DAY 1: Sickness, Shadow Puppets, and Stars

    "If I can just make it to the pastor training school, I can puke in the toilet, lie down, and everyone can let me die quietly."

This may sound highly cynical and rather harsh, but riding down a dirt strip that hardly deserves to be called 'a road' with a fever and intense nausea is no picnic. I mean, really. We must have hit every bump and pothole imaginable; and the ones we didn't hit, we swerved sharply away from, making my stomach churn and the pressure in my head explode with fresh violence. My back was not only in an uncomfortable position, but with every pothole, it was jared achily.  MISERABLE!

  But enough complaining (there will be more, anyway....). Remember my blog about our 'True Bush Livin'? This is the story of our return trip. Only this time, we stayed a whole week. And the drainage system backed up completely so we couldn't flush toilets or do dishes, til we finally pulled out what was clogging it (aha! got you interested).

THE DAY OF (yes, THE DAY OF) our departure, I got sick. First it wasn't bad. Just a really runny nose and an intense headache. But as soon as we started driving up and down the roads, I got this crummy feeling behind my eyes, and a sickening feeling in my stomach. The end of the trip was worse. I can not describe to you the queasiness or the pressure from the drainage in my head. It seemed unending. I only took 3 pictures on the road, all of Christianna.

  As soon as the van pulled in and turned off, I was out, running for the bed that I could lie down on.

I took no pictures on the road but Tristan took this picture of our greeting committee when he dug my camera out of our luggage:

  As I lay on Mom and Dad's bed and stared at the window, I saw on the window a bunch of little black dots, which turned out to be some cre-eepy beetles crawling. These beetles would fly in our hair, crawl on our arms, down our shirts, and around our necks, and generally be annoying.

 Aidan was my 'runner' ; he fetched things for me and found out what I wanted to know. 

Things this time were different - we had running water this time (a complicated system of tanks and gravity), a portable stove, and the generator ran more quietly! We fixed all our old mistakes, made a bunch of new ones, and were able to serve people a lot better.

  Once I was satisfied that the earth was not caving in under me and that I could stand on my two feet without falling and splitting my head open, I got up and wandered around. Everyone who came to see us was VERY enthusiastic, shaking our hands up and down, and saying how great it was to have us back. :)  When the sun began to set, I stumbled outside with Tristan and Aidan and 'helped' them set up the tents.... but as soon as the girl's tent was up, we found a rip in it and I made myself useful by stitching it up and telling Tristan and Daddy how horrible I felt.

  While us kids waited on dinner, we went in the room where all our luggage was and made a ton of shadow puppets; swans, turkeys, dogs, and weird monsters! We laughed at the bizarre things Christianna could do with her fingers and Aidan could do by waving his hand in front of her's.  

  M. Samuel and his wife Mme. Louise came with us. M. Samuel was going to help Mom with her women's conference and Mme. Louise was child care. 

Mom was trying to get the gas bottle linked up to our portable stove (no small task) and M. Samuel finally went over and shoved the line on as hard as he could. To test for gas leaks people normally light a match by the place they are checking, but that idea DID NOT settle well with Dad so M. Samuel got a soapy sponge and squeezed bubbles around the line. None of them popped and the stove was deemed safe. Samuel laughed as he did it and said that "we do it so we do not scare Daddy!" 

Dinner!

After dinner I was actually able to take a shower (HALLELUJAH!) and then ran out to my tent and brought my pack of tissues. The Stars were beautiful! There was little to no light pollution being out in the bush, so you could see So Many! I woke up at 2 a.m. because I couldn't breathe out of my stuffy nose. For about 2 hours I sat staring in awe up at the stars through the net and blowing my nose. 

To Be Continued

Note: This is a series of blog posts about the trip - stay tuned for the rest!