November 2, 2015
by Pat Rees
Fenton left the other day to begin his trip first to Libreville, then to Paris, and then to Seattle. I will be here another 6 weeks without him. It was a funny feeling to have him go and realize that I now had to do some things for myself that he had been doing. Now I don’t really consider myself too much of a chicken, but there are things I would rather not have to deal with on my own:
1. The 4 inch long cockroach in the shower the other night should not have been there. It was the biggest one I have ever seen. Thank goodness Fenton had killed it before I stepped in there to take a shower!
2. The snake in the grass that I KNOW I will see sometime before I leave here, but I don’t know where it is going to be in relation to my feet! There are lots of snakes here in the jungle. I haven’t seen one yet this year. It is just a matter of time, especially now that the rainy season is here.
3. Bugs that really bug me. We had an invasion of flying red ants the first week we were here. Then there was the invasion of the small flying black ants last week, and the “bufudo” (Gabonese No-see-ems that bite like crazy) have been thick the last 5 days or so. I am so tired of bug bites all over my arms, legs and back that I have gone back to wearing scrub pants instead of skirts.
4. There are the ever present, microscopic ants that climb all over everything, every day and every place. I found them on the water filter this morning. There were a half dozen of them perched on the top of the ceramic rod, which was surrounded by water. So funny---they started moving around when I opened the lid, but they had no place to go. I showed them where to go---down the sink!
Last night I read the book “On Call” by Dr. David Thompson, who was the first physician/surgeon here in Bongolo. It is a very amusing book. He told stories that happened over the 30 years that he was working here in Bongolo, taking it from a one room dispensary to the current 165 bed hospital. There were lots of funny events of western versus African thought and miscommunications because of language. What really struck me was the large amount of demon activity he encountered. Cognitively I KNOW the witch doctors are around. I see plenty of scariification on patients. (Scarification is the tiny little hash-mark cuts they make in a line around an area that is painful.) I had not been praying for my patients and protection against demonic forces. I am now! I pray the enemy will not try to thwart work that we have done to help these people physically. I pray that they will “see the light of truth” in the surgical care they have received. I pray they come to know they have received it from the Lord. I pray protection from demons, from spirits, and from fears of these angels of darkness for myself, the staff, the missionaries, and the residents here in Bongolo. I am not chicken, but I realize the importance of prayer against the “powers and principalities”.
On a lighter note, Chicken is THE meat of Bongolo. Aside from the small chips of “beef” that is grilled up by one of the vendors on the streets in Lebamba, and the canned salmon and tuna from the shelf, chicken is all there is. The store in town sells these hard frozen Brazilian birds that are about 2 pounds each. Universally, they are cooked all day in a crock pot, with onions and potatoes (if you can find them). They are heavy on the skin, and light on the breast meat. What they lack in taste, they make up for in the length of neck that is attached to the bird! (Thankfully, the head is NOT attached.) Fenton had dubbed these “rubber chickens”. My latest culinary offering is pictured.