Um, I’m in Africa!
(This was an email to my family, that I edited down for this blog. I’m trying to get better at blogging about the country I’m actually in rather than the one I just left.)
We are happily settled down for the month– for once we might ACTUALLY get to stay in one place for the entire month, but I don’t wanna get my hopes up. We’re in a city called Busia, right on the border by Uganda, and it’s surprisingly busy! The house that we’re staying in is really nice. Solid walls, glass windows, a solid roof. Electricity most of the time. No running water, but we have a well in the back that we draw water from every day, and bucket showers. And there are toilets! But we have to get water from the well to put in the tank if we want to flush. “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down!”
Too much info? Yes? Sorry.
Our room looks like something out of a sci-fi novel; there are mosquito nets EVERYWHERE, and at night when people get in them with their headlamps we all look like pod people. We’re all praying that our malaria meds really work– I have about 40 mosquito bites right now. There are definitely some pest issues in our house—yesterday I was standing on one of the couches (for some random reason) and a mouse ran up the side, past my foot, and down into one of the cushions where he apparently lives. Another one also scuttled between my bed and Andrea’s this morning—and we sleep on the floor. And there are some really, really large bugs. Everywhere. At night I just kind of operate on the “hear no evil, see no evil, feel no evilâ€� mentality—I just tuck in my mosquito net, put in my earplugs, and think about other things.
Sidenote: One of our guys killed a chicken for our dinner the other day– eesh. It was like the Christmas dinner scene from Christmas Story– the chicken’s head was definitely in the serving bowl. And a guy on our team ate parts of it; I thought he was going to cry and puke at the same time.
For the first week our ministry is going to be construction on one of the churches around here– this will give us a chance to get to know some of the people in the church. The rest of the time will probably be door-to-door ministry, which I’ve heard is really good here, and effective. Kinda makes me nervous though! Bring it on.
My new team is pretty great– I’m enjoying getting to know them. And we’re working with another team this month, which has several people who I love. So we’ve had a lot of fun here already– we’ve had a couple of off-days, but then Sunday was a full day at churches. We split up between three different churches, and everyone spoke and preached and sang. I had to stand up and give a sermon! Terrifying. But it went okay. Two or three more weeks of sermons to go…
Fun fact: The malaria meds make you really sensitive to the sun, so I’ve already gotten a ridiculous sunburn. Between the peeling sunburn, the mosquito bites, and the sweat/dirt combination of Africa —I am lookin’ good.
Love you all–
Jess
