you know you're in Africa when...

Life here is an adventure!  I have spent nine of the last twelve days with either the medical team or the dental team doing rural clinics.  The first five days I participated in the medical clinic and it was wonderful to be doing nursing again! I took blood pressures, temperatures, patient histories, gave injections, ran errands for the providers and on rare occasions, sat with one of the doctors as they treated patients.  It was a crazy week, but wonderful to be doing medicine and to be with people who love the Lord, love people, and are great encouragers. 

This week I spent a couple days with four pediatric residents who are working on a vaccine project.  The mornings were spent at the local project and during the afternoons they were patient with me as we made use of their hired vehicle and ran around buying shelves, groceries and other random stuff. The next two days I spent with the dental team.  I am now an expert in sterilizing dental tools, so if nursing doesn't work out for me...I have a back up plan.  The dentists were also kind enough to let me pull a few teeth.  I learned that molars take extreme strength (which I don't have) to pull and that I really appreciate dentists (like these) who really love their jobs.  I could never do it, but I watched their faces light up as they talked about their patients and the teeth they had pulled!

I am finally settling into life here.  We have a gas cylinder and I cooked dinner two nights ago.  It's nice to finally have the ability to cook and we're slowly acquiring utensils and staple items.  I met one of the doctors who runs the AIDS clinic here in Masindi.  He's very well connected and has promised to introduce Mandie and me to people at the hospital so that we can start working there.

For all of my irrational fears about transportation, how life works here, and learning the culture and language, I have been blessed with answers already.  I have the phone numbers for a couple of trustworthy taxi drivers and my house helper is a wealth of information regarding culture language and where to find things.  She spent one month in England and understands the difficulty of being in a different culture and has been gracious about cultural faux pas.  What a blessing!  The Lord truly has answered my prayers for being settled here!

Last but not least, I had two opportunities to share Jesus this week!  The first was with the van driver that the team has been using all week.  He has a Muslim name so I asked him one day about it.  We had a twenty minute conversation where I shared what being a Jesus follower meant to me and he shared that he had converted from Catholicism to Islam 10 years ago.  Please keep Herruna in your prayers.  I don't know when I'll see him again, but if you know me well, you know my heart is drawn to Muslims and I hope for more opportunities.  The second was at the dental clinic two days in a row.  Two hundred people came each day to wait in line to see the dentist.  I had a captive audience and was able to share with them why we come and offer these services.  It was a great opportunity to testify how the Lord has worked in my life and the lives of the dentists and why we would come around the world to take blood pressures or pull teeth.

Thanks for your prayers and your emails!  What a blessing you are to my heart!

oh...and you know you're in Africa when:

Your headlamp becomes the bathroom light.
Sleeping under a mosquito net is no longer elegant and classy.
The morning discussion during mobile clinics includes the quality of the latrines as compared to yesterday.
Someone says "hello" and you respond with "fine."