KILLER ANTS!!!

I went to the market today and picked up a kilo of green beans. Stephanie spent the better part of the afternoon picking off the ends and snapping them. Stephanie cooked them all up and I dressed them with salt and a little extra virgin olive oil. A short while later, as we were getting Timothy ready to eat a banana, we notice Timothy acting distressed about something with his shirt. Then Stephanie feels something bite her stomach. She looks down and there is a small red mark on her stomach. We notice a similar red mark on his stomach. I look down and see a medium sized black ant looking like it’s injured. I put it out of its misery with the sole of my sandal. As a minute or two passes, the minor discomfort Stephanie and Timothy were experiencing is transforming rapidly to an intense burning pain. We rush to the bedroom to find some pain reliever to apply to what is now a small red welt on each of their abdomens. The pain reliever kicks in and all is well. My only guess is that this killer ant was crawling around in the green beans and ended up on Stephanie’s shirt. When she picked Timothy up, she held him against her body, crushing the ant. Its defense mechanism kicked in and WHAM. Another day in West Africa.

Of course Stephanie saw two more ants in the bathroom later that evening…

Needless to say, the insecticide will be coming out in full force in the morning.

Electricity

First night here we had some power. I actually woke up cold in the middle of the night (around 1 a.m.). Then about two hours later, awake, and hot. HOT, HOT, HOT. No power. No a/c. No lights, anywhere, in the house. I groped around for my new Nigerian cell phone and slowly made my way downstairs to where I could do some writing, since I wasn’t doing any sleeping at this point. I wandered into a downstairs bedroom and found a candle. As I worked from candlelight, I thought about how things were back in the day before we even had electricity. Candles were it. Or kerosene powered lamps. One thing you don’t realize about candles when you aren’t relying on them for light and you are not living in an artificially climate controlled environment is that candles give off some heat. Not enough, perhaps, to raise the room temperature by a full degree, if there is only one candle in the room, but enough that you notice it if it is near. Three out of the first five nights we were here were unsleepable, due to the heat. For me, anyway. Four out of those five were mostly without power. The sixth, we have had some power. Praise the Lord for his goodness. Psalm 107:8 says “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!”

Recently we completed a bout of 60 hours straight without any electricity from the power company. It went out Monday the 20^th around 8 a.m. and it was out completely until Wednesday, 8 p.m. I don’t know which is worse, power off completely for 60 hours straight, or intermittent power. Correction. I do know which is worse, given the fact that the a/c in our room does not function when we are on generator power!

The generator they have here at the McLean’s house is massive (they call it a “32k” model). Must be thirty-two thousand somethings. It is in need of an overhaul. I can’t even imagine how much that would cost. And the cost for running it is prohibitively expensive to use for more than about three or four hours per day. Although you need about six or seven or eight hours of electricity per day if you want to keep the temperature in your freezer cold enough to keep meat frozen. Our generator will be on the smaller side, 6,000 watts.

There are two really weird things about the power here. One is the randomness of it all. One minute there’s power, the next, no power. Ten minutes later, or two and a half hours later, or ten hours later, the power randomly comes back on. There is no predicting when it will go on or off with any reliability. The other weird thing is for a room to be pitch black in the middle of a city. I mean, pitch black. Like a cave black.

After nearly 36 hours into our 60 hour blackout, something miraculous happened. God brought us a rainstorm. It dropped the temperature from 91 to 84 over the course of about a half hour. And let me tell you, that 84 degrees with a ten to fifteen mile an hour wind felt like it was 72. It was a beautiful thing. We all walked outside and basked in the joyful cold wave. Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!

Too Big House

Where are you going to be living? And when are you going to post some pictures to this blog?

I'll answer your second question first. Given the slowness of our
Internet connection it is difficult to post photos to the blog. We
will try to do so as we can, but for the time being, they may be few
and far between. We are hopeful that at the end of the journey we will be able to put together a nice montage of everything summarizing our time here. Just to give you an idea... I have spent the last fifteen minutes trying to upload one picture. No avail. Trying again the next night… This is our entryway and staircase as it was the other day.

Right now we are staying with the McLeans. It is a beautiful living
space. All the comforts of home (when there is power); very well
furnished and beautifully decorated. You could show this home on one of those designer programs on the telly. They have been fortunate to be able to keep this place over the years and so they inherited much of the furniture from previous occupants.

Our house, on the other hand, has . . . potential. It's a five
bedroom, three bathrooms on two stories with two other dwelling units in the compound. The security guard's name is . . . get this . . .
"Everett." How ironic. It's definitely not a Nigerian name. I will
have to find out the story there. But back to the house… when we first saw it last week, well, we weren't exactly excited, but we weren't really in despair either. It's just a lot of work living in a house here. Here is an example of the current state of one of the bathrooms.

Well. It was my intention to post a photo here. Foiled again. Stupid
cell network. I will try again here shortly.

The floors need to be mopped all the time because of all the dirt. And if there are any little holes in the screens, that's a potential vector for mosquito entry. And mosquitoes can be deadly here. Ever
hear of malaria? We're taking preventative medicine to thwart the
dreaded disease but it's not always 100% effective. I may write more on that one later. Yet one more thing for which we simply have to trust in God.

Psalm 56:3-4 says:
What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust;
I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.

I'm going to change that last part of verse four… I will not fear what
mosquitoes can do unto me.

What is it REALLY like?

The luggage arrived!! The principal and pastor of the Bible school,
Pastor Jakin, was willing to get on a bus, travel ten hours north to
Abuja, stay in a hotel overnight, go to the airport, fight with the
customs agents about whether he should have to pay an import tax on the diapers (obviously he didn't have a child with him) and then
wrestle with the six action packers and take a flight back home to
Enugu. We owe him big time. I am so grateful. I will be forever
grateful to this kind and generous man. We are so thankful.

I know what you are all really wondering is this: so tell us what it's
really like, Everett. Okay. I will try to muster a few words about
what it's really like in Nigeria.

It's HOT. Unbelievably hot. Unimaginably hot. Sweltering. The first
night we were here the power went out at around 1 or 2 a.m. and I was unable to go back to sleep in the 85 degree house. The air temperature outside was not much cooler… a balmy 81. And that's at 3:30 in the morning! When we first arrived at the airport in Abuja it was hot. But the airport, at least, had some air conditioning, so it ranged from probably 75 to 80 degrees. It didn't matter a whole lot We were just happy to be stationary. It was in the mid 90s today. Outside this afternoon it was 95. Inside the house, 93. NEPA, the local power authority, has been referred to as Never Ever Power Anytime. Or some variant of that. Which has been true a good part of the last four days. Oh well. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

We were overjoyed when we saw the McLeans at the airport in Abuja. What a delightful surprise! Bro. McLean had told me over the phone that "someone" would meet us in Abuja but gave no clue as to who it would be. When I later tried pressing him for details who would meet us, he only said that he knew the guy. Seeing them, made the problem of the lack of luggage seem like a very small thing.

Expect the Unexpected

I couldn't quite decide whether to title this post as it is, or maybe
instead "Predictable Unpredictability." In any event, that pretty much
sums up Nigeria. Another bit of wisdom shared with us by Bro. McLean (and passed along to him by Bro. Nickerson, who was a missionary here through the 80s): If you accomplish just one thing on any given day, you can count it a successful day. It seems a little harsh, or maybe like overstating things, but I think we will find it to be true.

So… what's new? What's different? What's going on in your little
corner of the world there, Everett?

Well the first order of business was to pick up a cell phone. We have
one now, and you can call us whenever you like. Well, just be sure
that it's before 2 or 3 p.m. Central time otherwise we are likely to
be asleep. We don't wake up in the morning usually until 11 p.m.
central at the earliest. So if you want to reach us, try in the
morning, or in the early part of the afternoon. I picked up an
international calling plan through "OneSuite" which does not seem to
be all that more expensive than Skype. To call our Nigerian cell phone from the U.S. would be on the order of around $.27 a minute, I believe. Yes, expensive, I know. But $3 for one ten minute phone call isn't all that much I guess! If you do want to try giving us a call, please email one of us and we will send you the number.

By the time you are reading this, you will know that the next order of
business was to get connected to the Internet and if you are reading
this, you can be assured we were successful. We are now able to use our cell phone as a modem to connect to the Internet. It took about 24 hours for that to get fully processed, so that is the reason for the delay. All told, we ended up spending about $65 for the phone, Internet access, and enough phone cards to last us for a few days (or maybe some weeks). We're not sure how quickly the minutes / Naira will be used up.

Just an aside, Naira is the Nigerian currency, and the exchange rate
is roughly 175 Naira to the dollar at present, although it has
fluctuated wildly over recent weeks. 175 is really high, 115 is really
low, and right around 140 to 150 seems to be what might be considered normative.

Finally, to reward those faithful enough to have made it this far, if
you wanted any salacious detail about any misery we may be
experiencing, I will tantalize you with this little tidbit. Guess how
many of our six action packers made it to Enugu with us? No, really,
take a guess. Take a wild guess. I imagine you have guessed it by now. Yes, you are a winner. The correct answer was indeed a big fat ZERO. When we arrived we had no luggage (aside from our carry-ons) and the initial estimate is that it would be four days (at the EARLIEST) before we MIGHT have a chance to see our beloved action packers.

I feel a little bad because we will be sending someone to Abuja to
pick up all of our Action Packers. What a nightmare. I thought it was
going to be bad with two adults. I suppose it's not too much more for
one person to manage than for two adults with a three year old child
along with them. But it's a $200 round trip flight, plus the extra
baggage fees we are going to incur. Ridiculous. I am very much hoping that the airlines will reimburse our out-of-pocket expenses relating to the retrieval of our luggage.

But my scripture reading for today says this:
We glory in tribulations
Knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
And hope maketh not ashamed;
Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
By the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
For when we were yet without strength
In due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Brr... It's Cold Outside

D-Day has arrived!

41 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. We won't see THAT again for a while!

It's official. We're still going.

I hope to post something a bit more substantial tomorrow from London.

One more week!

One week from this very minute we will be in the truck, loaded up and headed out to the airport.

Scary.

It seems like the "to do" list has grown longer and the number of items being checked off has not increased. Here a little, there a little, line upon line.

I am excited to get these Action Packers out of the house and into the fray. I am dreading the sight of these monstrosities when we hit the ground in Abuja.

I am looking forward to emptying the contents of these beastly beasts into our "apartment" (or, flat, if you will). I am not looking forward to the string of flights connected loosely by stays of various lengths in airports of various ilk.

I am excited to see our "new place." I am not so excited to worry about thirty-six hours of wondering what the boy is going to eat or not eat.

I can't wait to get in the classroom and teach. I don't know about five hours straight in "Africa hot" temperatures, three days a week, with a little boy along to boot.

I didn't grow up with air conditioning. But it seems to me now that I haven't spent more than an hour or two at a time without a/c since, oh, probably, 1992, not including the occasional vacation.

I am more excited than I am anxious or nervous or worried. I'm very excited, actually.

Africa, here we come!