Mocha's Birthday Party

Mocha is the Thelanders' dog, and yesterday was her fourth birthday.  To celebrate, Sarah Thelander made a doggie birthday cake out of peanut butter and dog treats.  After school the kids and Meladee Davis and I gathered on the Thelanders' porch to sing to Mocha and watch her eat her cake.  

The Bad Dog

It was a sad sound, a dog yelping piteously from somewhere in the jungle.  Most likely he was caught in a trap.  I would have been sadder if the dog had been of good character, but he was not.  He was one of several renegade dogs who regularly plunder the garbage pits of Bongolo, scattering trash all over the beautiful hillsides.  He also kept the missionaries awake at night howling at the moon.  Worst of all, the dog was aggressive, charging those who tried to scare him away.
     Paul Davis, who takes care of Bongolo maintenance, finally had enough of this dog and went after him with a gun!  The dog somehow eluded Paul, leaving him to pick up all the trash, day after day.  Until the day the dog got caught in a trap in the jungle, and gave himself away with his howling.
     I heard the dog howling from somewhere in the jungle between my house and the Thelanders' house, and I remembered a trap I had seen there.  I happened to see Paul and mentioned to him that I knew where a trap is, and that maybe the dog was in it.  He called the African workers and Josh, a short term worker, and they all followed me to the trap in the jungle.
     The howling stopped as we neared the trap, and I wondered if maybe the dog wasn't there after all.  Then I saw him, his front paw caught in a wire slipknot, wedged between two crossed sticks.  When the dog saw Paul with the gun, he barked angrily.  I put my hands over my ears and looked the other way as Paul aimed and fired.  The dog died instantly.
     I felt a little badly leading Paul to the dog, facilitating the dog's death.  Usually I am an animal lover, as my brothers would testify.  I guess I could have gone down there by myself and tried to cut the dog loose somehow, (as a child I would have) but he was aggressive, and I'm not sure he would have let me get close to help him.
     He probably would have needed medical care, but there is no animal hospital hereabouts.  And he would have needed to be tied up all the time to keep him from coming back to Bongolo, getting into the trash and menacing the missionaries.  Sigh.  Poor dog.

The Edible Cicada

A cicada landed on our school window.  "Look, children," I said, "this bug spent seventeen years underground, and now he's finally woken up!"  The children looked at the cicada, amazed and awed.  I continued, "That is why you must always be nice to cicadas, because they are so special and amazing."  Just then along came a big lizard who gobbled up the cicada before our eyes!  The children and I gasped in unison and in shock.  I'm sure we felt badly for the cicada but we all burst out laughing and saying, "I can't believe it, the lizard just came up and ate him!"

The Thankful Lady

This is what my family calls "The Thankful Lady."  She has always hung in our kitchen, reminding us to be thankful for our food.  It is what some would call a "sacred object," not in the sense that we worship it, but because it has special meaning for my family.
     Now that my parents are packing up to leave Bongolo for good, it is one of the things I will keep, because it reminds me of something important.
     I think sacred objects are especially important to missionary kids because we move around so much.  I think it is important to have a few special things to take with me to new places, to remind me where I come from and who I am.
     Besides the Thankful Lady, I have a small plastic gecko from my brother Jeremy that goes with me wherever I go.  I stick it up on the wall to remind me of home, where geckos abound.  Another sacred object is "Panga Man," a 6-inch wooden carving my brother Josh made for me when he was in high school.
     My move to Gabon two years ago was unplanned and unexpected, so almost all my sacred objects got left behind in Cambodia.  That is one of the reasons I am going back this summer, to sift through my stuff and find the little things that remind me of home wherever I go.

Still Cookin'

Our rice cooker is really old.  We have had it since I was seven years old, and it still cooks rice.  The rice pot has a leak in it, so now we keep our rice in the freezer, so that the coldness of the rice will shrink the pot and close the leak.  The plug has a loose connection, so it has to be held in the right place by a bowl.  And the cook button doesn't stay down on its own, hence the chopstick.  But it STILL cooks rice.  Amazing.

Following Jesus

This Easter I went to a baptism at the river in a little village called Mandji.  I followed the African Christians down to the river and watched Grace get baptized.  It reminds me of another time I followed a group of African Christians to a river to be baptized myself, when I was twelve years old.  I'm thankful for the African Christians I've known in my life.  They've been an example to me of what it means to follow Jesus.

The Way We Were

Here we are, circa 1978, about two years after we first arrived in Bongolo.  I don't remember much from those early years besides playing with my brother Josh.  Dad worked at the hospital and Mom stayed home with us most of the time.  We had a house helper named Justine who would watch us when Mom went to the hospital once a week.  Mama Justine used to carry my brother around on her back in a kind of sling.  Now she is elderly and my brother towers over her.  The picture below is of my whole family, after Jeremy was born, right before we returned to America for the first time.