Babar a kay!! (Good morning every one!)
Well, it looks like I am going to be spending up to another week amongst the Gabra people in Kalacha. The last few days have been eventful, stressful, and adventurous.
Saturday morning a group of men came over to another missionary home to complain about the nurse that was up here. Gloria - the nurse whom I traveled with and went on mobile clinics with. Apparently they were upset that Gloria charges too much for the meds (even though they are super cheap) and that she isn’t compassionate enough. The group was filled with 20 or so men, some of them were drunk or high on Mara and they got even more upset talking with the other missionary family. They marched over to Gloria’s house, threw rocks at her door and told her she had 24 hours to get out of town. Gloria was completely targeted out of the blue. Gloria was stunned.
We all believe that the mob had this well planned out because there were no church leaders in town, most of the elderly men were out in the fields, the town chief was three hours away on a supply run, and it is not the Gabra way to do things with out the chief and the elders around to talk things through and make good decisions. Gloria left town by 6pm with the only other two male missionaries left in town. That left three single girls (me included) and two mothers with 8 children combined trying to figure out what to do. Contingency plans were made up of how we could get out of town even though the Gabra said that they weren’t upset with us. We were all on edge for the rest of the day.
Eddie came back that night at 11pm from a church conference and he brought with him three leaders who were shocked about what happened. We have no idea if it was a good thing if Gloria left as soon as she did because the clinic is now shut down and this mob of young men are now starting to realize they did something wrong. They are not violent people. In a town with 4000 people, I have yet to see a weapon, except a knife to butcher animals.
On Sunday morning, Rachel, Eddie, and I were going to leave for a mini-vacation of camping in game parks as they drove me down country so that I could attend the International Teams conference in Nairobi (which starts March 9) and join my Ugandan team-mates. Well, we decided to post-pone that for a day until the other missionary men came back in to town to be with their families.
On Monday morning, at 10:30 pm all 8 of us loaded in to the Land Rover and about 45 minutes away, in the middle of the Chalbi desert we heard a loud metal clunk and smelled oil. We stopped the vehicle and saw that the radiator had come lose and hit the fan. We stood in the middle of the desert for three hours trying to repair the radiator. Another vehicle came along just as we were finishing the repairs - enough to get us turned around back to Kalacha. We were all cranky and dehydrated because we were rationing the water… we had no idea how long we might have had to stay in the desert with a broken vehicle.
So, now I am back in Kalacha - with no fresh food (we thought we were going to go down country to get supplies). Don’t worry, I’m not hungry, I’m just tired of meat with rice and beans. I miss fresh fruit and veggies. And no vehicle to get us down country. A radiator needs to be specially built.
So, now my options to get down country are a 12 seater flight on Friday - but it leaves from the town that is three hours away - we might be able to get one of the Muslim local store owners drive Rachel and I to Marsabit to fly to Nairobi. Or a six seater flight next Monday morning… then I can take a taxi straight from the airport to the conference centre. Pray that there are seats available on either plane and that I can have peace about staying another week in Kalacha.
That’s my weekend in a nutshell. We have been reading “Cheaper by the Dozen” in the evenings and the father always says it is one of those “Unavoidable Delays!”
Serving a God who is Good,
Karen
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