We're Leaving on a Jet Plane

Blog Post About January 2021

The morning we were leaving, we got up early to get PCR tests. Everyone was a real trooper except me. One of my children has a video of it, but of course, I will spare you, and it will remain hidden.

Several friends came to pray over us and say goodbye as we were loading the car. For the things that wouldn't fit (see one of the items in this post), a sweet friend mailed them to us.

We made it to the airport with zero positive Covid tests and said our last goodbye to Kylie from the same. time zone.

Keira always has some crazy "arrival eyes."

And when I finally had access to my texts again, we had a sweet text from Kylie ;)

After arriving, we settled in a hotel and Doug got our car from a friend who had been taking care of it. 

After getting some sleep, Doug ran some much-needed errands. 

One of those errands was scheduling for the "generator man" to come and hook our house up to the neighborhood generator.

We went to see the house we had rented 7 months early. It was Keira's first time to see it and mine and Karis' second.

The man that kept our car had some guys clean the house for us before we got there, but unfortunately, they didn't do the most thorough job.

While Doug was unlocking the door for us to go inside, I saw this plug in the outside porch area.

Guess we aren't supposed to use it :)

Thankfully, city power was on, so we had lights. 

You can see where we ran our fingers over the wall in all of the dust the cleaners had left behind.

The "generator man" was late. We waited for TWO hours (cleaning in the meantime), but he never came.

January 14, 2021

The next day, Doug graciously hired the cleaners we've had for our other houses, and they did a fan-tab-u-lous job!

They bring about 12 guys and clean from the roof all the way out the front door.

Yes, they literally mop their way out to the street!!

January 15, 2021

Some dear friends of ours invited us to live with them until we could actually get in our house. The hotel was expensive, so we took them up on their offer. Karis went to live with two single girls, and the other 4 of us moved in with our friends.

This is our luggage as we are leaving the hotel.

Two days later, Doug and I went to a "cabinet" store to order our cabinets. You knew that most houses come without cabinets, right?

Doug had already met the man on a previous day at the house to take measurements.

This is what our cabinets looked like on the man's computer when we finished.

Is this what we got?  No

Did we get them within a month?  No

The saga continues...

The Second Coming (of family)

Blog Post about Summer 2020

Doug, Kylie, and Caleb were left behind to finish things up after the lightning-fast move. 

Doug had to take our air condition units off the wall at our old house and put them in storage. 

He hired a crane to take the water tanks off our roof and move them over to our new house. 

Then Doug had to get permission from our new landlord to put a western toilet in our new house and turn the bathroom door around because the door swung inward over the squatty area.  The landlord really wasn't excited about it, but he agreed to it.

In the meantime, Doug was watching the news. He was waiting for commercial flights to start up again, but instead, things seemed to be getting worse.

So he booked flights on a charter to get them out on June 28, 2020.

And guess what?  

On the city's instagram post the day they were boarding the plane, these were the posts:

"NEW ROUND OF LOCKDOWN IS EXPECTED TO IMPOSE FROM TOMORROW."

"LOCKDOWN FROM 6:00AM - 0:00AM TILL JULY 4"

"PHARMACIES, SUPERMARKETS, GROCERIES, AND BAKERIES WILL REMAIN OPEN DURING LOCKDOWN DAYS. 

LOCKDOWN PERIOD: JULY 29 - JULY 4. 

LOCKDOWN HOURS: 6:00AM - 00:00AM 18 HOURS"

Coincidence?  I think not :)

So, while they were boarding, I was watching more instagram posts come through and feeling so thankful.

The next day said, "AIRPORTS THROUGHOUT OUR REGION WILL REMAIN CLOSED TO COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS UNTIL JULY 15th."

I'm so thankful that Doug felt led to buy tickets and get out, because realistically, commercial flights did NOT come back on July 15th, and it would have been a long time until he found one. The charter flight just happened to be the best option.

On the day they left, the Covid numbers in our region read:

Total confirmed cases 5,533

Total recovered: 1,634

Total deaths: 180

Total active cases: 3,719

I am more than aware these numbers pale in comparison to what was going on in America. I was keeping track of the numbers there, too, and this screenshot from May 30, 2020, was one month before we flew back.

 

We found it, Now let's Move!

There were no commercial flights arriving or departing from our country, but occasionally a charter flight would come available. When one did, Doug booked Karis, Keira, and me on it. We were going to leave June 21, 2020, so we could get Karis back in time to quarantine for two weeks before she went to ballet camp. And since the chartered flights were more expensive, only half of us flew, while Doug waited to see if the airport would open up and he could get something cheaper for the rest of them.

Two days before we left, on June 19, 2020, we found a rental that fit what we needed!

 

Perfect timing, too, because on June 20, 2020, Doug had already hired movers to come and get our belongings to take to storage.

We still went with this plan because we knew the new rental would need to be cleaned before we moved into it, and since we were going to be in America for about 6 months, we didn't want to clean it and have it sit and collect dust while we were gone.

You've heard the term, "It takes a village?"

Well, we took the village and we used them.

A friend who had been stuck in our country for quite a few months because of Covid offered to be at our house while the movers wrapped and packed everything into the truck.

Then I was on the other end of the truck, at the storage house. 

I showed the men the three rooms we were allowed to move into, and I made sure they stacked things well.

So instead of a stacking job looking like this, I would kindly ask someone to make it look like

this.  And so on.

Then, another friend was with me to translate. The movers spoke a language that I do not know.

In the meantime, our first friend stayed at the original house for most of the day while the truck went back and forth.

During all of this, Doug was at the police station in our new neighborhood, registering us to live there. There was a lot of waiting around and moving to different buildings for different pieces of paper. It was almost 4 hours before he ever made it to the storage house.

And our children had taken our need-to-live items (including all of the suitcases that would be going to America) and moved us into a guest house for the time being.

Then, at the end of the day, I took the girls back to the house we were leaving and let them take pictures in their old bedroom they had shared.

Ahhh...now to get all the luggage weight right so we some of us can get on the plane tomorrow.

The Party's Over...Literally

I don't know why I can't find time to blog, but it doesn't seem to come first in my list of "to do" items each week. So, since I mainly blog to have a record of our time here, I can't just skip to present day. That means you'll have to bear with me for who knows how long until the timelines of my blog and my real life match up. 

For now, I'm back at the morning after Kylie's graduation party, which is ironic, because we are currently getting ready to start KARIS' senior year.  Crazy!

The morning after, the decorations were were taken down, and we pulled out all the boxes we had been hiding in the basement while the party was going on.

Time to pack.

Before and After.

(If you don't remember, our landlord had asked us to leave so he could try and sell the house.  

Present day (2021), we are 14 months from our move out, and he actually did sell it last month.

Doug told me a doctor bought it and gutted it, so I went to see for myself. 

Sad day.

December 4, 2018                                                                                                                                                                                                        August 10, 2021

They have taken out every tree on the outside and inside of the gate, and torn up the garden that was there. It was also sad for me to see my laundry room tile on the street.

August 10, 2021

Back to 2020, even though we were packing, Doug still made time to cut Karis' and Caleb's hair! This wasn't just a "quarantine cutting." This is something he does all year long for any of us that needs it.

Caleb got a LOT cut.

At this point, we still hadn't found another home to move into, so while we were still looking, we also had a plan put in place to store our belongings in an unused house of a friend if we never found another rental.

Because we were trying to get to America to get Kylie ready to go to college, we decided to get our rugs washed, dried, rolled up and bagged for the months we would be gone.

We took them to a big, open cemented area, and some men rolled them out, told us how much it would cost, and then they were dragged away to be hosed down.

And even though summer 2020 was a relatively mild summer here, it was still warm.

And as you can see, it was almost as hot inside as it was outside.

June 6, 2020

So, Doug, Keira, and I decided to camp in the yard for a couple of nights, and it was actually not bad. The temperatures dropped a night, and it was a lot better than being in our bedrooms.

It was quite the pressure situation.  

Packing. 

Not having a new house to move into. 

Needing to get to America, and at the moment, no way to get there (see picture below).

So, we kept working and kept praying.

Hello from the Other Side

Well, I've returned.  Scraped up.  Wiser.  Better.  Thankful.

Since I am now "on the other side," I think my hiatus from the blog world needed to come to an end.  

I also see I'm behind in adding "Keira-isms" (as I call them) to the funny things "my darling three" (now four) say.

But before I recount some of our stateside, I think I'll start in the present with a conversation Keira and I had Monday when we got on the plane.

"Mom, who's driving us?"

She was very concerned, so I reminded her about the book we had read on pilots.

Then she said, "What's our new house called?"

I told her the name of the new country, and she said, "Is it to the left or the right?"

I said, "To the right."

Then she added, "I like flying."  (Of course, we were still on the tarmac).

In the air, she wanted to know, "Where'd all those houses go?"

Getting our last measurement (for a while) in Doc & Doe's closet

_________________________________________________________________________________

When she awoke in Frankfurt and at our final destination, her first words were, "Is this our new home?"

Just to give you some comparison, Caleb was only 7 months older than Keira when we left for Africa.

I must say, traveling with three older kids who carry their own luggage and manage themselves in the security line is awesome!
________________________________________
 Keira woke up from 1-3am the first night, and 4:30 to 6am the second night, but I think she's going to get back on schedule tonight.  We didn't let her rest all day.  Tonight at dinner, she was chewing her food, with her eyes closed and her head bobbing back and forth (we have video to prove it).
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Day 1:  Doug, our landlord, and a friend went to the local police to register us.  Upon arriving, they found out that showing passports was not enough, the officials needed to be handed copies of passports and a passport photo of every family member.

Since business is usually conducted in the morning, the registration would have to be completed the next day.

So, we went to look at the house and then went to start buying cleaning supplies, tools, and other odds and ends.  We were still going to different stores when night fell.

Day 2:  Doug, our landlord, and friend went back to the local police with all of the papers and photos, and they informed him that they needed to see his family in person.

The kids and I were shopping with a friend for brooms, squee-gee's, garbage cans, etc. so we quickly checked out and went to the police station.  We filed upstairs into a room where we were never looked at once, and after some papers were filled out, we were told we could leave and go on our way.

After lunch with some fellow teachers from the language center, we went back to the house to clean, starting with the roof.

We filled up one trashcan easily, so the rest had to be thrown over the side of the roof, into our courtyard.  

Broken tile.
Dirty underwear.
Empty water bottles.
Hay.
Wire.
Gunk.
You get the idea.

When we went downstairs to clean it up, we filled four garbage sacks full!  We also filled another trash bag cleaning up the litter in our house and on the street around our house, for which we are now responsible.

 
 The girls worked inside, cleaning the kitchen with a neighborhood friend; Caleb and two boys from the neighborhood, hosed down and squee-geed the courtyard.

I cleaned the "laundry room;" Doug swept inside and out; Kylie later scraped paint off the stairs, and the other girls cleaned walls while the boys went to play soccer.

Caleb said, "Mom, we're done.  They said we're going to go play in the street now."

"Uh!  What?"

"Mom, please!"

Thankfully, they finally agreed to go to one of the boys' courtyards and kick the ball around there.  *whew*

This is the view from my kitchen, into the living area (called "the hall")

An upstairs bedroom

Some dangerously hard-looking stairs

One of the three squatty potties (one's outside).  We're going to buy a Western toilet to go over this.

I'll try to send more pictures as I get them.  I forgot to get a picture of the front of the house; however, I did get a picture of the best part.

Taken from inside my courtyard, looking over the wall.

We live next door to a chicken slaughter business.  

I can get chicken and eggs at anytime.

And the owner is my landlord.

Looks like our property will be well-protected; however, I'll let you know when summer comes, what it smells like outside.

This is what "hello from the other side" looks like today.

"No, I'm sorry. You can't go to Uganda today."

That is what the ticket agent said to Doug and I after waiting TWO hours in line! My heart sank. He said we had to have a VISA or a return ticket, and we had neither. He asked us to get out of line. OUCH!

Our sweet friend Natalie had taken us to the airport and had sat with the kids the whole time by the windows. She let us borrow her iphone, and the phone calls began.

The International Mission Board was quick to fix the problem. Our ticket just had to show a return date, so they called a travel agent and made that happen. Then faxes were sent, more calls were made, and in one hour, we were back at the counter.

The guy was skeptical, of course, and left me for a good 20 minutes by myself. When he returned, he had some sheets printed up and highlighted showing me what trouble I could get in if I didn't get a VISA. Don't worry folks. I got a visitor's VISA as soon as we landed.

Any way, after three hours trying to check our bags, he let us start weighing them in. Prayer at work folks.

We thought we would only have 15, but we actually took 17 plus one bag of car seats. We had to pay a little overage, but it was all okay. Blessing one...check!