New insights

I had a conversation with a mother about delivering children in the hospitals here.


Here were some of her observations:


If it’s dark, and you don’t have a lamp, the nurses will leave you and go help someone deliver that has a lamp.


If you yell or scream during labor, the nurse will beat you or abandon you until you are done.


Many children die because of nurse-negligence.


If you don’t bring gloves and a plastic sheet (like are in the Maama kit), the nurse will not let you on a bed. She makes you deliver on the cement floor.


Women who are used to delivering in the village (in a standing position), find it difficult to push when they come to the hospital and are made to lie on their back. If they tell a nurse that they “can’t do it” lying down, the nurses have been known to slap them.


I don’t know if you are aware, but the hospitals here are not required to feed you (or care for you in a general sense). If your loved ones do not come and cook out in the yard for you or bring you water, bananas, etc., then you just don’t get to eat while you are trying to heal??? Makes sense, huh?


The power has been completely out here for a week, and it’s been off and on in the capital city of Kampala as well. A missionary friend in Kampala said that when the “powers that be” turn off a power grid in the city, they don't consider what is on that particular grid. Sunday, when we were arriving in Kampala, I witnessed major intersection lights out, and no traffic cops to assist in the need. My friend says that when they turn the grid off where the hospital is located, they don’t even seem to care. MANY patients have died because of lack of power, and it seems that the government doesn’t take notice. It’s not like you can sue here and get any justice.

This is the rat...

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Yes, that is a dead rat you are seeing!!!!

AND, it ate a little more than malt.

½ bar laundry soap

Sweetarts candy

1 Mini Hershey bar

He got into a bag of Peanut M&M’s

1 huge hole in the girls’ mosquito net

Grits

Note paper

1 silky pair of pajama bottoms

1 pair of athletic shorts

2 of Caleb’s Bendaroos

He got into a granola bar

He got into my bag of Trail Mix!!!

He got into TWO bags of flour

He gave a Ken doll a lobotomy

2 glitter pens

6 Mini Reese’s

2 raw eggs, rolled to a corner and cracked open (before I found them after too long of time)

A USB computer cord

An ipod charging cord (shredded it)

Cardboard stuffing inside a box

Chewed open a bottle of red ink (it went everywhere)

Chewed open a bottle of black ink (it also went everywhere)

Chewed open and ate half of 2 contractor bags (holding our luggage)

Gnawed on a luggage handle

Ate Minnie Mouse’s ear

Chewed a hole in a stuffed elephant

Pooped on Kylie’s bed and shelves

Pooped and peed all over my pantry, our garage, and the kids’ room

Nested in Kylie’s underwear

Chewed open a water bottle (water went everywhere)

Gnawed on my TUPPERWARE!!! (thank goodness my chocolate chips are safe)

Styrofoam peanuts

After three weeks of battle, he was found dead in a bag of cushy styrofoam peanuts.

My kids brought back some rat traps with them, and they had only been out TWO days...but they didn't get him.

Someone else in America is sending some glue traps, which I will be diligent to leave in my pantry!

Before any American traps were set, Doug saw bloody footprints on a plastic box in the garage. I guess one of he Ugandan traps I had set three weeks ago, actually went off and nicked him.

No matter. He’s gone, and I’m leaving traps permanently up in strategic areas in case his cousins decide to come in.

For now, the dead rat is out in the burn pile, and my garage and pantry smell like bleach, and I am one happy momma!