Perplex Me Not

Our internet service has been confounding this week. On and off again 25 times in the last hour, for example. Of course, we have several deadlines this week. Of course, we cannot get the systems to cooperate. Of course.

It is a miniscule issue in light of life and death struggles in our world today…and yet, this miniscule struggle has me ready to throw my beloved computer across the room.

Sigh.

Sometimes, when my desire to accomplish at least one thing overcomes my tolerance for a failing third world system, I feel crushed under the weight of the (seeming) persecution.

I feel consternation and distress at the problem I am facing.

Today, I found encouragement in this devotional reading:

   “we may be absolutely sure of an unperplexed [sic] and undismayed Savior” from Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E Cowman

No matter the size of our problem.

He knows. He sees. He provides. He purposes.

He is not overcome. Or surprised.

I am exercising a tired (and unbelieving) faith muscle this morning.

I am remembering:

“Has God forgotten to be merciful?

Has he in anger withheld his compassion?” Selah

“I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

I will meditate on all your works

And consider all your mighty deeds.”

“You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.”

Psalm 77:9,11,12,14

And.

I am included.

“The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made.”

“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”

“The Lord watches over all who love him…”

Psalm 145:13b,18,20a

All.

Every. One.

I am His.

And He is Compassionate Power.

The confounded (!) internet will not be victorious.

God has even this.

"Cutter, Cutter, Peanut Butter"

The school term begins this week in Uganda. Which means that school fees are being paid en masse at banks across this land.

I have been paying fees for awhile now. Start early. That’s the secret.

Unfortunately, “early” is not an easy thing for me.

So, it was with firm resolve that I walked up the stairs of the bank last Thursday at 11AM.

Yep. Almost midday. The line was all the way to the door.

Resigned to my fate, I joined the queue.

A queue full of two faces: The Stare and The Gawk.

I have mastered The Stare. The trick is finding nothing to look at. No person. No one thing for a very long time. Just an indifferent sort of gaze.
Most of my fellow queue-ers were already well into The Stare mode when I entered. I broke their reverie with my arrival.

The long line, to a person, broke wholeheartedly into The Gawk. This is enabled by my very white face.

I pretend not to notice. But The Gawk actually seems to burn holes in my back.

I ignore The Gawk and with a deep breath I enable my own Stare hoping that the effort will somehow, magically make me blend in.

Everyone’s attention is drawn away from my pale skin by the first cutter.

She is smooth. She walks past all of us with her heavy bag and stack of papers. She, in mastery of The Confident Gait, takes her place well in front of me.

I am silently annoyed. But I say nothing. Everyone's attention was just drawn AWAY from me. I did not want to call that attention back. Several of my Queue-mates raise their eyebrows and snicker. It seems they are almost thankful for the break in the endless staring. Her misdeed is a sort of distraction. (telling) We all quickly settle back into The Stare.

Two more self serving individuals place themselves conveniently at the front part of the line.

I decide, that the next time I will speak up.

And in walks E. The sweetest older woman you’ve ever met. I have only had two opportunities to speak with her through the years, but she is deeply respected and valued in this community.

I felt my Stare morph into Gawk as sweet little E greeted her way to the front of the line.

I imagined myself calling sweet E out. And I shuddered a little bit.

With a sigh, I kept my mouth closed.

The woman with the crippled leg grabbed my attention next. She limped her way to the front of the line and no one complained. I momentarily felt proud of the compassion and patience we were all exhibiting on her behalf. Of course SHE can go to the front of the line.

She approached the teller. Finished her transaction and then left.

A few minutes later she was back. With another transaction.

And again.

And again.

Seems she had a bit of a hustle going on. ☺

Meanwhile, I barely moved for another half hour.

All of a sudden (I must have dozed), I was near the front of the line. There were two in front of me.

Only.

And then.

The Nun.

She jumped in front of the first gentlemen. He was caught off guard, lost The Stare and looked annoyed for a quarter of a second. Then was jolted back into reality by the fact that she was A Nun.

She sidled up to the teller and pulled out a huge stack of papers.

Gracious me.

I think she was paying school fees for the entire tribe.

More unfortunate than her stack of papers, was the teller she chose. In over an hour of waiting time, I had carefully observed the tellers. There were four at work. One was for business customers only. Three were for the rest of us. Two of the tellers I had begun to think of as MH1 and MH2 (“MH” stands for molasses hands). The teller at the first window would be our savior. He worked quickly, relatively speaking. And I loved him.

UNTIL…and in the third world there is ALWAYS something else…

Mr Bank Employee in is stylin’ tweed jacket comes to complain to the tellers about the line. After talking their ears off for several minutes, which only served to slow them down, (have mercy!) he came out to address the crowd.

He said something like, “This line is too long!”

Thank you. I will now refer to you as Einstein.

So Einstein begins to peruse everyone’s deposit slips. In some seemingly arbitrary way, he pulls people from the line BEHIND me and puts them in a direct line for teller #1. The savior. Which, in effect, made him lost to me forever.

Now, thanks to the brilliant categorizing of Einstein, I am stuck behind Pushy Nun and my entire day rests in Hands Made of Molasses.

At this point, I began to huff. I couldn’t help it.

It did no good.

Twenty five minutes later, I dragged my weary bones to the teller window and handed her my papers.

She languidly went through the motions. I held my breath lest she decide it was tea time and leave me standing there. But, with a million slamming slaps of her official stamps, she finally completed my transaction.

Painful. Long. And able to reduce my maturity level to that of a 1st grader.

“Cutter, cutter, peanut butter!”

Next time I’m going with that!

Too Little...Too Much

Ft Portal is currently undergoing EST. Electricity Shortage Torture. ("Torture" is obviously my own description.) Several months ago, UMEME (the only power company in Uganda) announced that they had to repair a major fault in the Ft Portal power lines and it would take some months. Months. They set a schedule to turn off our power at 7 am and then turn it back on at 7 pm. Everyday. But, unfortunately, they have misrepresented the truth. They rarely turn the power on at 7pm. In fact, it is quite impossible to share the schedule with you. It is a WWAGAR schedule. ("Whenever we are good and ready...") The power often comes after 9pm and goes off again at random hours in the night and early morning.
Which means we are getting very little usable power... unless, I become a complete night owl and never sleep...

To magnify the problem, our house is hooked up to an old, overused transformer which is known to catch on fire. Yep. You read that right. Fire.

When our transformer sparks and shoots out fire, our house looses power. So when the rest of town is using their already limited power, we sit in the dark. And think the loveliest thoughts. ☺

Two weeks ago, as we were preparing for a much needed trip to the capital city, our transformer spouted fire and we sat in the dark. For 4 days. We are a family of six, which means the already overwhelming laundry pile was growing exponentially while we waited for the power to be fixed. (We did wash some clothes out by hand...but that process was also thwarted by the unbelievable deluge of rain...hand washed clothes do not dry out well in such wet, moist weather.)

On Saturday night, our power came back on! Praise! I turned on the washer and the dryer and thanked the Lord for whatever minutes of washing we could accomplish.

Which wasn’t very many.

Our lights started buzzing. The power was spiking so high, our breakers were blowing like crazy. I stopped all the machines…but not soon enough.

On Sunday morning, when the power came back on again at normal volts, my dryer and my washing machine would not work.

To understand the depths of my grief…you need to read my past posts…here and here.
These washing and drying machines have been long awaited in my life and have brought me the greatest joy. That UMEME, who I already have more issues with than I can communicate politely on this blog, may have taken these precious ones from me…
makes me think words I shouldn’t.

Like…”Fooey”…

My tired brain has been on overload following a difficult season of ministry…so all I could do was pray desperate prayers for the healing of our machinery …unplug them…and quietly shut the door. God’s will be done.

I squeezed out water from the dripping wet washing machine load and hung those clothes out with the still wet load from the dryer. Then packed dirty clothes for our trip. Sigh.

In the power spike of that day and the previous weeks we have lost a TV, a microwave, washer and dryer and our inverter.

That is a rather long and discouraging list.

There is a bright side:

Our computers are still functioning--for which we are very thankful.
And we have solar equipment on the way in a sea container.

Which will get us off the spiking, machine destroying, rarely working grid...

Taking It Easy

When we began making plans for our trip to the AAMC conference several years ago, we decided to travel the “easy” way…flying. Driving from our home to the coast of Kenya would take 5 long, hard days one way. We decided to save our shillings and buy plane tickets.
Here is the rundown of our easy trip:

We left our home at 8:30am arriving in the capital city at around lunchtime. We grabbed a quick lunch and exchanged money for our trip. We drove the remaining hour to the international airport.
We arrived at the airport well ahead of time, and approached the desk to check-in.
The woman at the computer informed me that three of our family were booked on this flight, but three of the children were booked on the early morning flight the next day.

Um. That won’t work.

Jeff trekked upstairs to ask the “higher ups” if they could help us. Here was the wise advice of the airline manager:
“Just leave the three children by the check in counter overnight and the agents will help them on board in the morning.”

He seriously said that.

My, oh my.

Thankfully the kind women at the computers, thought better of that idea, (especially after witnessing the energy levels our children were displaying) and did everything they could to get us on the plane…together. That night.

We wrangled our energetic young ones for nearly two hours, hoping there would be at least 3 no-shows for the evening flight. Twenty-five minutes to departure we were all given boarding passes and told to HURRY! We rushed to immigration, needing to move quickly to board the already loaded aircraft.

Immigration.

Isaac has a new passport. “Well done, Mom!”… for remembering it would expire this year and securing a new one before traveling to Kenya!
BUT, his new passport had no dependent’s pass stamp in it. (This is the pass the children and I pay for every three years in order to live in Uganda). The immigration lady was not happy. She questioned us. Complained. Huffed. And INSISTED that it was IMPOSSIBLE to allow Isaac to leave the country.
We, amazingly, stayed calm. We assured her, we had not smuggled our 5 year old into the country. That we had in fact paid for his dependent’s pass, just like the other three children, but had neglected to carry the old passport with the proof. We pleaded and promised that we would most certainly pay the visa fee upon return, “WE LOVE UGANDA and YOU, DEAR IMMIGRATION LADY….PLEASE let us on the plane!”

She agreed, albeit grudgingly, and we finally wheeled our 6 bodies, 5 carry on bags and 6 stamped passports on board.

Upon arrival at Nairobi, it was late and our youngest two were very tired and uncooperative. We arrived to a FULL immigration lobby, with long lines at the Visa counter. (We all must pay for visas to enter Kenya.) I began filling in our arrival cards and visa forms (that’s TWELVE forms total) all the while shouting “SILAS RYAN STAY HERE” more times than anyone cared to hear.

We joined the neverending line.

A kind gentleman in an Airport Immigration uniform, paused when he saw me wrestling Silas in my arms…and asked if we were on holiday (the British word for vacation). We nodded and smiled hopefully, also adding that we were going to attend a conference. His helpful attitude dissipated and he said, “Oh, a conference.” He left us standing without assistance.
Having learned our lesson, the next immigration man that paused at our whiny clan received a rousing, “Jambo! We are on HOLIDAY!”

With the magic word leading the way we were escorted around the long line to a special help desk where three men began discussing if they COULD help us since I had written “holiday/conference” in the “Why are you in Kenya?” blank on the forms.

Jeff smoothly convinced them it was a holiday-like conference…and they agreed to help.

After 20 minutes of discussing all the places we had visited in Kenya, how two of our children were born here, and reminding everyone within earshot that “SILAS RYAN SHOULD STAY HERE!”…we were stamped and allowed to walk down the stairs to collect our bags.

We found them all….PRAISE….and pushed on through customs.

We met our taxi driver, loaded up our bags and were just about to head out to the hotel, when another taxi driver approached and began to….shout.

Yep. Our taxi driver was getting what-for from another very ticked off individual. And then the police showed up. Which usually doesn’t mean things are going to get better.

We sat for 20 minutes, while the 5 men pointed, argued and paced. Our taxi driver assured us there was no problem (all evidence to the contrary) and eventually, returned saying there was no case and we could leave.

At the hotel I had to fill out another form, then was given two rooms. The great finish line was near…and the keys wouldn’t work. We were escorted to a lovely waiting area full of glass tables, crystal, large glass windows... and Silas. Good times.

We finally made it into our rooms…slept…woke up early… and went downstairs to meet our driver for the return to the airport for our next flight.

Our driver didn’t show up.

At the last minute we were tossed onto a large bus with Kenya Scouts headed to Amsterdam.

We arrived at the airport and stood in the long security line waiting to check in. After waiting for a half hour, we learned that we were at the wrong terminal… and must go down the road a little ways. Terrific.

We joyfully pushed two carts of luggage and herded our munchkins on a busy road, to the next building. Thankfully, the security line was very short and we were quickly unloading our bags onto the security conveyor belt.

Security personnel began going through Kinley’s carry on bag. They said they had seen something sharp in her bag. While hefting our large bags back onto the carts, I kept my eyes on the hands of the security man, sure that he was after her camera or disc man. He emptied her bag three times, the lady behind him insisting she had small sharp articles in her bag. Finally, having found nothing, we packed her things and moved on. As we stepped away from the security desk, Alex, sheepishly held up his hand full of nails. Nails. “I don’t know how these got in my bag Mom. Sorry.” I snatched them from his hand and quickly deposited them in the nearest trash can.

We checked in and found our “waiting lounge” for the next flight. We waited and waited. The scheduled departure time came and went and our lounge became VERY full. There were no planes in sight.

About 30 minutes after our scheduled departure, the airline employees, shouted into a very poor intercom system, “Please exit the lounge and reenter so that we can re-check your boarding passes.” We were about 175 people at this point and outside the lounge was a space as big as, well, a thimble.

We CRAMMED our mass of bodies and carry on bags into the one inch (or so) that was the area beyond the lounge and laughed very hard, when the airline employees announced they were requiring this ridiculous check, “to save time”.

We finally, one hour after scheduled departure, boarded our plane and took off for the coast.

Our return trip involved a 7 hour delay which resulted in a 3 hour earlier departure…long story that still wouldn’t make since even after I explained it to you…and a late arrival back in Uganda.

Many,many miles...4 waiting lounges…12 luggage carts…3 taxi’s…3 pleading conversations…4 airplanes…4 hotels and 33 forms later…

We arrived back home safely.

The Easy Way.

If the Internet was a Race...

The internet.

A vague…can’t hold it in your hands or shake it…but it exists…Thing.

Do you remember when you first heard of the World Wide Web?
Back when the phenomenon of the Net was gaining momentum…we had just moved to Africa.

We heard of the wonders of the “race”. The amazing information. The immediate accessibility. The endless possibilities…

We eagerly joined in to “race” with the world. We wanted to enter the fray and keep the pace. Most other countries seemed to have a speedy, reliable, well-trained “athlete” in their “lane”. Month after month, year after year, the athletes improved…gained strength…ran longer and faster…and were much more impressive.

In our lane, the progress was slower. Amidst the cheering fans of the competitors, we nervously glanced at our athlete and wondered exactly what was going on. Zeroing in on our racer, we recognized the laughable nature of the situation. We searched for another participant. We felt an odd mix of panic and embarrassment. How did we end up with this guy? Ultimately, in desperation, we accepted the painful realization that there was no other option…
We sidled up to our "runner" and began to coax. We encouraged. We motivated. We paid money. We prayed. But in the end…as the speedy opponents lapped us again and again…we accepted the sad, sad fact…that our lane’s success rested on the hardened shell of…a turtle.

Slow and not always sure…

Many times…completely withdrawn and immovable…

Sigh…

As we continue to struggle through the race…that is, the internet…we are doing all we can…

But in the end…we are depending on….a turtle.

Thank you for bearing with us…

New Beginnings?

I've missed you.

It's been a sad, sad era in Internet Land for the Cashes. I can hardly believe I'm on my edit page. I haven't been able to move past actual blogs for about 6 days.

Before that, I was, diligently working to upload pictures. Work, that for the most part, proved futile...I'll spare you the gory details.

Nonetheless.

We will not quit.

And the blogs will keep on coming. Sooner or later.

Jeff has spent much time the last few days attempting to get us on a new internet service. He has more gray hair and no new service as of yet.

I repeat, we will not quit. :-)

And speaking of new things...I was headed to the edit page tonight, mostly expecting the internet to lock up before completeing the task...when the "change to new blogger" screen came up. They've been suggesting for some time that we switch...now, they are making us. So, with much fear that I would lose the connection sometime in the middle of my switch...I did it. It seems to have worked. Which is cause for much celebration in our home. Something worked!!!!
I'm just thankful that I won't have to sign in as "Old blogger" anymore. :-)

On to the new!