he was on his way to try a couple hospitals. I sent him on his way with fare and prayers, and asked him to return if he didn't find the vaccine. He didn't, but returned in the morning. So this morning, on a national holiday (for the elections), we got to chase down possibilities to treat his daughter. Fortunately there were a number of helpful and sympathetic people, who helped find out where a stock of the vaccine was. But it wasn't open today (did I mention it was a national holiday?), so we'll go there tomorrow. But she did get to leave with clean wounds and a pink Hello Kitty bandage, which she seemed to appreciate. And her dad got to vote (I hope!).
Anyway, I thought that the political and medical events of the day were a very interesting juxtaposition of reality, that shows that the things a day brings are not necessarily anything like what you might fear or expect. But God is gracious, and He provides in our time of need.

Busy Boy Goes to School

2011-11-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

Several of you have busy little boys like our Joel. He preferred motion to stillness from the womb! Once he learned to walk, he never stopped.

So when it came to schooling, I knew we would struggle with a conventional 6-hour-desk day of learning ( you may recall...).
Here's an update on how my kinesthetic second grader is doing at his desk:

- The older we get, the better time we have had being able to focus for short periods sitting at his desk. Good thing too! The older we get, the more material there is to cover!

- To ease his issues with focusing for longer periods, last spring (end of First Grade) we slowed down his math. He is no longer a full year ahead of grade level, but he is less frustrated and more confident. With a summer birthday, just turning 7, he is extremely young for Second Grade this year, so we'll see where that goes.

- One way we continued to get him enough physical activity, was to have him run laps around the house between subjects. We never skipped his recess time, and it was mandatory to spend recess outside unless it was raining. Then he could play Wii inside. I also used to divide up his math page into 4-5 sections. We called it 'Travel Math': #1-5 sit in the bathtub; #6-10 on the couch; #7-15 in the hallway and #16-20 on the top bunk. He loved this funny way of doing his math practice in so many 'weird' places!

- Joel's reading really took off over the summer and while he doesn't LOVE it obsessively like his brother, he is a good reader and enjoys reading for his little sister. This fall I began to notice he would read something well on one page and get distracted halfway through a second page, his voice trailing off while his mind was on the pictures or something else. We are not sure if he inherited the ADHD tendencies, but we have taken him off all dairy to see if his focus improves. So far, it seems to be working (3 weeks now).

So my not-so-little Busy Boy Joel is able to sit for an hour at a time through a normal school morning and complete his work without stress and frustration!! This is so exciting to me. Part of this success is due to 'just growing out of the wiggles' and part of it could be cutting dairy foods. I don't really care which, as long as it works and we can get some work done!

Not surprisingly, his least favorite subject is still handwriting, and his most favorite subject is science (hands-on experiments!).

Busy Boy SITS in School!

One More Thing...

2011-11-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot! To go along with the fascinating sermon on the Fall and it's effects... I did happen to notice that right in the midst of the part about the serpent, a wayward bat lost his footing in the rafters and flew two circles over our heads trying to get himself back to 'bed'.

Snake.
Bat.

Practically the same to me!

Caught three R.O.U.S.s on our back porch last night in Kent's homemade bucket trap. Rodents of unusual size? Oh, they exist! No, they weren't the very-real bush rats that are 3 feet long, but they were big rats. BIG. When it grosses out a Congolese person, it's big. Just sayin.

Fallen

2011-11-06T21:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at church we heard a fascinating take on the Fall. There were several points that stuck in my head - maybe you will also find them thought-provoking:

- All in the Family:

From an African perspective, family relationships define most everything and the terms, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, etc. are used often in the broadest possible sense. There are, of course, rules, but I don't have time to explore the glories of anthropology right now. This sermon discussed the entire story of the Fall calling Eve 'our grandmother' and Adam 'our grandfather'. Putting them quite literally in our direct lineage brought the whole thing much closer to home.

- Not Even:

The pastor described 'our grandmother' telling the serpent what God's Word said about the forbidden fruit. She not only told the serpent the rule: 'not to eat' but exaggerated it: 'not even to touch'. Oh, how easy I find it to exaggerate! Guess it runs in the family... =) I know the absolute Truth, but I like to enhance it a little to make myself look better.

- Conflicted Desires:

The last thing that stuck with me, was his perspective on the curse our grandmother incurred. She was cursed with painful childbearing and the desire for her husband. I've always thought of that as a desire to be more powerful or controlling, but never that desire to be loved and needed beyond normal reasoning. He explained this curse as the reason we see a battered woman return to her husband again and again. Even if she is beaten and abused, she will come home. Even if her husband has been horrible and absent for a year or more, she will take him back. Yes, marriage should be preserved with forgiveness and perseverance, but this powerful desire to belong and be loved can make one do crazy things. I know there are times that I look to Kent to supply what only God can.

Well, I promised you 'several' things and gave you 'three'...

There I go with exaggeration again!

Birthday Week

2011-11-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

This week James had a great 9th birthday and I had a wonderful time turning 25 again. =) (For some reason, Anna kept calling me 25. She just knows that when my 'number' changes, hers is soon to follow and she can't wait to be 5!)

So here's the birthday boy wearing a crown in school (I know, I'm so mean making him do school on his birthday. But in 'the real world' people still have to go to school too!):

eating his favorite lunch (roasted steak and fried cabbage):

He loves reading mysteries right now (Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Box Car Children, etc etc) so we had a Mystery Party where the kids had to gather clues around our yard to find missing letters to this code and solve the Case of the Missing Birthday Candles. It was fun. And Anna and Joel got to help cut out question marks...

Lots of fun opening presents. This is a book of hard mazes and he's focused not bored. =) Eventually he put it down and opened up all the legos, new Wii game, etc.

What can I say, my son is from Eugene, OR. He loves tie-dye and has asked for it for years. Grandma finally found one and sent it over and he put it on immediately! The requisite blowing of the mystery candles (recovered near the crime scene):

It was a 9x13 two-layer almond-banana cake with Cran-raspberry jam for filling. The honey-marshmallow frosting didn't do the right thing, but we poured it over the top and moved on. For a 'sugar-free' cake, some people thought it was too sweet! Honey and fruit are pretty sweet. James loved it, which is what counts.

- - -

Then it was my turn. I was treated all day like a queen. Kent made me coffee with real cream (brought by my friend Suzanne over from Kenya!), scrambled eggs and bacon! I had LOTS of help opening gifts:

Yes, most Congolese living rooms come fully-equipped with a sink. =) The kids made the fancy bows out of magazine pages, so I wanted to keep them all!

Kent made me a fabulous pumpkin pie, but it was still in the oven. So we toasted our sparkling juice ('spicy juice' according to Anna):

Notice that lovely water filter behind me. Love that thing! It magically turns sludge-water into clean water! Then the kids got ready for bed and came back for pie. The leftovers the next day were the best!! My helper blowing out my candle with me. (The extra pie filling made some cute little heart-shaped pies too!)

See that gorgeous wood grain on the table Kent made? Love it. Now off to plan one more birthday for our house! =)

Fully Un-isolated

2011-10-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Congo is in the news this week!

Help is being sent for problems ongoing and seemingly unnoticed by the world at large for a decade. I'm infused with hope. This land I call my home frequently goes unnoticed.
I've heard it called lots of different names this week:

rugged
isolated
'Wild West'
troubled
poverty-stricken
backwoods

forgotten

Really people? Forgotten?
Maybe Congo is forgotten by some, but it is cherished by others.
She is the size of Western Europe! Forgotten?

She is certainly not forgotten, unnoticed or isolated from Him who spoke this breathtaking, wild country into existence.

He knows it all.

Every nook and cranny.

Every waterfall.

Every beautiful smile.

Congo is not isolated from God.

It is fully KNOWN.

And LOVED.

Isn't that just where we are?
Rugged, wild ; feeling isolated and forgotten.
But we don't have to be defined by any of those words.
Nope.
He sees us in our sin.
He pays for it "while we were still sinners",
knows us,
draws us in our ugliness near,
and loves us.

As Matthew Henry says, "No other such an instance of love is known."

That is as fully un-isolated as you can get.

Recipe #6: Banana Pancakes

2011-10-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

Cooking comes naturally to some people. I'm not one of them. When we lived out in the jungle (where it is definitely a WOMAN's job to cook), people were often puzzled that Kent would help in the cookhouse. We skirted the impropriety by explaining that Kent studied Biochemistry. He was just doing chemistry!

As newlyweds, I was in the informal-learned-from-my-husband school of culinary arts. Lately, I do 90% of the cooking with trusted faithful recipes and we all can smile. But every now and again, Kent likes to get in the kitchen, make a big mess and experiment. Did I say 'likes'? No, he LOVES to experiment. It must nourish his inner chemist.

My Congolese friends keep reminding me how good I have it. I do love that Kent enjoys cooking. While he tells funny stories about disastrous culinary inventions in college, nearly poisoning his innocent roommates; he rarely makes anything we don't all eat with joy. I should have given him the credit entirely for adapting Recipe #1: Chocolate Nut Butter Brownies. It was his experimentation that drove us to find something better than we started with. And it is his experimentation I bring you today. The real trouble is that this is all in his head, and not written down. I will attempt to codify this genius:

Recipe #6: Banana Pancakes
This was adapted from Elaine Gottschall's Peanut Butter Pancakes in her book Breaking the Vicious Cycle. We like the sweetness of adding banana to them.

Ingredients:

1 cup natural peanut butter, creamy (or other nut butter - we just live in peanut-land)
2-3 Tbs. raw honey
8 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla essence, optional
3 ripe bananas, mashed or blended

This serves 4 people, we usually double this recipe and snack on leftovers.
We stick everything in the blender and fry small (4") pancakes on low-medium heat in oil or ghee. Because of the honey and banana, they will brown prematurely or burn if cooked on high heat. It means that you have to cook them a bit slower than 'normal' pancakes. If it is too thick you can thin it with water or your milk of choice.

These are not your white fluffy styrofoam McBreakfast pancakes, but they are so packed with protein that I can go hours without feeling hungry after eating just 3 small ones. We top them with aforementioned guava sauce, ghee, raw honey with mixed with water and maple flavoring, or fruit-only jam.

It's still not the same as our favorite granola, but they are grain-free.
Yummy healthiness!

This is the last of the week of SCD recipes to give you a feel for what we are eating, and what is helping all of us feel stronger and healthier. These and a few others have become family favorites that we will likely continue making even after we go 'off-diet' someday. James' birthday is coming up and almond banana cake with marshmallow frosting have been requested, flourless, sugar-free and grain-free. I'll post pictures!

Recipe #5: Mapera (Guava Sauce)

2011-10-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

I spent most of this weekend in bed with a colossal headache, trying to figure out if I should be taking malaria drugs or antibiotics for a sinus infection. Thankfully, I chose the latter and am finally surviving without high doses of Tylenol. So today I am kind of copping out on the recipe run... I don't know that fruit cooked with honey can officially be called a recipe...

But it's tasty stuff! We use guavas because we have a whole tree full of them in the backyard, but any fruit would work really. We've also tried pineapple. Pretty much ends up tasting like canned Dole Tidbits. We love this with mangoes!! Mango sauce is the only way I like them. Yum! Too bad mango season isn't here until December. Boo!

Recipe #5: Mapera (Guava Sauce)
Btw, this one does not come from a fabulous cooking blog. We just made it up.

1-2 gallons fruit (20-30 guavas in our case), washed and halved
2 cups filtered water
1 cup raw honey
1 Tbs. cinnamon

Wash and half all fruit into stock pot. Add water and simmer until soft. Run through an applesauce mill or food grinder if needed. Add honey and cinnamon. Put it piping hot into glass jars and hope they seal. Stick them in the fridge anyway just in case. (For me anyway. You have access to 'real' canning supplies, so you're probably good to leave them on the pantry shelf a while.) Serve cold over cakes, in yogurt, on toast, on fried fish, on pancakes, etc. Ooh pancakes! Tomorrow!

I'm so distractable at this late hour of 8:15pm... If you want to be distracted with me today: This makes me think, which kind of hurts. But then I read this and pray. Finally, this makes me rejoice.

Recipe #4: Coconut Ice Cream

2011-10-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

For those of you living in the land of grocery stores... this is a bit unnecessary. There are some beautiful coconut ice cream options made in Oregon by Coconut Bliss or So Delicious/Purely Decadent. If you can't afford them, can't find them, need to go sugar-free like us or are just one of those DIY foodies...

Our family tradition (at least overseas) is to make some form of 'ice cream' (stainless steel bowl full of something) in the freezer on Sat. and have it with snack foods for dinner and a movie Sunday nights. When starting this dairy-free, everything-free diet, my first two concerns were how will we do pizza night and what about 'ice cream'?!

I tried mashed white bean - honey ice cream. Blech. Then mashed fruit sorbet. Ok. But I LOVE coconut milk, so I was thrilled to find:

Recipe #4: Coconut Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Inspired by this tasty goodness over at Elana's Pantry, but for some reason James couldn't get into Coconut milk on its own without some fruit, and we usually forgo the raw eggs.

Ingredients: (I double this for our family)

1 can coconut milk
1 large (or 2 small) ripe bananas
1/4 cup raw honey
1 Tbs. vanilla essence
dash sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon, optional
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (we use Enjoy Life dairy-free mini chips)

Blend bananas, honey, vanilla, and salt in the blender and then add the coconut milk later until no banana chunks remain. I add half the chocolate chips in the blender for a pulse or two just to chop some of them. Then I dump the whole thing in my metal freezer bowl. Two - four hours later I try to remember to come back and add the second half of the chips when things are mostly frozen. We don't have an ice cream maker, so it can freeze very solid. Good to leave on the counter for 10 minutes or more before breaking your ice cream scoop... So yummy!!

I have added mango sauce before and it was very good. Haven't yet tried warm jams or dried fruits... I hope soon to try adding cocoa powder and or peppermint extract... YUM!

It's never too late in the year for ice cream. I know I can't talk because I live in the tropics. But you can pair this with a warm ginger molasses cookie... a pumpkin spice latte... a piece of mocha coffee cake... I better stop before drooling on my keyboard.

Recipe # 3: Flax Bread

2011-10-05T03:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after 3 months without bread or grains, this bread tastes like dessert to us! We slather it with imported blackberry fruit-only jam. Joel likes it with honey or guava sauce poured over or sandwiched between. But they Joel likes most things, including baked perch topped with guava sauce. He says he's preparing to become a chef. I digress...

I found this recipe over at Adrienne's blog: Whole.New.Mom. She has her family on a similar diet for similar reasons, and has some great recipes! She says her family likes this bread with bean dip or hummus. Yum! We changed it up a bit and have not perfected it quite yet for our own use. The recipe makes a spongey thick 9 x 13 focaccia that would probably be better in two 9" squares or 3-4 loaf pans.

The flax seed meal will lose most of its beneficial properties within 3 days of grinding, so keep refrigerated if you have extra, or bought it as 'meal'. The less expensive option is to buy the seeds in bulk (either color) and grind them yourself! My blender can do this on high speed for about 1 min. per cup. To get the 2 cups of flax seed meal needed here, you'll want to grind just more than 1 3/4 cups of seeds.

I suppose we could call it fabulous flourless flax focaccia, but that's over the top. Hope you like this tasty way to get your Omega-3 oils!

Recipe #3: Flax Focaccia Bread
2 cups flax seed meal
1/2 cup almond flour*
2 Tbs. coconut flour*
1 Tbs. aluminum-free baking soda
1 tsp. sea salt
2 Tbs. raw honey
5 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup water*
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 375. Grease your pans (see note above). Whisk together dry ingredients (*we added almond and coconut flour last week in an attempt to decrease the cake-like texture and really liked it! We added a bit more water than the original 1/2 cup to compensate, fyi. They are optional.) Mix in wet ingredients until fully incorporated (no egg strings!). Now the strangest part: Turn off the mixer and leave the batter alone. It needs to sit and congeal for 2-3 minutes. It will start out looking watery and will soon spread like soft butter. Odd, huh? Spread it in your greased pan. Bake for 18 min. or until it springs back. Let cool. Cut in whatever shape you like!

It is a beautiful rich dark brown color. The opposite of white bread! Seriously! We've used a thin version for pizza crusts, we've made mini-sandwiches, we've smeared it with honey like a cornbread. It's still a bit egg-ey to my taste, but we'll keep changing it... There's 'our bread' for now!

Recipe #2: 5-minute Chocolate Pudding

2011-10-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

Originally inspired and adjusted from Alex's Raw Chocolate Pudding recipe on allrecipes.com.

5-minute Chocolate Pudding

(see Banana Pudding option below**)

Ingredients:

1 large avocado (or 2 small ones), yes you read that right
1 ripe banana
1 cup coconut milk (or other milk)
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1/2 c. honey (or other sugar if you must)
2 tsp. vanilla essence
dash sea salt
tiny dash stevia powder, optional*

*I started adding the stevia because I don't enjoy the sweetness of chocolate when made only with honey. The stevia, imho, gives it a little extra something that is better for cocoa than honey alone. I have a fruit-chocolate taboo, but I'm getting over it.

**If you want to avoid chocolate or cocoa for some reason, it is possible to make it Banana Pudding, in which case I recommend omitting cocoa and stevia and adding some cinnamon and/or nutmeg.

Put everything in the blender. And blend. Really, that's it. Pour into 3-4 cups and refrigerate 30 minutes.

Or just eat it out of the blender... your call.

Recipe #1: Nut Butter Brownies

2011-10-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: If you and yours eat a high-sugar diet (high-fructose corn syrup, cane juice, sugar, sucrose, maltose, etc. all count!) then these brownies may not seem 'sweet enough' for you. To us, they are delectable! Enjoy a whole foods treat!

RECIPE #1: Peanut Butter Brownies

This was adapted from Elaine Gottschall's original recipe published in her book 'Breaking the Vicious Cycle'. The original recipe is also found on the SCD website with a photo here.

Ingredients:

1 c. cocoa powder
2 tsp. sea salt
3 c. natural peanut butter (other nut butters would work too)
8 eggs, beaten
2-3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/4 c. honey (we use raw)
2 Tbs. ghee (melted butter or oil would work too)
1 1/2 tsp. aluminum-free baking soda
1 c. chocolate chips, optional (we use Enjoy Life dairy-free mini chips)

Preheat the oven to 300 (it's best baked slowly, you could try 250 even). Grease a large 9 x 13" or 2 square pans (we use ghee).

Combine cocoa powder and salt and set aside. Blend wet ingredients well in a mixer (or high-capacity blender like a Vita-Mix, just be gradual with the peanut butter). Add dry ingredients gradually. Add baking soda last (then chocolate chips if you like). Batter will be thick like most banana bread recipes.

Spoon batter into greased pan(s) and spread evenly. Bake 'low and slow'. The batter will 'puff' quite high and then fall in the center. Bake about 1 hour for chewy cakey brownies. Bake less if you like them gooey (until the 'jiggle' is gone in the center). Maybe 40 minutes, depending on your oven.

The added mashed bananas add sweetness and gooey-ness, which we like. You can skip them, but it won't seem very sweet and you might need a bit of extra sweetener. Sometimes we have used 2 drops of stevia powder for this.

If you are into a really cakey brownie, you could replace 1 c. peanut butter with some almond flour and coconut flour. But if you go to all that trouble, you should just try THIS over at my favorite sweet-tooth blog 'Gluten Free Fix'. Michelle is a professionally-trained pastry chef, now Mommy blogger, and fabulous SCD foodie.

What NOT to Eat

2011-10-03T02:36:00.000-07:00

It is weird.
Yes, I'll admit it, 'the diet' our family is on is weird.
I sometimes feel like I am constantly explaining.

What can you eat? You really don't eat rice?
Are you sure you don't want a cookie?

Wow, that diet seems hard!

Aren't most truly good things also hard? Trying an 'autism' diet wasn't a big deal to me as someone who has altered her food for years to avoid allergic reactions. We also travel around the world for a living, which would be miserable if we only liked Cocoa Puffs or Wheat Thins. We're accustomed to eating foreign foods and other 'weird things'.

So we tried new things! We learned new recipes. Don't worry, we still eat brownies with the rest of them. They are just made without flour or sugar. We finally know what NOT to eat: No flour. No sugar. No grains. No potatoes. No noodles. No rice. If you or someone you love wants to invest time (realistically 1-2 years or more) to eat toward a stronger immune system, check out GAPS and SCD!

Here is more background about our choices, and some links if you actually want more information or need help getting to sleep in the middle of the night...

So what do we eat?? Over the next few posts I invite you to try a new recipe, if you're into that kind of thing, and 'eat along with us'! For the next 6 days I will post one recipe from this diet that we have come to love and have made recently. And who knows? Without all that flour and sugar, you might enjoy guilt-free seconds on brownies!

The OT Journey: Parting of the Waters

2011-09-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

As some of you may remember, we learned of James' need for an OT (Occupational Therapist) about 2 weeks before leaving the US. That was simply not enough time to get in to see one. We returned to Africa in faith that we would find the Sensory Assessment we needed somehow somewhere. We tried working with two different OT's by Email long-distance in July. Neither one could help us.

We planned extra time in Kampala, Uganda last month to search one out. We went to town armed with 4 possible contacts. One by one they fell through: out of town, not an OT but a PT, on vacation, etc. I had one last lead in Nairobi an hour's flight away, but really hesitated to spend a lot of money chasing a lead that might fall through like the others. If Nairobi fell through, South Africa or Europe were our next options.

Now begins the long list of the ways God provided for James and I on this trip, miracle upon miracle to the point that I felt like Moses must have felt standing in the Red Sea watching walls of water stand up straight in the sky:

--This popular Belgian OT had exactly the experience, training and recommendations we needed, but was 'hard to get in to see'... She answered the phone the first time, took time to talk with me, Emailed me right away some forms to fill out (even though she was traveling to another country the next day), introduced me to her 'Autism Team' who arranged all our appointments for us, set up an appointment with her one week away, and her associates even did some shopping for snacks that were on James' diet! (Thank you Karolien and Trixie!!) Like I said, walls of water.

--With the encouragement I had from the Emails, my conscience said to go ahead and plan this trip to Kenya. We would need a place to stay, and had heard of a new guesthouse on our office compound. I wrote and it was booked already for the two nights we needed. The same day I got a second Email saying that the previous guests were actually leaving the day we would arrive and someone else was coming in the day we would leave. It was available to us for the two nights we needed. Exactly. I couldn't have even planned that. Walls of water.

--I knew we should book it, Kent gave me the green light, but the cost was prohibitive to buy two plane tickets at the last minute. We usually fly this back and forth to Congo. And now we were flying in this! (You would have to chuckle with me at James in the window seat eating his mixed nuts like a king!) We asked our team to pray for provision of costs. Immediately someone wrote who felt led to cover the entire cost. Walls. of. water.

--So off James and I went up to 35,000 feet. Kent always handles the money side of life. My plan was to arrive and get Kenyan shillings from an ATM. I forgot contingency cash and it wasn't until we started the descent that I realized I had no way to pay for our visas to get into the country. They have to be paid in Euros or Dollars. I had neither. Yes, God can provide for my stupidity. James and I prayed right then and there that God would make a way. Upon arrival I noted the airport has changed a lot in the past 3 years. There were ATM machines everywhere! I got one to work for me right in the concourse and walked up to the nicest immigration official I have ever met. She let me pay in shillings! AND charged me $20 instead of $50 because we would only be there 48 hours. Dry path through the reef.

--The night before our flight, we got out passports and realized that mine only had one page left. Doh! The tourist and transit visas take up one page each! It was the weekend, and no embassy was open anywhere. We looked up the consular officer online and called the emergency number. She was very kind and said if I could get into Kenya Monday morning, they could install new pages in 15 minutes while we waited Monday afternoon! It is a little nerve-wracking to know you can almost get into a country, but won't be able to get out until something is fixed. The one page I had left, did have a small corner date stamp, so I would have to beg that they work around it and not cover it up... The exit guy from Uganda snuck in his stamp on a busy page just because he was nice. He didn't have to! And the entry into Kenya lady was a saint who stuck her sticker right on the edge and had to wrap on edge over the other side. Why do I worry?? Our office team in Nairobi were waiting for us to arrive, praying all would work out for the extra passport pages. They are awesome! We love you RBS! As we drove off in one direction to our first of three appointments, they drove off in the other direction with my passport to get the extra pages added. Marvel with me.

--So now that we were in the right country, with a taxi to our guesthouse, we needed to figure out food. It is pretty easy to stay on James' diet here in Congo where everything has to be made from scratch everyday anyway. But driving by Java House and Pizza Inn at lunchtime was pretty tough! I had written ahead asking my colleagues to buy a few staples for us so we could prepare our own foods. Not only did Karen buy my whole list, she scrubbed and soaked all the fruits and veggies for me ahead of time and had them in ziploc bags! James and I thoroughly enjoyed lots of apples, grapes, chicken and broccoli (things we can't get here)! Water standing up.

--Nairobi has a shortage of roads. Or an excess of cars. Either way, there is smog and bad traffic. Everywhere. All day long. The taximan we used is a good friend of a friend. He somehow skirted most all traffic jams. Where I planned 60 minutes to get across downtown, he would make it in 30. Where I planned 30 to get a few miles away, he would make it 15. We ended up slightly early to every appointment. And every appointment was a bit like drinking from a firehose, but exactly where we needed to be and learning things that we can do here at home. I brought James his DVD player with Lassie season 1 and he never used it. (Though we did borrow 2 Hardy Boys books and the Secrets of Nimh and he read all of those in his 48 hrs...)

--James scored below 2% for processing and reacting to the sense of touch. We suspected as much. This was confirmation. What was wonderful news is that he doesn't have other sensory troubles. YAY! He had so much fun at the OT studio, he didn't want to leave - even to go on an airplane. We came back with pages of advice and ideas for therapy at home, and better than that, the therapists are happy to help over Email until we see them again next year! Can you see that water standing up?

Oh me of little faith.

It was truly marvelous to watch God move every obstacle right out of our way. And much of that was possible through a multi-cultural, multi-national, amazing team of colleagues! I am grateful to work alongside them.

Hugest thanks to all those who gave and prayed us through the water. Also to Karen, Olivia, Judith, Emily, Serge, Joseph, Trixie, Liz, Karolien, Josh, Audra, Gabe, Raeleigh, Rod, Emergency Consular Officer lady, Embassy people, and RBS!

Back...

2011-09-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

After a miraculous whirlwind month, we are back home in Congo now.

We did fit in a few days of vacation. Much of our time was spent chasing down leads to find James an Occupational Therapist (OT). They are not plentiful in Africa, let me tell you. I will write out the details of provision later, but the short version is that we found a wonderful Belgian OT to work with in Kenya. She was able to detail James' sensory issues and suggest a program to start him toward recovery.

This is all very new territory to me, and at times overwhelming, but we will make it through one day at a time! He is doing really well. We continue to see progress everyday on this diet!! Coming soon, more OT details and I will post a few recipes in case you like trying new things. You can 'eat along with us' for a few days from around the world!

Passport photo day

2011-08-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Here is Samwise's passport photo. I'm not sure if it is OK to have another dog in the shot or not...

The Smell of Candle Smoke

2011-08-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Candles provide such a serene, contemplative light. And I love to watch the delicate loops of smoke rise to the ceiling! Well, James has me thinking about candles this week...

You know that adorable toddler phase of picking up everything? The one where dirt must be tasted, smelled or rolled between the fingers to really sense it? (You know you did it!) It's actually a very valuable thing to discover the world piece by piece. How do I know what it tastes like? I'm sure I must have tried it!

All of our kids went through this phase in some form or other. Of course the boys were more into dirt and Anna was more into washing her hands for hours on end. But the senses are such a valuable thing well-worth the investment of time.

One of James' struggles has been what is technically called 'tactile hyposensitivity'. It basically means some of the wires in the 'sense of touch' part of the brain are confused or not working properly. And we thought he was such a cute little tough guy being able to watch the needle go in his arm for a blood draw without a flinch or cry... know we now what was really at work there!

This past week, James seems to be discovering his body and the world around him all over again! It's the absolute funnest thing to watch!

"Mom! Smell this candle smoke! Doesn't it smell funny? I wonder if I can catch it in my hands??!"

Believe me, he has had plenty of exposure to candle smoke before. We light candles at dinner for the entire months of December and February. Surely, this wouldn't be a huge discovery for him? But it is.

"What? This guava is too ripe and squishy!"
Mom: "But you ate the same kind last week and the week before that and didn't care."
"Well it's gross. I don't really like the taste of guavas."
(two siblings eating them up don't seem to mind...)
Mom: "But you used to love them!"
"Well, I guess I like them if they are mostly green."

Mr. Picky Discerning Tastes, where did you come from?

Foods he has eaten without comment for years have suddenly changed. Everything tastes different to him. Each meal is a discovery!

"I love this spice!"

He seems to be awakening all over again to the amazing world we live in.
The smell of rain.
The smell of candle smoke.
The delicious taste of ripe fruits.
The taste of spices.

It is a whole new world for James. One where he gives out the hugs and asks to be tickled (two things he hasn't done for at least 5 years).

It is a whole new world for his Mom.

But a wonderful one
we are so grateful for the glorious senses
to hear,
to taste,
to feel,
to smell and
to see this shadow of a world.

Watching him discover things makes me realize how rich I am.
Rich with a Sage nose that can smell out any treat or disaster.
Rich with an ear for music.
James, through his struggles, teaches me gratitude.
So next time you blow out a candle, I hope you take a second to watch the gorgeous smoke rise, smell it with me and thank God for senses!

We are coming up on 3 months of James eating allergen-free foods on DAN protocol, and 2 months of being on the SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet, linked over in the sidebar). I had heard amazing stories about autistic kids finding healing on SCD, but had not read anything specific about sensory issues. Apparently, this diet has helped sensory issues in other families too.

Back to School!

2011-08-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

(our school room, ready for another year)

One of many reasons we homeschool is that it allows us flexibility to stay together as a family despite Kent's somewhat mobile life/work. We have various reasons to travel most of the month of September, so we started school a couple weeks early this year. Anna has moved up to 'real preschool' and kindergarten math, but likes to sit through Latin and Zoology with the boys. She has a real desk of her own and loves it!

James moved up to a larger desk,
for as you will see, he is growing like a weed!

The gapped grin, dimpled cheek and huge front teeth are eerily familiar...
He almost looks like a teenager to me in these pics, and not a third grader...
We even have the right slump!
Really, aren't we done yet Mom?

I didn't edit out my studio for you...
yes, it is a dining room chair in front of a fleece blanket on our front porch.

My sweet Joel is in Second Grade!

...and that second front tooth will soon be gone! He's pretty proud of being almost 2 inches taller than his brother was going into Second Grade. He'll catch up with him one of these days...

And our resident princess,
in the midst of trying to grow her hair out like Rapunzel,
is starting preschool!

And of course, we had to take a new silly-face picture, at right.

The kids then all insisted that our puppies get their portraits taken too... If you thought getting young children to sit still and pose was a challenge, how about 2 9-month-old puppies who think they're missing breakfast??! I had fleeting delusions of getting the dogs to take their turns sitting on the chair.
yeah, notsomuch

Then moved the chair hoping they would agree to sit with our kids petting them nicely.
dream on

Then just wanted to get them all the way in the frame...
you can see how things degraded:

So Nella, our sweet black lab mutt, who flops over for a belly rub at the sight of you, gives me her rump. That's what she thinks about portraits!

But her brother Samwise, who is usually hyper, was eating up all the attention he could get. We took lots of pictures and the kids got up, and he was still laying there like, "What? It's over already?"

(I just love the expressions! We love dogs!)

Maybe we should be called the ten-foot and eight-paws family...

Université Shalom de Bunia Jubilee

2011-08-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

This didn't work for some reason, so I've posted it here.
For a more in-depth, if somewhat jaded, report on one aspect of the Jubilee, go here.

Meltdown

2011-08-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Two steps forward, one step back.

I can feel the progress, but it's harder to appreciate it on the 'one-step-back' days.

Like today.

The bedtime chapter book we've been reading is lost. Somehow this is a magnanimous disaster for my routine-loving boy. Routines are safety. And dealing with changes at the end of a long day, well sometimes, it's just too much to ask.

Some AS kids have meltdowns that look like a toddler tantrum on steroids. Screaming, kicking, throw-yourself-on-the-ground to deal with the inner pain of sensory overload or fearsome changes. Not my son. His are pretty stealthy meltdowns and I can't often see them building under the surface. He retreats, disappears, stops talking, starts bawling, tears streaming down his face that the day simply can't go on because the book is missing and he needs storytime.

Skipping stories is a big deal to a kid who lives to read stories.

So tonight we meltdown.

The routine is not right.

And sometimes that will just have to be what it is.

As much as I have tried, as he grows, I know I cannot eliminate all disappointment and change from his life. After several minutes of melting-down we were able to move on tonight. He's now sleeping peacefully.

But that is not how every night ends.

I don't have to worry about those nights.

They are the yesterdays, maybe even the tomorrows, but not today.

Today I will be thankful for a long day with a short meltdown and a happily sleeping boy.

The Light(ning) Side

2011-07-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

In Kenya we were told that the 'long rains' come in Sept/Oct, which was easy for me to remember as it should be 'fall'. Only not really.

In Congo, things are similar in the sense of dry - then wet - then dry - then wet. [Cultural tangent: We have met people who do not know how old they are in years, but how many wet seasons, which unfortunately doesn't count the years of drought...] But the timing is a bit different here. I was told when we spent time in the rainforest that the long rains come Aug. 25th. Sure enough, they did! But here on the savannah, I'm told they come end of July. Given that the past week has had at least 2 hours of rain each day, I guess they are right. So end of July it is! (not the time to go on vacation apparently...) It's been SO cold (down to 60 degrees!!)

Rain here is not in the same universe as Seattle rain (figuratively!). It is more like my limited experience with New York rain. Sun, then dark clouds, then crashing thunder and drenching downpour, and back to sun. If Seattle rains like a street band (all day long just singing my song to make a few bucks), then New York rained like the tune of a commercial (throw it at you fast). If Seattle rains like a flute solo, New York rained like a heavy metal band.

Well, over near one of the world's largest rainforests, we have heavy-metal rain. No shock there! The thunder booms in the East (always in the east) and approaches town. By watching the flashes and counting the seconds, I keep track of how close the center of the storm is from our house. You see, lightning strikes are a very real menace.

People have been killed or maimed in town by lightning. When the thunder rolls, the streets empty out like the end of a movie (forgive me. It's analogy day). A few minutes and a thriving neighborhood looks like a ghost town (see?)! If you drive by and look closely, people are crowded under porches or the overhang of a storefront waiting it out.

Once in the last two years our neighbor's house was struck. We didn't see it coming (who does?!). I was typing right here at my computer when the outlet on the wall in front of my desk (at eye level) suddenly arc'd! Thousands of watts flowing through all these wires and right over to my face. Very scary. The sound came immediately after the arc. We lost some of our equipment in our house due to the proximity and spent $300 replacing it. We were lucky! Much more could have been lost.

So now when the lightning comes within 5 miles, I disconnect us from the grid manually (just flipping a switch) whether the power is on or off. This is easy enough. But when you wake up at 4:23am to flashes and rolling thunder, it's not so fun. I sleep on the light side, so it makes sense for me to be the designated 'Lightning Control Monitor'. I'm up anyway.

Often I sit and marvel and the phenomenal light show and sheer power God displays in these storms. The fear of God makes sense and heavy metal rolling thunder becomes my awe-filled song of worship. There is nothing God cannot do!

Pole Pole

2011-07-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Pronounced 'POE-lay POE-lay'. This is a very useful Swahili phrase meaning 'step by step' or 'slowly slowly', 'little by little', 'one foot in front of the other', 'baby steps', 'bit by bit', 'inch by inch' - I think you get the picture. I don't think it is coincidence that 'pole' alone means 'sorry' or 'my sympathies'. When someone dies or is very sick, you can say 'pole sana kabisa' which is 'sorry very completely'. The reduplication in 'pole pole' does not mean 'sorry sorry', it is often used as an encouragement to someone struggling to finish or achieve something.
'Step by step' you will get there! But there is a kind aftertaste of sympathy.

[As a disclaimer, while I am still learning how to care for James with new understanding of his issues, this blog will not become an 'autism' blog. I will try to create for you a picture of the mosaic of stuff that is our life in Congo, autism being one of those things.]

James is making significant steps 'pole pole'. I will illustrate one of these in conversations had trying to get ready for church on Sunday.

Dec 2010
(pre-diagnosis)

Mom: "James you are walking around barefoot. It's almost time to leave for church. It starts in 15 minutes. We need to leave in 10 minutes. Please get your socks on, your shoes on and find your Bible."
James: "Uh. Okay."

5 minutes later, James reading on his floor
M: "James, it's not time to read a book. You need your socks, shoes and Bible. Please get them now."
J: "Oh. I forgot! This book was distracting me."
M: "What 3 things do you need?"
J: "socks, shoes, Bible. socks, shoes, Bible"

5 minutes later his younger siblings ready and walking out the door
M: "Ja-ames! Time to go!"
J: "I can't find my socks!"

At which point we all arrived late after him finally finding everything, or we would step in and help him finish each task. During the diagnostic process, we learned James has significant trouble processing auditory information and organizing himself (executive function).

-------

May 2011 (2 weeks on the GFCF Diet - gluten-free, casein-free, allergen-free)

M: "Time to get on socks and shoes for church."
J: "Okay. Can I finish reading this paragraph first?"
M: "Sure."

2 minutes later
J: "Mom, I can't find my socks!"
[No Mom was ever so happy to hear those words!]

**HE PROCESSED AUDITORY INFORMATION!! HE HEARD AND REMEMBERED!!**

M: "They're over here."
J: "Hey! I might be ready before Anna!"

**NOTING HIS OWN PROGRESS!!**
(which almost helps him in giving up his favorite food of all time: cheese)

-----

June 2011
(after 2 weeks on SCD: Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and routine lists established for visual input)

M: "Time to get ready for church."
J: "Already got my socks on, now I'm looking for my Bible."
M: "Way to go buddy!"

**SOME SELF-MONITORING and EXECUTIVE FUNCTION RETURNING!!**

-----

July 2011
(5 weeks on SCD with routines)

M: "Time to ..."
J: "I know Mom. I need to get my socks, then my shoes, fill up my water bottle and get my Bible."
[said with a cheeky grin too!]

I was almost in tears. After years of needing constant reminders to get anything done, my son is telling ME what he needs to do. He's a planner at heart after all!

I think this is what people must be talking about when they say their child was 'recovering' or 'waking up' from autistic symptoms. I feel like I have a little boy in my house I haven't seen in 5 years. That adorable little funny 3-year-old is back. Only he's almost as tall as I am by now!
He can hear me!
He can process what I'm saying!
He can plan his time!

These may seem like insignificant molecular steps toward progress, but to me they are monumental.

Mon. u. men. tal.

Pole pole we will go far!

And I am ever-so-motivated to keep up the diet!

Entering Autismland*

2011-07-21T03:21:00.000-07:00

Years of searching for help and answers, in regards to the difficulties of our son, culminated in April in a diagnosis: Asperger's Sydrome. Those of you on our newsletter list have read some about this just this week.

We have left the unchartered waters of encopresis or Reactive Attachment Disorder, and entered the unchartered waters of Autismland. This is one of the reasons for the 'Quiet' you may have noticed here, not feeling we could be open about this quite yet.

Our first few months in Autismland have been a crash course in orientation. We were also given the added pressure to make snap decisions about treatment and care to get started before we headed back overseas for 2 years. Thankfully, they were helpful decisions. I could spend months describing how God provided over and over opening just the right doors, closing others, giving us just the right resources to get in and out of a myriad of doctors and tests. I became totally comfortable with vials of frozen pee in my freezer. I even put them there.

I will likely never forget the moment the nice family doctor referred us to Children's Hospital to 'get to the bottom' of our issues... (if she only imagined the pun possibilities!) A Hospital? Is that really necessary?

Nor the moment the receptionist on the phone told me, the Hospital's "doctors had reviewed our records" and we were being transferred to the Autism clinic...

Every feeling revolted (to steal a Jane Austen phrase).

Then I remembered.

I remembered a picture of him 3 yrs earlier at his cousin's busy birthday party.

The quiet little boy in the corner 'in his own world' drowned in adult-sized headphones. Coping by tuning out the crowd. Seemed so cute at the time.

I remembered.

I remembered often wondering, "Where is James anyway?" Often lost somewhere in a book, even before he could read like the wind.

I remembered one horrible night in the middle of jet-lagged transition, his least favorite thing. We had missed our connecting flight. Again. (You see, for him changing schedules is right up there with plucking out fingernails one by one = painful.)

The vision of the little boy, his backpack on, belonging to me, screaming his lungs out, writhing with fatigue and pain on the shiny tile in front of some 300 people in the immigration line in London's airport. Because our plans had been changed for the bajillionth time in 24 hrs.

And us, his stunned and exhausted parents, each with a younger sibling in their arms, staring at him in disbelief until the nice British Airways attendant helped him up, promising candy she never delivered. Do not promise my son something you can't deliver! (I also remember looking back over my shoulder at the jealous death stares of the masses while we were ushered to the front of the impossibly-long-for-midnight-line...)

I remembered that endearing habit of lining up all his little cars. in. straight. lines.

I remembered how the video of our sweet boy turning 2 doesn't really include any words. Train noises, yes. Intelligible words? Notsomuch. I consoled myself that he was going to be bilingual. He did speak late...

I remembered how absolutely he loved Thomas the Tank Engine and all things train. And for the next 2 months straight I would repeatedly answer the question, "Does he focus on one particular subject to the point of obsession?" Did I really make train-shaped birthday cakes for 5 consecutive years and NOT NOTICE?

One by one snippets of memory came back to me. A photo. A vision. A story.

And one after one, like salty waves seeping down into soft sand, I slowly (oh-so-slowly) accepted that we needed to knock at this ominous door marked 'Autismland'. Guess those Hospital doctors do know some things...

Well, we found the courage (and money) to knock, trusting that God would sustain us through whatever came next. Remembering that He had before.

Turns out, it is exactly where we need to be.
Hindsight is 20/20.
All begins to make sense.
Pieces fall into place.

Entering Autismland meant getting answers!
And treatments!
That work!
Even better is that changing his diet is changing his everything right now, and I am ever so thankful we knocked on this door to sail this sea.**

-----------
P.S. If you want to reread this, this or this, they will likely make more sense now.
P.P.S. We started up a Box Brigade (see tab up top) to help get James foods he can enjoy more often.

*I borrowed the phrase 'entering Autismland' from the fabulous autism mommy blogger Jess. This is the source text.

**If you have sailed these seas, know someone who has or wonder about what it's like, it's good to start here.

Quiet but not gone

2011-07-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

I just realized I haven't blogged in over a month. Ack! Things have been super busy since we finished school. There are a few picture finally uploaded to a facebook album if you'd like a peek at the kids and how well Joel's birthday went.

We've also just finished a long-overdue newsletter that you should see in the next week at your mailbox, real or electronic. We're hosting a guest on his way inland to help wiring a new Bible Translation office for solar panels and internet. Lots more to write! We are quiet momentarily, but not gone!!

Sending you love from dusty Congo!

Saturday Tid Bits

2011-06-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Thanks for bearing with the non-photo phase of this blog. I now have photos and will share them soon - for sure! I want to tell you so many things, but do not have time to write them all down right now, so today you get 'tid bits'. Bits of many stories that all involve our adventurous life here.

Chai
It is a cloudy morning after a cool, rainy night. It's probably only down to 68 degrees, but I pulled out the fleece. We all woke up slowly (perfect for a Saturday anyway). You know something is up when your 4-year-old begs for chai. After 5 years in Kenya, we became rather accustomed to chai, and Anna learned how to ask for it before she was 2 years old. So Chai it is.

Monkey Business
We have some gorgeous fruit ripening on the trees right now. Our loquat tree is full. Our avocado trees drop beautiful fruit with each and every puff of wind. They hit the tin roof with a boom-shak-a-lack-a and then BUFF! onto the grass. Kent and kids LOVE mangoes and eat them with every meal during mango season. We have two trees. The one in the front yard gives a stringy, tough variety that is better used for juicing. (Local kids will pick them and rub them on a rock or tree trunk to release the inner juice from the fibers, then poke a hole and suck the juice out! Practically Tropicana.) But the backyard has the beloved mango tree! It gives wonderful, flavorful mangoes and there are many currently ripening on the tree.

So you can imagine where this is going. Someone in this neighborhood brought three wild monkeys in to sell or have as pets. Then they got loose (or were cut loose?) and now they maraud around eating people's fruits! There are now only two of them left and I caught them yesterday in Kent's beloved mango tree each with a mouth FULL of ripe mangoes. Grrr! Let's just say he's off to the market this morning to buy a better machete and cut down some of the surrounding trees. We're hoping that will make it more difficult to reach the beloved fruit. And just for the record, monkeys are not cute or cuddly or fun in real life. FYI.

Tornado
I have seen some of the horrible images from the mid-west of the damage a tornado can do, and I have to say, it sometimes reminds me of my kids' rooms. Or the school room depending on the day. Just saying. That's what Saturdays are for, right?

Life Without Closets
When we first arrived home last month, everything was so clean and empty. We unpacked our bags and still had room left over. Then we hit the storage room. We dug out all our old mess and now it is still laying around (what I did not immediately give away, that is). You see, some of this stuff is just going to take time to sort through. Kids artwork from last year? Extra curricular materials? Craft supplies? It's the kind of stuff I would put in a closet or the garage until I had time to go through it. But this house was built without closets. Yes, you read that right. Without closets. So for now we have to walk around the occasional stack of dusty boxes. That's just the way it is. I often joke that if I wrote a book about our life here, I would title it 'Life Without Closets'. No place to stash and hide things. Hm...

Chef-boy-are-Amazing
Due to James' diet changes, I feel like I am learning to cook all over again. Maybe I never really did learn how to cook in the first place... So far, my experiments with the industrial-sized pressure cooker we hauled over here have been tasty. It seems one of the only ways to cook meat that gets tender. Experiments with alternative salads, juicing and flours await me after school is out Friday.

Novel
Kent and I have been married 12 years next week, and we still learn things about each other all the time. Amazing. We've recently discovered that he thrives on novelty. He loves to try something new and figure out a new puzzle. This works really well here because there is always something new breaking! Today it is chopping trees and fixing our living room sink, which has been emptying into a pot for 3 weeks. On the flip side, I love the things I love (I ate PBJ sandwiches with a glass of milk every day of my 7th grade summer vacation. Every day. Still like them.) So trying new things is really not my favorite. Kent is understanding me on a whole new level with this knowledge. Thus the kitchen adventures I'm trying are a big step for me. When I start to panic, I can just call on my handy novelty man, and he'll find a way to make anything work!

Festivities
So looking at the calendar, as with so many of you I'm guessing, it's the end-of-the-year extravaganza this week. Over here we have our little piano recital Wed., school 'graduation' on Friday, a friend's birthday Sat., Father's Day Sunday, and Monday I start an important checking session for a few days. Come July we have Joel's birthday and hopefully some REST! May your summer be restful and refreshing too!

The Shouldas

2011-05-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

It's easy for me to feel bound by what other people think. It just hit me this morning that over my lifetime, many people in authority over me have had plans. They feel it necessary to tell me of these plans.

You should.

You could.

Hey, you should consider becoming an artist.

You should write a book!

Could you promise me you will get a PhD? (strangely enough I got that one twice)

You could write a book! I would totally buy it.

You would make such a wonderful natural childbirth educator or doula!

And while I would probably do okay at these things and enjoy them... what don't I enjoy? I know they mean well, but theirs are not the plans that matter.

You see, God has planned my days. Each and every one of them. He's planned yours too. There are good things laid out for us to do. And I have felt called to do good things (though no one has ever said, "Hey! You should be a Bible translator!"). Why don't people say:

You would be a great homeschooling Mom!

You could raise godly kids!

You could attend to your needy child with beautiful patience and endurance!

You would be good at coming up with yet another healthy dinner!

You could scrape all the grime right off toilet seats!

Yet these are the plans, the calling, that I live. We are called to something higher than what human eyes can see. We are not bound by what others think. Motherhood and household management deserve a better reputation.

Doesn't pay overtime.
Little short-term return.
Huge long-term gains.

"A wise woman builds her house,
but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands."
Proverbs 14:1

Build your house. Don't tear it down. You are doing one or the other.

I often have to stop what I'm doing and remind myself to 'build my house'. Not with wood and nails, but with wise words, contentment and endurance. So to all you ladies out there, I invite you to join me today in building your house. That will look different for each of us. Build your house.

This is God's plan for me right now. I'm throwing out the shoulda-woulda-couldas.

flower

2011-05-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have had precious little to put into our yard, but God has been gracious. In the back there is a stand of banana trees that, in addition to producing far too many bananas (once they do), produce the most wonderful flowers. Anyway, here is a taste. you can sort of see the different stages as the flowers are more and less mature, with the ones at the top already being pollinated, and ripening into bananas.

Where the Wild Things Are

2011-05-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

Well, a HUGE thank you goes out to all who prayed us through a very long, but very smooth trip across the globe. Many people helped us pack up, Grandma and Grandpa put in lots of last minute babysitting, etc. Even the ticket agent checking our mountain of luggage was pleasant. The people waiting 'forever' in line behind us where totally supportive and even told fun stories of growing up in Zimbabwe. You just never know how God will provide. This was likely our smoothest trip yet!

I still do not recommend two consecutive overnight flights with a long Heathrow layover in between, but we seem to have mastered the art of getting a napping couch in a busy airport. =) Besides, we got to meet the police squad in between snoozes after Joel left his backpack unattended on the other side of the couches. =)

There was a classic moment of panic when the policeman, who strolled up with Joel's bag, asked me for ID. I don't know if it was the fact that I hadn't slept more than 3 hours in the past 27, or that we had walked several miles to get to the napping-couch-section with 3 kids in tow, but I couldn't come up with my ID for anything. Kent had our passports, and he had gone to the security desk to inquire about the very bag elusively floating between two tall policemen and myself. It was a bit surreal. "I know this looks bad, Officer, I just can't find my ID right now." Strangely enough, I could recount every item INSIDE the bag and could probably give an approximate replacement value... Mommy brain at its best. Fortunately, the police had pity on my groggy self and the repentant 6-yr-old at my side and gave us the bag anyway. Grace.

We are back to Where the Wild Things Are! Home in Congo. Our yard had gorgeous 6-ft sunflowers all over, our basil looked more like a bush, and the marigolds spelling 'welcome' had grown waist-high! I LOVE being warm! Our kids are thrilled to romp in the backyard in sandals and shorts and we are eating as many mangoes as possible. =)

In the past 4 days, we got mostly unpacked, got a swing up in the loquat tree, welcomed our two puppies to their new home, got a little sunburned and failed miserably at sleeping on a schedule. Our house is very dusty and many things are needing to be done to get us back in working order, but we are safely and happily home!

Even had 3 monkeys up on our roof this afternoon!
Wild.

Adios amigos!

2011-05-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry this past month has been so crazy, and words so few.
We are packing up and weighing bags.
Our overnight international flights leave in 3 short days.
The 'stuff of our life' carefully divided into 50-lb. increments.

God has used this past few months for his glory. He has loved and showered us with blessings over and over. He has answered some medical questions for us. We (once again) leave behind some precious new friends knowing that we will see them all again one place or other.

It's always hardest to leave our family. They pay a higher price than we do. I'm getting a tougher skin, having done this a few times now already. What turns me back into a puddle is watching my kids' tearful goodbyes. I read somewhere that if you feel pain upon parting, it is the proof that you have loved well.

So my kids have loved well and been loved, and while it feels like an end, it is just the space between chapters. This chapter is about written, and the next one is coming soon.

Goodbye homeland, land of sunbreaks, land of berries, land of connectivity and electricity, land of English-speakers, land of snowy mountains in the distance. See you again in a couple years. Sunshine - here we come!

We appreciate your prayers for us 5 traveling through 10 time zones with our 17 pieces of luggage. Next post will be from the other side of the pond!

Happy Song

2011-04-16T12:37:00.001-07:00

Just had to leave you this happy song. Smile with me. How fast they grow up!

Joel's Circle of Life

2011-04-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

In searching blog archives, I was hoping to find for you the video of a 4-year-old Joel. He has always mulled things over in his head. You know he's really chewing on things, because out pops a totally creative new perspective. A tiny window on the world all his own. A completely different sense of this wacky world.

In the video he asks a good question:
"Since God can do anything, can He swim even where there is no water?"

I assume Joel would like to try swimming in the air when we get to Eternity... =)

My Creative Little Prince's wheels have been turning through First Grade.

Well, a couple days ago, he explained to me his version of the Circle of Life.
He's really put weeks of thought into it:

lions eat zebras
zebras eat grass
grass eats dirt
dirt eats water/rain
water/rain eats clouds
clouds eat airplanes
airplanes eat people
people eat lions
etc.

*insert cool circular graph here*

It makes me think, then laugh, then think again...

I think I love 'airplanes eat people' the best. It took me a long time to digest that one. Figuratively, people walk in and look like they are 'consumed'. Like a large animal swallowing up it's little passengers for dinner. Where does he come up with this stuff? But we've been in enough airplanes to consider them banale (French for 'commonplace', only better than just that).

Then the banale beast of prey disappears and is 'eaten' by a cloud. This is almost like one of those phone commercials where each new frame leads us to another world entirely. Don't you just love to see the way kids think? I hope Joel's Circle of Life gives you a chuckle today. We could all use a little more childlikeness.

I guess I do feel a bit like I've been in the belly of a whale after a 10-hr flight...

The Vortex

2011-04-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I really have very little idea what a 'vortex' actually is.
I think it's supposed to be something that sucks you in whether you like it or not.
Like you're going down the drain.
A wild and powerful force
on the edge of uncontrollable.

Five weeks remain until we hit the friendly skies once again. The to-do lists are growing everyday with things to stock up on, de-plastify, carefully weigh in 50-lb. increments, and insure for the long-haul. Random things on my shopping list to give you the gist:
Bag zapper tennis rackets
Craisins
Multi-vitamins that expire after 2013
Math curriculum for 2012-2013 school year
4 laptops for Kent's work

If only I could buy me some peaceful TIME to do all this shopping...

'The experts', not sure who they are exactly, say that to completely unpack your emotional bags to live in a different place takes about SIX MONTHS. So, this time around, at only 5, we knew we wouldn't get that far. Trouble is, over the last wonderful 12 years together, we've only passed 6 months in the same house a few times. So this THING. This process of folding up your life in packable bits, moving it across the world... or across town, and unfolding it once again... This process is TRANSITION. And it is where we live.

In one of our orientation classes, a wise instructor gave us a gift.
A piece of paper really.
It's our emotional road map.
It lays out the emotional process of transition.
First, the folding up and shutting down.
Then the chaos in between.
Finally, the unfolding...
making mistakes.
Learning to trust.
Again.

We hang that roadmap on our bathroom door and often look at it and find ourselves in our relative processes. Such a relief to know that anxiety at this stage is normal. We have gotten to the point of taking it down once or twice, but usually it just lives on the bathroom door. Pointing us to the path ahead. Making our exit. Making our entrance. This path we walk... in transition. Following in dusty, bloodied footprints. Putting off the old life. Putting on the new. Maybe it's just good practice...

I call TRANSITION a vortex, because it seems to suck you in without asking. It feels like everything is powerfully out of control.

But it isn't.

This whirlwind of moving chaos has limits.

God holds it in his hands and does not let us spin out of control. He keeps our hearts pumping, minds thinking, friends praying. He holds us close. All else in the material world is packed, shipped or tossed away.

But we will always have HIM. And He is far more powerful than our little vortex.

Sunday Blessing

2011-03-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

This afternoon God surprised us with this blessing, too large to fit in one picture:

May contain traces...

2011-03-14T15:39:00.001-07:00

I have a pile of letters.
They remain letters unwritten.
I have wanted to tell you so many things.
But I also desire to say only what is beneficial and blameless,
so there have been few words.

We are squeezing in our fair share of fun, parks, ice cream, libraries, etc. Things we don't get in Africa. But we also needed to squeeze in quite a few doctors appointments and chase down some answers to what exactly is going on with our health.

I finally got in to see a wonderful allergist - maybe the best of the four I've ever seen. I'm not just biased because his son is a linguist living overseas and his waiting room is stocked with overstuffed leather couches. Love. (You see dust mites can't move through leather - they are dust-free furniture!!!) I walked in with a pile of questions and walked out with answers.

For as long as I can remember I have reacted severely to tree nuts. Not just the nuts. Anything that has shared airspace with a nut. (That's right, no donut or cookie shops and certainly no coldstone.) We're not talking about a few scratchy bumps on the arm either. I'm an overachiever. I have the whole throat-swelling-shut, run-to-the-ER-and-stab-yourself-with-an-epi-pen reaction.

Way back when I was a wee bairn, food labels were much less informative and no one had ever heard of dying from a nut allergy. I actually didn't believe it could be dangerous. I had grown up eating Honey Nut Cheerios. I felt fine. Just avoided the Chex Mix and Russell Stover's at Christmas. Worked for me. There were two mysterious times I didn't understand where I ate a cookie at a potluck (potlucks are like Russian Roulette for people with severe food allergies let me assure you) that I found out later had almonds in it. My uneducated hypothesis was that the almonds in Honey Nut Cheerios and the potluck cookies must have been SO processed that there was really no protein left for me to react to. But... AHA! My allergist confirmed the truth that, in fact, I am NOT allergic to almonds. Just all the other nuts. =)

YAY! I've been happily eating my fill of Honey Nut Cheerios ever since!

Sorry, that was a really LONG way to say that I went in with my list of allergies and, for the first time in my life, got to cross one off! Sadly enough I had to add egg and soy to non-almond tree nuts, black bean, kidney bean and Nido milk powder. So you win some, you lose some.

I'm so thankful for a country that enforces good labeling (it is not so elsewhere in the world my friends). There really is a difference between 'manufactured in a facility...' and 'may contain traces'. I'm somewhere in between. For whatever reason, 'manufactured in a facility...' works for me while 'may contain traces' does NOT.

I'm also so thankful for doctors and the amazing tests that can be done today. It used to be that finding a food allergy was like finding a needle in a haystack and usually involved elimination and substitution diets that took months or years. The food often tasted like a haystack too. Now there are amazing food options and blood tests that tell us what your immune system is doing. Exactly. This week. Such an incredible gift.

As expensive as all this stuff is, I am very thankful also for all the different specialists out there who can really serve our needs. This next 10 days I will drive 90 minutes to one specialist and 2 hrs to another, but I know we will be getting an answer.

So pray we would get the answers we need to prepare well for our next 2 years in Congo. We leave in only 8 weeks...

You Know You're when

2011-03-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

You know you are raising a 'missionary kid' (MK) when your kids:

... think a snow angel is something like Frosty the Snowman.

... get excited about a library.

... see it's 30 degrees out and still can't be bothered to put on socks and shoes.

... always miss their friends, no matter where you live.

... make up a foreign language that only stuffed animals speak.

... see it's 30 degrees out and skip out the door without a coat (and then scream).

... think a 10-hr airline flight is normal.

... fight over which suitcase they get this time and know how to pack and unpack themselves.

... can't tell the difference between a long trip and a move.

Scary but true: Driving home from our 10-day Oregon trip last week, it became clear that Anna truly believed we were about to pull into our house in Congo. Her main concern: The toys made it alright. The simplicity of being FOUR.

Friendship

2011-03-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

Our kids have close friends in Congo. They are used to playing with them every spare minute in a mixture of basic English and Swahili. Over time customs seep in unnoticed. In a good way.

When we arrived here one of James' first comments was, "I hope I find a friend." And we frequently pray for that provision when we move. Knowing this trip was short, I had not been thinking along those lines and had not focused on the kids finding friends.

His first day of Sunday School was a sort of indoor 'field day' where the Grade 2-5 students played various games. He bonded almost immediately with a sweet boy his age. I was a few minutes early to pick him up, so I waited on the sidelines. Then I saw James trying to grab this boy's hand.

Uh-oh.

I realized a bit too late that James was going to learn about this cross-cultural difference the hard way.

You see, in Congo, you show someone you care and value their friendship by holding hands. Boy to boy or girl to girl. Holding hands is important. I hadn't realized James caught that. So here he was applying the Congolese rules for friendship to a sweet unsuspecting American kid. At first this kid was trying to make it a spin-the-arms-around game. Sheer politeness. After a while I watched him start to avoid James. The Mama Bear in me wanted to run out there and make it all better, but I had to let them finish the game and bite my tongue. It's hard to watch kids make their own mistakes. Parenting older kids is new for me.

Over a snack at home I gently broke the news to James that holding hands means friendship in Congo, but has much stronger connotations in America.

"Like you want to marry someone?!"

"Pretty much."

He blanched. "I had NO idea!"

I guess crossing the world is much more than getting off a plane.

P.S. They continue to be friends and plan a playdate after basketball season is over, so our foibles didn't ruin anything long-term. We later explained to this boy's mother as well, who was very understanding. Just need a little extra grace getting our cultural bearings.

Capri Suns and Vacuum Cleaners

2011-03-01T20:12:00.001-08:00

There are too many experiences to list them all for you. Everyday my children experience another piece of this thing called their 'passport culture', and we hope that one day when they must return to fly solo the pieces of the puzzle with come together and be less overwhelming.

So, today's anecdotes about how our kids are learning and coping: Capri Suns and Vacuum Cleaners. Growing up with cement floors and little electricity means lots of sweeping and mopping... and no vacuum cleaners. After most of their lives overseas, both Joel and Anna are still terrified of these beastly machines. They just aren't used to the loud noises. But then how could they be? For now, James is the designated chore vacuumer and his younger siblings run for cover.

Almost everyday I find people gazing curiously at my kids. Last week they were given Capri Sun juice pouches for the first time. After drinking them, they discovered the fun of puffing them full of air! Nearly balloons really. So then came the tilted head of a new acquaintance. And me explaining that they've never seen a Capri Sun before.

Everything is new. There is always something fun to discover. How mail works. How a dishwasher works. How clean water is at your fingertips in every drinking fountain. How fun it is to blow dry your hands in a public restroom, or drive thru a restaurant and have yummy food and toys thrown into your car. Or blow up Capri Suns like balloons.

So when you see my kids doing something strange, just tilt your head a bit and I'll explain once again, "They've never done this before."

2011-02-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

So sorry for the 2-months of silence here... I have heard several of you encouraging me to continue blogging even while we spend a few months in North America. It has been quite a huge transition, naturally, from living in Central Africa to living in the States again. We have been away for two years, and a few things have changed. TV shows are now online instead of on TV. Pants are tight instead of loose. Boy's hair is down in their face and leg warmers are back. Makes me see visions of jr. high... Now I feel old.

Anyway, James remembered lots of things right away, being the oldest. So he knew all about drinking fountains, restrooms with air blowers, automatic toilets and faucets, city parks, even remembered how to work a vacuum cleaner and that the bakery ladies at Fred Meyer have free cookies! Joel, on the other hand, mostly remembered family members and friends. He was old enough to understand we are here temporarily and moving around a bit, so he's along for the (fun) ride.

Then there's Anna, who was only just 2 when we left and really didn't remember much of anything about our fast-paced, tasty, cold double life.

More on our adjustments to come...

Savor

2010-12-06T00:12:00.000-08:00

You know how it goes... take time...

stop and smell the roses...

drink in the sweet moments...

treasure up all these things in your heart...

Savor.

The French use a different word: profiter, from the same root that we pull the word 'profit'. Make the most of every opportunity. Well, we are being given an absolutely HUGE gift to spend Christmas across the world with our family, so we will be doing just that - savoring.
It will be a bit of a shock to go from summer to winter, from flip-flops to snow boots in 29 hours, but we want to make the most of it!

You will likely not hear much on this blog for the next month,

but know that we are wishing you the Merriest of Christmases!
We hope this season is filled with True Hope for you and yours!

Savor something good,
even if it is just sunlight on snow.
All good gifts are from Him,
the Father of Lights.

Blessed Advent!

Photologue: Lake Albert

2010-11-28T03:59:00.000-08:00

our first glimpse of Lake Albert

The road down the escarpment was steep...

...and the flatlands near the lake were pretty muddy!

Waiting for our paperwork to get processed, many people gathered around to see the 'white kids'. One mother even passed her baby in the window to sit a few minutes on Joel's lap. Our guide told us if the kids shook our hand, they would refuse to wash it all day long...

In the boat. Seeing fishermen pull in their nets.

He's not hiding from the camera, just bailing some water...

The man.

...gotta love all the faces!
(Thank you Rachel for the sunglasses!)

We love our little water proof camera, but it got a little fogged up over the lake.
You can probably still see this guy having lunch right by the road!

Winding up through the Ruwenzori mountains!

This was taken minutes before my first time ... how to say this... Let's just say the cow in that back right corner didn't make it to the pit stop and we needed our windshield wipers for much more than rain.

It was long, but worth it with this waiting on the other end:

swimming with friends on the shore of Lake Victoria...

playing, eating, sleeping and playing and eating and sleeping.
(Thank you Menda for everything!)
A great time was had by all!

Travelogue: Lake Albert

2010-11-10T02:31:00.000-08:00

Our trip across Lake Albert was very enjoyable.
It's a fascinating place!
Sorry - no hippos in sight...

Here's the play-by-play:
The first leg of the trip was in a car with a cousin of a friend who is also the head of a local NGO. He was wonderful to talk to! He has so many interesting ideas about why things fail here and how to help them change. We really enjoyed the ride into his hometown, meeting some of his friends, and hearing about his work to help the physically disabled people in this region gain tools and experience to live well in their own homes with their own families. Right where they are. Working with what they have. Instead of lamenting and importing what feels lacking.

He drove us to a private beach location where we transferred bags from car to boat, used the outhouse and gooped up on sunscreen. We had hoped to 'set sail' (it was really a motorboat) before the sun got hot, but we ended up embarking at 10:30am with the sun already heating up. The cool wind made the trip gorgeous! The water was somewhat warm, we all buckled up in our deluxe life jackets complete with reflectors and whistles. The kids, of course, had to try out the emergency whistles... Yep, they work!

There were three people sitting across the boat and three benches to sit on. Kent and I sat on the first one, then the three kiddos in the middle and three local ladies behind them. In the middle of the trip I could understand the ladies were debating about which of our boys was the eldest or whether they were twins. I cleared up their misconceptions and shared our gingersnaps. What else could I do? Joel had just reached in the water and accidentally soaked one of them with his splashing.

Anna was hysterical when she sat down and felt the boat rocking. She was inconsolable until allowed to grip my hand with white knuckles. Once the motor started and we had wind and a view she shouted nervously, "I love this!!" You will get a kick out of the pictures we took of her in her sunhat, shades and life jacket gripping my hand for dear life. The boys are seasoned travelers by now I guess. They seemed nervous the days before, but were excellent and confident when we got to the boat. We all had fun spotting different water foul. We tried not to be concerned that the 'copilot' of the outboard motor was occasionally bailing water. What could I expect from a handmade boat? I knew we were in the best possible hands and left it at that.

We lost an hour somewhere in the middle of the lake and it became high noon. Amazing that all that warm water will travel north to Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt!

I've never seen a lake that had bits of floating vegetation everywhere. Lots of lily pad-like things. And the occasional pretty purple flowers. Fun to see all the dugout fishing boats too. Up to this point our trip was really glorious (not only because we always travel better in the mornings). I shouted over to Kent, "People pay big money to go boating on a day like this!" I felt like a yuppi crossing Lake Washington. Our 2-hour tour across the southern tip of the lake only took 1hour, 40 minutes and there was little wind to splash us. The country we were entering is, generally, much more organized and wealthier, so I mistakenly assumed it was clear sailing from here on out...

First of all, when we beached the dugout boat... yes, I say 'beached' because we got in at a 'real dock' and now landed in a lily pad marsh on a patch of sand... there were no signs or buildings. There were a couple of enormous trucks (lorries) full of bottled water and other goods for transit and eventual sale getting loaded one man at a time into a much bigger transport boat. They were handmade boats the size of a city bus, and couldn't get very close to shore. So laborers were hired to cart 2-3 boxes of goods on their heads from the back of the trucks into the warm lakewater chest deep where someone would drag them onto the boats. Quite an interesting sight really.

Anyway, once we were beached, the only way out involved a foot or two of lakewater and lilypads. No big deal in your swimsuit among friends, but disconcerting with 3 kids, 6 suitcases and 30 strangers. Some of the laborers came right over to lift us out. That didn't look like a good option to me. One of the local ladies told them "Hakuna pesa" (no money) over and over, so I assumed this hauling of people was a paid position. Kent climbed over the suitcases and was able to jump to the sand more or less. James and Joel followed. One of the kind ladies lifted Anna over there (who resumed her freaking out now that my hand was not attached to hers anymore), and there I stood in the boat gently rocking in the lapping waves.

So I did what I have seen my courageous mother do many times, rolled up my sleeves (pants in my case) and jumped in with both feet! =) It felt nice on my feet actually. I tossed my shoes to dry land first. I think I shocked those 30 strangers. Unfortunately, the immigration process waiting for us had nothing better to do all day and took a long time and was not friendly in the least. But soon enough we were piled in a taxi sedan and driving toward our destination. We were by this time about 2 hours later than we wanted to be.

Our route took us through a portion of game park, or wildlife preserve. It was fun hearing the driver's stories about seeing the lions sleeping on the road at night. We saw gazelle and other deer-like thing in abundance. I would want to live here if I was a lion too! But we didn't see him with our own eyes. Just his meal for tomorrow. We also saw a mother warthog with her babies next to the road. The car drew closer and she just took off, leaving them to fend for themselves! What a mom.

We wound our way through the Ruwenzori Mountains, which reminded me a bit of the foothills of the Cascades and more closely the mountains in northwestern Cameroon. People would work the land at a 60 or 70 degree angle, which amazes me! Lush green hills with wide dusty dirt tracks sliced through steep valleys. It was beautiful!! There were even a species of evergreen - in the tropics! Apparently, these mountains do actually get snow occasionally in April. Who knew?

We arrived to meet our bus connection to find that it had just left. Our options were staying the night and waiting a day, hopping a small van taxi or hiring our current driver to continue on. We opted for the last option after a quick stop to buy more water at a real grocery store! Pavement and grocery stores - civilization itself!

Alfred the taximan was nice. Kent and the kids sacked out for a nap in the back and he and I discussed life in the front seat as we drove. There are few drivers I am comfortable with as a front-seat passenger, but Alfred was good! He knew the roads well and that helps immensely. He knew when we would see road construction and truck after truck rolled by with Chinese sprawled across the front. He knew when to gun it and make up the time. He was careful with his car and I appreciated it.

It took us a long time. It was a long afternoon. We didn't pull into town until well after dark, just in time for rush hour traffic! And he didn't know the unlit roads well in the city. I began to pray that God would somehow guide us there without even ONE wrong turn as it was really late for the kids. We called our friends for directions as we neared their house. We couldn't find the Total gas station they referred to, but decided to pull off the road a bit to get better directions. As it turns out, the road we were sitting on was the very one we needed! We found their house and minutes later were chowing down homemade lasagna and taking hot showers! Not one wrong turn!!

Driving ourselves last time took about 16 hours, which for us is best spread over two days. This time with the boat over the lake we were hoping would take only 12 hours. We ended up taking 14, but were really slowed down by the whole missing-the-bus decision. Anyway, we are glad to have done it at least once! I probably still prefer the airplanes in 68 minutes or less to be honest. And I won't say I'm sorry we didn't see any hippos or crocodiles. I didn't really want to anyway. We waved to them all the same!

Pictures will come once my better half returns in the camera cord! =)

The Big Eight

2010-10-27T13:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry not to post much more about the fun party and celebration we had today for James. I can't believe he's 8! Sounds so old to me. In just 10 hours we are attempting to traverse this portion of the globe which will involve not one, not two, but three different taxi rides, a boat trip across Lake Albert and a bus trip across the Ugandan midwest. Should be an adventure any way we slice it! So, to catch up on James' big day, see my facebook photos over there. And to catch up on our trip, I will post updates just as soon as I can!

I'll wave to the hippos for you!

Sese Fo

2010-10-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

She sits quietly flipping the pages of her illustrated Bible for children.

Crowded faces behind peer over her shoulder to peek at the pictures they never had.

The big people stand up.

Sing stuff.

Sit down.

Pray something.

She kicks her muddy shoes on the bare-board pew just in front of her.

You see, this is church.

But it is not church as I have ever known it.

This is church in a foreign language.

Our kids are learning Swahili, but we haven't pushed French yet. We usually attend the French service, and while it is all well-known to Kent and I, we know Anna isn't getting much. She has started to recognize songs and try to sing them. Last week we sang a familiar tune:

"Je suis fort, fort! Oui plus que vainqeurs
par le sang... de Jesus!"

[translation: "I am strong! More than conquerors because of the blood of Jesus!" Okay that sounds weird in English, but it sounds good in French, trust me.]

I didn't realize until we got home that Anna was singing (at the top of her lungs no less) this same tune. "Sese fo, fo. we nanana" She's making sense of something and proclaiming it from the rooftops. I have to admit, as a linguist who loves languages it was a little disturbing to hear her murdering the French, but she's only 3. James, at almost 8, can sing all the words and those of a few other songs as well, but he'll never outsing his vociferous little sister. =)

The girl has volume I have never known. Opera future? maybe. She's right there with Olivia the Pig. Yesterday we talked about the Nutcracker and ballet and she promptly donned her Fancy Nancy tap shoes and tried a tap routine. She really only slipped those two times because the shoes were on the wrong feet. Dancer?

Whatever she becomes, I pray everyday she knows and understands where real strength comes from. For now we'll go with 'Sese fo!'

The Races

2010-10-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

One lazy Sunday, I heard lots of laughing on the back porch.
I went to investigate (as any mother would because sometimes laughing is synonymous with trouble).
But this was not the case.
No, this laughter came from cheering at ant races.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Ant Races.

You may recall we have had a year of battling with biggie-sized ants in our kitchen. Since the back porch has been doubling as the kitchen these days (basins for washing dishes, charcoal burner for long cooking), we stack dirty dishes out there. Presto! No ant problem in the kitchen. They're all outside. There is a Congolese genius to traditional construction of a cooking house separate from the residence.

So the boys were watching these ants do their thing around our breakfast dishes. The stacked basins for washing became like a track, and I have no idea why but the ants would go around and around and around. That IS funny. Can you find the lead ant in this race?

I love that my kids don't need video games, noises or flashing lights to enjoy playing. I always avoided battery toys when they were tiny (not only for my own sanity, but because I wanted their little brains to get well-exercised in IMAGINATION).
I love the look of wonder on their faces as they discover things all around them,
and create little castles,
moats,
dams,
houses,
roads,
etc.
Little universes that help make sense of their own.
Filled to the brim with imagination.

The Divider

2010-10-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

It can look like a Great Barrier Reef, this massive division separating one world from another. To build that bridge and learn that language is so slow and so much work, most people don't bother. But the Body of Christ is to be a symbol of unity across barriers. We have immense chasms of differences and yet we are one Body.

I was sitting in church last week trying really hard to listen to a sermon in Swahili. This past year we have become really comfortable with the young - urban - professional - youthgroup French service, but the life of the church is really conducted in Swahili, so we are trying. My side of the barrier sounded something like this:

... Matthew 11 ... ... ... ... ... ... ready ... ... ... ... he/she/it is praying ... ... ... ... ... first... ... ... Jesus ... ... ... friend of mine from my village ... ... ... ... always said he was really strong (lots of laughter) ... ... ... people look for him when someone doesn't pay them back... ... joy ... ... many people ... ... ... ... ... like that ... ... ... praiseworthy ... ...

Doesn't make much sense, does it? I'd love to claim that I had to take 13 different children at different times out back to the outhouse, but it's not true. The kids occasionally distracted me with a request for water, but in general there were many lost minutes of nothing but noise to me. Hard to subsist on jumbled pieces that don't make sense while you wait for the blanks to be filled with understanding that seeps in at a snail's pace.

Kent was able to fill in most of the meaning I missed on the way home. Apparently, it was a great message about following John the Baptist's example of humility. Ironic.

You may remember the experience I related in of attending Obedi's funeral where his mother, in her early nineties no less, sat in the dirt next to his coffin. I was confused at first that one of the younger sisters was talking right into her ear. I thought maybe she was hard of hearing until I listened for a louder clearer version of Swahili to find the sister was translating into a local language! This grandmother needed a translator to attend her son's funeral.

And left me wondering, how many people in this country are sitting in services hearing messages that are more 'blank' than meaningful? How many grandmothers who come have a limited understanding of Swahili like I do?

Oh that God's Word would bridge the gap and fill in the blanks!

This is why we came.

Children's Readers

2010-09-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

As you know I am smack dab in the middle of teaching James and Joel to read well and love reading. For a Literacy Specialist, this is a little bit like being a kid in a candy store! James doesn't really need any more teaching - just vocabulary, spelling and grammar instruction. Joel is starting to really pick up steam as he moves from sounding out every letter to remembering more and more sight words. It's fun to see him growing and loving it!

Six months ago I blogged here a bit about books I love to read aloud to the kids during snacktime, and yesterday I had a lovely surprise of being contacted by the author's grandson himself! You can find his comment listed below that post, or I can just fill you in here:

"I was happy to read your mention of The Happy Hollisters. My grandfather was Andrew Svenson, who wrote the series under the pseudonym Jerry West. The Hollister children were patterned on the real-life Svenson children: my father, aunts, and uncle. I know my grandfather would be delighted to know that his former fans still appreciate the Hollisters' wholesome adventures and are now introducing their own children to the books. I know he would also be fascinated with your family's travel adventures, since he loved to travel and incorporate his adventures into the books.

"I thought you might be interested to learn that we have just republished the first volume in the series -- now in paperback, but otherwise identical to the original. If you like, you can read more about the project at our website (and see a photo of the family that inspired the books)"

Here I thought I was enjoying some rare children's book from the 50's! In the summer after the third grade my family moved (which is big for a family that doesn't. ever. move.), and my Mom found me 3 copies of different Happy Hollister stories to read over the summer. I think I read each one 2-3 times! Over the years I always kept an eye out for other copies of books in the series, and never found any. This year it's James who's reading them over and over! And I was thrilled to hear there are 30 titles in all! I hope they all get republished... =)

Off to start a school day!

Missing: Garbage Trucks

2010-09-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Pop over today to read what one of my colleagues wrote about my experiences in garbage and recycling in Africa.

Lots of things seem broken,
but there is always a way to fix them.

Hodge Podge

2010-09-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

On this blank canvas of blogosphere I will paint a hodge podge today. The things going on...

I felt that wellspring of creativity about to burst Saturday and had to make something (but wanted to finish in just a couple hours), so I made one of these! Super cute and super fun and now I won't be stepping on legos and holding my breath in the dark anymore. Anna has been seen trying take out a baby tooth so she can have The Tooth Pillow come to her door.

We finally have our plane tickets! We will spend December with family and then move north to help teach at Trinity Western/CanIL. God is good!! I am praying we find good doctors.

We gutted our off-the-porch pantry, or larder, or mud room this week. It had been used for years in local-style charcoal cooking and the walls are pretty dark. I don't know how much paint we will have to throw on it to brighten it up. But we will try. Kent has already built the shelving unit that will line one wall. It waits on varnish. I can't wait to have a place to put things away!!

About 6 months ago we bought furniture. But it is not what you think. We didn't go try it out in a store. We didn't carefully flip through color swatches. We didn't even look at a catalog. It is used furniture from a friend that was downsizing two countries away. You may ask, how it could possibly be more convenient or cost-effective to purchase something used from two countries away when we live right next door to a local carpentry shop?? Good question! Apparently furniture in this town is in such high demand that carpenters don't have (take?) time to dry their wood. Furniture is built with hand tools, varnished and sold and it is only 4 months later when you look at your new table and watch the joints bend or disconnect entirely before your eyes, that you realize they used green wood.

There is a wonderful retired carpenter we trust. We asked him to build a bookshelf for Anna's room.
He said he would love to...
if there was any dry wood to be had in town.
We asked how long would it take to dry?
For a Congolese? 6 months.
For a missionary? One year.

We soon realized our dream of real furniture, a place to hang our clothes and a straight shelf to hold our dishes, was either going on hold for a second year while we dried our own wood, or we would have to ship from another country. Just about then a possibility opened up to put them in a container (those huge metal boxes on ships, trains and semi trucks) that would be trucking its way over here in July. We agreed. Various delays. It was trucked here this week. It is even unpacked and sitting in our office building. But it has not 'cleared customs'. So we are back to waiting (and praying for the customs officials).

This morning James and Joel went romping around the yard telling stories with their matchbox cars before schooltime. When I called them in for school James kicked his crocs off and they landed in the recently-hauled bucket of clean water to wash our dishes. (Yes, this is now over 2 months of incomplete kitchen sink.) The water could no longer rinse off dishes as it was now almost murky. So the boys had a little lesson in consequences and were late for school hauling more clean water. This is Africa after all.

Funny Baby

2010-09-15T02:30:00.001-07:00

You probably don't have time to sit around and read blogs, and I probably read more than I should, but The Pioneer Woman's Funny Photo Contest lived up to it's name! For a split second I thought about entering a funny picture of one of our 'babies' (don't worry I do realize they no longer fit in the baby category). As I scanned a few folders of pictures, I noticed a theme...

Can you guess the theme?

Which one do you like best?

Where the Wild Photos Are

2010-09-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

Just ran across a friend's amazing blog, and couldn't keep it to myself! Click over to read through fascinating and funny tales (it also helps that she's a professional photographer)! LuAnne actually took the family photo you see at right. With a rich history and worldwide perspective (having visited some 60 countries!), she has lots of fascinating things to share.

I'd love to hear which are your favorite posts! This one from Uganda and this one from here make me seriously laugh out loud because they are so true! What's interesting to you?

Weekend Getaway

2010-09-08T02:12:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not this was the road on a good day. On our way home it was more like a mud pit. It left me thinking of Mr. Darcy 'What is 50 miles of good road?'

A carepackage with candy necklaces made the trip quite tasty for some of us.

Joel + Termite Mound = Happy Climber

...now you know where whole trees go when they are taken over by termites!

We were staying with a couple who have lots of history working here. They have returned to help build up what used to be a huge mission station for this region. Everything was still pretty gutted after 2 years of military occupation. Rebuilding is slow.
Left us thinking about what we can leave behind.

It was lovely to listen to the different songs of birds we don't here over the mosque next door and to stay up late learning to play Rook. Other highlights were getting to ride their little 4-wheelers and gorge ourselves on cinnamon rolls!

It is likely to be our last weekend away for a few months, so we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Corn Mush Diet

2010-09-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

I got asked a good question about our life in Africa, "What is it about your African lifestyle that slims you down?" My first steps on African soil were 11 years ago this week, so in some ways I have forgotten what is different here.

The rain waters seep into this red clay soil, and the African way of life seeps into my own.

There are several things about life here that encourage weight loss (though to be fair I have to note it doesn't work like this for everyone*): more walking, more sweating, more stress, less favorite foods, etc. If I want to eat pizza for instance, I make the crust from flour/oil/milk, I make the sauce from tomatoes/onions/spices, I grate the cheese, I cut up the fresh pineapple. It is all very 'locavore' and usually very fresh, but it is also all very much work! Because of the work it takes, and the core of laziness I have, I snack less. No quick easy munchies here. Farmer's market without all the prepared goodies.

It seems the weight is proportional to the level of civilization you live at. In discussing this with colleagues, it was commonly expected one would gain the 'furlough 15' (15 extra pounds) by returning to the US. I know some people have avoided this with care, but if one weighed 120 in the US (don't we wish), then in an African city one weighed 110 on average, and out in a village they weighed 100. Here we are somewhere between a city and a village.

In the US I can visit Starbucks for a chat, drive through any number of fast-food restaurants, and even the foods I put on the table are processed and manufactured often so that tortillas are not just wheat and oil. There are more options and there are yummy options and they are all filled with little things to make them MORE yummy.

In the big African cities I have seen, there are several meat options, always fruits and veggies and sometimes even imported varieties (how much is a real, crisp apple or few blackberries worth to me??). There are fewer 'fillers' in foods (but then your bread gets stale more quickly too) and fewer packaged foods. There are restaurants, but they are not drive-thru and don't have huge luscious extravagance. The richest thing I ever splurged on was 5 handmade spinach raviolis in a heavenly gorgonzola cream sauce in Kenya (but the restau was owned and operated by an Italian).

In the few rural areas we have lived, extravagance is eating meat or using oil. In one place salt and sugar were even a splurge for people. The place I lost the most weight (and even heard of a colleague losing almost 40 lbs in one month!) was in the northern hills of Cameroon where we lived with a Cameroonian host family. They splurged and made us meat sauce to eat with our corn mush. Most families we know eat one large meal in the evening and cold leftovers or porridge for breakfast (usually nothing for lunch). Joel was just a few months old, nursing like crazy in the heat and I had him strapped to my back as we hiked up and down the hills visiting friends and churches and clearing their fields. It was physically exhausting just to accomplish basic life. Now why on earth was I ever enamored with Little House on the Prairie??! Hauling water. Scrubbing laundry. Hiking up. Hiking down. Hiking some more. I still think Jenny Craig really could be on to something with the 'corn mush diet'...

It is no wonder we have colleagues who have to work at keeping enough weight on. Add in a few tropical illnesses or a bout with malaria, and you start to think about how to gain weight.

And so it goes... weight = wealth here.

*For some, who would benefit from all the fat-free, non-fat, diet soda options in the US, they actually gain weight overseas where carbs are ever-present and diet soda non-existent.

A Note on Stress

2010-09-01T03:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know we are here. We are well.

The longer note would go into how 2007 taught us our own limitations, and how to better manage our personal levels of stress. So thankful for those lessons! We use them everyday here.

Exercise:
I don't exercise because I want to be stronger or fit into a certain pair of jeans. The African lifestyle slims me down just fine. I exercise because it keeps my mind sane. Doesn't really make sense to me, but I know that my person needs it to handle stress.

Bible Study:
We started up a little community of English-speaking Moms here that doubles as accountability for keeping my nose where it should be and fellowship with people who get my life.

Chocolate:
Okay, this wasn't really in the textbooks on managing stress, but it DOES help! =)

Hobbies:
I'm sure you've been in a season of life that was busy and stressful. Suddenly one day you look back and realize that you haven't finished that book you started 6 months ago. The cross-stitch that never happened. The quilt blocks collecting dust in a stack. The art papers you never unwrapped. (A dusty TV doesn't count unless it's in the garage.) We need hobbies, especially when we're stressed. Some small way to be creative and productive without lots of effort and energy. Those are mine (reading, sewing, cross-stitching) - what are yours?

Vacation:
As much as I love our little mostly-furnished fixer-upper, and our school routines and such, we have had a hard time finding ways to take breaks here. This homeschooling Mama must get out a bit more. And yet... There are no hotels. There are no guesthouses. No bed-and-breakfasts. There are no grandparents' house a few hours away. It's either thousands of dollars at a schmancy 5-star safari resort or camping. We have yet to discover somewhere we can go without A) spending over $800, B) traveling more than 5 hours each way or C) feeling we return more stressed out than when we started.

But!
Another possibility has arisen for this weekend, and I have faith that it will not run into A, B or C! Some blessed people in a quiet town nearby have invited us over. So, after figuring out that I need a break, seeing only closed doors, a window opens.

See you on the other side of the window (i.e. next week!)

Off to pack up some hobbies to take along! Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Another Day in Paradise

2010-08-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

Another day where we have far more avocados than 8 people could ever eat.

Another day where our neighbors celebrate at the highest possible decibel level (this time it's a wedding, and what's not to celebrate about that?).

Another day of thunder rolling over the ridge, echoing off the hills in the east.

Another day of bright colors and songs that make you dance.

Another day where everything in our yard grows inches per day (weeds and seeds alike).

Another day with the privilege of serving the under-privileged.

A day sewn in faith, hemmed in prayer.

Another day full of Grace.

Look! I wrote my name!

2010-08-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

Quotidienne

2010-08-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

Gotta love the French for coming up with a beautiful way to say something as normal as 'daily'.

The daily norm, the quotidienne, over here seems unworthy of blogging to you all. But every so often it dawns on me that what I now consider 'normal' for our life and work here, is not what most of you consider 'normal'. Here's today's random bit of normal.

Kent is almost home after a 10-day journey to Eastern Europe. Every time he leaves inevitably something vital breaks. I think the machines in our house must feel his absence. They know the genius is gone from the house and decide to take a vacation while they can. Quick! The simpleton is in charge, time to play! Makes me feel a bit like the substitute teacher trying to keep relative control of the ruthless teenaged mechanisms in our household.

So this time the TV monitor gave up (which works for listening to music, but not for watching anything).

And the water pump, which allows us hot water.

I'm not complaining. Heating kettles for bucket baths and watching movies on my computer are not suffering or anything. I felt pretty good finding new solutions to keep up our movie night routine.

I also felt pretty good managing to speak to our guards in Swahili, and understand about 80% of what they said to me (they were probably speaking nice and slow for me =) they are such nice guys that way).

I now know I am a pretty exhausted single parent. I have NO idea how those ladies on TV, who single-handedly worked 2 jobs and raised 6 kids, survived. I need more sleep, but I sleep less as I know each wail for a drink of water or lightning strike in the distance is ultimately my sole responsibility.

Last night at 4:30am I decided to get up and cut our connection to the city grid. I'm one of those people who sees the flash of lightning and starts counting the miles. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand... At four the windows start shaking with the CRACK of a peal of thunder. All the previous ones were between 8 and 15 miles away. But four is plenty close for me! Time to shut off the grid. Our house isn't high enough to be hit directly, but we've lost some equipment in the past when our neighbors were hit just because the grid gets super-charged.

So I cut the power and stood to watch the light show by the back hallway window. Suddenly our neighborhood was struck, and it is always more amazing when you happen to be watching out the window! My cheek was pressed to the right window of the back door as it started shaking violently with the very essence of power. I heard a loud zapping/buzzing and ran to check that our colleague and guest hadn't seen any arcs in her room (where we have in the past). She was worried for our power system being blown. We went and checked it out. No smoke. Lights working. I was so thankful to be up to disconnect the house just in time. Being a light sleeper has finally paid off!

The kids did great through their first week of school. It was good for us to return to familiar routines. Anna loves running for the cookie jar at snack time and munching on top of the desk while I read (Alice in Wonderland for this month) before recess in the yard. The boys ramble off to their new friend's house next door in the lazy afternoons and all is quiet while Anna sleeps (or sings) in her own bed.

They grow up so fast! Joel is doing great in his reading. Some invisible switch must have flipped over the summertime, and he is motivated and doing great! He even thought the first couple 'cat sat on the mat' books were too easy! Anna has learned to spell and write her name. James has his 7th loose tooth! Bye bye little babies... hello big kids! Each phase has fun parts of their own.

There's a chicken squawking in the backyard. The neighobor's hen is lost again. Our guards are great chicken-wranglers. It really is an art that takes practice. They convince it to fly back over the wall. Hopefully the right wall...

With the rain pouring down at 6 this morning it is cool, humid and cloudy. It might as well be a snow-day. The rain turns the roads into slick mud that might as well be ice (except that ice doesn't get ruts that can drown a semi truck...). So everyone pretty much freezes in time, hanging out wherever they happen to be. The meetings can wait. The classes can wait. The job will wait. Church can wait. Everything waits for the end of the rain (which is usually less than 2 hours btw). If you want the road to yourself or feel like singing a solo in church, go out anyway. Today I expect our workers will show up an hour or so late. Makes me want to sit in my bathrobe and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and soak in the slow morning slowly. Rushing doesn't really pay here anyway.

And our days roll on. A funny jumble of quotidienne.

On titles

2010-08-21T05:58:00.000-07:00

Just for the record...
I think I have failed to explain that we did not choose the title 'tenfootfamily' because we love feet. I once found this adorable family blog around the theme that they all loved coffee. Cute coffee cups artistically scattered around their lives contributed to the theme in the sidebar. Drink yumminess. Fill our cup. All sorts of language to illustrate their theme.

When we decided to blog (all of TWO years ago!), we decided right away that we weren't the open-sharing-of-full-names kind of people. (I'm not judging those of you who are btw!) Nor were we the kind that like to dub our family members with bizarre initals DH, DS, DD. Makes for troublesome reading if you ask me! Nor did I like giving them some other web identity (though I considered it, it really doesn't lend itself to the theme of FEET very well): then Stinky Feet said... and Twinkle Toes replied... then Soccer Cleats really lost it. I find it pretty hard to follow these blog posts, as I will never remember by the time I've scrolled past the key terms in the sidebar which kids they are talking about.

So, despite my temptation to go overboard about feet, you will not find tons of feet pictures. I know some people are not fans of feet... =) With five of us, there were only so many choices: fivenosedfamily, teneyedfamily, fiveheadedfamily... And we're linguists, so we can't help but love the double entendre of tenfootfamily. There we are. Over on the far side of the sea... but not really by the ocean.

Back to School: The Students

2010-08-16T07:40:00.000-07:00

Our homeschool tradition is that the first hour of our first day of the year is spent taking the obligatory school pictures. Hair gel, chairs, collared shirts and all. You all would laugh with us if you saw that the fancy clothes lasted all of 20 minutes and all three were barefoot during the whole photo shoot! The backdrop is Kent's Costco fleece napping blanket over the front porch grill. Given all that, I'm happy with this year's school pictures. I took seven or eight of each kid and got at least one serious and one guffaw from each of them.

(His Uncle John face...)

Tears of resistance, despite the blue blalarina dress
(yes, the same one she's been wearing since she was 2!)
But brothers with funny faces saved the day:

Then we all had to make funny faces, and the results are some of the best photos ever!
You can enjoy them now in the margin at right. =)

Back to School: The Setting

2010-08-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

As stressed as I felt to get everything done earlier than usual this month, God graciously reminded me that last year I was flat on my back the month before school. And when we finally started the school year, the kids' desks and chairs weren't finished yet! We made it through just fine (and they were built within a week or two). So this year is so calm in comparison! Here is a peek at our schoolroom ready for our big First Day of School!

There may be random holes in the concrete walls. The cupboard may be slightly leaning to the left as the wood continues warping. The sign with Deut. 11:1 is hung with tooth floss and the letter Ww has disappeared, but we are ready for school. And all this wacky place is mine, and I am so blessed to have a space to call my own. Not borrowed. Not on loan. Our schoolroom.

We have three languages to get learning. The kids already speak some Swahili with the neighborhood kids and with our helpers at home, and now that James and Joel are reading in English we will begin French lessons. It is our grand experiment to see that all those language development theories and research are right (or not) that a child succeeds further in a second language when he/she is grounded and reading in the first language first. Should be interesting to see how close we can all get to trilingualism.

So we are diving in (to Second Grade and First Grade and 3-yr Preschool, that is).

Awe

2010-08-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Last night we had one of the biggest thunderstorms I can remember.
It was a blow-your-roof-off storm.
Being the light sleeper I am, I woke up as the claps of the thunder drew nearer. The whole thing lasted more than two hours! There was probably 24 inches of rain, and I was so thankful for the roof holding out! The thunder was so loud it shakes your bones.

We have friends whose house was hit in the past and cost them thousands of dollars to replace their electrical equipment. I sat up and watched in awe at the power of my God. He could split the earth in two with a word. He can take down people, trees, buildings, anything in a moment. We are so small.

As a child, I always heard 'the rolling thunder... thy power throughout the universe displayed... then sings my soul... how Great Thou Art!' I agreed that all of creation is beautiful handiwork. I would sing with gusto, convinced that the song really complimented God on his artistic skill. His 'Art' is great! But the fact that HE is Great, and Mighty and Powerful is better yet.

The storm traveled over the ridge behind our house and eventually faded in the distance. It left with one last strike of lightning striking VERY near. FYI, it is an involuntary reflex to jump 12 inches from your bed or chair when lightning strikes 50-100 feet away, even if you are mostly asleep. I had such fun watching God put on a light show that rivals the most advanced pyrotechnics!

How Great Thou Art!

P.S. Kent was stopped by a storekeeper friend yesterday saying he saw us on the local television broadcast of the graduation ceremonies last week. How random is that? TV??

Blessed Sabbath

2010-08-08T03:07:00.000-07:00

May you know Rest this day.

Drink of God's goodness and trust in it.

Today I praise him for:

Living room couches (see above!)

Healed ear aches

Smiles and kisses of this sweet girl

Shining sun

Eyes to see it

Toddler whispers

Naps

Singing

Chocolate!

Room to Romp

2010-08-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

About a YEAR ago some of you asked to see how we painted the boys' room...

Well, better late than never, right?

For the artsy types, here's the scoop:

I saw some really cute Dr. Seuss rooms online, and we are major fans and own every single book and read them often and have half of them memorized... So we all agreed on water and their room had originally been painted in water-based aquamarine like the rest of the house. I had someone slop up at least one layer of thin whitewash because we all looked seasick with blue/green walls everywhere. And the result was a kind of splotchy sky color. We decided to keep it with the whole water and sky theme and I think it works (and was less work!)

Just before we moved in, I visited the paint store and from their pallet of 20 colors brought home a few for the purpose of mixing. I had seen this denim blue color I liked on a pottery barn bedroom, so I went to mixing black into royal blue oil-based paint. The fumes are pretty bad, but the walls can be washed! Might come in handy in a boys' room... It wasn't quite as dark as I was going for, but works fine. My painting implements were a falling-apart brush and a few Q-tips. Yes, I freehand paint with Q-tips. Didn't have a lot of other options.

We had raised bunk beds made (which you don't see because the boys didn't make their beds and it's summertime...) covered in a special-order floor-to-ceiling long mosquito net. I sewed the first one from two nets myself, but will try to pay a tailor from now on!

Then we needed closet space. We used Action Packers for a long time, then upgraded to a borrowed bookshelf, and finally built custom shelves to fit our needs. The mahogany here is a gorgeous color and this stuff had beautiful grain (you can almost see in the last picture).

Handy PVC pipe for a rod and voila: closet! It is a larger, more complex version of the one we built in Anna's room if you remember. Anyway, the boys decorate with occasional sea creatures or road maps - you know, to make it feel like home.

So there is the view from the doorway (with beds to the left). For curtains I added a strip of Congolese kitenge to expand on the secondhand Martha Stewart Living white linen tabbed panel curtain that wasn't quite big enough. It is looped over a length of rebar painted black. Only the fancy stuff for us! =) The orange fish are only construction paper and won't last forever, but may outlast the boys' interest anyway. The only last thing we haven't finished is the glow-in-the-dark constellations on the ceiling from the Seavers and planet vinyls from Missa Lobba! =) It's a mini-Dr-Seuss-ecosystem! (if you exclude the rebar and PVC pipe...) =)

They have a gray cement floor, like most of our house. I think a few years back it had a dark green cement veneer, but that has worn off in most places. They have their preschool cars and trains map/carpet on the floor until we choose a more 'sophisticated' carpet next time we leave the country...

It works well and the boys like it and that's really what matters!

Swyflotter

2010-08-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

Back to School

2010-07-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you are hearing this popular marketing phrase all the time, but over here we are not. I'm just finally packing up last year's mess of work to unpack the new books for 2010-2011. James will cruise through Second Grade. He thrives on learning and if we can't find him we've stopped asking, 'James, where are you?' and starting asking, 'James, what are you reading?'

Joel will move from Kindergarten into 'real school'. At his age I was bawling my eyes out in fear over having to stay at school the whole day and actually EAT there! It's totally different for him. I suppose that's almost always true from one generation to the next.

Anyway, thinking about this new school year has me battling fear again. This time I'm not so scared of eating with strangers, or even how to organize myself to teach a classroom of 30 busy little people, but rather how I'll crack the code. What code? The secret code to teaching Joel more effectively. What could be worse than a Literacy Specialist and Certified Teacher who can't teach her kid to read? He is a tactile/kinesthetic learner and that is like a foreign language to me. My one tactile habit in life is touching all the fabrics in a fabric store, but apart from those few minutes I often feel stuck in trying to help something 'click' for Joel.

Anyone out there with tactile/kinesthetic experience - do share!

So far we have done lots of:

arranging things on the carpet (alphabet in order, numbers 0-100, forming complete sentences, etc.),
jumping on or touching these cards,
dramatic reenactments,
jumping jacks after each page read or each math fact said.
One thing our homeschool manual suggested he thought was lots of fun.
'Fishing for facts'
(with his lovely assistant of course).

A ruler for a fishing rod, yarn for line, and a sticky magnet for a hook make this easy for anyone to create. In this case Joel was reviewing his colors and shapes. He would fish for them from couch to carpet (I tagged each one with a paperclip so it would cling to the 'hook') and once he caught one he had to name it!

Cheese!
... I mean, blue triangle.

Did I say he loved it?

Now, if only I could get him this excited about handwriting or books!

P.S. I know some of his hesitancy is due to being young for his class, and that part of learning to read involves individual development as well as pedagogy.

Pssst...

2010-07-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything creative to say, but wanted you all to know that I finally FINISHED my living room upholstery sewing project today!!! And there will be pics. Three slipcovers, 15 buttons, one pillow and one seat cushion are DONE! After many months we finally have a furnished living room we can all enjoy. Of course, now all I can think about is the stenciled wallpaper I want to paint.

Thank you for your encouraging words. I was motivated to persevere because I knew you were waiting with me for this day. Eating one peanut M&M for each finished seam helped too...

Looks like Anna is really into sewing!

Or was she in it for the candy??

She pulls my pins out as I go and carefully sticks them back in the 'tomato' pincushion. She puts the foot down or up for me and turns the sewing machine on or off as needed.

She also sang loud random songs in a bizarre melange of languages that almost hurt my ears...

Only an MK...

2010-07-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

A Paperclip in Time

2010-07-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

When something ends and another thing starts it always feels to me like a paperclip in time. You can feel it coming, often uncomfortable as things are changing, then the big week (or day, or hour) arrives, and something else begins with the paperclip slowly fading in the rearview mirror. I guess the technical name is milestone and I might have had one too many temp jobs as the office copy girl in college, but I still like paperclip.

Well, we had our paperclip in time in June as we celebrated James finishing First Grade and Joel finishing Kindergarten. That week both of James' front teeth fell out. (Finally! I've been waiting for that gray tooth to be gone for 3 years! No offense Kaitlyn... we love you. =))

Back to the days of toofless grins! =)

Our school mascot is Hoppy the Frog.

So we all wore green as our 'school color' and had a green party with Hoppy's favorite cupcakes!

(note the locally purchased cute china! with God all things are possible!)

Then the kids got little certificates and baby froggies. Kent, I mean The Principal, picked some quick flowers in the garden for the Teacher and her lovely Assistant. =)
Pink cosmos from our yard...

It wasn't your 'typical' cap n gown graduation, but we had fun.

My primary goal for this summer was to completely finish our living/dining room. Our experience so far with local artisans has been less than splendid, and I'm probably being picky, but it's just better for me to do it myself. So in the above picture you can see the wall I just painted. Not teaching left me so much free time! I also chopped Anna's hair:

My lovely assistant painter:

Think she has drama in her future?

The paint brushes before and after:

The rough cement walls sort of rub them down to a nub.
They cost $1 and you get what you pay for.

Anyway, I have 1 more cushion to make, 1 more to sew a slipcover for, and 3 zippered pillowcases and a whole lot of buttonholes before our couches are officially finished. I already bought all the fabric, cording, zippers, etc. and have a lovely Janome sewing machine.
I really have no good excuses.

Given that I only have 5 weeks left of summer (ack!) I have made myself a little deal to inspire and motivate. I will not blog another word until I get them done! I'm hoping that will only mean 1-2 weeks away from the blog. You are probably all off on fabulous vacations anyway! I may post a picture or two and I let Kent know he could take over if he wanted...

I will still get your comments if you want to cheer me on.

See you soon! I'm off to build my house! (proverbs 14:1)

Day Finale of Critters: Misc.

2010-07-13T01:59:00.000-07:00

I love the word 'Misc.'
Miscellaneous.
Junk drawer.
Leftovers.
Conglomerate. It's fun to say.
I used to have a folder of documents labeled 'Misc'.
Drove Kent crazy.
Still have 'Misc shortcuts' on my desktop.
Love 'Misc.'
Something that doesn't fit in a category? Just throw it in Misc.
Well, here is my Critters: Misc. =)

We have ants of every shape and size, but I bet you do too.

So big you think they're roaches in the kitchen.

So small you can't feel them walking up your arm.

Flies.

Geckos too.

We have dark brown field crickets who, for some bizarre reason, get into our shower drain pipe and occasionally come for a visit. I still have NO idea how they can fit through the small drain holes... Not my fave.

And possibly the most random thing in this 'Misc.' folder:

Can you guess?

It's not technically a 'critter'.

We came upon it in a national park in the rainforest.

Small elephant skull.
The boys don't look too impressed.
There was great debate about whether it was a young elephant skull or an adult pygmy elephant, but his teeth weren't all in.
It's all in the dental records.
The rangers have a 'no shoot' policy until a wild animal puts a human life in danger. Apparently a few weeks earlier this little one had charged people several times, so they finally had to do it.
It's a huge skull!

Day 12 Critters: Cockroach

2010-07-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

I like to talk to things.
In a good way.
My little roses.
My avocado green KitchenAid mixer.
I named my car in college.
Hey, I even named my little ivy plant.
But there is really no cute diminuative for these suckers.
No getting around the ugliness of COCKROACH.

(I didn't take this picture myself),
but I have seen them on a regular basis since moving overseas.
Thankfully only twice in this house (and the first time was before we moved in).

As it turns out, I had an ingenious allergist in Oregon find out that I was extremely allergic to them. Now I can have a legitimate excuse! =) I'm curious if there is a relation to dust-mites... Okay, back to the bug-which-shall-remain-nameless... We have seen the 3 inch variety that will chew through 3 layers of ziploc bags to get my Peanut M&Ms and we have seen the tinier variety up close and personal. Very. Personal.

We were invited to a fancy lunch at a businessman's home in our neighborhood last week. The business must be doing pretty well because they had some pretty fancy things. They played some nice Tanzanian praise music DVDs for us while we chatted and the kids played with their little daughter until the food came out. Anyway, I'm almost done with my feast of roasted beef, fried bananas, and something resembling coleslaw on a pretty porcelain plate when one of these jumps up for a nibble! Ack!

The thing I think I hate the most is how they dart around and you can't quite smash them on the first couple tries. Thankfully I was about finished eating. I did eventually use a fish bone to fling IT to the floor and squish him with my shoe. Having to share my lunch with likes of IT was a first for me.
blech...

It was Anna's first success on a squatty potty too, but that's another story.

Everyone has their phobia. Mine is definitely spiders. Kent's is definitely these. While in the forest I struck a deal with these bugs that just might help you out on a camping trip:
I stomp loudly, you get out of the way.
I don't turn on lights, we both pretend you're not there.
You don't show your face, I don't squash you.
I am allowed to repeatedly remind myself that you are more afraid than I am.
I have the right to strike with a shoe if you break any rule.

We can coexist at a tolerable level, which for whatever reason cannot happen when there are more than 6 legs involved...

Day 11 Critters: Moth

2010-07-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Joel is a lover of all creatures great and small. On one of our trips where baggage weight was an issue we did not bring many toys. But Joel started a tradition we affectionately call 'moth wars' (you know, like Star Wars minus all the aliens and light sabers but with a lot more wings...).

Moth wars started right here:

Joel came in one afternoon holding a wiggly flapping moth saying,
"Look Mom! Look what he does when I tickle him!"
Gently flicking the poor thing, he flapped that much harder.
Fear just never crossed his mind...

His next discovery was that one in each hand was like a little fight and thus began the game of Moth Wars. I don't know how you tell who wins. He always let them fly away after a while.

We quickly learned the difference between a butterfly and a moth (wings up or wings down?), but you would never be able to guess by their colors or patterns! In the rainforest we saw some of the most beautiful butterflies ever, but here at our house there have also been some incredible moths! One had light blue and orange lacey patterns that reminded me of an Indian sari fabric. Unfortunately I didn't run for the camera that day.

But I did once. This is not a great picture as I was too chicken to get any closer lest this Mothra fly up into my face. I had a jug of paint on the front porch (which used to be our paint shop) and one morning I reached for the paint and saw this behemoth (pun intended) staring up at me.

I'm estimating a wingspan of about 7 inches. There supposedly exist moths up to 11 inches spread wide, but 7 was plenty for me to stand back. Guess he just thought a yellow jug was a pretty stealthy place for a yellow moth to snooze the day away...

I didn't really feel like painting much that day anyway.

Day 10 Critters: Mukobe

2010-07-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

Peekaboo!

This flamboyant gecko on steroids is technically an agama lizard who apparently comes in several colors that get brighter for mating purposes. This guy is hanging out on the average tree trunk in the rainforest (that doesn't even fit in the picture), but more often we see them scampering up the cement walls that surround our compound to bask in the sun.

The word here for them is 'mukobe' (MOO-CO-BAY). We see mukobe everyday. Brightest of blues, basking in the sun. I'm almost used to 12-15 inch lizards hanging around... as long as they recognize who's boss.

Day 9 Critters: Rhinoceros Beetle

2010-07-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the feedback! Critters are back unanimously!

This lovely little lady was found on our front porch.

She looks harmless enough until you realize she is 3-4 inches long!

(Yes, those are small ants around her on the ground. Look here for a cool rhino larvae pic...)

The females don't have the big rhino horn, but definitely take a second to check out what her hubby looks like!

She seemed to only walk along baseboards, so I'm curious where she ended up.
A few weeks later we found her again (or her twin sister) just inside the dining room.
I gently 'showed her the door', and 5 minutes later she came walking back in!
She had skirted the front porch and returned.
Must have been a bad day...

Day 8 Critters: Okay, not really

2010-07-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

After so many days of the creepy crawlies, I have noticed a marked decline in comments posted here. This must mean that you are now:
A) determined to check back after the bugs are all gone,
B) scared speechless,
C) waiting with bated breath for a few more buglies or
D) really busy with real life.

Whichever category you fall into, I should warn you that I still have 4-5 pictures of critters to share, but I can take it if you are really done and would rather see Anna pictures. Really. I can. So please take a second to vote: YAY for more critters or NAY for bugs and back to normal life!

These aren't critters, but they did block our road not too far from here. If I had to carry around such huge horns I might choose the middle of the highway too... These are the breed that many herdsman keep around here and over in Uganda. Very distinctive... And very in our way!

Day 7 Critters: Spiders

2010-07-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

Surely after reading about 6 different kind of African creepy-crawlies, you can handle ONE teensy weensy spider! =) Or a colony of them... For the record, in our home we have only killed three, count them: three, spiders this whole year! (and only one was big =))

Deep in the earth's second-largest rainforest we met our first colony of spiders:

...this shows about 1/4 of the tree they engulfed. I know next to nothing about how they form a community like that. I mean how do they share the food? I suppose in this location there is enough to go around - there are SO many different bugs in the rainforest. Wikipedia didn't have too much info. on these neighborly arachnids either, but apparently you can find a web like this that's 200 yards wide in Texas.

Guess they do everything big...
Never was a huge fan of Texas...

Anyway, enough spider nonsense.
How many spider colony residents can you find??

(I found 5, but I'm sure there are more...)

Day 6 Critters: Termites

2010-07-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

As anyone who has ever lived in Africa will tell you, when it rains - the termites fly! I don't have a clue about exactly why, maybe all the termite eggs hatch all of a sudden when they are covered in water? I know this is going to sound really strange, but in one of the most rural villages we visited in Northern Tanzania oh-so-long ago, there were these little clouds of termites with beautiful translucent wings exploding out of the ground to start a new life almost like a confetti explosion on a concert stage.
Flying up and up into the light.
New life bursting forth in rare beauty.

Back to reality, here they all ended up on our front porch by following the light. The porch light. Joel was a helper and swept the pile of newborns up for us while I took pictures. Yes, they are alive btw. They try to fly away and soon their 4 wings fall off and they just walk. We stuck them in a bucket, knowing they are food to most people here.
We fried up a few just to say we did.
Pretty airy really.
Cheese puff minus the cheese.

Quite frankly having tufts of wings floating under my doors is not my fave. Later in the day our gardener gently inquired about the contents of the bucket and we happily gave him the whole thing to take on home.

This week we heard a friend from the rainforest complaining about the high price of fried termites in the market these days...

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto.

Guess we never were...

But we'll pretend we are for a few hours on Sunday and have a tasty barbecue picnic on a friend's lawn. Happy Fourth of July wherever you spend it!

Day 5 Critters: Chameleon

2010-06-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so he was not found in our backyard, but a friend found him and thought our kids would have fun with him. Supposedly if you keep him on cut flowers or greens on your table he won't go anywhere. I had some lilies brought in for a treat, so onto the lilies he went!

Hello little guy!!

I absolutely love how little chameleon feet can fold in half.
Great for grabbing!
This poor guy nicknamed 'Color' by our boys was getting
lily pollen chameleon-prints all over...

As you can see he didn't camouflage himself in lily colors.
I guess some things are just too much to ask.
After a few days he was looking rather peaked.
We decided he needed more bugs then we could offer and moved him outside to the guava tree. Haven't seen him in quite some time...

Day 4 Critters: Fuzzy Caterpillars (Chenilles)

2010-06-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

Well, you've made it through the first half of my week about bugs -
surely it's not that bad! =)

These fuzzy friends are deceptively cute, but cuddling up with them can be mildly poisonous. There are many varieties, and we don't see them in the city often. This group was out in the forest sunbathing on a fence post. At least that's what I would want to do...

A similar pokey brown variety were fried up for lunch...

Gotta go!
Apparently when I was driving James back from the doctor's today we ran over a snake and Joel quickly learned the Swahili word: nyoki. Maybe I can get a picture!

Day 3 Critters: Stick Bug

2010-06-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to see one,
so it was exciting times when the boys found this guy outside by the car!

They said he walked slowly like a praying mantis
and when he flew he had beautiful blue and yellow wings like a butterfly.
Never would have guessed!
He hides them pretty well, don't you think?
Gorgeous on the inside, with a plain rough exterior.
There are people like that.

Of course they thought it would be fun to give him a tour of our house,
much to their little sister's chagrin...
His shadow makes him look even bigger!

What a creative God we serve!

Sticks that walk?

I could never have come up with that.

Day 2 Critters: Snails

2010-06-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

After alluding to snails and puppy-dog tails yesterday, I thought this one fitting for today. My Joelie loves his snails. In fact, one day after a heavy rain, he grabbed an empty honey jar and filled it to the brim with little snails and moved them right into his room.

They were in his windowsill and climbing up the screens
before I was even aware of his little plan.

I finally convinced him to take pictures and moved them back outside
where they are happily eating through
my precious roses
to this day.
Hm...

Day 1 Critters: Froggy

2010-06-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, every time Africa comes up inevitably someone asks me the critters-question:
What are the bugs like?
Aren't there spiders there?
How about the bugs?
How big are they anyway?
Are there LOTS of bugs?

Regardless of what I say in response, they almost always reply:
Oh! I could never live there!
Wow, I don't know how you do it.
Eww, gross!

I know it will not comfort any of you, but I will say anyway that I am a pretty dedicated arachnophobic (the movie trailers from that movie-which-shall-remain-nameless are with me to this day). AND I have seen more spiders at my parents house in the US than here in Central Africa (no offense Mom and Dad, but there really was a couple years of true infestation). If I can live here, anyone could. Seriously, the cockroaches here are nothing to those in Texas from what I hear. Deep in the forest the biggest spider we ever saw was about hand-size anyway (and that's not where we're living btw).

So hopefully you are past being grossed out and able to enjoy some of the creatures we've discovered in this past year. I will endeavor to post a picture of a new 'critter' for one week. Should be more fun than gross. But I have two boys... what was that about snails and puppy dog tails? What can I say?

So often Joel (aka Master Tracker) has caught some living thing or other and wants to keep it. Seriously, this happens about once a week. The kid knows no fear. Often it was these cute little frogs:

See?

Cute.

Little.

Froggy.

Then last month we found HIM:

Yes, in our backyard.

No, it's not pregnant.

It really is that big.

The video of the boys chasing it around the back porch to the screams of their sister will have to wait for an hour of high bandwidth.

Critter number One: Bullfrog.

Reading about Africa

2010-06-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

There are lots of good books many of you have probably already read about this beloved continent, Out of Africa being one of them... (NO, the movie does not count!)

{Side Note: The first place Kent and I lived in Africa in 1999 was in Karen, about 1 mile from the historic home of Karen Blixen, incognito author of that book! Gorgeous place to fall in love with Africa, even if the encroaching capital city had changed the neighborhood a lot...}

Though you may not see them from your Starbucks table at the bookstore or on any billboards, there are two books on Africa definitely worth reading. Okay, I am a bit biased... They are written by two colleagues of mine and much of what they write gives insight into how our lives work day to day.

BOOK 1: (you know, Thing 1 and Thing 2? Maybe I read too much Dr. Seuss...)

Through the Outhouse Floor: and other real adventures of missionary life by Barbara Thomas

Barbara and her husband precede us by a decade or two, so we have never met in person, but their stories give lots of humor and insight to the realities of working here. Of course our working strategies and details have changed a bit since then, but due to the history of this place there are things she was able to buy back then that we can no longer find here, like brown sugar. I have already read through it twice and still enjoy it. If you're looking for a novel, this isn't it, but it will give you a funny and clear picture of how things work here. She places the emphasis on "REAL" and I can vouch to you that it is just that!

BOOK 2:

Grandma's Letters from Africa by Linda Thomas

(Yes, the two women are married to cousins.)

Linda is a dear friend of mine. When we first came to Africa 10 years ago she and her husband were working in the school administration where I was a volunteer teacher for missionary kids. We had great fun that year! One time I was trying to make an international phone call to interview for a teaching job back home the following year and Linda was sharing her office for this purpose. (All went well btw - call made, clear connection, questions answered and job taken...) As I turned to leave her office she was locking up behind me and we were chatting when my eyes caught something posted on the wall next to her desk. It looked like a cute stick drawing done by a young child. Slowly it dawned on me that I was not reading the child's scrawl of a beloved student at the school... It said something like, "We miss you Nana." With tears in my eyes I turned to Linda, "I thought it was excruciating to leave my friends and parents behind and come to Africa, but you left your grandchildren!" I can't imagine how hard that must have been, but she did it for the Lord she loves. She did it with grace. And had fun too! Check out sweet Linda's blog here: Quaint I Ain't.

Why my roses make me smile

2010-06-17T05:01:00.000-07:00

About one year ago, as we were moving into this fixer-upper with a great yard in a great location, Kent spotted a tiny plant hidden between the dilapitated outhouse and back wall we share with the mosque. Familiar little leaves, like those of a ROSE. Surely roses are not indigenous plants and were probably carefully brought here some decades ago by previous foreigners with a taste for home gardens. Here there are spindly poinsettia trees, and wild hibiscus, lemongrass, bougainvillea and palms and vines galore, but a rose? I was doubtful. With the aid of our handy sack full of bat guano from the attic remodel we transplanted this tiny thing (maybe 11" tall) to the area out our back door. My imaginary back patio, which will one day be more than dirt and rocks...

Flash forward to August 09 when after 2 months of remodeling and 1 month on the road I spend the entire month in bed with 2 bouts of malaria topped off with a dash of swine flu. Somewhere near the end of this month-in-bed, just as I was starting to feel better, I was blasting a Sara Groves song. As she sang, 'Hope has a way of turning it's face to you just when you least expect it... walk through a room, you look out a window and something there leaves you breathless...' And, I kid you not, God's timing is beautiful music, these exact words were playing as I walked down our dark hallway to the cramped kitchen and in a glance I will never forget, saw HOPE embodied. My little rose-ish imp had grown several inches and blossomed the most beautiful of pink blossoms. It WAS a rose after all! God provided us a house, even though it was a time-sink and disappointment in some ways, and just as He had worked healing in my body, I knew He would work healing in our house.

A reason to hope.

As our fall rains came, our little pink picture of hope continued to grow stronger and taller. By the time the Christmas heatwave hit it was over a meter tall (3 feet) with a series of blooms one after another. Sometime in January I noticed something new... a little sprout. (I'm sure you gardening experts have a more official name - excuse my ignorance. For many years now I have not had a garden to call my own, so this is all new to me.) A baby rose plant! Hope begets hope.

As the new growth grew to about a foot and developed roots of its own I prepped soil and cut it off from the mother plant to move it further away. (Someone with gardening expertise is probably going to read this and know better - please just leave it the comments - I'll take all the advice I can get.) The move was really rough on the baby rose and it died down to its second-to-last green leaf (the dog running over it everyday didn't help either, but a fence eventually did...). I started to get bold with pruning the mother plant.

I was taught, in the northern hemisphere, of course, that rose bushes are to be trimmed down to about 12-18" in February or so to allow for the new growth of spring. Well, we don't have seasons like that here (see previous post), so I was a bit lost. I have been trying something new cutting a stem down that far after its thorns turn color and its blossomed already 2-4 times. So far it's been getting me a bushier plant (which = more flowers!).

And after a few dormant weeks here and there, this rose of hope blooms. And every time I walk in or out of my kitchen I look out the back door to drink in the sight of it. Last month I had not one, not two, but SIX pink roses on that mother plant. And the baby? The baby is now almost two feet tall with its first pink rose and another bud. How far He has brought us all this past year!

That first little rose plant must have been put there years ago awaiting my discovery, that in nurturing I would also be nurtured and would find HOPE. Hope I can look at and touch.

Hope flourishing.

That's why my roses make me smile. They are a tangible picture to me of the unseen work God is doing to settle us here and I have HOPE He will use our lives for his Glory.

weather

2010-06-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

I just love that in Emma Thomson's Sense & Sensibility little Margaret is taught to bring up the weather in the most awkward situations! It is always a safe subject. Well, after actually posting the words 'blood diamond', I am following up with a 'safe' post about weather. =)

Being raised in the Pacific NW, moderate temperatures and occasional rain are really normal to me. Living in the tropics has definitely adjusted my thermostat, but where we are it is quite comfortable (at 2,000ish ft above sea level) between 60 and 100 all year. Most days are around 80 degrees. We are just finishing our spring rains, which brings occasional thunderstorms and cool cloudy days before the dry heat of summer. A cool, rainy spring doesn't feel that strange to me.

Nor does a cool, rainy fall or a warm summer actually. It is the heat of winter that always gets me as totally bizarre. I just can't seem to curl up with hot cocoa and marshmallows before the Christmas tree listening to Bing Crosby when it's 90 degrees and sunny outside... After several years of this, I am finally starting to get used to making potato salad for New Years.

The advantage to this system is that we get flowers year-round!! (oh, and veggies too...)

treasures

2010-06-14T04:02:00.000-07:00

Anna would like to teach herself to read. She found James' Bible open on the front porch and brought it to me, "Tell me some of Jesus' words." I showed her how Jesus' words were red and we flipped through the gospels looking for 'lots of red'. Matthew 6 eventually came into view with its veritable fount of red ink. Wow, Jesus said lots of words here!

She again asked me to read. (Apparently, I was taking too long scanning for something that would make sense to a 3-yr-old going on 13.) I started in on the Lord's prayer (verse 9 - 14) because her brothers have it memorized, she has heard it often in the evenings and could finish each phrase where I left off. Thinking this would exhaust her curiosity, I turned to shut the Word. She stopped me. "Read more!" I skipped to verse 19, "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven..."

She understands treasures. And she understands moth and rust destroying. We see it everyday very plainly. Stuff gets yucky here. This idea sated her, as she ran off to play (or change clothes again for the umpteenth time), I was left pondering. This week I've been stuck thinking about treasures. Our money. Our media. Our image. What do we treasure? How can you tell? I think we must be willing to sacrifice something for a treasure.

A few years back several friends said we needed to watch "Blood Diamond" because of the similarities with where we work and live. We knew it would be intense, and I felt I had to mentally prepare to watch it. Last week we did it. I survived with liberal use of the MUTE button and blocking out the violence while reading the subtitles below. I fully own my wimpiness when it comes to violent movies. Images stay with me forever, and I just don't need to witness 500 extra murders however fake they may look to some of you. If you haven't seen it and feel ready to, I will at least say this: it portrays accurate and realistic chaos.

Then Sunday we sang in French how 'God is more precious than silver and gold and diamonds.' As I watched Congolese people singing those words, the song took on new meaning for me. Here it is obvious when a cousin leaves his family to work in the mines, make a few dollars and spend it on worldly pleasures. They sacrifice their entire social network (which means so much more here) in search of worldly treasure. It is fleeting. Spent quickly. Temporary. In that movie, and probably still today in many mines people will sacrifice much, many give their lives in pursuit of gold and diamonds. For what? So some American 20-yr-old bride can get a deal on the perfect ring? We can't pretend we're not involved. What do we treasure?

All I'm saying is that I've got a lot to 'chew on' regarding treasure.

"for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

The New Mundane

2010-06-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

People often ask me to describe a 'typical day'. I don't know that there is a really typical day here as everything seems in a slow-motion constant of change. I will endeavor to describe my Tuesday this week, as it was a crazy and productive day that will give a taste for how things work on a household level. It is not mundane. It is never mundane. Something new every morning! [*FYI: This is quite a bit longer than I intended. Read when you have more than a minute...]

This was our first week of summer break, but Tuesday really didn't feel like my picture of 'summer'...

6:30am Alarm clock rings and I jump out of bed, make it quickly and grab all the dirty laundry (and soap and iron) to put on the back porch before our handwasher Faustin shows up. If I can get it out there and not have to meet and greet him face to face in my jammies it is better for everyone.

7:00am Kids straggle out of their rooms and need prodding to get on with the morning 'jobs' (making beds, setting the breakfast table)

8:00am Yesterday's milk is skimmed from the fridge (cream kept for making butter later), granola and yogurt are on the table and everyone is eating. Non-fat yogurt for Kent, whole milk yogurt for James and I, semi-skimmed milk for Joel and Anna. Vitamins and medicines taken.

8:43am Just as I notice that our cook Rachele hasn't faithfully arrived at 8:30 (she is very faithful, but her son was ill yesterday so maybe she's back at the clinic with him and will come later)... I get a text message from her but in very bad French (someone had written it for her obviously) saying she was ON HER WAY to the mission hospital with her very ill son when they were in an 'ACSIDA MOTO'. In case you didn't get that, it is bad French for 'motorcycle accident'. They were already nearby 'L'HOPITAL BLAN' (white hospital) and were both admitted there. We have no idea where the 'white hospital' is and pray it is a decent place. Faustin says he knows where it is.

9:00am Having resigned myself to trying to manage the kitchen on my own today, I realize it is baking day and we are due to make 3 loaves of bread and at least one batch of cookies to cover the next few days of lunches. Usually we pick the chaff out of the wheat berries and put them through the electric mill 3 times for fresh whole wheat bread. But the power is off today. And our solar panels only had clouds to work with. And the generator ran out of gas (then after Kent bought more, it ran out of oil and after he bought that, it broke). Kent went to get some, but the car wouldn't start and the battery needed charging. Ugh.

9:30am Impromptu family prayer meeting on the front porch where there is enough light to see well. We feel under attack and pray protection for us and our workers and their families as well. Kids commit to being extra helpful for a couple days and we all feel strengthened by singing 'A Mighty Fortress is our God'. Look on the bright side - we have plenty of water!

10:30am I 'jerry-rig' some bread (can I say that?) by soaking raisin bran flakes (raisins carefully picked out for another occasion) and oats before adding my 8 cups of white flour. The recipe suggests sifting, but I could care less right now. An extra bug won't hurt. Hopefully it will work. It's rising, however slowly, on the stove.

11:00am I start on cookies, and given the kind of day it is, I decide to get out those precious carepackage chocolate chips to make my absolute favorites: oatmeal chocolate chip! Oops. No eggs. Oh well, the Wycliffe cookbook says add a little extra oil and water and call it good. Hey, now I can shamelessly eat the dough! Anna and I decide a lot of quality checking is necessary.

11:30am Loud banging down at our gate signals that the milkman is here. Oh yeah - him. I rush around to find the right pot and filter and go to greet him. Between his French and my meager Swahili we communicate next to nothing very well. But we smile. And we get the milk. He pours us our daily 3 bottles through the filter to get bugs and hair out. I then take it and stick it on the stove to pasteurize/cool/skim/store it in the fridge for the next day.

12:00 noon Water filter is running low and slow. It's really hot and our drinking water is down to a few liters. James fills the bucket with dirty water from outside (commonly known to carry typhoid, but locals drink it straight anyway). Kent hauls it into the kitchen and hefts it above the fridge where the filter can siphon down into a jerry can on the floor. From there I fill up the drinking water in the fridge, and backup storage and kettle with clean drinking water. Right about now I start to realize just how much Rachele does each day! (And start praying more fervently for her full and quick recovery.)

12:30pm Bread almost done in the oven, lunch table set. Twice a week we eat hot bread for lunch with honey, our own ground peanut butter, jam, or fresh-roasted peanuts, or like today some diced avocado from the yard with salt and garlic powder - yum! Oops. I forgot that Rachele also makes Faustin lunch and coffee. Better get going on that... The coffee he likes smells like tar. Yuck.

1:00pm Joel is Mr. Helpful and sets the table for me. We finally eat. We are encouraged - this day is going to work.

1:30pm Lunch is cleaned up. And yogurt needs doing. Our fridge food is dying having been off for several hours now. I take out things that will not survive and toss them in the compost bucket (life without a garbage service can get interesting). Find the yogurt recipe and need hot water. Kettle is empty again. Find more filtered water. Try not to stress about how little drinking water remains. Heat it and search out the yogurt starter. It's in the bottom drawer of the freezer. It's now frozen shut and I can't get to it. An upper drawer has new starter packets. I go for those. I use two because last time one did nothing. After mixing, I wrap it up in a local wrap and leave it to do it's happy yogurt thing on the counter.

2:00pm In forming my dinner plans, I decide to use bread again, since it went well. I pull out a can of hummus and decide to make a cucumber/yogurt salad (because it's what I have on hand). This means washing up the cucumbers we bought yesterday. This means scrubbing the dirt off and soaking them for 20 minutes in potassium permanganate to kill germs - because we're going to eat them fresh not cooked. Okay, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans and rubharb soaking.

2:30pm Kids are in their rooms napping or having 'quiet time' and all I want to do is curl up with a book. Most places in the house are too dark to read and there are still cooled loaves to find bags for storage. We wash our ziplocs and reuse them, but that means I have to find them in the sea of plastic bags. One worker leaves for the day (he will tell us the next day how he visited the hospital on his way home) and another arrives. He is finishing some painting and gardening outside, so I try to explain in a way we both understand what needs to be done. Vegetables need to come out of soaking, be rinsed with drinking water (by now there is a bit more in the jerry can - yay!) and dried before chopping and storing in the nearly warm fridge.

3:30pm Friend arrives for a haircut while kids are still down. So much for time to read a book. The house is quiet and this is the best time frame for me. I seem to have become the local hairdresser for about 4 ladies. They usually compensate me with goodies, or in today's case, free babysitting. Score!

4:00pm Hair cleaned up. Kids getting up. Warm cookies eaten. Ironed clothes distributed for kids to put away for the day. (We live in a mango fly region where all wet clothes hanging outside have to be ironed at high temperature to kill the eggs. Don't get grossed out. It just means lots of ironing, and without power, it means lots of charcoal ironing - which I don't do myself.) How cool is it that we are done ironing cloth diapers?!

5:00pm It's getting pretty dark in the house, and tonight is bath night, so I need at least two big pots of hot bath water to get the kids clean. I start lighting candles and putting pots of tap water on the gas range. With a pretty quick dinner plan I decide I have time to make dessert for a change and remember that I almost like rhubarb pie when mixed at least 3:1 with apples. Rhubarb chopped. Apples chopped. Topping made. Why not try for whipped cream on top? Someone sent me this powder that is reputed to make a cool-whip-ish thing. Just add milk and whip in the mixer. Hm. Lots of whipping later my arm is dead and the stuff still looks like milk. Then again the directions are in Italian, so maybe I didn't guess it right with my rusty Spanish...

5:30pm Dinner went fine (other than kids complaining about having to eat hummus with a garlic bite to it) and dessert was a big hit. Rhubarb is redeemed for me. I will buy it again. We pour the non-cool-whip-ish stuff over the top and stick the rest in the fridge. We also turn on the batteries after a bit of sun in the afternoon so the fridge can get cool again.

6-7:00pm The busy blur of bathtime and bedtime. The bathwater wasn't as hot as I'd hoped, so washing hair is not a popular idea. We eventually get everyone snuggled and warm after their cool baths. With 4 candles lit we can read altogether. My headlight comes in really handy for cleaning up the table and kitchen. Then Kent reads to the kids while I start cutting out another dress for Anna. Maybe tomorrow I will have power to sew it with...

8:00pm Yogurt actually worked! Will be great cold after a night in the fridge. Food gets brought out to our night guard with coffee in a thermos. We recheck our battery levels to decide how much we can afford to have on all night. Ideally the fridge could stay on, the security lights outside and the fan running in our room to block out noise and help us sleep. On good nights we leave computers, router and internet on as well. Tonight we have to choose one of these three essentials. We decide to turn off fridge and fan and keep lights outside.

9:00pm After reading by flashlight a while, we call it a day. It is exhausting to have a day of changes. But it was beautiful to see the kids pitch in to get everything done!

The daily management of resources like power and water is much more time consuming than we hoped. If you haven't lately, now is a good time to thank God for your power company! =) Believe it or not this was the first of 3-4 crazy days without power, and there were many more adventures of burning the beans, or giving up and serving noodles with parmsean cheese. We were all extremely happy to see Rachele feeling better and able to work yesterday!

Remembering

2010-05-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today is our first day of 'summer' (though living in a place where it feels like summer all year long tends to change our notions of what summer means). It won't mean luscious berries. It won't mean vacation to the ocean or swimming at the lake. It won't mean VBS or horse camp.

Today I will take to regroup and reflect on how our year went. This schoolyear. Joel will never again need to learn his alphabet. He will never again be a little guy in kindergarten. James took to reading and subtraction like wildfire. Anna mimicked everything: drawing, writing, phonics, counting, even jumping rope.

I don't know about you, but each day I have 'off' my mind fills with about ten days' expectations. I am constantly thinking of other projects or fun things to do. I have to stop this madness with lists. I love lists. Lists are my friend! I am really not okay if I lose the list. Okay I digress...

Back to reflection.
Memorial Day for you all on the other side of the world is not forgotten here.
It is not a holiday for us, but we remember nonetheless.

we remember

3 grandfathers, 2 fathers, uncle and aunt, friends

who were and are US servicemen

they gave of themselves for the benefit of many

they cause me to ponder

how we spend the liberty we're given?

Tear up with me at these if you dare...
Remember today.

Obedi Goes Home

2010-05-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

Obedi is the brother or cousin of one of our Congolese colleagues. We hired him as our night guard, but he always did lots of gardening and extra jobs too. He had not been feeling well for a day or two and was taken to the hospital and treated for a bad case of malaria. He regained consciousness and was visiting for two days with various family members when he died rather suddenly. Our kids knew him well, and had not experienced death like this before. So for the past week we've had many conversations about life and death. As much as I'd like to shield them from the realities of death here (or anywhere), it is a part of life as much as birth.

So here is my tiny tribute to a great man who is now Home. If you want to read my thoughts on our first Congolese funeral experience, they follow below.

Obedi was a servant-hearted man who was always smiling and full of energy. He planted me 20 pineapples and several banana trees just because I like them. He would stay extra hours after an overnight shift until our cook arrived when Kent was traveling just so I wouldn't be alone those 30 minutes.
He dreamed of land to leave his family.
He is survived by 5 children and 28 grandchildren.
There were 4 widows and 4 children he took into his household.

Please pray provision for those who depended on him.

Funeral Experience - - - - - - - - -
Due to it being the tropics here (without a morgue), grieving has to be done quickly. The tradition is that family and close friends bring the body back to their home and stay up all night with the body. The next day more people trickle in as they get word. (like 100-300 people)

We found the house and were immediately greeted (handshakes) and ushered into the dark house where many mamas were crowded in and singing on benches. Not until my eyes adjusted to the light did I realize we were being ushered into HIS room (Obedi, our friend) who was lying peacefully dead in the center of it all. They cleared out a few other mourners and gave us the front bench right in front of him! Not quite what I expected.

Needless to say our three kids, aged 3, 5 and 7 were a bit overwhelmed. Then (to save face in this 'anti-shame' culture) someone came to tell us the 'oxygen' wasn't good and we should head out the back door. We took the hint. I think people were cycling through like this and then sitting outside for the official service. So event #1: view the body (cry, sing, wail) and say goodbye.

Joel (the 5yr old) said, "Oh. So dead is looking like you're sleeping, except not moving and not breathing." Yup. I think Anna expected him to wake up. James and I were the family wailers.

We proceeded straight through the wailing daughters out the back door of the little mud building. The family had strewn up UN tarps on posts to keep everyone seated in the yard/courtyard of the house but still shaded from the sun. They brought out wooden chairs for us right in front while everyone else sat on benches or floormats or their shoes. It is sometimes hard to receive what people want to give you.

There were a couple choirs of mamas singing in Swahili. My Swahili is first semester of first year, but Kent tells me they sang about how we will get to heaven and DANCE! I like that idea.

[Background note: When we were living for a few months in the rainforest we were near a 'maternite' or delivery ward and I absolutely LOVE that the Congolese bathe every meaningful thing in music. The tradition is that when a first-time mother and her baby are ready to return home, her friends and family come to walk and sing her all the way home. LOVE it!]

And seeing all those women singing over Obedi's body reminded me of the same thing. They are singing him home. Something we really don't do at all. But very cool. So the funeral itself was a lot like church services here. Verses. Sermon. Songs.

Just as with weddings, there was a reading of his biography - a bit on the story of his life. He was 68, had 13 kids, 5 of which are still living due to sickness and war. He was supporting his blind wife, his elderly mother and her sister, his youngest son and a daughter with three children who had been widowed in the war. Her epilepsy prevents her from doing much work.

The coffin (simple pine box nicely decorated with bright contact paper) is nailed together and then wreaths of fragrant juniper topped with bright pink bouganvillia were laid on top. After the first sermon, the wails grew louder and people hoisted the coffin with wailers following and placed it 12 inches from us on the head table.

The close family returns to the house for a big meal together. They repeat this on the third day (or whenever the family declares the fasting/mourning will be over). So he died Tues., wake Tues. night, funeral Wed. afternoon followed by burial and family meal, and then service/meal again the next Tuesday afternoon.

Just before we left the cemetery, as they were shoveling the dusty dirt we said to our friend, "Goodbye! We'll see you on the other side."

Dust to dust.

Life is short.

Obedi lived well.

It was an honor to help sing him home.

He was a wealthy man in all the ways you can't see.

On the Mend

2010-05-10T23:49:00.001-07:00

Well if it is the thought that counts, then you should know that I have written invisible posts to you many times these past few silent weeks. After months of ongoing tummy trouble, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I may be 'on the mend' with a treatment of H.Pylori, a bug that munches stomach lining. I'm told it's rather rare in the US and quite common here, but there are several friends on facebook who have been through it... and reached the other side. I hope to be in that club soon! My energy feels like it is returning and I'm only halfway through the two weeks. So far so good.

If I could find the camera cord I could show you great Mother's Day pictures. The boys drew/colored a life-size picture of me and treated me to breakfast in bed and a menu of choices for lunch (raspberry Chrystal Light or lemonade?) It was great fun!

Today James lost his sixth tooth and is missing 3 of the front ones all at once. Joel is starting to get jealous (he hasn't lost even one). I think he's in it for the tooth fairy cash.

Anna has learned to button dresses and change her own clothes. This sort of happened overnight and rather suddenly. Now she is changing clothes about 4 times a day. Don't tell her if you see that her shoes don't match her skirt because she'll have to go and change right away. It's a good thing I don't do all the handwashing around here!

One of those well-intentioned non-existent posts I wrote you was on Saturday night...
As I slogged through my cold weekly bucket of handwashing, realizing that I needed to heat water to take a bucket shower yet and really just wanted to curl up in front of a movie. And a friend came back. It's not a nice friend. Maybe enemy is a better word. My old pal 'self-pity' stopped by. Kent was watching a movie, why am _I_ doing all this work while he relaxes over there? (Even worse when in direct line of sight). I'm surprised my face didn't literally turn green with envy.

Then in a moment of grace a vision popped into my mind of something that happened only hours before. I am well-fed, contented and happy lounging on our newly made couch and pillows reading a fabulous new novel with my feet up on the coffee table. The kids are all napping, reading in their beds, or pretending quietly to do one of those things. The lunch table has been emptied and cleaned. With one exception: Kent's plate. Enter my wonder-husband, arms laden with computers, papers and files (you know, linguist stuff). It's almost 2pm and he hasn't eaten since 7am. Anything. (This is not the land of freebie Safeway cookies, donut holes at church and trail mix in the car while you drive somewhere.) He's been at the office working on tone patterns straight through lunch and only wants a bite to eat and place to lie down awhile. I did mention it was Saturday right? There I am reading my book with my feet up. [snap back to reality]

So there I was in my concrete, mildewed bathroom with my hands in a cold bucket sending this nasty old pal out the door. I had my time to relax. It just wasn't NOW. Kent had finished his work and I had not. Strange how things can get twisted around in our heads... Amazing how much more pleasant the handwashing can be with a little perspective.
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There are many more posts to share about homeschooling and all the fun critters we find around here. They will have to wait as it's past time to start another school day. Tuesdays we do piano lessons too. My time is not my own, but it's happy that way.

The Pride & Prejudice Marathon

2010-04-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

So while Kent was gone this past week, I decided it might be a good use of my 'extra' time (ha!) to watch the three versions of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice that we own. It would keep me from sitting around feeling sorry for myself, it would be appropriate for the children to come and go (nothing I have to shield them from), and I would be sparing Kent from watching them all with me!

My friend Jessica suggested I blog a little review of all three versions, so I'll try. If you are a Jane Austen fan familiar with the story, this will be fun. If you are not, read on with caution. First off I will say that there are aspects I enjoy of all three films in comparison with the original book. Now that I think of it, I've reread the book over the last few months so it is fresh in my memory.

Okay, Kent actually started this one with me before he left,
which is what kicked off this whole idea...

Version #1: BBC Classic 6-hr Pride & Prejudice 1995
(sometimes called the Colin Firth P&P, because he plays the role of Mr. Darcy, and our kids affectionately call it 'The Mr. Darcy Movie")

PROS:
-meticulously accurate to the book
-mama drama (I'm told it takes good acting to be this obnoxious)
-witty daddy
-Mr. Collins is fabulously hideous
-Lydia as silly as anything

CONS:
-It takes nearly 6 hours to watch the whole thing through, so unless you are on a first name basis with your fast-forward button and know the story well (or are home all day with a horrible illness), it will likely take 2-3 sittings to finish the whole story. That said, it is one of my first 'sick day' movie picks.
-Jane. The elder sister in this version is too much of a wall-flower. She isn't as 'gorgeous' as she is on the page, and doesn't take much of a leading role to guide her younger sisters into behaving better. She rarely even scolds them.

Version #2: Bollywood Bride & Prejudice 2004
a bright, colorful version modernized and simplified to fit in 2 hrs instead of 6!
I'm new to Bollywood films, but really enjoyed it - even moreso after I got over the shock of everyone breaking into a song and dance everywhere they went.

PROS:
-very funny, plenty of comic relief if you can handle musicals/Bollywood style
-the sisters seem to have more comraderie than in the other versions
-Mr. Collins character, 'Kholi Sahib', is really wonderful (with a bit of playful mockery of Americans in there which I enjoy)
-no where else is there ever quite the same experience as 'Maya's performance for the family!
-loved how it picks up the international marriage idea that touches so much of the world with dollar signs in their eyes around eligible Americans

CONS:
-Here there are only 4 sisters (no 'Kitty'). And for some reason it is often Mary ('Maya') who scolds wild Lydia ('Lakhi'), which is different.
-Mr. Bennett ('Mr. Bakshi') not as witty as I would like, maybe it was an acting issue - I'm not a good judge of actors
-Miss Bingley (Balraj's sister, I can't remember her Indian name) plays the snobby part beautifully from her British penthouse, but it doesn't come out much at all that she's pursuing Mr. Darcy, which is blatantly obvious in the book.
-Charlotte Lucas, Lizzie's best friend, is supposed to be 'plain' but 'Chandra Lamba' in this version is gorgeous in my opinion.
-In order to modernize the storyline, certain things were changed like Lady Catherine's role being played by Mr. Darcy's wealthy mother. But overall they did a splendid job of a modern version. I love the realism of the international scope of it.

Version #3: "New" Pride & Prejudice with Keira Knightley 2005

again shortened, but this time setting and characters stay true to the book

PROS:
-There's a wonderful messy 'reality' about this version of the Bennett household, they are not picture perfect (though I had to wonder what their servants were doing...)
-beautiful artistry and music, including sculpture (which Version 1 did not)
-loved the actress playing Jane. She is gorgeous and takes on the commanding role of the eldest sister well within the confines of her shy character
-Mrs. Bennett here is so maternal, sweet and endearing I have to list her as a 'pro' to watching this version even though I believe the melodramatic mama in Version 1 is more accurate to the book.
-One other thing I appreciate about this version is that it includes a post-wedding scene! What? Life after the wedding kiss? Shocking! It's my personal pet peeve that many American movies end everything with 'the kiss'. Ugh. The last few pages of Jane Austen's book come after their marriage and move to Pemberley and I'm SO glad for that last bit of closure. This version doesn't have much, but I'll take whatever I can get.

CONS:
-Mr. Collins was mediocre, severe, but not that bad - almost a cute little man instead of repulsive
-Don't shoot me, but Keira drives me crazy. I liked her in Pirates of the Caribbean, but had a really hard time with this version because of how physically thin and emotionally impulsive she comes across. Oh my poor nerves! I can't hardly watch...
-This version tried to fit too much of the story into sound bytes, so they would have room for all that gorgeous scenery and music. The end result is intense conversations that seem to happen at double speed. I can hardly keep up with how fast they talk and they can hardly pronounce all the words!
-mid-film proposal over-dramatic and unrealistic. In that day and age 2 people caught alone, soaking wet in a rainstorm in a public park at a monument with a view seems more than unlikely.
-Other than not getting his words out very articulately, the actor playing Mr. Darcy does alright. What I can't stand is the ending proposal where he stomps through the misty marsh at 5am with very little to say. Where is the self-sacrifice, self-control, self-discipline??!! Mr. Darcy waited months and months to find the right time to propose again. Not just a stroll through the marsh. Not magical powers either. 'You've bewitched me.' seems to the highlight of this climax. No thanks.

As is probably obvious I numbered them here, and watched them, in the order I prefer them. Overall I enjoy the the long BBC version best for it's extensive conversations and faithfulness to the book. The six hours was originally done for television, so it is broken up in 50-minute segments and is easily enjoyed over a few sessions. Personally, my second choice is Bollywood's Bride & Prejudice because of the modern-day, multi-cultural aspects. Call me weird, but I also enjoy much of the music and dancing. Of these three I enjoy the "new" Keira Knightley version least. It is indeed artistically beautiful and I've watched it a few times just for that reason, but I think the essence of the story is missed when rushed through in 90 minutes.

There's my two cents on my P&P Marathon!
I will likely never be a movie critic, but it was fun pretending for a while!
So which is your favorite? Do you like a version I haven't listed?

A Glimpse of Easter

2010-04-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

FYI, we had a wonderful Easter staycation, had good friends over, gorged ourselves on homemade French fries and cinnamon rolls, watched much of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, sang 'A Toi la Gloire' at church and came home for 'Up From the Grave' and 'Nothing but the Blood' (two of the kids' favorites!)

Kent is taking phenomenal pictures of his trip into the rainforest this week, but before he left I grabbed a couple Easter shots. This way you have proof that they enjoyed themselves hunting for eggs and candy in our backyard, (don't worry - Anna had a 5 minute head start) ...

... and see my first attempt at a little girl dress for Anna. We had matching outfits! I know it's cheesy, but she loves it (and probably won't in a few years...).

Eggs in the corn patch? Why not?
She picked out her shoes herself... red birkenstocks.
What can I say? She's smart!
For those who are wondering, even with a bag of 'loot' she really didn't get the 'hunt' idea. at all.

HAPPY EASTER!!

from Congo to wherever you are.

P.S. The red shorts were James' idea - not mine. He wore some lovely slacks to church...

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