Sickness, and encounters with the outcasts.

The last two weeks has seen me getting very very sick. I had malaria a while back and I seemed to get better from it after a few days. But about one week later I woke up with a splitting headache and a very weak feeling. Farouk encouraged me to go check it out at the local medical center, which I had just been at one week before. My nurse Olivia, who knows me well now, wanted to take a big amount of blood from me and check to see if I had any typhoid, as well as malaria. After checking she came back and told me that I did have malaria, and a very strong case of typhoid.

I had my typhoid vaccination about four years ago, but it seems it only lasts about three years, so I was well and truly sick with this potentially lethal disease.

You can get Typhoid from drinking the water here (which I am always careful not to do) but apparently it’s possible to catch it from eating street food (food sold on street stalls) which is something I do regularly.

I ended up having to get a cannula in my hand so they could pump medicine directly into my veins. The first lot they put in made me feel very ooazy, as I told the nurse that I needed to lie down. I ended up fainting slightly onto the sick bed in the medical centre, and had to wait about 15 minutes until my next injection.

Overall I had to have nine injections over the course of three days, including one very painful penicillin shot in my bum. One of the nurses laughed, and said she was happy as she has never got to see a muzungu’s (white mans) bum. The other nurse said she didn’t want to see because she ‘feared’ my skin, it was too white for her. When I told Agnes this it didn’t seem to faze her and she just laughed.
So I spent a few very sick days in bed due to the two life threatening diseases and the strong medication being pumped into me.

I was also told to keep the cannula (a needle thing that stays in your arm that you can attach drips into) in my hand for the night so they could use it to put medicine in the next day. I remember just before bed though it was driving me crazy. It is such a disgusting feeling, having this little tube up one of your veins, it’s like your whole body is crying out that it doesn’t want it in there. And when I would turn my hand slightly the tube would push against the vein and it would send shots of pain up my arm.
Farouk and I ended up working out how to pull it out, and I just bought a new one the next day to go into my other hand.
I was also very watchful to make sure all the needles going into me where fresh out of the packet. Seeing as I am in a little back ally medical clinic in Uganda, I thought it might be worth just checking on that one.

Our house has also been cut off from power for the last two weeks as well. It seems when we moved in our power meter was not working right, and our landlord was not aware of this. We ended up going and paying for a new meter from the power company almost two months ago. But this is Uganda so things take time. We were still connected to power and allowed to stay like that, we just had to show our receipt when the power company came to cut us off.
Anyway they came, but Farouk was out, and our neighbour told them we didn’t have a receipt (even though we told him we do, and if the power people come and Farouk is out, to just get Beatrice to show the receipt).
So we got cut off and we are still trying to hassle the power company to hurry up and put us back on. They keep saying tomorrow, but it has been about five ‘tomorrows’ now.

Hopefully everything will be sorted by Monday.
I have been reading books by candle light though, which has been sort of romantic.
I remember one night when I had the cannula in my arm, and was feeling very sick from the typhoid and malaria, I pulled out the little Gideon bible next to me and read it in the candle light, while I ate my plain rice with my bare hands.
I actually felt really content and happy in that moment, and I had a giggle over it all. Maybe I am getting closer to what Paul talked about when he said he had learnt to be content in Christ in all situations.

Today was an interesting day in little gospel lessons, and the power of grace pulling on the heart strings.
Farouk and I decided to go to bugembee to eat some food. As we were walking to catch a taxi we passed a few men who were walking, one of them screaming in a very angry sounding voice as he preached.
This is something you see often here, street preachers that have taken it to an extreme, where you cannot even understand them because they scream so loud.
I kind of know the man in the area, so as we passed him, and he screamed in our direction, I calmly asked him “Sir why are you so angry?”
He responded by yelling at me and asking what I had to say, and I simply asked again why he was yelling so much. He stated that the bible says to go and preach the gospel, to which I agreed, but then said “but why do you have to yell it at people?”
He kind of laughed and then kept walking, and Farouk and I noticed he was very quiet as he walked away, as perhaps he had gotten embarrassed.

At first I smirked with Farouk, but it wasn't long after that when the stain of smugness was recognized on my own heart. As much I am not a fan of this type of preaching, I really started questioning and wrestling with myself. Was that really the most loving way to interact with that man?
It may sound harmless how I questioned him, but I know within my own heart that my questioning came from a frustration of being kept awake all night by these types of pastors, who scream and yell into their jacked up microphones all night, every Friday night.
I have to be so careful not to hold a sense of arrogance towards these types of people, just because I believe how they are doing something is not the right way of going about it.
And I guess we can all get caught up in not extending love to the people who don’t preach with love.

I couldn’t dwell on this too long though as what came next completely surprised Farouk and I.

If you remember a few weeks ago I wrote in my blog about the local drunken villager coming and asking for prayer after saying he was knocked by a motor bike. If you read the blog you would know that I felt guilty that I hadn’t reached out more to this man.

Well it seems like God wanted to give me another chance.

As we walked past some shops this man yelled out to us, and I went to go shake his hand. He started telling us that he had another injury on his foot and he started to take of his sock as he wanted to show us.
When he took of his sock and showed us the bottom of his foot Farouk and I cringed in horror. This man’s foot had a seriously deep and disturbing wound that took up most of the bottom of his foot. I am talking about a massive hole in his foot that looked like it was rotting away. 

It was gross.

I knew straight away this guy would need medical treatment as he could quite easily loose a leg or get a lethal infection if left alone. I knew the man had no way of paying for it himself, as he was lying in the dirt with a torn pair of pants and no top. He then started pouring his little bottle of bootleg local booze on his wound as he smiled at me and waved his little Gideon bible around to show that he had been reading.

Farouk and I got him up and put him on a boda boda (motor bike taxi) and got it to take him to the local medical center (same one I had been to when sick) as Farouk and I walked the short distance to meet him there.
When Nurse Olivia saw the wound she also cringed and said that it would take serious treatment, the guy basically needs a shot every day for the next ten days. Our friend was clearly drunk, and Farouk explained to him we would promise to pay all his treatment but he has to commit to coming to the medical centre every day to get his shot. Farouk also asked the man to please take a bath before the nurse works on him, as he really stunk.

It was quite a sight as the man sat on the hospital floor shaking his head strangely, with his foot sticking up in the air. He really is an eccentric character, and seeing him with his bottle of booze in one hand and his little bible in the other made me laugh.
We gave him money to take a boda boda back to where he lives, to bath and rest before he would come back in the afternoon, and we promised to buy him shoes so he would stop walking around on the ground with bare feet, and infecting his foot even more.

He was so thankful and kept waving his bible and saying "God bless".

Often a man like that would be so looked down upon here in society, especially by the church, due to his drinking. But I can’t help but think of the verse that says “the first will be last, and the last will be first”. I know many pastors who may be well respected in the community, but have a very strong air of pride around them. I have no doubt that this drunken lowly man would be the first to humble himself before God and recognise his need for a saviour. Sometimes I have a feeling that we will actually be very surprised to find out who will be in the Kingdom.

So for the next few days I will go to the medical center and pay in small amounts, depending on whether he comes for his medicine or not. Please pray that he commits to going, because the wound is very very serious.(Although much later that afternoon I went to the medical center to pay for his evening dose of medication, and they said they had cleaned him up, gave him injections, and wrapped and bandaged his wound, as well as give him the shoes. A little later I met him on the way and of course I find him walking in bare feet with his wound in the dirt. He showed me where they had cleaned up the wound, and I got to see how deep it actually was, to the point of almost seeing bone. I tried to explain to him that he can't be walking around in bare feet, and he nodded and agreed. He actually speaks really good English, but how do you get something through to such a sporadic crazy man)

After we had dropped him at the center, Farouk and I went to town to go eat some food, but Farouk couldn't eat meat because he kept thinking of the guys’ foot. I had no problem though and gobbled down some grizzly, tough meat.
After buying some shoes for the man and dropping them off at the medical center, Farouk and I headed home. 

But it seems God was not done with us for the day.

As we walked past an old empty shell of an unused church, we noticed a drunken street youth, passed out, propped up against the wall, all by himself. 

We called out to him for a bit but he was well and truly out of it, and seemed to be sleeping off his drunkenness. Farouk and I then went to a local shop and went halves and bought a bottle of water. We then walked back to the boy and while trying to snuffle our giggles, quietly placed the cold bottle of water in between his legs in front of him. 

We laughed the whole way home, as we imagined him waking up from his drunken stupor with a throbbing headache in the abandoned church, and finding a full bottle of fresh cold water sitting in front of him. Farouk started joking that maybe he will get freaked out seeing as he was in a church, and that he may think the water was a divine gift, and it might end up making him turn his life around.

Life is always interesting here. I feel so blessed that I am surrounded by daily opportunities to be able to walk like Jesus.
Some days I don’t though. 

Some days I am so caught up in my own life that I walk on by and don’t think about those around me, selfishly consumed with the day’s tasks.
But other days, I have a real sense of God’s love and grace, and feel the weight of it as I encounter people who are needing his love and grace shown to them.
This are the days I love, and I believe these are the days that will matter in the end.

So if you feel like praying for me, I would request you pray for this old man with the wounded foot, and the drunken street boy. Who knows what it just may do.

God bless.