the bean and the bug

this was taken in Musoma, on the shores of Lake Victoria. we go to musoma to stock up on propane and do errands - it's about a 3 hour drive from us.

our gardener, Samwel, with curious onlookers.

my dad came to Mugumu for a week in September - among other things, he taught Ben how to whack a golf ball (75 feet in the air), flicked a lizard to it's fate over the hedge, met many of our friends and finessed his Swahili.

my mom and aaron - precious

Ben

So as not to leave out Ben, here are some recent pics of my gorgeous, edible three year old boy.

(I realize I am totally blogging backwards here!)

National Geographic - eat your heart out! :)

Ben has anywhere from 5-20 friends come to our yard on a daily, perhaps hourly, basis. Many of them are quite a bit older than him. Although at times we feel like we are the neighborhood kindergarten, we are thankful that Ben has playmates at a moment's notice. His Swahili has really been picking up lately - important words like "jongoo" (millipede), "kono kono" (snail), "mjusi" (lizard), "acha" (stop), "njoo" (come), "hapa!" (here), "ona" (look) etc.

one of his favorite activities is "fishing" off of our porch


turning 3 on august 2nd. we had about 10 neighborhood kids over for a party on the porch. i decorated the cake using a ziplock bag. Ben didn't seem to mind.

We had a day at Rosslyn where there happened to be facepainting - he wanted

"Lightening McQueen" - the "famous racecar!"

Aaron

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Aaron...

There are SO many more though - although, I do admit, as the second child, we don't have a picture to record every second of his life, like we did with Ben.

little aaron - two months

first smile caught on camera - 2 months

i like to call him my "little bug"

brothers

aaron has the smallest mouth I've ever seen. however, when he smiles,

it takes over his entire face. so adorable.

a "record" shot...or two

Ngorongoro Crater

Wildlife

catching up

From Nairobi...

We really don't come up here to Nbi all that often...it just seems like it's the only time we get around to blogging! I thought I'd throw together some pictures from the last few months and I hope to post some more pictures in the coming days.

Aaron is six months old now - starting solids, laughing a lot. He was born with his eyes wide open and he is one curious little baby. He loves anything exciting and new. He is a well-traveled little baby already - driven all over Kenya and Tanzania. Poor guy has had no choice but to be a rugged adaptable little baby.

Ben or "Mbogo" (Buffalo) as people in Mugumu call him, after his Grandpa French (Papa), is only the best little athlete the world has ever seen. This guy can hit baseballs and golf balls, throw a frisbee, kick a soccer ball and bounce a basketball and hit a tennis ball like it's just an extension of himself. Yes, I'm totally bias.

We're about to enjoy a week of relaxing in Nairobi. It has been a great but very busy last few months - highlighted by a visit from Opa and Oma Unger from Winnipeg. They stayed with us in Mugumu for two weeks, and then we had a week of vacation with them - traveling through Serengeti and Ngorongoro with them, spending a couple days in Arusha, and then some more time with Ryan and Kristen in Nairobi. Ben was in heaven with his grandparents' visit - so much attention. Opa can make matchbox cars the most interesting thing in the world - or stories about tails. Aaron made sure to secure a place in his Oma's arms every chance he got.

We love you Opa and Oma!!

Ben and Opa studying a caterpillar

Serengeti

Tasty

A bloggable day

Last Friday seemed worthy of a blog so I'll try to do it justice.
Ben got me up around 6:30 and I took Aaron so Carla could sleep for
a few minutes longer because Aaron had been up quite a bit. By 8:30
we had had the regular entourage of people including our gardener,
househelp, babysitter, milk delivery and neighbour.
(As a background to the whole day, Carla's sister had gone on a
trip that Monday and had planned to return by Wednesday or Thursday.
But she hadn't returned yet and no one had heard anything since she
left so Carla was feeling pretty ill.)
Walked to work around 9 and went through all the greetings with
everyone. Quickly looked into an issue with our little network at
CBHPP and then went to staff devotions. Found out that a few of our
staff including our director had spent the previous night in the car
having gotten stuck in some mud in the middle of nowhere.
So after some discussion we decided that me and two other guys
would go and pick help them out. So after picking up mud extraction
tools and food around town we were off. It really wasn't too far but
the roads got progressively worse.
But finally we found them half way between one village and another
and they were really, really stuck. The rear differential was pretty
much covered. So I pulled up behind them and hooked a rope up, we
hooked up a winch to a tree and we had our first shot but it didn't
budge. Over the course of the next 3 or 4 hours we dug down and
jacked the car up. We watched as the rain came approached and, right
when we were getting ready for our second try, it hit hard. Of course
people had gathered around so they came for shelter in the car so I
had a lady and her two kids and another guy in the car for the second
try. But low and behold, I pulled, people pushed, mud flew and they
got free! (I really think we had some extra hands pushing because I
did not think it would come free with all the rain.)
So we had a bit of a celebration and then we were off to tackle the
journey back. The roads had only gotten worse since the downpour so
at one point the other car did a full 180 spin out and at another
point I had one wheel a couple of feet off the ground and was tipped
over so far that fuel was leaking out of the fuel door - which I later
realized did not have a gas cap.
When we arrived at the closest village we stopped to get some food
and one guy even went to buy shirts for everyone. That's when I
realized that my wallet was missing. For once I actually knew exactly
where I had put it. I also then remembered that one guy had been
in my car for quite a while by himself after the rain started. He
had behaved sort of strangely when I got in but I hadn't thought
anything of it at the time. Anyway, so we collected some village
council men and drove back over the worst part of the roads (see
paragraph above) and to his boma or collection of huts. At first his
kids said he wasn't around but then we saw him and he came over to
talk. Of course he said he didn't take it but I'm almost certain he
did (and I'm not one to say that lightly) but what could we do.
So back to the village we go and as we stop by the village council
hut we see a couple of guys fighting with a crowd around them. They
run off and the crowd follows. What's happening I ask, "Oh some guys
are fighting with pangas." So the council man continues with writing a
letter on my behalf and as my eyes adjust to the hut I realize there
is a woman squatting on the ground with a kanga around her head which
is dripping blood. She had tried to get in between to youth who were
fighting and had been hit. There is one youth standing at the door
and he starts scolding her for her actions and blaming her. At one
point he turns to me and asks, in surprisingly good English and big
wide eyes, "So what do you think of us Africans?"!?!?!
So needless to say I was quite taken aback, it is pretty rare to
find someone who speaks English that far out in the bush, and man what
a question at such a time. So I said something about there being bad
people and good people in Tanzania and in Canada. Our director took a
brief look at the gash on the lady's head and thought it would be OK.
And then we were back in the car and driving back to Mugumu. We
arrived home just as Carla got the call that her sister was OK.
Unfortunately the only picture I have of the day was taken on my cell
phone. It's a blurry picture of one of my friends just after he's
stripped down to his undies and trying to run away from my limited
zoom on my cell phone.
I will try to blog and write somewhat more often.

Hope you all are doing well!
Kurtis

Last week I (Carla) had to send in a progress report for work, and for one section they asked us to share a story.  So I told the following story that happened around February.  I realized that I have not shared much about my actual work here with MCC, so I thought I’d post it as it kind of shows our daily reality here.  And just some general background info: Kurt and I work for Mennonite Central Committee, and are seconded to a local organization called Community Based Health Promotion Program.  The program does HIV/AIDS education and prevention, voluntary counseling and testing, home-based care for about 500 clientele from 14 surrounding villages, and helps clients with income-generating activities.  It’s really quite an amazing program working in a very difficult environment with little resources.  My job title is “home-based care coordinator,” and I work with 3 Tanzanian full-time staff in the HBC office.  (CBHPP has about 10 or so full-time staff).  Kurt is working to get the offices set up with computers and internet as well as doing general maintenance.  He is also becoming Mugumu’s computer guy so he gets lots of requests to help doctors or pastors or so-and-so’s with their computers.  We like our work although many challenges come along with it.

 

Right now I’m actually on mat leave – technically I have until September off, but will be helping with a 3 week home-based care training seminar that starts next week.  So I will take more mat leave off after the seminar is over.

 

Anyways…to the story…and of course, the promise to try to post pictures sometime soon:

 

We had a client come to the office with her 2 month old child.  The mother, Bhoke, was crippled in one leg but had walked the 13 km from her village to Mugumu center with the help of her aging mother, so that she and her child could get medical assistance.  When I met them they were gettinig ready to leave Mugumu to walk back to their village, but they had not yet arrived at the hospital.  They had decided that it was too late to visit the CTC clinic and needed to start walking home as to arrive back before dark.

We told them that we would drive them to their village if they visited the CTC.  They were able to go and see a doctor, who started the baby on antibiotics for a chest infection.  We started taking them home, stopping at a duka to buy their medicine.  As we were leaving Mugumu, we found out that they had nothing to eat at home.  So we went back to the office and gave them a supply of a mix of ground rice, millet flour and peanuts. As I drove them home I was asking about the health of the baby - he just seemed so small.  And I found out that the mother was only breast-feeding him twice a day, because she was told not to breastfeed him if she was infected with HIV.  So she was trying to give him a small amount of uji at home.  This was disturbing to me, and I encouraged her as best as I could to breastfeed the child when he was hungry.

 

A week later, the baby was admitted to the hospital for malaria and pneumonia.  The mother stayed in the hospital with the baby.  At Mugumu hospital, patients are dependant on family members to buy medications and bring food supplies to them.  However, since they lived 13 km away and had come unprepared to be admitted to the hospital, they had no food with them.  The grandmother left Mugumu to find a source of milk to feed the baby, and the mother stayed in the hospital.  A day after they were admitted, I went to visit them, bringing some bananas, milk, water and millet flour.  The mother and the baby had both not eaten in over 24 hours, and the grandmother still had not returned.

 

I held the baby in my arms and helped Bhoke find the small outdoor shed behind the hospital where there are some firepits.  She built a fire with some twigs.  I gave her an old pot and some utensils, and she cooked up some thin uji mixed with milk for herself and the child.  I tried to educate her about how to know if her baby was hungry, and how to prepare the uji so it was not too thick for the baby to swallow.  I tried to encourage her to know if her baby was getting enough food.  We went back to the ward where she tried to give her baby some food but after a couple of spoonfuls he was unable to take more and she gave up. 

 

Over the course of two or three days I visited them in the hospital several times, asking about her baby's food intake, talking with the nurses and pushing them to weigh the child regularly and monitor his progress.  In two days he went from 2.5 kg to 2.0 kg.  It was very frustrating to feel like people (including the mother) had already given up hope that this baby would survive.

 

Walking home from the hospital after a frustrating encounter in the hospital I was wondering about hope.  Was it reasonable to have hope for this baby?  What kind of life would he have even if he survived - living in a remote village, a crippled mother, an aging grandmother?  Little access to food, and a small chance of obtaining an education.  And then the story of Moses came to me.  We know the end of Moses' story, but what about the beginning - the parts where the Israelite babies are being murdered and the desperation of a mother who gives her baby up to the mercy of a river.  How bad would things have had to have been for a mother to let her child go in such a manner?  And I realized that if God can bring up a person like Moses out of a situation of desperation and despair, that we are certainly called to have hope for each infant, each baby and each child.  It is not up to us to decide what kind of a future a baby might or might not have - it is only up to us to choose to fight for and love each child, and leave it all up to God.

 

One day I went to the hospital to visit them and they had been discharged.  Feeling surprised that they would discharge a baby that was losing weight daily and obviously still sick, I talked with a doctor and got the baby tested for anemia.  He was highly anemic so I got a prescription for iron supplementation.  Then we drove them home with an adequate food supply (the grandmother was able to find a source of milk from the community and we had offered to pay for it).  And an HBC staff person who lived close to their village agreed to follow up with them after a day or two.

 

A week later I learned that the baby had died at home.  And although I knew that this was likely to happen, I still felt overwhelmed with sorrow.  On the one hand, he was in the arms of Jesus, yet on the other hand, it was the poverty, the lack of education, and the lack of adequate health care that led to his death.  How do we work to improve these circumstances so that more infants do not need to die?

 

Later, the same day I learned of his death, another mother came to CBHPP with her 2 year old child.  She had travelled 60 km, getting an expensive ride on the back of a truck, to have her child seen by a doctor.  She had obtained for him a prescription for antibiotics for pneumonia.  She came to our office to get her prescription filled.  But when I asked about his symptoms they did not sound like pneumonia - fever, stomach pain, diarrhea.  I asked if he had been tested for malaria, and she said he had not.  So I walked back to the hospital with her and asked a CTC doctor to test the baby for malaria.  He had a count of 100 (!) and was admitted for IV Quinine over a number of days.  I visited them from time to time and helped them get food and medicines.  After a few days her son was healed from malaria and they were ready to go back to their village.  As she was leaving she told me "If you had not refused to give me the antibiotics until we had tested him for malaria, he surely would have died at home."

 

To me, the stories of these two mothers and their children illustrates the kind of place we work in and the challenges faced.  People living in remote villages with little access to health care and little funds to travel to Mugumu.  Mothers with no health education and little empowerment to make decisions for their children.  Inadequate and incomplete hospital treatment.  Lack of food and lack of funds to buy medications.  Children dying preventable deaths.  The hardships seem overwhelming.   And yet we are still called to have hope for each child, to fight for them, to rejoice in the small victories, and to ask God to give us strength to continue working towards justice so that children do not have to suffer needlessly.