Today was a lesson in patience, not uncommon on mission trips as Liz has discovered in the past. We were SUPPOSED to travel to Moroto in Karamoja today to meet up with Val and start work there. The how of the getting there has been under discussion for several days. Val was unavailable to come and get us and The MAF flight was not an option as they are currently not flying that route. Even though Liz suggested several times the idea of traveling on the local bus, it was vehemently vetoed by our Ugandan hosts they obviously felt they were saving us from a horrible fate! They tried having a CLIDE vehicle repaired yesterday which stretched into today and now into an undetermined period of time. Val even sent us a driver on the night bus who arrived at 6am. Unfortunately we had no vehicle for him to drive. Next, Moses contact YWAM (Youth With a Mission) they have a huge work in Soroti. YWAM was happy to provide us with a vehicle but wanted their own driver to take us there. The driver, Andrew, was nowhere to be found and is currently without a cell phone as he recently dropped it down a pit toilet. About 5:15 pm Andrew was located, but it was decided making the 5 hour trek to Moroto that late was not wise.
Liz occupied her day bird watching, catching up on Bible reading and doing some financial paperwork she brought from home. Julia went butterfly and cricket catching and did some Bible study and Bible reading. Heidi hung out with us and joined in our Bible study as well as working on her own. We all went to see the house Moses is building for his family and to harass the auto mechanics (politely of course) in hopes they might get the vehicle fixed.
So the current plan is to leave at 5am and God willing (literally) get there about 10am to start the work Val has lined up for us. If we make it, it is unlikely we will be able to post on the BLOG again until we get to England as INTERNET in Karamoja is rarely accessible. Keep praying for us!
Addendum to yesterdays BLOG entry Liz was responsible for the grammatical foible. No, we do not expect our patients to bring their own dental instruments (the wording in yesterdays post went something like We extracted a tooth in a dog without dental instruments). We just wished we had some! We did check on the patient this morning and she was, most importantly, alive and also hungry. Prior to our surgery (OVH and extraction) she had not been well for several weeks, had aborted puppies 2 weeks ago and had not eaten for several days. Amazingly she even wanted to eat as soon as she woke up last night found some scraps we put out for another dog and ate them, bones and all. Dogs here are tough! We did discover, however, that she does not like carrots! Oh - and power outages are common here. We did part of our last spay by headlamp at 11pm last night.
Cultural note: Barrack Obama is VERY popular here. The Ugandans claim him as being from their country as the location his grandfather was from in Kenya used to be part of Uganda before the borders were changed. When he was elected as the 44th US president there was a national celebration in Uganda. The feeling here was a black man from Uganda now rules the world. There are stores named after Obama, Obama calendars, Obama posters and Obama clothing. Dr. Kasiime bought Julia and me Obama flip flops as souvenirs!
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