On vaccines and drainage ditches on the mission field

Thursday we had a South African couple come stay at the guest house. Nice couple, but very broken English, so we settled them in their room and left them alone.

Yesterday the South African couple picked up two single Dutch girls from the airport who were going to visit for a month to learn more about "the mission field." The Dutch girls couldn't speak 5 words of English, so we left them in the care of the South African couple... who couldn't speak Dutch, but who spoke Afrikaans, which is a very loose type of Dutch, so they could mostly communicate. Mostly.

The four of them went out to dinner last night and the sweet Dutch girl, who was so excited about getting to ride a motorcycle, stepped backwards to take a picture of the bike and promptly fell into a drainage ditch.

Ah, the drainage ditches here... how to describe them? They are narrow, 3 feet deep, cement... and the catch-all for all things nasty. No trash can? Throw it in the drainage ditch. No bathroom nearby? Use the drainage ditch. Building a house and can't afford a septic system? Plumb the dirty water into the drainage ditch.

So on top of smelling revolting and ruining her pants, the poor girl suffered a nasty cut in her hand. Small, but very deep and bleeding profusely. They brought her back to the guest house whereupon the circus of trying to translate tropical wound care from English to Afrikaans to Dutch began.

I brought out the hydrogen peroxide, iodine, anti-bacteria gel, band-aids.... how do you translate all that? I ended up opening up the band-aid to actually show what it was and Brant tried in vain to explain that hydrogen peroxide would "burn" but not actually burn off your skin.... I am still not sure that they knew what the iodine was... but she accidentally poured it on her pants... which meant two pairs of pants ruined in one evening ....And that's life on the mission field.

In the course of the "conversation" it came up that the girl had never had a tetanus shot. Out come the medical books to determine how long we had to track down a tetanus shot before her jaw started locking up. Do you know what the Afrikaans word for Tetanus is? Something like calamari. I never did learn what the Dutch word was.

Tetanus is a very real and present danger here. We had a national friend die a very painful, brutal death about 6 months ago from Tetanus. Left behind a wife and 3 young kids. Opting out of vaccines in nice clean, healthy countries like America or Holland is one thing, but here the diseases they prevent are very real threats and you opt out at great risk.

So at ten o'clock last night when we were feeling we were beating our heads against a wall trying to communicate, we called our good friend here in town who is Dutch, but who speaks excellent English. We explained the whole situation to him, who in turn spent half an hour on the phone with the Dutch girls chewing them out for never having gotten a Tetanus vaccine before they got on the plane. I think "my friend died a painful death from Tetanus and I watched him suffer" came into the conversation as their eyes got really wide.

Then we had a long discussion about penicillin class drugs vs. tetracycline class drugs, which with a Dutch accent "cillin" and "cycline" sound almost the same. In case you're not up on your tropical wound care... you can take high doses of amoxicillin and hope for the best if you cannot get a Tetanus vaccine in time... not a fool proof treatment, but better than nothing. 

So at midnight last night Brant and I fell into bed totally exhausted. Half laughing because of the hilarity of the communication blunders of the evening. Half crying because of the seriousness of the situation and the fear and pain the girl was going through. 

Welcome to the mission field. Don't ever come without your vaccines. Or extra pants.

Things making me smile this morning

- Hanging clean laundry on the line outside in a cool morning. Very peaceful. Reminds how beautiful it is and makes me feel like a super productive pioneer woman.

- New silverware divider in my drawer. Have been searching for one for YEARS and yesterday found one (ONE!) on a random end cap at the big new store in the big town two hours from here. Every time I open my drawer I am surprised by how neat and orderly it looks.

- Freshly ground cinnamon and other spices sent in a package from a friend whose parents own a spice farm on a nearby island. Heavenly.

- Caleb's new toothless smile. Just as his first adult tooth grew in and closed the little gap in his mouth, his second tooth fell out. So cute.

- Signs at the mall yesterday for a movie theater being built! Civilization is slowly creeping into our corner of the world. Really fun to be think about being about to go to a movie someday.

- The boys' constant scheming this morning to trick and surprise me and Brant. Have found someone around every corner or doorway ready to jump and yell "Boo!" I overheard the latest plan being hatched to "put a trip line in the bathroom so when Daddy goes in to go on the potty he will fall and his head will land in the potty."

The secret to parenting...

So, Brant and I felt like we have stumbled upon THE secret of all secrets... I think we could retire rich off this one... the trick to getting the boys to sleep at night without a fuss or a spanking or an endless parade of drinks and potty breaks.... 

Flashlights.

I kid you not. We modified the idea from a friend. For 15 minutes each night the boys are allowed to play with flashlights, read, talk, whatever they want to do (staying on their beds.) When the timer goes off, if the flashlights don't go off and the talking doesn't completely stop, then they lose their flashlight time for the next night. 

It works! They LOVE it. I hear them tell their friends "We get to play with flashlights when we're supposed to be sleeping." They are totally quiet as soon as the timer beeps and only once or maybe twice have we had to suspend their flashlight time the next night. 

We've taken the same concept over to the tents they've been building all summer... they are allowed to build any type of contraption they want to sleep in (we do check to make sure it's decently safe) as long as they are totally quiet and go to sleep when the flashlight timer goes off. The night we had all 5 boys in one tent, we gave them 20 minutes of flashlight time.... then dead silence. Easiest slumber party we will probably preside over. :)  

Summer dreams

Our summer hasn't gone according to planned. See my nice little plan I made on June 8, exactly one day after we packed up the home schooling books and celebrated the end of an excruciating school year with pizza and ice cream?

You can't hear the music playing in the background and the sounds of happy children laughing as they play peacefully on the floor while I read a book and bake cookies and fold laundry all at the same time.... that's kinda what I was hoping for this summer.

Enter reality.... A really full guest house with guests sleeping on the floor and calling at all hours of the day and night with needs. A cook who quit. A sick kid who won't get better. Teammates who left on furlough. June was a TAD stressful. I'm not quite sure that I saw my children the entire month (other than shuttling Elijah back and forth to get blood work done.)

I did manage to find some apples and have a friend help me make a pie crust and put together a pie for Father's Day. But that weekend happened to fall on "I'm on kitchen strike because I've been cooking for two weeks for 30 people and we're getting take-out all weekend long" so we ate pie and fried chicken Brant picked up on the side of the road for $5. Happy Father's Day!

But July has been amazingly wonderful.... all the guests left the guest house. I think we're going to start running the guest house with no guests in it. Way easier. :) The boys have de-stressed after having our yard overrun with children for a month. They've built tents.... they actually slept in this one....

...and in this one. This was their first sleepover - we had our teammate's boys over for a "camp-out" in our living room. Was SO much fun for the boys - they were bouncing off the walls.

We've had beach trips with friends...

Pool time... Caleb is learning to swim! He is SO proud of himself. He calls it "floating" because he can get around in the pool without touching the bottom. He's also learning to snorkel, which happens at the pool first. At last week's beach trip he was going to try to snorkel on the reef, but it didn't work out.

Ezra... with his flippers and sunglasses and floaties and hat. He is cool and he knows it. 

We have been doing a little summer reading contest I picked up online. The kids write the titles of the books they've read on ice cream scoops and when they get to ten scoops they get to go pick out an ice cream at the store. 

And yes, I let them pick out whatever ice cream they wanted, and no, I don't normally let them do that. Of course they picked out the biggest chocolate-est things they could find and were totally sick afterwards. Elijah finished his second round of scoops this week and settled for a "mini" chocolate ice cream. Smart man. :) 

We had our annual 4th party, which was so much fun. Our teammates back in the States sent us decorations and we pulled out the ice cream maker and cooked burgers. We had six other families come up to the (empty!) guest house and had the yard and playground to ourselves. It was a great party - one where everyone leaves way later than they intended to and kids run around and play in the dark and adults talk for hours. As they were leaving, a friend gave me a hug and said "It really felt like the 4th." I love it. Holidays are hard here; make us miss home a ton. Independence Day is one of the harder ones... living over here with such abject poverty and hopelessness we realize how incredibly privileged we are to be born Americans. So it's a time to be patriotic, but also a time of thankfulness to God that our kids can get the medicines they need and eat 3 square meals a day just because they were born into such a blessed country. 

Tomorrow's Thursday. Craft Day. Thankful for these summer days.