"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."

- Winston Zeddmore, Ghostbusters

That quote has nothing to do with this blog, but it may just apply to the average Samaritan's Purse employee. Not that they are all about the money, people just don't like to ask the hard questions about what our programs are really doing. Once something is set in motion everyone assumes things are good without actually thinking about them. I digress...

So 2/3s of our team flew out for a conference last week and I was kind of left in charge of Kauda our main base. I was excited about that until I realized that the 1/3 of people left was the totally unhelpful group. Still not a bad week, got to do some stuff I don't normally do.

On Saturday the people who had flown out were supposed to come back, along with some extra people who needed to stay the night before flying out in the morning. Total we were planning on having about 30 people on the compound that night. So I stressed all day, counting beds and blankets and making sure we had enough food. I had our guard kill two goats (this is normal meat here) and the ladies were supposed to cook it all up. I spent about an hour myself cutting up tomatoes for a giant salad we made. And just when we went to pick them up at the airstrip, a giant cloud formed. The plane got half-way there and the wind started blowing hard enough to rock our trucks and lightning started striking everywhere. When torrential rains started a moment later it completed the scene, and the plane turned around and landed somewhere else for the night. All our preparation for nought. This is what we refer to as the "Nuba Factor".

But my adventures were just beginning as the Nuba Factor struck once more. I told one of the ladies I would drive her home because she stayed late to help cook. Normally it is a 15 minute drive. Of course thats assuming the rain hasn't just destroyed the road. So I got stuck for about an hour and dug out with a shovel and my hands. Then I dropped her off and got stuck in the exact same spot on the way back. I dug for another hour. I couldn't figure out what I was stuck on, as all my wheels seemed to be on the ground, but when someone realized that my 30 minute trip had taken about 150 minutes they sent someone to help. Apparently my wheels weren't locked (4-wheel drive related thing) and when he locked them I moved effortlessly. Fun times.

Then I got home at 10:30 and spent about 45 minutes in a cold shower, cause thats how long it took me to scrub the mud out of my arm and leg hair.

Other interesting Nuba occurences:
1) Sergey, my Uzbekistani friend, killed a cow with his truck. A week later a letter was sent to all NGO's and the UN asking who did it and saying that the owner was threatening to go to the local sorcerer to put a curse on him. The letter also stated that the sorcerer has power of thunder and other harmful things. Fortunately the matter had already been cleared up by then, so no one has been struck down by lightning to my knowledge.
2) Troy, my Missourian friend, was asked to help transport a dead woman from the hospital back to her home to be buried. He did and then they got stuck in the mud for hours. Him and the dead body. Shades of "Little Miss Sunshine".
3) We had four quads drive in a convoy from Kauda to our southern belt (a place called Morro). I was really annoyed with the trip for a while cause I thought it was unneccessary, but then I realized something: How many times in life will I be able to drive 4-wheelers cross country with 3 buddies, and call it a part of my days work.
4) I avoided the return drive because there were some VIPs visiting and one of them thought it would be fun to make the journey by quad. I reluctantly gave up my quad, and took his place on the tiny-4 seater plane. So I sacrificed my exciting 4 or 5 hour ride through mud and bad roads, for a boring 20 minutes on a plane :) I've flown more times in Africa now than in the rest of my life combined.

Thanks for the love and prayers people. Hope to see some of you before too long.

love, shaps

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

- Macbeth

Well no picture or even a drawing with this post. I'll claim I'm tired, but I'm probably just lazy. What to write... I'm feeling bogged-down with decisions about the future. I kinda want to go back to school, but to go next fall requires getting a bunch of apps done by the end of this year. Maybe I won't even want to go next fall, but if I do I need to be ready now. Annoying. I want to stay in Africa for a while once my contract is up in mid-november, but I have a hunch that my family might not be happy if I don't come home for the holidays if I don't have a real job. And once this contract is up I'm sure my cash will dry up quickly and I'll need to either survive as a freelancer or get another job. Thinking of investing my money in my favorite football (soccer) team. COYS.

So, I have this problem where I sit down to type up reports and get work done, but I end up wasting entire days at a time without doing anything. Today was one of my good days, and I probably only put in 2 or 3 hours of real work. I'm basically Peter from Office Space. Now when I'm out visiting churches I do put in long days and I work hard. Just not when I'm staring at a computer screen. I probably read 20 articles on the New York Times website today. Probably 20 more on various sports sites.

You guys remember when they give you personality-type tests in college - sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholy. I was a sanguine-phlegmatic as a sophomore in college. The definition of that goes something like this: "Most likely to be voted 'most likely to succeed', least likely to actually do it."

I'm sounding depressed so I'll try and list some good things now:
1) My boss Zaki got stuck in a big flowing river and messed up a truck pretty good.
2) I have the only 4-wheeler that works properly, probably a direct result of the fact that I drive really slow.
3) My friend Patrick, our Kenyan mechanic, has taken a job in Nairobi and so won't be here for the last 2 months of my contract. Means no one to talk to once everyone else is in bed after midnight.
4) Mark Twain is great.
5) I successfully gave off the impression of working today everytime my boss walked by.
6) The Lions are 2-0.
7) Tigers still have a shot at the playoffs.
8) I wrote a really good report in my 2 hours of work today.
9) I have to drive 4 hours south, then 4 hours north, and then 4 hours south again, in about 2 days. On a quad, with a passenger, probably in the rain, and I can't see with my glasses and I'll probably ruin my phone worse than it already is.

Alright, I'm really grumpy for some reason. Half those things weren't even good things. Just things off the top of my head. 1, 3, and 9 are actually really lame.

love and miss people,

aaron

"The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

- Picasso


Well noticing that I haven't blogged for a while I have rebooted my blogging career with an artistic expression of a recent adventure.

My friend Tim got stuck in a river with his truck. We sent a tractor to retrieve him and this also got stuck. So Tim and about six guys with him needed rescued. We had an old truck with no headlights and a 4-wheeler. So we plugged a spot-light into the 4-wheeler and drove ahead of the truck with no lights.
So in the picture I am on the back of the 4-wheeler holding the spotlight while Troy drives in front of me, while engineer Oliver drives the big crappy truck with our boss Zaki riding shotgun.

Further notes on above painting:
1) Old English D on my hat just as in real life (go Tigers).
2) Troy is a big guy.
3) The 4-wheeler looks slightly like a wagon that would be pulled down the street by a toddler. Don't be fooled, it is a manly vehicle.
4) Oliver has a big smile.
5) Zaki is always on the phone.
6) Beneath the vehichles is a sketch of the road. The X is our base. The small man is Tim.
7) Brown denotes muddy spots.
8) The brown creature is a bush baby. They jump across the road sometimes. They look like beanie babies but they jump like Tigger of Winnie the Pooh fame. Seriously they are like 4 inches big and they could easily jump over my head I think.

Now that the blog is updated I move on to catching up on the emails I haven't replied to in months.

Ma'a Salaama (which means "peace out" in Arabic).

This was only the third worst time I was stuck this day.

"I'm not a genius, but maybe you'll remember this, I never said I ever want to be a man."

- White Stripes lyric that immediately comes to mind when my coworker told me I was becoming a man out here.

Chronological Highlights of my last 3 days:

• Get stuck in the mud. My comrade Ryan was behind in another SP truck and pulled me out after 5 minutes.
• Get stuck in a sandy river. 4.5 hours of work, drank lots of river water to fight of dehydration, and we were out.
• Became acutely aware of lack of food all day apart from a piece of bread for breakfast and a handful of peanuts.
• Person guiding me to destination took me down a foot path and the ground crumbled beneath the truck. I actually thought we were stuck forever. See picture above. 20 guys from the village came out and we were out in under an hour actually.
• Now dark, attempt to cross a sandy river. I succeeded but when I got to the path on the other side I couldn’t get up the hill. When I reversed got stuck. Spent the next six hours digging out of sand. Got some reinforcements from nearby village. Arrived at someone’s house to sleep at 1am. End day 1.
• Driving back from village we slept at, planned a short day of dropping off my translator and then going home and sleeping. Instead got stuck in a small river. 1 hour or so of work and we were out.
• Dropped off translator and realize I have a flat. Replaced flat with spare and began journey home.
• Driving fast to avoid getting stuck, I slid in the mud and I sheared the right side mirror off of the car. Also busted the snorkel in half, so I will no longer survive if I drive the truck totally under water (I anticipate this happening any day now.)
• Being smart I drove off the road to avoid big mud holes. Unfortunately the side of the road was sludge. 2 hours of futile work. Realized my high-lift jack was no longer functioning. Realized another tire was now leaking air.
• Hiked to Heiban, hour and a half away, barefoot in the dark through mud, rivers and thorns. Water was thigh high on multiple occasions. I was wearing jeans for some reason.
  Slept at our Bible School in Heiban, where I found one of our tractors. End day 2.
• Take tractor out to truck and haul it out of mud.
• Get stuck 5 minutes down the road, but tractor was still just ahead and pulled me out no problem.
• Left tractor and entered home stretch back to base. Got stuck. Dug out in 10 minutes.
  Get stuck again. Worked for over an hour, truck full of other NGO workers shows up and they help push me out.
• Arrive back at base. Shower and realize the pain in my feet is not from cuts, but from splinters. Spend 30 minutes digging them out.

The mud is slowly killing my will to live. In case you are counting that is 10 times stuck in 2.5 days.

Other than that, things are great. We got a big shipment of food in, so now we have cereal and potato chips and ramen noodles. Probably the most exciting thing in my life right now. Oh and I get two weeks off starting in one week. I don’t know what I’m doing for sure yet, but I am very ready for a break.

Me and Pastor Matta Mubarik, my recent translator.

"Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault."

- Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz

Hey people, think I'm past due for another update. Here are a few recent highlights.
1. Got stuck in the mud this morning. I don't really mind that anymore. What I do mind is when I have people ranging from 12 year olds to 65 year old women pointing and telling me what I'm doing wrong as I attempt to get out. None of them have ever been in this sort of situation before, much less driven a car. I had about six people tell me I needed to move the jack I was using to the other side of the car, even though I was obviously doing everything I could to move it and it was stuck. (If the winches are broken on the front of the car [and they always are when I get stuck] then the next way to get out of the mud is to use our high-lift jacks to get the wheels off the ground and then we stick a bunch of rocks under them.)
2. Spent yesterday (Sunday) up on the mountain right behind our compound. Only like a 15 minute hike up, but it's really nice view and quiet and I spent like six hours there reading and writing. It was my favorite day in a while.
3. The sister of a guy who works for us hit herself in the foot with an axe. So I drove her to the hospital, only like 25 minutes away, but it is up the worst road in the area. The ride wasn't comfortable for me, but I think it was worse for her judging from the amount of blood she left on the floor. Watched the doctor stitch her up with no anesthetic cause he said he had to get the bleeding stopped right away.

Apart from that I want to talk about my guy Hamad. Hamad drives a truck for us in one of the areas we work. While I was up there I was sharing a tent with him and I figured out that he's my new role model. This guy is from a totally different world. He's 60 years old, uneducated, lived his life in a war torn land. Doesn't know much of anything outside of the Nuba Mountains. He was forced into being a government soldier during the war. They kicked him out of the army when they realized he was purposely shooting his gun over the heads of people during battles cause he didn't want to hurt anyone.

The man has as much Godly character as anyone I've ever known. He's works harder than anyone else around. He's humble. He gave up his bed for about five days to someone more than 40 years younger. He's generous. Where most of the other guys want to ask us for things (sodas, food, clothes, etc..) Hamad is the one guy who always wants to share what he has with us. He has integrity. When most people are sick they feel the need to moan and put on a show so we let them off work. When Hamad is sick he tells us and then continues to smile and have a good attitude anyhow. He's content. He's not well-off by the world's standards, but he's happy and he doesn't complain and he praises God for what he has. And he has faith. When he talks about the war he talks about how God was faithful. When he talks about the current hardships in Nuba, he talks about how God is still faithful and will take care of their needs. When he prays he prays with passion.

Could Hamad give an intellectual defense of his faith? Probably not. Could he argue the finer points between Calvinism and Armenianism, or for that matter Catholocism or Protestantism? Definitly not. Is he a more worthy role model than anyone I've known who could do those things? Absolutely.