The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day (s)

Today, if the truth be known, I (Martha) woke up not wanting to be in Uganda. Believe it or not, this can be a difficult place to live. Last week we made another trip to Kampala. The beginning of what seems like a difficult spell began on the way back.

My stomach has rejected the idea of living in Uganda from day one. This is made worse by rough travel. It is now the rainy season so roads that were rough during the dry season are just awful now. On our way back to Arua, we were forced to spend one night in Karuma. Without going into details, let me just say that I hope that we never have to stay in Karuma again.

When we finally arrived back home last Friday, I was feeling pretty under the weather. Probably flu so no big deal, but then on Monday I started feeling worse. I was having terrible pain in my right eye. I thought that I was getting another case of iritis. As I haven’t had iritis in almost 2 years, I was pretty discouraged. I postponed seeing a doctor, because the idea of seeing someone unfamiliar was too much. By Tuesday morning, it became essential that I see an eye doctor. A new found friend, Sarah who is here with SIL (Wycliffe), informed us that there is a new eye clinic in Arua that is a beacon of hope for NW Uganda. We decided to give the eye clinic a try.

I am not quite sure how to explain visiting a doctor in a foreign context like Uganda. I don’t enjoy going to the doctor in the US so magnify that by about 100 and it gives an idea of how much I did not want to go to the clinic. As it couldn’t be helped, I eventually sucked up enough fortitude to go. There were many people at the clinic, and as is true everywhere, Eric and I stuck out. As we waited for the doctor, I was noticing the other patients. There were a couple of children that would probably lose sight in at least one eye from something that would have been treatable if they had earlier medical attention. It was humbling. I was dreading the visit to the clinic but could do it very easily whereas many Ugandans will have to make a long journey to receive good medical attention.

When the doctor was able to see me, he diagnosed me with an eye infection and gave me some antibiotic drops. After returning home, we began putting the drops in my eye every couple of hours. Well as is true for most medicines, my body reacted poorly. I must have been allergic to the drops because by the end of the day my eye looked really horrible although it didn’t feel quite as badly. We had been instructed to come to the clinic every morning for as long as needed so we returned the following morning. My eye had greatly improved during the night (when I was not applying drops) but was still a bit red. This time there were five students or other optometrists or something in the room watching the doctor. I already feel on display here so having more people in the room staring into my eyes was not a good feeling. The doctor then decided that he needed to flip my eyelid and leave it like that while he examined my eye. I am sorry to those of you who as a child used this trick to freak people out, but I found it to be extremely uncomfortable. So now I had a lot of people staring at me, close around me, and my eyelid flipped inside out. I was ready to leave. The doctor eventually put my eyelid back to normal. However, my body did not let it go. I continued to have a strange feeling in my eyelid. I must have started to think about this, because before I knew it, I was feeling quite dizzy. I then looked over at Eric through the people around me and mouthed that I was feeling dizzy. Next thing I know I could feel myself sliding off of the chair and hands all over me. Then I came to on the floor. So what should have been a relatively easy eye exam turned into much more.
Because I had passed out and remained weak for some time, the doctor thought that there must be something else wrong with me. He phoned another physician to come check me out. While waiting for the physician, I started regaining some strength. When the second doctor arrived, he decided that we needed to rule out malaria or other infections. I guess that he didn’t believe me when I told him that I really think that I passed out because of the eyelid scenario. So now he wanted to do some blood work, and as many of you know, I don’t handle needles very well. I started feeling dizzy again before they even came in with the needle so I went outside for some fresh air. I am proud to say though that I did survive the needle without passing out, although if the procedure would have taken a minute longer, I might not be able to say the same thing. The eye doctor then gave me some different drops and three hours after arriving at the clinic we were able to leave. Since then my eye has improved quite a bit although it is still a bit cloudy.

When we arrived back at home, a visitor awaited us. We spoke for a little while and then before she left she said that she noticed that we had red ants and that we really should get rid of them. We walked around front with her where we very easily noticed the huge lines of ants going up our walls. Now while it may be hard to believe after the last story, I really do not fear many insects or rodents or anything like that just weird body things. However, I am scared, absolutely scared to death of ants. It was my nightmare that we would move to Uganda and that during the night our house would be invaded by ants. You can imagine then that I could not stand for very long watching the ants. I ran around the house and in through the backdoor. I went to the spare bedroom and with great trepidation pushed the door open. There were several columns of ants moving up the walls. Eric and one of the watchman then used many bottles of insect spray to kill the visible ants leaving corpses all over the house. Some of these corpses were in our bedroom and even on our mosquito nets.

Since then, we have contacted different folks here in Arua to find out a solution to our problem. We have employed all of them. However, to this minute, nothing has worked. They continue to come out of different wholes throughout our house. We are now in the fourth day of ants. Millions have been killed, (I love that!!) but they continue. We have been told that these ants are not common especially in houses like ours. They are also very dangerous as they have a horrible bite. The fact that I have slept in this house now three nights since the initial onslaught is a miracle. I was already having horrible dreams that wake me up at night from my anti-malarial meds. Eric and I have moved our bed to the center of the room and put white flour and poison around the legs of the bed. I guess that this usually deters ants, but as it has been unable to deter them in all of the other rooms, I don’t know why we believe that it will deter them from our bed. We have used bottles and bottles of spray along with other things like banana leaves, ashes, poisons in order to stop the onslaught. Right now Eric is using a syringe to apply another poison down the many, many holes that the ants are using. Most people have been shocked that we are being attacked like this as they have been here for X number of years without any ant problems. Lucky us! Believe it or not, this doesn’t make me feel any better.

Now mind you, I know that God is still in control in the midst of this but for me right now, honestly if you add up the bad eye, sick stomach, ants, and add in a little bit of homesickness, you may begin to understand why I didn’t want to be in Uganda when I woke up this morning. Maybe I should move to Australia (last line from The Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day book)