The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn...

It's around midnight on our first night in Kitgum. Nancy is still up, but about to go to bed. I've been asleep for about an hour and a half. Suddenly, everything goes dark as the power goes out. We were told to expect this--electrical service in Kitgum (and probably all over Africa) is sketchy at best. Many places of business(including our hotel) have generators, but they do not run them at night because, well, its a waste (take that Americans!) to run the electricity all night while everyone's asleep (!). I do not enjoy or appreciate total darkness. I wake up immediately and am smothered by the complete and utter BLACK that surrounds us. There is no ambient light coming from ANYWHERE, as the entire city is without power. Not only is it totally dark, it is dead quiet. Again, something I do not cope well with. Thankfully, I have brought a small, battery operated fan which serves as my "white noise" and my flashlight (plenty of extra batteries too). But these are small consolations--not only is it dark and silent, but remember, I am in the middle of Africa, thousands of miles away from family and familiarity. I was just getting sort of comfortable with that second part, and now this. Nancy doesn't seem to notice at all and falls right asleep. I spend the next several hours fitfully drifting in and out of sleep, clutching my flashlight and trying not to let my mind wander to all sorts of unpleasantness. I pray and pray and am afraid and afraid...Somewhere around 4 am another fun thing happens, a thunderstorm starts to roll in. Great. Probably 3 of my biggest fears-darkness, silence, and thunderstorms, all bundled together. I wouldn't be comfortable even in my own bed, and well, obviously I'm not there! Suffice it to say I do not get much sleep.

Around 5:30 it starts getting gray outside our window. I can't stand lying there awake any more so I creep out of the room and down the hall a bit to explore. I go to the end of the hall and kneel on the chair there and look out the window. (after moving the GIANT box of condoms. Part of Uganda's HIV/AIDS prevention requires all hotels to have copious amounts of prophylactics available. The box has a cuddly black couple on it, I wish I could remember the name of the brand!) I'm looking out on a gray morning, the clouds from the thunderstorm are starting to clear, you can tell eventually the sun will come out, but it is still very overcast. There are houses beyond the compound wall, no one anywhere seems to be stirring. Somewhere you hear a rooster crowing, but that's it. I feel like the only conscious person in this whole city. On the windowsill are 3 small mushrooms growing up from a crack, their stems are so weak and skinny that they are lying on their side. For some reason this image sticks with me very clearly, of these 3 anemic mushrooms. I am wondering just what in the world I am doing in this place.

Nancy gets up and hops in the shower first. She lets me use her phone to call Bill--it's $4.99 a minute, which is outrageous, but I am desperate to talk to him. I keep it short--I think I only talk to him for 3 minutes, all of which is spent with me crying "I want to come home!!!" and him patiently reassuring me (how many times something like this has happened in our marriage is not even funny!). I tell him about my long night, and he keeps telling me how much he and the kids love me and that everything's going to be fine. As I'm sitting there on the bed, I'm noticing a pool of soapy water that is emerging from the bathroom and slowly making its way across the bedroom. I hop up and quickly start to pick up everything off the floor and get it to higher ground. Apparently the shallow "tub" area was clogged and would not drain, so basically our bathroom flooded. I decide to skip a shower for that morning, and Nancy and I lay down our towels to try and sop up the worst of it, but it's not entirely helpful. We go down to the front desk to tell Pamela what's happened and she is appalled that we have put our towels down on the floor--that seems to be her main concern. She also seems totally exasperated at these 2 stupid American girls, like we can't figure out how to work a shower and its our fault. We're trying to be nice, really!

Breakfast time, which consists of bread, jam, bananas and passion fruit juice. I'm not so much hungry, but I need to eat to take my malaria pill. The jam comes in cans--it's "red plum" jam which kind of looks/tastes like raspberry jam without the seeds. It's actually quite good and I'll eat a couple slices of white bread with butter and jam for breakfast all week. One day we even had a toaster! But it only worked for like 3 or 4 cycles then went kaput. This morning we are going to be attending church services at the 4 "mother" churches we'll be working with all week long. Somehow last night Chad got me to agree to share my testimony at the church we'll be going to. This is not something I would do even at home, but strangely enough I'm not entirely nervous about it. I think I just feel so out of sorts that this is just one more uncomfortable thing in a whole litany of uncomfortable things so I don't even notice anymore. More waiting and sitting, God, if we could just get going and do something maybe I wouldn't feel so awful! But when you're sitting around for like 2 hours its hard not to just be thinking about everything you're missing. Finally its time to board the busses and head to church--the sun has come out and it is a beautiful day...amazing how the terrors of night pass when the light comes...