It’s too cold to go outside today, so taking Christmas decorations to storage will have to wait. Keeping the tree up another week. Lol.
A couple things on my indoor list today are to start up a batch of beef bone broth using Christmas roast “garbage” (underway)…
…and to try to revive my sourdough starter. Step one: bring to room temperature. I’ve not done this before, but all the info I’ve read says these uglies should be fine with some tlc. Let’s find out!
…
I left my job yesterday at 4:30 for the last time. It’s not quite retirement as I’m not old enough for that, I’m just entering a “not working phase” for an as-of-yet-undetermined length of time. Perhaps it will eventually run into official retirement, but that is a long ways away and remains to be seen. I may get another job doing who knows what. I’ll figure it out as I go along.
In the meantime, I have many things in my mind that I plan to bring into reality in time.
You see, I bought a book some years ago that captured my attention. It’s been gathering dust. And now I’ll have time to learn from it.
I have a list of things that have been wanting my attention that is incredibly long. Remodeling and repairs (doing as much of it myself as I can figure out), wall painting, new flooring, gardening, bread making, getting bees, canning, road tripping, starting up with some chickens, all the things!
Perhaps I’ll even blog more. But this time maybe I mean it!
One thing is certain…I deleted my routine work related alarms. It was a great beginning!
I had Covid back in May of this year (2021). It started one morning with a seemingly inconsequential sense of my sinuses being swollen, and I sounded congested (but wasn’t). A few hours later while drinking coffee I realized I could not taste it. Nor smell it. I scheduled a Covid test at Walgreens for the next day and immediately left work.
Once home, I began to try to taste and/or smell the most powerful things I could think of….salt, garlic, ammonia, bleach, vinegar, vanilla extract.
Nothing.
As I suspected, my test came back positive.
Because I could tell my brain exactly how those things smelled/tasted, I did “therapy” with them a couple times a day. I began to “come to my senses” after about four days. It took a couple of months to get most of my senses back. (I still don’t trust my taster though).
Then, about four months after my diagnosis, something weird started to happen. When I was busy or when there was something to smell, everything smelled normal.
But when things were quiet, if I wasn’t doing anything, and there wasn’t anything to smell it smelled awful.
The first time it happened I was lying in bed. Suddenly I began to smell a horrible burnt chemical/smokey smell. I got up to check the house and the smell disappeared. Until I got back in bed and then it returned. Everytime I was quiet or doing nothing and there was nothing to smell, the smokey chemical smell of nothing overwhelmed me. This started happening with increasing frequently…at work, in the car, in the backyard, etc.
It was clear I was suffering olfactory hallucinations. But why? I began to look for answers. And like every normal human being seeking medical information, I looked to the world wide web.
“Why am I smelling smoke when there’s no smoke?” I asked it.
Aha! It’s got a name! Phantosomia!
And it can happen after a viral infection.
And post Covid folks are reporting it.
It COULD be a brain tumor.
It’s probably from Covid. But what do I do about it? It actually became a big distraction. It kept me awake and then woke me up all night. It was so much ugh. It was affecting me.
And then I walked into some co-workers’ area. I saw an orange pill bottle with cotton balls in it. I learned that one of the co-workers made it for the other who had also had Covid and whose smell and taste was not returning well. It was a smelling jar. The cotton balls were soaked in essential oils: eucalyptus, peppermint, lavender, citrus, and oregano.
The smelling jar was to help her gauge how well she was able to smell from day to day. I asked if I could borrow it so that I could smell it when I had nothing else to smell. I left it open at my desk so that I could always smell it. It worked! It kept me from smelling smoke. I took it home and slept (head under my covers) with it open under the sheets. An uninterrupted night’s sleep! I kept using it and unexpectedly discovered that I had to use it less and less!
Over the course of about a month my need for it dropped off to every few days. It’s now been a few weeks without an episode at all. I don’t know if the smelling jar cured me of the hallucinations or if they went away coincidentally during my use of it. But I’m definitely so much improved.
So hey, if you’re suffering olfactory hallucinations (and it’s not a toomah) post Covid, give a smelling jar a try!! If you do it and have a good result, let me know!
~ Lou
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hebrew 13:2 KJV
After spending what I’m sure was a wonderful week or more in California, I hit the road back to Colorado, this time taking the southern route through Arizona. Despite being late September, it was a brutally hot day as I drove towards Phoenix. Along the 10 freeway in this part of Arizona, there are few exits, and even fewer places to stop for gas, food, or the bathroom.
As happened on the way to California in my previous post “Entertaining Angels – Part One”, I saw a figure walking in the distance along side the freeway. And I knew. I’d be picking this person up, too. Only he wasn’t hitchhiking. He was trodging, head down. And he was in trouble. Even though the temperature was pushing 110 degrees, as I pulled up next to him I could see that he wasn’t sweating. He was beet red and he was panting and he had no belongings, no water. He was wearing probably all the clothes he owned, including a heavy jacket. The sign for the next place where there were “services” indicated it was 10 miles down the road. I drove along side him with the window open telling him he needed to get in so I could get him cooled off. He was muttering to himself. I finally drove a little in front of him, got out and opened the car door telling him to get in. He did but he told me it wasn’t a good idea. I was busy wetting down a towel and some fast food napkins and putting them all over him, so I didn’t care if it wasn’t a good idea. I made him drink water. With all my years of experience as a nurse to help me, it wasn’t hard to determine two sobering things. One, this man was less than an hour from death and would not make it to the next gas station. And two, he was deep in the throes of paranoid schizophrenia.
I wasted no time in getting back on the road with the AC cranked to maximum and heading for that exit while the man sitting beside me had a conversation with someone unseen about how no, he wasn’t going to hurt me, because I was helping him. I sped up. He was rocking back and forth telling me to hurry because he didn’t want to hurt me. I kept encouraging him to hang in there, that it would just be a few more minutes, and told him to keep drinking water. Man, I was nervous. I was just praying that if I had to die that it would be quick and painless, but asked if I was going to get a prayer answered, let it be that I could just get the guy out of my car and to safety in time.
That was probably the longest six minutes of my life. But we made it. He had started to sweat by then (as had I) and wasn’t nearly as red, and he jumped out of my car as soon as we hit the gas station. I gave him some money. And I got the heck out of there.
No deep spiritual lesson in this one. Just that sometimes doing the things the Lord wants you to make you reeeeeally uncomfortable. I don’t know if either of these men I stopped to help ever made it to their final destinations, but I do know that both of them helped me along my way to mine.
…
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hebrews 13:2 KJV
I have a long and, well, colorful, if you will, “relationship” with hitchhikers. I was not brought up to pick up random people off the street, but I learned at a youngish sort of age that my path would often lead me to places where I would do just that.
My driver’s license was not even dry yet before I had my first experience with a hitchhiker. It was dusk and I was driving alone down a long stretch of road. The road was chain link fenced on both sides and I was the only car on it. I passed a young man going the same way as I with his thumb out. Without a thought I drove right past him. Women alone in cars don’t pick up strangers, right? But I immediately felt the Lord prompt me that I should have offered the man a ride. I made a U-turn as soon as I could to go back, but the man had disappeared. To where? There was no one else on the road, and there was no way to get off the road. I had thoroughly missed an opportunity. And I decided that in the future, if I could help it, I would not let that happen again. Over the years I practiced listening to that prompting and picking up people that I felt I was in the right place at the right time to render aid to. I never felt much in the way of hesitation. Until eight years or so ago…
Instead of flying on my annual September pilgrimage from Colorado to California to visit my people, I was driving this time. The sun was just rising as I crossed from Colorado into Utah. I found myself alone on the vast expanse of the freeway winding my way through the high desert. Off in the distance I saw a figure walking along the edge of the road. “Please Jesus”, I begged, “please don’t make me pick up someone out here in the middle of nowhere.” I slowed down as I drove past him. He looked pretty rough, was unshaven, and was barefoot. I kept him in my rear view mirror so I wouldn’t lose sight of him as I briefly argued with God, ultimately pulling over and stopping about 200 yards in front of him. He walked up to my window as I was tossing things into the back seat from the passenger seat next to me. He was rather incredulous as I told him to get in and asked where he was going. I knew full well this guy might be in my car all the way to Los Angeles. Offering him a ride stretched even my usual calm reserve about picking up hitchhikers.
No, I don’t remember his name. He was on his way to Phoenix and I told him I wasn’t on a schedule and offered to take him there. He declined that offer. We decided on Moab. A big detour, but what the heck. As we talked I learned that he’d been trying to get to Phoenix from the East Coast for months. It had been a huge struggle. He’d walked most of the way as few had been willing to stop and pick him up for more than a few miles at best. His shoes wore out some time ago. He hadn’t bathed in weeks. He was hungry. He had absolutely no money. His little kids were in Phoenix and it had been years since he’d seen them. We ate breakfast out of my cooler. When we got to Moab, we went shoe shopping. I gave him money, offered one more time to take him to Phoenix, and prayed with him.
But none of that was all that important. After he first got into my car, he told me why he almost couldn’t believe that I’d stopped for him, and it’s truly amazing…
“I slept out in the desert last night. I was cold and I was wet. It was the worst night of my life. I was feeling desperate, and I was feeling so angry. This morning I stood up and raised my fist to the sky and shouted at God at the top of my lungs…WHY WON’T YOU SEND SOMEONE TO HELP ME????? That was fifteen minutes ago.”
This man learned that God sometimes answers prayers immediately, even ones that weren’t asked in the nicest way. And I learned that I never want to forget what it felt like to know that had I not listened to that voice I would have missed out on the opportunity to be the almost instantaneous answer to that desperate shouted prayer. Now, instead of waiting to hear the voice, I ask God if I’m supposed to pick up this or that person. I even offer rides to some people who are not asking for one. Part Two of this particular story takes place on the way back to Colorado on this same trip. Stay tuned. (Click HERE for Part Two)
But don’t tell my dad.
…
My friend Abner was recently traveling over in the Middle East. “Meet up with me for a few days in Israel”, he messaged me. He would cross the border from Jordan, and I would fly into Tel Aviv where we would connect and head to Jerusalem. I’ve been wanting to go to Jerusalem for a long time, and if I could work out the details, I wanted to go. I got the time off almost last minute, arranged for a cat sitter, packed a backpack, and went.
Being a person who is both fascinated by and terrified by politics, seeing the Knesset and watching the public debates was on my “to do list”. We were only there for four days and saved the Knesset for the last day, Tuesday. Unfortunately, that is the day that the Knesset isn’t open to the public until 4:00. We got there at 11:00. This is as close as we got:
So we went across the street to sit in the Wohl Rose Park to discuss our Plan B.
The first thing I saw in the garden was a tent. A tent that looked like it had been there for a long while. Repaired with strips of colored tape and surrounded by stones, it seemed that someone was living there full time. The area around the tent was neat and tidy and it looked like it might be cleaning/airing out day as the fly was open and bedding was folded and piled onto a chair outside the tent.
Then I saw the probable occupant of the tent. An elderly looking gentleman was washing dishes at the drinking fountain nearby. As a lover of people’s stories, I knew I had to talk to this man.
So I put some shekels in my pocket and although I had a full Nalgene bottle of water, I headed over to use the fountain using the pretense of wanting a drink to strike up a conversation.
I asked him if that was his tent, and introduced myself. It was. His name was David. He spoke English very well, but in a thick Hebrew accent. “Do you live here all the time?” I asked. He did. Under my questioning he told me was there to protest, “a private matter”, he said. He’d been protesting there for eight and a half years. He asked where I was from. He’d never been to Colorado, but wanted to go some day. He had lived in the states before and served in the U.S. Army. I could tell he wasn’t used to casual conversation, and I didn’t want to pry further. I offered him a blessing and asked that God would incline his ear towards this man through the Knesset so that his issue could come to resolution. I gave him the money I had put in my pocket, and we shook hands. He told me I was a “very kind lady”. I thanked him, wished him well, and left. He returned to his dish washing and I to planning Plan B.
…
“Go To Machu Picchu” has been on The List of Fifty since it’s inception when I was a 10th grader.
However, I rather always thought that when I would go, I would go the hard way, you know, by hiking up there on the Inca Trail.
That was not to be. You see, the opportunity to go came too late…for my knee. I have a bit of an arthritis problem. My left knee has just gotten worse and worse over the years and it is no longer trustworthy. The discomfort it gives is tolerable, but it lacks the strength and stability needed for rigorous activity.
So when I was invited to Peru last month to visit a friend there, even though I was disappointed that I would not be doing the hike, I jumped (not literally, of course, can’t really do that either) at the chance. 🙂
Mag. Ni. Fi. Cent.
…
On Tuesday, while my phone was silenced for work, I received numerous texts. I retrieved them as I was leaving my office in Denver for home in Colorado Springs. Fire. Fire in the Black Forest.
As I made the long drive home, I could see the huge plume of white and gray smoke climbing in a massive column into the sky off in the distance.
Probably shouldn’t have been taking pictures while driving….
Closer to home and farther off into the distance I could see the smoke from yet another fire in the Royal Gorge creeping its way across the horizon from behind Cheyenne Mountain.
Different fire, different smoke.
When I reached the exit for New Life Church, I headed that direction. I parked on the side of the road and watched the fire. The nearest edge was only a mile or so away. Chinook helicopters were already chugging their way back and forth dangling Bambi buckets filled with water beneath them to, and empty from, the fire. They looked like mosquitoes dropping trickles of water into hell.
Not again. These fires are only supposed to happen once in a couple of lifetimes.
But last year at almost this exact time, there was a fire burning in the mountains behind my own house. It started in Waldo Canyon, one of my favorite hiking spots. I had been out shopping when I looked up into the mountains and saw smoke rising. By the time I got home a short time later, it had doubled in size.
Almost home, the Waldo Canyon fire had been burning for an hour.
It seemed like it was far enough away that it wouldn’t threaten my neighborhood. As it burned, I had to keep my house sealed up as the smell of smoke was so strong. It was so hot. No air conditioning, no breeze through open windows. I would go to sleep (fitfully at best) at night with those fires burning “back there” praying none would be caught unawares in the middle of the night. I would wake up in the morning with a lurch because of the smell, and I’d check the news and look around outside in search of fire. Always with the smell of smoke in the air. No one thought the fires would reach as far as the city, but I evacuated my dad who was on vacation and staying with me, just in case. I didn’t want to have to try to have any future evacuation any more complicated than need be. And a couple days later, devil winds picked up and blew that fire like a river down into the beautiful Mountain Shadows neighborhood just a couple of miles from my own neighborhood.
I had been taking photographs at a local school that looked down into a number of the canyons that were on fire when the winds inexplicably “collapsed” over the mountains and tripled in velocity. I watched in horror as the fire began to run out of the canyons and around the mountains seemingly directly toward my home. As I rushed to my vehicle and to home, I could feel my heart racing. When I reached home, I could see the flames not too far in the distance.
The view from my window as the fire entered the city.
As I was taking pictures of the fire from my bedroom window, I all of the sudden realized, I needed to leave. The smoke and flames were getting awfully close very quickly.
Not too much later and the smoke was just down the street.
I had already packed up in “pre-evacuation”, so I took a quick video tape of all the things in my house rapidly explaining in a very shaking voice what it was I owned, and what I thought things might be worth…for insurance purposes, and to remember. Smoke was blocking out the sunshine and burning my throat.
Within moments the smoke was filling my neighborhood.
I caught and loaded up my cats and picked up a few last minute items and headed out as the smoke and embers blew into my own little neighborhood in a toxic choking cloud. I said good-bye to my neighbors as they also evacuated and thanked my next door neighbor as he watered down our building one last time before he and his family left. As I was leaving, I got an electronic reverse 911 call instructing me it was time to get out NOW. I had already resigned myself to losing nearly everything I owned and was at peace about that. By the time I reached safety, everything I had evacuated with, including my cats, smelled like forest fire. I thought watching from a distance as the fire consumed everything in its path, that all of Colorado Springs was going to be ashes by morning. But it wasn’t. Miraculously, the fire was contained to, and stopped in, Mountain Shadows. The fire had been traveling a half a mile an hour, and the nearest burn to my house was only a mile away, but I lost nothing. Not true for so many. I thanked God for graciously sparing me. But 346 families’ homes were a total loss, quite a few those of friends. That fire was declared the worst in Colorado history.
But that record was not to stand for long. On Tuesday, less than a year later, the hellish quadrad of high winds, high temperatures, near zero humidity, and a longstanding drought lead to a another fire of epic proportions raging out of control through one of the most lovely areas in all of Colorado Springs. As I watched from New Life Church, I saw pops of black smoke rising out of the gray. That was homes burning. So awful to watch, even from a safe distance.
For the past five days, I have been experiencing that same sick and uncomfortable feeling remembering my own experiences a year ago. This fire was 10 miles away. I could see the smoke out the same bedroom window, only looking in the opposite direction. Across town, thousands and thousands and thousands more new evacuees were experiencing the same emotions and fears that we on this side of town experienced last year. I could feel it again like it was happening to me. There was one morning in particular, when I was awakened early to the smell of smoke, that I felt that shaky uncertain sort of scared feeling in my chest again. I quickly got up and looked out all of my windows, went outside to look for evidence of fire, and checked the news to see if there was a new fire, perhaps nearby. I had this feeling I should be packing up and going somewhere, just to be sure. I didn’t like it.
I had put the word out that my home was open for fire refugees, but no one took me up on my offer. Which turned out to be a good thing as a few nights ago my phone rang at 1:30. Those early morning phone calls are never good news. It was my friend Abner. And he was calling to tell me he was very sick. He was in Casper, Wyoming for work, and it sounded like he had malaria. I told him my house was available and to get here as soon as he could. What a weird thing to have happen in the middle of a totally different kind of crisis. So, as Abner, a malaria refugee, was getting over the worst of his fever and other symptoms, the heat lifted, the humidity rose, we got some rain, the fire abated, and evacuees started to return to their homes. Those who still had them.
As of tonight, 483 homes are a total loss. The death toll is two. Two souls trying desperately to evacuate who were captured by the flames. And, just like that, less than a year later, we have a new worst fire in Colorado history.
Things eventually begin to return to some normalcy. My windows are open and I don’t smell smoke. Abner was well enough to get to his parents’ home to spend Fathers Day with his pop. My mother, two sisters, nephew, and their cats, who were all evacuated the evening the fire broke out, have returned to an undamaged house. And that jittery feeling is abating for me.
Colorado Springs is an amazing city. For the second time in a year, the community absorbed 10’s of thousands of evacuees. Lines for donating food, water, and other supplies stretched for miles at various drop off locations. By basic standards, it’s a large city, but it acts like a small town. People line the streets cheering the firefolks who run in when others run out. When I had to evacuate last year, I had a dozen people offer a place in their home to me. I imagine that this is the same story many others would tell. It is likely that last year’s evacuees returned the favor to the exact same folks who took them in.
I am blessed to live in such a great place. I am blessed that all I have had to endure with these fires is some temporary inconvenience and a ongoing sense of uncertainty about future fire. When I lived in Southern California there would be times when it seemed more quiet than usual…more still than usual…warmer than usual. The birds would be quiet. There was no rustling of ocean breeze through the vegetation. Even the bugs were silent. We called it “earthquake weather”. Now, when it gets hot here, when the humidity dips into single digits, and when the winds kick up, it will be “fire weather”. And I will pray that epic firestorms are a thing of the past. I pray that lightening does not strike my wonderful community three times.
…
awe
[aw] noun, verb, awed, aw·ing.
noun1. an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand,sublime, extremely powerful, or the like: in awe of God; in awe of great political figures.2. Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence.3. Obsolete . fear or dread.verb (used with object)4. to inspire with awe.5. to influence or restrain by awe.
aw[aw] interjection
1. (used to express protest, disbelief, disgust, or commiseration.)2. (used to express sentimental or sugary approval.)
Chickens.
The actual bird is not problematic. Chickens are actually kinda cute, some are downright beautiful. I’m not afraid of chickens or anything. I’m okay with them being alive. I’m okay with them dead all ready to be cooked. And I’m especially okay with eating them.
I.
Love.
Chicken.
Bake it, fry it, roast it, whatever. Yum yum yum.
Where I fail as an African woman is getting said chicken from that live state into that ready to be cooked state.
Throughout Africa, it is not unusual to see a woman on the bus or minibus carrying a live chicken (the eating kind, not the laying kind) tied into a plastic bag with only its head out, or in a basket, or the like. This chicken is for dinner. The African woman will kill it, pluck it, and break it down in order to cook it for her family. (And it will be amazing because African chicken is soooo much better than any chicken I’ve ever eaten in America).
The only time I’ve been faced with any part of that process was in Zambia back in 2006. In case you’re new to my story, prior to my summer in Zambia, I had done very (VERY) little actual cooking. Didn’t really know how. I had never even made fried chicken. However, being very brave, I had purchased a number of chickens in order to make fried chicken for my team of TWENTY SEVEN people. Knowing it was likely that I wasn’t accustomed to slaughtering chickens, the woman from whom I purchased them quietly did that business out of my eye- and ear-shot and brought the now-dead chickens to me. She must have seen the rather horrified look on my face when I saw the pile of white feathered headless bodies as she immediately smiled and asked if I knew how to clean them. Which of course I didn’t. I also didn’t have a knife that would cut through bones even if I wanted to tackle the butchering part. So I paid her a little bit extra to do the job for me (and told her she could have all the “insides”). Less than an hour later, she returned with a big bowl of chicken pieces that looked a whole lot more like what I was used to seeing at home.
How I was used to seeing chicken for sale…
…what the chickens I bought in Zambia looked like…
I would have tackled the plucking part, but it would have taken me about a day or two to do the job.
I’m not sure I would ever be able to do the killing part.
And for that, I would not make a good African woman.
…
I was on a search. I needed a pair of shoes.
I was looking for a pair of shoes that had to perform very specific functions and meet specific criteria. I was going to be traveling and backpacking in Africa for three weeks and I needed a pair of shoes that were 1) extremely lightweight, 2) very durable, 3) had at least decent, if not good, arch support, 4) would be easy on easy off, 5) could be folded up to pack, 6) would double as water shoes, 7) because of reason 6 would need to dry quickly, 8) would be easily hand washed, and finally 9) were fully enclosed, and 10) could be worn with the back folded down like a slipper. Plus, if they could be not ugly, possibly even cute, that would be my bonus.
A pretty daunting list of requirements for a pair of shoes, no? I couldn’t find anything remotely close. I’d pretty much resigned myself to needing to take multiple pairs of shoes, which I was loathe to do. I really only wanted to take this elusive pair, plus a pair of flip flops.
Sort of desperate, I decided to drop into a Famous Footwear store that I happened to be driving past the day before I was to leave on my trip.
When I listed these things off to the salesperson she immediately took me to these shoes. I tried a pair on and couldn’t believe there was actually a shoe that appeared to fulfill every single one of my criteria. I put these shoes through their paces in my three week trip. They were awesome. And though they are a just little worn looking, they still look good enough to wear in my work as a nurse. And, as a totally unexpected bonus, despite wearing them non-stop day and night at times, and without socks, they did not get smelly!!! I will be buying additional pairs of these shoes in more colors as I fear they will not be an ongoing style in Skechers line-up.
I give you…….Skechers Go Walk Slip-Ons:
Available at shoe stores I suppose everywhere, and on amazon.com as well. Here’s a link to google images for them. Look at all the wonderful color choices!!!!!
…
And this is a big one!
In many parts of Africa there is a form of transportation called a “bike taxi”.
The bike taxi strikes fear into my heart.
Take a battered bicycle and put a “seat” on the back of it over the rear tire, and you have a bike taxi.
Like this one?
I wish. No.
Like these ones. (These have really good seats on them, by the way).
I recently went on another adventure to the African continent. The trip in a nutshell went like this:
Fly to Dubai, meet up with Abner, hang out in Dubai for a bit waiting for our next flights, and sleep in the airport. Fly to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania…me via Qatar, Abner direct. Meet up with Abner again. Spend night in DAR. Take boat to Zanzibar. Spend time in Zanzibar. Take boat back to DAR. Spend night in DAR. Take buses and minibuses from DAR to Malawi. Spend time in Malawi. Take buses/minibuses to Mozambique. Spend time in Mozambique. Fly from Mozambique to South Africa. Say good-bye to Abner as he heads to Lisbon. Fly home.
This post is about the middle part of the trip. The part where we meet up with friends in Sani/Nkhota Kota, Malawi. There’s a lot of stories to tell up to this point, but this is as good a place as any to start.
In Malawi, especially in the rural “bush” areas, women wear skirts. So, I was in a skirt. And we were backpacking, so I had a big pack on my back, and a smaller one on my front. And I’m not a young thing anymore…pushing 50 in fact. And we’d been on the road for over two days, so I was tired and sore.
As we neared the place where our bus would drop us off to meet our Malawian friends, I began to wonder how, in the dead of night (it was after 10 PM) we would get from the roadside drop off point to Sam’s house (about 10 km) into the bush. Is it too remote for a regular bush taxi? Would we walk? Or, please God, no, would he have arranged for bike taxis?
As you have probably guessed, it was the latter. I took one look at those taxis and pictured myself trying to jump up onto the back to ride it sidesaddle with all my gear, and in a skirt, and I nearly died. That was SO not going to happen. “Fortunately”, once the “taxi drivers” saw the color of my skin, the previously agreed to price all of the sudden became seriously inflated. I took that as my opportunity to encourage their immediate dismissal, opting instead to do the long walk.
Sam was quite amused. African women have literally no problem with this form of transportation. Even the very old ones with a parcel on their heads and one grandbaby in their laps with another one their backs. And they are graceful while doing it. Of course, they’ve been doing it their whole life. This would have been my first time.
I seriously hate being a “problem” like that. I try very hard to do the best I can to just quietly do what needs to be done. And normally, I am extremely “game” in most travel circumstances.
But not this time. I just couldn’t do it. So we walked. So I made all of us walk. 😦 And I was glad we did. It was so very dark and the dirt road was bumpy and full of washed out areas, rocks, and potholes. Even if I’d have gotten up there, I’m pretty sure at some point I would have fallen off, and possibly injured myself. This is what I tell myself to make myself feel better about not doing it.
Perhaps the next time I find myself faced with a bike taxi I won’t be in a skirt, I won’t be loaded down, it won’t be dark, and there would be a step stool. I’d give it a whirl if so.
But not this time.
In this particular case, I did not make a good African woman.
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I have a problem with this. Using Marines in full dress uniform to hold umbrellas? WHAT?? Have other presidents done this? Probably, I don’t know. But it needs to never happen again. It is, after all, at the very least, against their protocol to hold umbrellas. To me it just smells like O acting like a Czar, or an Emporer/Dear Leader, enlisting whatever peasant happened by to do his whim. No thought to the protocol, or the pride, of these magnificent Marines.
Seriously, what were Obama and Erdoğan doing with their own hands that they couldn’t have hoisted their own umbrellas? It would have been a really awesome thing if Obama had grabbed an umbrella and held it over Erdoğan, but there’s a part of me that just doesn’t think Obama has a paradigm for servanthood. He certainly has a strange (and dangerous, as seen in the Benghazi disaster) approach to being a commander-in-chief.
So much ugh-worthiness from this administration this week. But of all the scandalous things the O-ministration is up to these days, this awkward event spoke the most to me about Obama’s general attitude towards this country.
This country is in big trouble. You do realize that, don’t you??
All men are created equal, but some men are more equal than others.
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Perhaps we should learn from a people who have been there, and done that…
“Americans Never Give Up Your Guns“
(click above to read one Russian’s thoughts on gun control)
And when you hear people say things like “No one needs an AK-47 to hunt”, you should be thinking, “well, duh”.
The right to bear arms is about the right to protect yourself, your property, and your family against a tyrannical government. When the states added the second amendment to the constitution, they were not thinking about hunting. They had just fought a bloody revoluitonary war to be free from a government that exercised unrestrained power over them…THAT is what drove them to want that protection embodied in the constitution of this country.
What is tyranny?
tyr·an·ny
noun, plural tyr·an·nies.
1. arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority.2. the government or rule of a tyrant or absolute ruler.3. a state ruled by a tyrant or absolute ruler.4. oppressive or unjustly severe government on the part of any ruler.5. undue severity or harshness.
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Often when reading the Bible, I learn something unexpected. I recently was reading Jeremiah. I have read this book before. But verse 7:16 jumped out at me. I don’t ever remember reading this before. I won’t get into the context or anything, because I believe this verse stands on its own as well as in context. This is God, speaking to Jeremiah:
“Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.” (KJV)
INTERESTING! There are times when God simply chooses not to hear certain prayers. God basically tells Jeremiah, “don’t even waste your breath, dude.” But also, he’s commanding Jeremiah to NOT PRAY. Therefore, if Jeremiah would have prayed in that way when God told him NOT to, would he not have been sinning by doing what he was told not to do?
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It is a new year. At least by the Gregorian calendar it is. The calendar we use is named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it 1582. It replaced the less accurate Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar is accurate relative to the length of a solar year, but boring. Most of the months are named after mythical gods or Latin numbers.
In China, 2013 is the year of the snake. The Chinese calendar is way more interesting than ours. It’s filled with creatures and complex explanations of the attributes of months, years, signs, etc. Chinese New Year falls on February 10th this year, so I guess it’s not quite the year of the snake yet. It is still the year of the dragon. I was born in the year of the dragon, tempered by the element of wood. You can do a search on that to find out how that makes me special. 🙂 I was not only born in the year of the dragon, I am a Capricorn. A woman I worked with once (many years ago) who was from Thailand, told me that in her country, in the time I was born, I probably would have been killed because I was girl born under two very powerful signs. She said that in her culture, there was too much power in that combination for a woman. I’m glad I was born in America.
2013 AD (or CE, you pick) correlates with the Jewish years 5770-5771. Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of the Jewish new year. This year the celebration will start on September 4th. By far I like the history of the Jewish calendar the most. It started on the 6th day of creation, the day that Adam and Eve were created. I can’t hazard a guess as to how much time transpired prior to the day of the creation of man or to how old the earth is, because God exists outside of time. The thing that the Jewish calendar is missing for me, though, is Jesus.
So, despite its relative mundanity, my favorite calendar is the Gregorian one…the one that marks time relative to the birth of Jesus (likely inaccurate by years as well as months and days). I like that every time a reference is made to the year, that a quiet recognition is made to His very existence.
Happy New Year! Happy 2013 years (give or take) after Christ’s birth.
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In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Replace “rich” with “Jew” and it’s a Nazi propaganda video. Everything that is wrong in America is become of the rich. Everything that was wrong in Germany was because of the Jews. The parallels between these two propaganda are myriad. This is so disturbing. What on earth is this video even supposed to be used for? SHAME on everyone involved in it. Extra shame on Ed Asner. How can even be involved with a project depicting a rich white man urinating on a middle class black woman. UNBELIEVABLE.
I think I hear black helicopters.
12/06/12 Update: The teachers union removed and edited the video to remove the portion where the white rich man urinates on the poor black people. Good call. But the rest of the video is just as bad. They’ve reuploaded the edited version. Bad call. They should have quit while they were ahead.
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Calling someone a hero is such an overused thing anymore. Doing so has nearly lost its’ power, at least for me, at least in my country. Too often, we throw the word around like it is nothing. When I was young, a hero was someone who rushed in without thought of their own personal safety, just on instinct or habit or natural inclination; to save the life of another, like Superman stopping an oncoming train from hitting a car of children stalled on the tracks. Or it meant it was someone who would make the life of another something so much better than it would have been if not for that heroism. True heroism can be a single act, or it can be a lifetime of action. Heroes don’t mean to be humbling, but they are. They make us look at ourselves and wonder if we could ever be heroic like that. I don’t think that Harry and Echo VanderWal would be all that comfortable being called heroes. But if they are not, then who is?
If you ever find yourself talking about how something needs to be done about this or that problem in the world, how do you respond to yourself? Do you just talk and make demands of others, or do you actually DO something? Or perhaps you are simply struck with analysis paralysis finding that despite wanting to help and wanting to do something VERY good, you do not HOW? Well, here’s a how you can help some real heroes do their heroic work. Support the work of the the VanderWals and the Swazi people. Give to The Luke Commission and help their work not just to save one life at a time, but to save an entire country from the ravages of HIV/AIDS and from REAL lack of access to even the most basic of healthcare services.
The VanderWals run hundreds of clinics, year after year, reaching into every nook and cranny of Swaziland. They treat many hundreds of patients at each of these clinics. They facilitate ongoing care year after year for those with chronic medical problems. They bring health and they bring hope. They help failing eyes see again. They bring mobility to those who otherwise would be stuck in their simple homesteads, unable to manage the rocky streets without durable carts. They screen for and treat hypertension, diabetes, and tuberculosis. They treat everyone for intestinal parasites which rob people of whatever meager nutrition they are able to obtain. They are performing hundreds of adult male circumcision, a procedure that is proven to reduce the risk of spreading AIDS. At each of these clinics they stay well into the dark seeing every single person who comes for help, no matter how late into the dark it gets. No one, not one person, is turned away. Never. Harry and Echo see patients and operate in the darkest of night until every last patient is cared for.
Trust in Swaziland is hard to come by. The Swazis trust the VanderWals because the VanderWals have proven themselves trustworthy. Because of that, the Swazi people get tested, get treated, get life. No one has been successful like they have been in helping to turn the tide for these beautiful people.
I’ve seen them in action. It is humbling.
YOU can help #192. You can help hundreds of #192s. Your money could simply not be more well spent.
On this World AIDS Day 2012, do something tangible to make a difference.
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