trips and meds

We have had a busy few weeks. Our brother-in-law Seth was in town. It was so good to see him a and spend some time with him. He borrowed a truck and we drove a couple hours to a town called Kabuye that is on lake Kivu. It was a beautiful place. We stayed the night at a place called the Bethanie Center. It was right on the lake. They had a restaurant with good food and the rooms were nice. Our room even had a beautiful view of the lake. It cost $20 for the night. The next morning we took a boat out on the lake and stopped at an island to walk around. We then came back to Kigali and had some wood fire oven pizza that was pretty good. The drive was very beautiful. It was nice to get out of the city for the first time and see more of Rwanda. It is a very beautiful, green, hilly country. Almost everything you see is farmed. The hills are terraced and farmed. I heard that the leading cause of injury in Rwanda is from people falling out of their steep hilly gardens.

The next weekend Christi and Mili took a bus to Burundi to visit her sister. It took about 6 hours and was uneventful. The bus is sort of a small Greyhound and the roads are paved. She left on a Thursday morning and came back on Monday afternoon. She mostly just relaxed and hung out with her sister and brother-in-law. I missed them like crazy. I did have a chance to spend some time with teachers from my school. We did two movie nights where we borrowed the school's projectors and watched them on the "big screen." It also gave me a chance to explore the city a little more. On Sunday night I went out for coffee with a friend from Uganda who is the youth pastor of the church by our house. He's a great guy and it was good to get to know him a little better. The whole time Christi and Mili were gone I was suffering with a bad ingrown toenail. I had it looked at by a friend who recommended I go to the doctor and get it cut out. I soaked it in hot salt water twice a day and took ibuprofen. I couldn't get an appointment until Monday afternoon, and by then it had pretty much healed from soaking. I cut out a piece that was digging into the skin and it has not given me any problems since.

This week has been really hard. Mili came down with a fever. She had been fighting it for about a day and a half when it went up really high on Wednesday night. We called our friend Becca, she and her husband are the country directors in Rwanda for World Relief, and she picked us up and drove us to the main hospital in Kigali called King Faisal. They gave her Tylenol and took a blood sample to test for bacterial infection and malaria. They also put her on an IV drip to get fluids in her. It was really scary being having a sick baby in a foreign hospital, but we were really pleased with the cleanliness, knowledge and care we received. After several hours her fever had still not come down and they recommended we admit her. We asked to wait until the blood tests came back. When they did they were both negative for malaria and bacterial infection. They thought it must be viral. When the test came back she was starting to look better and we had her temperature taken again and it was normal. We ended up going home and it was fine the rest of the night and all the next day. Becca stayed with us the whole time and we didn't get home until after 1am. Just before 6:00pm on Thursday night her temperature spiked again to almost 105. Our friend Becca was stuck in traffic and unable to pick us up. I called my principal who came and got us. He suggested we get her in a bath to get her temperature down. We went to his house, which is near the hospital, and gave her a bath and gave her some medicine we had gotten from the hospital the night before. Her temperature came down to about 102 for 15 minutes and then started to go back up again. We gave her another bath and it came back down and this time stayed down. She became more attentive and less lethargic. She even started playing and laughing which was so good. I had sent out text messages to friends here to pray. One person got me in touch with a Canadian nurse and American doctor who gave us great advice. We ended up staying the night at my Principal's house whose family was amazing. They fed us, prayed with us, and put us up for the night. The next day Christi took Mili to a pediatrician who also said it was viral, and not swine flu. She hasn't had a fever since and has been doing really well. I had gone to work both days and was exhausted by the end of school on Friday. The kids had a half day and I went home an hour early and took a nap with Mili. The entire emergency room visit, medicine, and pediatrician visit totaled less than 100 dollars which was so nice.

Today is Umaganda where the country shuts down from 8am to noon so that everyone can work in their community on service projects. At 2pm our school is having a costume party put on by the parent teacher organization. We aren't sure what we are going to dress up as yet, but it will be nice to have something fun to do this weekend. Tomorrow we are having lunch with the family of one of my students. They are so nice and it will be good to get to know them better. I hope this finds you all well. Thanks for all your prayers and support. We feel very loved by all our friends, family, and coworkers in the States and here in Kigali as well.