After many weeks of feeling so weak, shivering, sweating, waking up with headaches and having joint pain, I decided I should go to the good modern hospital here called Alishafa.
I was getting very tired of constantly being sick and not being able to spend a few hours doing activities before I needed to lie down again.
After more blood tests and a good examination from a professional doctor I was diagnosed with Typhoid and Brucellosis. The typhoid is still from last time and wasn't fully treated so I am now on powerful medication (The best type you can get, the doctor said).
The other disease 'Brucellosis' comes from contact with cows carrying the virus. You can get it from drinking milk or eating meat not quite cooked.
This makes sense as I often eat at dimly lit restaurants, where feral cats are running between your legs, and you can't see the food being prepared. As much as I love eating at these places I may have to stop going there. Luckily for me I am getting married in two months to someone who loves to cook ;).
The disease can be tricky to treat and can last for months, even years sometimes. It can develop into a chronic level which may be similarly compared to something like chronic fatigue. Continually tired and weak and feeling sick. If not treated it can also turn into a serious illness that effects bone marrow.
You can say I am glad I got diagnosed fairly early.
It was quite clear this is what has been causing me to feel so weak the last month or so.
The treatment is a bit tricky, so he wanted to get me imported medicines from Germany, instead of the cheap alternatives floating around. A bit expensive, but worth the extra money.
So I will be trying to recover for the next few weeks. Keep me in your prayers as I am really coping it here! I also have a bad cough, chest infection type thing that I need to get medicine for.
Feels like my body just caving in.
When it was time to introduce me, the pastor got up and stated to the church "We have a young man here who is going to take one of our daughters hand in marriage, can anyone find him?" At this point they played some upbeat African music, while everyone looked around the church 'pretending' to try and find me. I say pretending because everyone knows it is Agnes getting married, and everyone knows she is marrying a white man, and the only white man in the church was me.
Not too hard to find me.
Farouk had come along with me for support (as I am not allowed to come with Agnes or sit next to her .. more cultural things to obey) and so we also joined in with the pretending of trying to find this mystery man.
An elder of the church then came and picked me out of the crowd and hugged me, then grabbed my hand to bring me to the front of the church. He then told me I needed to dance.
So while everyone screamed and laughed at us, Farouk, this elder, and myself all danced to the front of the church.
Not embarrassing at all.
Then they picked Agnes out from the crowd and she also danced to the front of the church with her entourage following her. We then gave a little talk each and then the pastor came to pray over us. It got interesting here because the pastor asked us to kneel down on the ground. I went to kneel down and everyone started laughing at me. They were just laughing because it was funny for them to see a white man kneel, but I got a little confused and stood back up to ask the pastor if I should kneel too.
You see in society here, in many situations of greetings, women kneel down, but men are expected to stand and never do such a thing. So It flashed through my head that perhaps this is why they all laughed at me. But it become apparent these cultural protocols don't apply to this situation I was in, because when I asked the pastor if I should also kneel he looked at me funny and said "Do you have something wrong with your knees?"
I said "no no its ok" and quickly knelt down, while everyone laughed at me some more.
I am such a white boy.
After a long prayer, which I didn't pay any attention too because I was just praying it would hurry up, because my knees actually did start hurting on the concrete, we were finally allowed to 'dance' back to our seats.
Another interesting experience. Sometimes I have to laugh, I used to think I had a really good grip on the cultural stuff here, and in many cases I really do, but getting married to a Ugandan women can make me feel like I am just scratching the surface on the deeply rooted cultural norms here.
Other wise everyone was so excited and happy for us, and we got a lot of people in her church supporting us.
If you read my last blog post you may have read about a man named beeyo who had an extremely infected foot. We have managed to get him treated over the last few weeks (with a few missing days here and there, with him nowhere to be found) and his foot has really healed.
It has been quite funny trying to get him treated, as he often is so off in his own world, that he will walk around in bare feet in the mud, or searching for hidden treasures in a trash heap, while his infected wound is at risk of getting very dirty.
He came around to my house the other day with his walking cane and his mongrel looking dog following him. He came to see me and to thank me, continually repeating "in the name of Jesus, God bless you".
He told me he wanted to give me a plot of his land and put me in the lease for it, and include me in his will.
The interesting thing is the man is actually quite wealthy, despite his appearance. He used to be a town counselor here and was a very respected man in the community until he went mad and the alcohol ravaged his mind.
I tried to tell him it is not necessary and that he should give the plot of land to his family, but he wouldn't have it, telling me "No one wanted to help me, you were the only one who helped me".
Farouk told me later that its quite possible the family were waiting for him to die so they could inherit his wealth.
I really really don't want to be given the land and to be put in the lease, and now Beeyo is trying to convince me to come to his place on Sunday so all his relatives can see, and witness, that he is giving me the plot of land.
Not sure how I am going to get out of this one haha.
Never a dull moment in Uganda.
Otherwise things have been a bit rough here in Uganda. I have a lot of things to work on in regards to my upcoming wedding, and also YSU projects, and this sickness has really knocked me back a bit.
I am also fairly conservative with this sort of stuff, but I feel I have had a lot of spiritual opposition lately. Without going into details, to preserve and protect the identities of certain people, I have been involved in a situation here, where I have aimed to respond in a biblical way, holding onto truth and integrity.
I have tried to take the role of defending the weak and abused and trying to act in a way I could see Jesus responding. I have also approached and corrected what one could say is a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'. Even doing things in a gentle, humble way, with no intention of trying to bring anyone down, and trying to do everything from a position of love, I have still felt some serious opposition.
Try and be a light against the darkness and it will bound to happen soon enough.
I have no shock or surprise over it, or even the sickness for that matter. I fully expect and embrace any suffering here on the mission field. Christ is more then enough for me.
I want to live a life that shows the world that my treasure is in heaven and not on earth. And even though I can fall and fail, as all humans do, I feel so confident and secure in my faith, and in my position before God.
Not because of anything I do, but purely because of what God does for me, and through me.
So please keep me in your prayers during this tough season, I am feeling a bit of the weight on the Calvary road of suffering.
But if it can glorify God and show to those around me, how satisfying He really is, I wouldn't have it any other way.
He truly is more then enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment