It's been stressful at times with some of friends in Uganda needing some intervention for a domestic issue where the husband has been very violent leaving his wife with head injuries. Hopefully,we can help her to get to Kampala for much needed treatment and a R & R from the intense family situation in Adjumani.
I had some biopsies taken to check some issues that could be dermititus or skin cancer. I won't have those results for about a week.
It's been fun, too. Continuing some long distance coaching opportunities with several young women from Pennsylvania to N. Carolina, Idaho and Walla Walla, Washington. Jeff and I together had dinner with a couple here in Portland who are considering long term missions either to Europe or N. Africa.
Other fun was being invited out with our daughter-in-law, Hannah, to see the 3D production of Avatar. What a treat and experience that was! First of all to hang out with one of my lovely daughters and then to see that kind of media where things jump out of the screen and float in front of your face. How do they do that?!!!!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Pray for the Chandlers
Several months ago I read the story of a British couple, Rachel and Paul Chandler, who were sailing from Tanzania to the Seychelles. They were captured by Somalian Pirates. Today I read that they are still being held hostage with demands for ransom. It moves my heart that Rachel, especially, is very ill. You can read the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/8489958.stm
Join me, please, in praying for them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/8489958.stm
Join me, please, in praying for them.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Our Dear Visitor
I recall the many times in Uganda when the youth choirs would sing songs to "Our Dear Visitor"! Now I want to dance and sing because "Our Dear Visitor" is coming to visit from San Francisco arriving tomorrow. Jaclyn Konczal who was such a beautiful ministry partner and community member in Adjumani is coming to visit us and to connect with our family and friends and to get a taste of our beloved Imago Dei CC and PDX.
We'll have a reunion together with Erin Carkner and hopefully Darin and Andra Williams who spent time in our Adjumani community, as well. It should be a lovely time together!
We'll have a reunion together with Erin Carkner and hopefully Darin and Andra Williams who spent time in our Adjumani community, as well. It should be a lovely time together!
Friday, December 11, 2009
NOT CANDY CANE
Jeff's ongoing journey continues to challenge and at times baffle us. He has been working out regularly on the treadmill which was so encouraging until he developed severe pain in his rib cage area and now down into his right hip around the hip replacement. It got so bad yesterday that he dug his cane out of storage to help him get around. He hasn't used the cane since the hip was replaced in 2007. Hopefully this too shall pass.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Another Way of Life
From Monitor Online
On the trail of a long-horned insect
Posted in: News
By
Dec 5, 2009 - 1:36:25 AM
Nearly every Ugandan takes the arrival of nsenene for granted. But the hunt for them is an act of survival that mirrors the story of life and death, as Saturday Monitor’s Rodney Muhumuza reports
If the wall had not been too high, or if the frantic girl in a school uniform had been tall enough, this would have been a quick catch. As fast as the hungry crows hovering in mid-air, as if marking their territory, Julie Nabbosa would have moved to her next target.
Yet height was not the only thing the girl did not have on her side. In this verdant tract of land that overlooks a railway line, where destitute people grow corn and the grass is tall enough to hide the face of a six-year-old girl, Nabbosa could have done with a lot of favours.
There were other boys and girls offering competition, and an adventurous incursion into bushes could leave her bruised. A foray into railway-line territory could be as disastrous as a foolish attempt to climb a rough wall with bare hands. At the very least, these children were bound to suffer terrible itches from hours spent romancing the grass.
Clutching bottles, some nearly full with the objects of their passion, Nabbosa and her horde could not have been fully aware of the risks they were taking. If they were --- and the oldest among them looked to be in his early teens --- they probably did not care.
It was 10a.m. on a rainy morning in an industrial part of Kampala, in the Namuwongo suburb, and these children were here for business. If the bottles they carried showed intent, and if the anxiety on their faces betrayed urgency, each of these children was a veritable soldier.
After all, this was November, season of the grasshoppers, or musenene, when young and old are not embarrassed to chase after tiny insects, when market vendors have to update their stock with a hot addition; when so many Ugandans have to pay expensively to get a taste of the new season.
The insects, known to everyone as simply nsenene, are a type of bush cricket that comes in hues ranging from light green to dark brown and to an improbable purple. In street talk, nsenene (the species Ruspolia baileyi) are said to “migrate” from the central region, in Masaka, to different parts of Uganda --- in gardens, on street poles, on high walls, and in the kinds of bushes Nabbosa was not afraid to negotiate.
“I will go home and fry them,” the girl said, her face contorted with coyness after a stranger asked to know why she was not at school.
“I am going home now.”
The man, looking down at her from his second-storey office, was within reach of several of the insects Nabbosa would have wanted stuffed in her bottle.
The insects were scattered across the wall Nabbosa was not tall or acrobatic enough to scale, and as she and her competitors walked away from the inquisitor, perhaps cursing their fortune, it was now up to the roaming birds to reign supreme. Those who catch nsenene range from innocent children like Nabbosa (who seize them one at a time from beneath dense vegetation) to ruthless businessmen (who invest heavily in harvesting material) and to marabou storks (which ambush the insects in space).
It is a process that renders itself to survival, to recklessness, and, increasingly, to shrewd trade.
Lights on
Not far from the place where Nabbosa was found catching nsenene, across a street that policemen regularly patrol for signs of illegality, one man had recently erected what a looked like an unfinished fence.
The contraption was in fact a trap to catch nsenene --- a barricade made of iron sheets raised high to reach a gleaming bulb. Nsenene are drawn to light, finding refuge along or near bright spots, and businessmen exploit this weakness to catch them in amazingly large numbers. Attracted to the light, which blinds them, the dazed insects inevitably slide down the iron sheets and into open barrels.
If their journey ends in those containers, their story does not. Nearly everywhere in Kampala’s suburbs, from Kitintale to Kamwokya, a keen eye will notice that sometime in November, as torrential rains pound the city, many roadside stalls are crowded with women circling saucepans brimming with nsenene. Their job is to pluck the wings and legs off these crickets, a task not as exciting as catching them, and then dropping them in empty saucepans, ready to be boiled and roasted until they turn a seductive golden brown.
Until the tasters find them crunchy (and salty) enough, the heat may not be turned off. And Johnson Tumuhereze’s job as a vendor may not start.
Never give up
“I walk wherever I can because my job is to sell,” he said one afternoon as he walked along a dusty street, his right hand carrying a can of ready-to-eat nsenene above his shoulder.
“This is my business.” At Shs200, which could be costly for many people, a spoonful is not enough to satiate a craving, and Mr Tumuhereze does not except to make more than Shs5,000 each day. In any case, he is one of so many young men hawking nsenene.
INCOME EARNER: Whenever the months of April and November set in, the trade in nsenene booms and business people cash in big.
In many ways, the nsenene story is as modern as it is archaic, adopting raw capitalism but retaining the crucial role of women in bringing the delicacy into living rooms.
Kiganda oral tradition has it that, in days past, women were sent to shrubs to harvest nsenene but were not allowed to eat them.
As the story goes, the privilege belonged to their selfish husbands.
“I think that the men were just being greedy,” says Charles Peter Mayiga, Buganda Kingdom’s information minister, “considering how delicious nsenene are.”
But the more serious reason, Mr Mayiga said, had to do with “the purity that was attached to the woman” in Buganda. If the women were strong enough to resist eating delicious insects on the sly, it was proof of their fidelity, he said, noting that attitudes have evolved over the years.
“My wife is a modern woman,” Mr Mayiga said, making the point that they both eat nsenene at home.
Put differently, nsenene have become an equaliser. And one place makes it clear: Nearly every morning when it is nsenene season, trucks and motorcycles descend upon Nakasero Market, in Kampala, to deliver huge consignments of freshly-trapped insects ferried from hundreds of miles away.
The jostling for space and sneering among rival salesmen --- young and old, women and men --- sometimes gives way to cold-blooded fights.
They do it for the love of nsenene, so that they milk the new season for all its worth, and so that Madinah Naggayi may take the season for granted.
“I’ve eaten a lot [of nsenene] this season,” the shopkeeper said recently. “I can’t count them, of course. And we don’t care about the trouble they go through to catch them. For us, we just wait.”
What is Nsenene?
Nsenene is the Luganda name for a long-horned grasshopper that is a central Ugandan delicacy as well as an important source of income.
The insect is also eaten in neighbouring areas of Kenya and Tanzania. Traditionally in Uganda, nsenene were collected by children and women. They were given to the women’s husbands in return for a new gomasi (a traditional dress for women). Although the women were made to do the treacherous work of collecting nsenene, they were never allowed to eat them.
It was believed that women who consume nsenene would bear children with deformed heads like those of a conocephaline bush cricket.
Nowadays, nsenene are consumed by most women in the areas where this insect is traditionally eaten.
November is the main nsenene season, the other being April, when a swarm of the delicious locusts converges on the areas around Lake Victoria from the greater North.
The commercial nsenene production includes wholesale trade in sacks, transported over long distances to urban areas in order to get the best price. In most market places, vendors cash in big on the nsenene.
Source: wikipedia
© Copyright 2009 by Monitor Online
On the trail of a long-horned insect
Posted in: News
By
Dec 5, 2009 - 1:36:25 AM
Nearly every Ugandan takes the arrival of nsenene for granted. But the hunt for them is an act of survival that mirrors the story of life and death, as Saturday Monitor’s Rodney Muhumuza reports
If the wall had not been too high, or if the frantic girl in a school uniform had been tall enough, this would have been a quick catch. As fast as the hungry crows hovering in mid-air, as if marking their territory, Julie Nabbosa would have moved to her next target.
Yet height was not the only thing the girl did not have on her side. In this verdant tract of land that overlooks a railway line, where destitute people grow corn and the grass is tall enough to hide the face of a six-year-old girl, Nabbosa could have done with a lot of favours.
There were other boys and girls offering competition, and an adventurous incursion into bushes could leave her bruised. A foray into railway-line territory could be as disastrous as a foolish attempt to climb a rough wall with bare hands. At the very least, these children were bound to suffer terrible itches from hours spent romancing the grass.
Clutching bottles, some nearly full with the objects of their passion, Nabbosa and her horde could not have been fully aware of the risks they were taking. If they were --- and the oldest among them looked to be in his early teens --- they probably did not care.
It was 10a.m. on a rainy morning in an industrial part of Kampala, in the Namuwongo suburb, and these children were here for business. If the bottles they carried showed intent, and if the anxiety on their faces betrayed urgency, each of these children was a veritable soldier.
After all, this was November, season of the grasshoppers, or musenene, when young and old are not embarrassed to chase after tiny insects, when market vendors have to update their stock with a hot addition; when so many Ugandans have to pay expensively to get a taste of the new season.
The insects, known to everyone as simply nsenene, are a type of bush cricket that comes in hues ranging from light green to dark brown and to an improbable purple. In street talk, nsenene (the species Ruspolia baileyi) are said to “migrate” from the central region, in Masaka, to different parts of Uganda --- in gardens, on street poles, on high walls, and in the kinds of bushes Nabbosa was not afraid to negotiate.
“I will go home and fry them,” the girl said, her face contorted with coyness after a stranger asked to know why she was not at school.
“I am going home now.”
The man, looking down at her from his second-storey office, was within reach of several of the insects Nabbosa would have wanted stuffed in her bottle.
The insects were scattered across the wall Nabbosa was not tall or acrobatic enough to scale, and as she and her competitors walked away from the inquisitor, perhaps cursing their fortune, it was now up to the roaming birds to reign supreme. Those who catch nsenene range from innocent children like Nabbosa (who seize them one at a time from beneath dense vegetation) to ruthless businessmen (who invest heavily in harvesting material) and to marabou storks (which ambush the insects in space).
It is a process that renders itself to survival, to recklessness, and, increasingly, to shrewd trade.
Lights on
Not far from the place where Nabbosa was found catching nsenene, across a street that policemen regularly patrol for signs of illegality, one man had recently erected what a looked like an unfinished fence.
The contraption was in fact a trap to catch nsenene --- a barricade made of iron sheets raised high to reach a gleaming bulb. Nsenene are drawn to light, finding refuge along or near bright spots, and businessmen exploit this weakness to catch them in amazingly large numbers. Attracted to the light, which blinds them, the dazed insects inevitably slide down the iron sheets and into open barrels.
If their journey ends in those containers, their story does not. Nearly everywhere in Kampala’s suburbs, from Kitintale to Kamwokya, a keen eye will notice that sometime in November, as torrential rains pound the city, many roadside stalls are crowded with women circling saucepans brimming with nsenene. Their job is to pluck the wings and legs off these crickets, a task not as exciting as catching them, and then dropping them in empty saucepans, ready to be boiled and roasted until they turn a seductive golden brown.
Until the tasters find them crunchy (and salty) enough, the heat may not be turned off. And Johnson Tumuhereze’s job as a vendor may not start.
Never give up
“I walk wherever I can because my job is to sell,” he said one afternoon as he walked along a dusty street, his right hand carrying a can of ready-to-eat nsenene above his shoulder.
“This is my business.” At Shs200, which could be costly for many people, a spoonful is not enough to satiate a craving, and Mr Tumuhereze does not except to make more than Shs5,000 each day. In any case, he is one of so many young men hawking nsenene.
INCOME EARNER: Whenever the months of April and November set in, the trade in nsenene booms and business people cash in big.
In many ways, the nsenene story is as modern as it is archaic, adopting raw capitalism but retaining the crucial role of women in bringing the delicacy into living rooms.
Kiganda oral tradition has it that, in days past, women were sent to shrubs to harvest nsenene but were not allowed to eat them.
As the story goes, the privilege belonged to their selfish husbands.
“I think that the men were just being greedy,” says Charles Peter Mayiga, Buganda Kingdom’s information minister, “considering how delicious nsenene are.”
But the more serious reason, Mr Mayiga said, had to do with “the purity that was attached to the woman” in Buganda. If the women were strong enough to resist eating delicious insects on the sly, it was proof of their fidelity, he said, noting that attitudes have evolved over the years.
“My wife is a modern woman,” Mr Mayiga said, making the point that they both eat nsenene at home.
Put differently, nsenene have become an equaliser. And one place makes it clear: Nearly every morning when it is nsenene season, trucks and motorcycles descend upon Nakasero Market, in Kampala, to deliver huge consignments of freshly-trapped insects ferried from hundreds of miles away.
The jostling for space and sneering among rival salesmen --- young and old, women and men --- sometimes gives way to cold-blooded fights.
They do it for the love of nsenene, so that they milk the new season for all its worth, and so that Madinah Naggayi may take the season for granted.
“I’ve eaten a lot [of nsenene] this season,” the shopkeeper said recently. “I can’t count them, of course. And we don’t care about the trouble they go through to catch them. For us, we just wait.”
What is Nsenene?
Nsenene is the Luganda name for a long-horned grasshopper that is a central Ugandan delicacy as well as an important source of income.
The insect is also eaten in neighbouring areas of Kenya and Tanzania. Traditionally in Uganda, nsenene were collected by children and women. They were given to the women’s husbands in return for a new gomasi (a traditional dress for women). Although the women were made to do the treacherous work of collecting nsenene, they were never allowed to eat them.
It was believed that women who consume nsenene would bear children with deformed heads like those of a conocephaline bush cricket.
Nowadays, nsenene are consumed by most women in the areas where this insect is traditionally eaten.
November is the main nsenene season, the other being April, when a swarm of the delicious locusts converges on the areas around Lake Victoria from the greater North.
The commercial nsenene production includes wholesale trade in sacks, transported over long distances to urban areas in order to get the best price. In most market places, vendors cash in big on the nsenene.
Source: wikipedia
© Copyright 2009 by Monitor Online
Friday, November 13, 2009
JOY
Today I feel JOY because it is our son's 36th birthday and we are going to have a family celebration at Jarra's Ethiopian Restaurant;Dirk's choice of food.
Dare I remember here the wonderful day Dirk was born and was laid on my chest moments after birth. Perhaps only mothers can recall the deep joy of that moment. Thirty six years later it still gives me joy when I hear his voice or when we are together. Jeff and I are eternally grateful for the gift of our son.
Today I'm also EXCITED because we put our first candidate into application with WorldVenture after 5 weeks of walking with Ashley Barram in initial steps to serve in Cote d'Ivoire pursuing a Community Health Internship with Rod and Angelika Ragsdale. I wish you could get to know her as well. We love her and feel it is such a privilege to be in the journey with her. Since we cannot be in Africa, this seems a beautiful way to remain connected to God's heart which is for the nations.
Dare I remember here the wonderful day Dirk was born and was laid on my chest moments after birth. Perhaps only mothers can recall the deep joy of that moment. Thirty six years later it still gives me joy when I hear his voice or when we are together. Jeff and I are eternally grateful for the gift of our son.
Today I'm also EXCITED because we put our first candidate into application with WorldVenture after 5 weeks of walking with Ashley Barram in initial steps to serve in Cote d'Ivoire pursuing a Community Health Internship with Rod and Angelika Ragsdale. I wish you could get to know her as well. We love her and feel it is such a privilege to be in the journey with her. Since we cannot be in Africa, this seems a beautiful way to remain connected to God's heart which is for the nations.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
LEARNING FROM HAGAR'S STORY
Last week we were at Corban College where I was given the opportunity to share some of my story with a Women in Ministries Class. I wasn’t sure what to share of the 21 years of our missional journey. I felt led to share the need to develop a Theology of Suffering as it was years before I realized how devastating the world can be when one does not know how to deal with all the suffering we encounter. Often we deal with it by thinking that God must be either angry, very mean and nasty or that He just does not care. Thus the need to study how the Bible reveals God in this area of a suffering humanity. I happen to believe the stories in the Bible are there to help us know God. He reveals Himself by how He relates to us as broken human beings. I believe the stories are true and historic. I also believe we need to focus on understanding the relationships as they are portrayed in Scripture.
I decided to start reading from the beginning of the Book and take a serious look at suffering and how God interacts with people in their suffering. This is what I discovered this morning.
Genesis 16
Hagar’s Story
(The story opens after the LORD has promised Abram a child in his old age.)
Such an intriguing story! Sarai, Abram’s wife, decidedly took things into her own hands. Impatience? Rebellion? Fear that the promise was impossible considering she was past childbearing? She stated, “Perhaps I can build a family through her.” Her, being Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant. Abram agreed to the plot. Hagar became pregnant and despised Sarai. Did Hagar willingly take 86 year old Abram to her bed? We are not told. But I imagine she was not given a choice. Hagar apparently became arrogant and disdained her mistress under the circumstances. Sarai in turn blamed Abram for her suffering. She even called on God to judge between her and Abram. Did Abram take Hagar’s side at first? Perhaps he was elated that Hagar was going to give Sarai and him a child, as was the initial plan. But, oh, the fickleness of Sarai, he must have thought. Abram, nonetheless, allowed Sarai in her peevishness and pain to mistreat Hagar so much so that Hagar sought to escape.
The Angel of the LORD found Hagar in the desert. Was she attempting to go home to her family in Egypt? We are not told. But my guess is she was. The Angel of the LORD pursued Hagar and invited her into a conversation. Amazing! The Angel of the LORD asked where she was coming from and where she was going. Hagar’s answer was simply that she was running away, not where she was going. Perhaps she had little or no hope of reaching Egypt alone as she headed into the desert. The Angel of the LORD told her to return to Sarai and to submit to her—then He promised Hagar the same thing He promised Abram (Gen. 15:5). But unlike the promise to Abram, that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him, the promise to Hagar regarding her son was that Ishmael (the name given by the Angel of the LORD meaning “God hears”) would be a wild donkey of a man; and that he would live in hostility with all his brothers. Hagar actually named the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me” and she stated, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
What an incredible story of God’s mercy, of God’s compassion for a desperate, marginalized, outcast, woman. A woman suffering the effects of the sin of others and of her own pride. A woman who had no power over her own situation. Thus Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram named his son, Ishmael. It seems obvious Hagar humbled herself and returned to Abram and Sarai. She must have told of her encounter with the Living God on the road to Egypt at the spring that is beside the road to Shur. The most poignant point of the story , in my view, is when the LORD told Hagar, “You shall name him (the child) Ishmael, for the Lord heard of your misery.
I am reminded that God sees us and hears us in our suffering. He does not always choose to do what we want Him to do to change the circumstances. But He does do what I believe is the most amazing thing. He comes alongside us and walks with us through it. Jeff and I were talking about this at lunch today. How often in the Scripture are we reassured that God is with us! Over and over it is written.
And as followers of His, I believe that is what He wants us to do for others. We cannot often fix what is broken, but we can walk with one another through times of suffering.
I decided to start reading from the beginning of the Book and take a serious look at suffering and how God interacts with people in their suffering. This is what I discovered this morning.
Genesis 16
Hagar’s Story
(The story opens after the LORD has promised Abram a child in his old age.)
Such an intriguing story! Sarai, Abram’s wife, decidedly took things into her own hands. Impatience? Rebellion? Fear that the promise was impossible considering she was past childbearing? She stated, “Perhaps I can build a family through her.” Her, being Hagar, Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant. Abram agreed to the plot. Hagar became pregnant and despised Sarai. Did Hagar willingly take 86 year old Abram to her bed? We are not told. But I imagine she was not given a choice. Hagar apparently became arrogant and disdained her mistress under the circumstances. Sarai in turn blamed Abram for her suffering. She even called on God to judge between her and Abram. Did Abram take Hagar’s side at first? Perhaps he was elated that Hagar was going to give Sarai and him a child, as was the initial plan. But, oh, the fickleness of Sarai, he must have thought. Abram, nonetheless, allowed Sarai in her peevishness and pain to mistreat Hagar so much so that Hagar sought to escape.
The Angel of the LORD found Hagar in the desert. Was she attempting to go home to her family in Egypt? We are not told. But my guess is she was. The Angel of the LORD pursued Hagar and invited her into a conversation. Amazing! The Angel of the LORD asked where she was coming from and where she was going. Hagar’s answer was simply that she was running away, not where she was going. Perhaps she had little or no hope of reaching Egypt alone as she headed into the desert. The Angel of the LORD told her to return to Sarai and to submit to her—then He promised Hagar the same thing He promised Abram (Gen. 15:5). But unlike the promise to Abram, that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him, the promise to Hagar regarding her son was that Ishmael (the name given by the Angel of the LORD meaning “God hears”) would be a wild donkey of a man; and that he would live in hostility with all his brothers. Hagar actually named the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me” and she stated, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
What an incredible story of God’s mercy, of God’s compassion for a desperate, marginalized, outcast, woman. A woman suffering the effects of the sin of others and of her own pride. A woman who had no power over her own situation. Thus Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram named his son, Ishmael. It seems obvious Hagar humbled herself and returned to Abram and Sarai. She must have told of her encounter with the Living God on the road to Egypt at the spring that is beside the road to Shur. The most poignant point of the story , in my view, is when the LORD told Hagar, “You shall name him (the child) Ishmael, for the Lord heard of your misery.
I am reminded that God sees us and hears us in our suffering. He does not always choose to do what we want Him to do to change the circumstances. But He does do what I believe is the most amazing thing. He comes alongside us and walks with us through it. Jeff and I were talking about this at lunch today. How often in the Scripture are we reassured that God is with us! Over and over it is written.
And as followers of His, I believe that is what He wants us to do for others. We cannot often fix what is broken, but we can walk with one another through times of suffering.
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