A rainy day

It rained again today!!

I guess I'll have to stop blogging about it at some point, when it's more regular. This time, I put out our big water containers, right under the eaves so the gush of water would be contained. It was filthy brown water, after the thick harmattan dust we've had for the past two weeks, but the dirt will settle on the bottom. And anyway, if we boil it to drink it, it'll be sterilized dirt. So what's the harm? No, we won't wash our clothes in it! That's the only real downside of dirty water.

Timothy and I enjoyed hearing the rain (he laughed when it thundered). We went outside and stood where we were getting a little wet. Timothy stuck his hand into the flow of water from the roof, fascinated. When the intensity lessened, we went out into the sprinkling rain, and I let him splash in the puddle on our front walkway (wearing only a diaper). He kept looking up, as if he were wondering where the water dripping onto him was coming from. So cute!

And now it's starting to sprinkle again, an hour later, so maybe we'll catch even more water. The good news is that we've made it through another dry season, and we never once had to purchase water, even though the water board has been on strike for weeks! Very cool!

Hard decisions

The hardest decision in the past week...

(drumroll, please)

...was to cut my hair!

No, not really. Okay, so I did debate a lot over that decision, but I didn't agonise over it.

Seriously, though, this week I'm faced with the decision about whether to continue working, and if so, how much for how long. It's not an urgent decision, exactly, but I do want to give 30 days' notice, and as we're leaving June 1 for five weeks, I thought I'd better get it all done before then. That way I can really relax on our "vacation."

Then again, I've already committed to being at a writers' workshop the week after we get back in July. So should I keep that job? Or should I note in my resignation letter now that the workshop will be my final farewell?

OY! I hate making decisions. I can't sleep at night. My stomach churns half the time. I'm exhausted. What do I do?

Pass/fail

David passed his Part I Fellowship exam!!

Very cool, especially considering only one-third of those who attempted actually passed. Wow, my husband's awesome. :) (I knew that already, but I always enjoy the confirmation in tangible terms.)

He was gone for TWO WHOLE WEEKS and is now safe at home, back to the normal everyday routine at the hospital--but this time as a senior resident. Yay!! I couldn't be more proud. Now he has to study for the same exam given by the National medical college as opposed to the West African college. *sigh*

In the meantime, I'm still working frantically, trying to do too many things at once--between planning our trip to the States, looking up medical requirements to practice in the U.S., taking care of Timothy, working both my jobs, helping set up (and work, next week) the Hillcrest Book Fair...Anything else I left out? I think any day now I'm just going to crash and burn. How can people really expect me to handle all this? Or am I just incompetent and lazy??

Healing rain

It’s raining today.

That about sums up my mood, too. I love the rain, always. But today as it rains, I feel melancholy. It has nothing to do with the clouds and precipitation. As I said, I love the rain always. But to most people, it spells gloominess, depression, greyness.

My little friend Samuel died.

If you’re new to my blog, you won’t remember Samuel. I first met him in the summer of 2006 while working in paediatrics. He was an HIV+ little boy on anti-retroviral treatment. He was small and cuddly and full of smiles. I adored him, I’ll admit. He was just too cute for words, and he seemed to enjoy the attention I gave him, even though he never really talked—not even when I saw him several months later.

He was doing so well, I thought, and now he’s gone. I don’t know what happened. I’m surprised I found out at all, actually. I ran into someone in the hospital yesterday (when I went to weigh Timothy) who knew him and told me of his death.

HIV and AIDS have been in Nigeria for several years now, and I’ve seen patients die. But this is the first little guy I knew and held and loved who succumbed to the nightmare. My heart aches for Samuel’s loss. If I could write his epitaph, it would read,

“Here lie the remains of a little boy
Who was full of life, full of love, full of joy.”

You will always hold a special place in my heart, Samuel. Rest in peace, in the sweet arms of Jesus.

Conquest of the cockroach

When Timothy stirred and cried the other night, I got up to put his pacifier back in his mouth and discovered *insert JAWS theme here* that we had an uninvited guest.

Yes, it was a cockroach!!

I was furious. How dare it enter my private chamber!

But I was effectively daunted and leapt back into bed. Timothy cried, but how could I leave the safety of my bed to comfort him, with a sneaky, putrescent insect skittering across my floor?

I sprang to Timothy's bed, patted him for a moment, then jumped back into my own bed as the cockroach approached What was I going to do?

I looked around the bed. There wasn't much within reach I could use to kill my nemesis. I grabbed my Bible study book, put some scratch paper underneath it so it wouldn't get messy, and held it over the floor, waiting. Timothy continued to cry, and just as I was about to give up on the cockroach and return to my waking infant, the black body scuttled into view.

Wham! I smashed the book down onto the floor as hard as I could. Then I stretched out my leg and stomped on it several times for good measure. After half a minute, I crept to Timothy's crib, whisked him up, and brought him into my bed stealthily. Nothing short of a fire would induce me to leave my bed again that night! But my goal had been accomplished:

The cockroach was dead.

Waiting on the wedding dress

David's been gone for a week and will be gone another six days. Halfway there! Today is the day of his written exam. If he passes this part, he'll take the clinical exam on Monday or Tuesday and should be home Wednesday or Thursday. I can't wait!!

Dusty (my parents' dog) caught a guffia last night, a large bush rat. What a lovely sight to wake up to in the front yard! The guffia's body was about a foot long, and its tail dragged another foot behind it. Delightful.

David's sister Bridget is getting married in May, and we can't go, since it's two days before we're supposed to leave for the States (we just found out the date last week). I felt bad that we couldn't attend, so I thought I'd offer my wedding dress for her to borrow. After some discussion between David and Bridget's fiance, David texted me from Ibadan to let me know Bridget wants to use the dress.

So the big question then was, How do I get it cleaned?

My first step was to ask on Joslink--our email announcement/query network for missionaries and expatriates in Jos--if anyone could recommend a reliable dry-cleaner. I got two replies, but both referred me to someone else, without giving me the contact information. Great. So then I thought I could ask the young Nigerian ladies who work in the SIM office in town. Bingo!

One of the girls who used to work in the office , Talitha, had helped me with my wedding, and she got married last June, so she knew of a place. Talitha gave the name and phone number to Kauna, who also works in the office, and I say Kauna yesterday to get the info. This morning my parents' driver took me out 20 minutes to Rayfield to find the place. The cleaner, however, wasn't at home. What to do?

My parents' driver saw an older man going through the gate and hailed him. After some discussion in Hausa, it turned out that the cleaner had told the older man, baba, that a woman would be coming by with a wedding dress to clean. That being the case, we left the dress with the baba and came home.

Oh, to have a book of yellow pages and flip through to find a good cleaner! Let's just hope that for the $12 I'm paying, my dress doesn't get ruined! I guess I'll find out on Monday...