Levi's nose - on the way to the hospital. It steadily got worse during the day.
The river ran out and we were in the floodplains. The guys had to pole us through shallow water for well over 2 hours.
My view on the way back to Lukulu after spending the night in the village.
We have had a very interesting weekend. Here is the story - our plans were to camp out across the river with the one Baptist Church. Not my cup of tea but I knew that we would need to do this when we came over here. We had two church members make the trip across the river to help guide us back across. We had to totally scrap our plans. On Wednesday, I had noticed that Levi had a red circle on the side of his nose. The redness had spread out and inside the circle had become very yellow and pus-y. It kept spreading toward his eye and underneath it. I was very concerned with it. We had 2 choices - scrap everything and drive 10 hours to Lusaka where they might not even know what it was or head upriver in the boat to a Mission Hospital run by Canadians, Americans and Irish. We decided to take Levi to the mission hospital at Chitokoloki on Saturday instead of heading to the church. We thought we would go there on Saturday and continue on to the church on Sunday. We took the boat 3 hours up the Zambezi. They have American, Canadian and Irish doctors and nurses. They took such good care of us and just welcomed us into their community. We were so blessed! It ended up being Herpes which is the cold sore, chicken pox and shingles virus (also can be contracted as an STD). There just happened to be 3 visiting pediatricians who were there and they said it was a very good idea to come because the virus could have ulcerated his eye and then it would have been very dangerous. The kids spent the afternoon swimming and playing with 2 girls, MKs who live there. Two different families fed us lunch and supper. We left Chitokoloki at 7:15am on Sunday. That is my new favorite place. We might even go there for a couple days vacation. We stayed in a 2 bedroom little house. We could bring our food, hang out with the missionaries and swim in the pool. :) It only took about 2 hours to get almost back to Lukulu where we have to then take the Lundwebungu River to the church. 5 hours later, we sort of arrived. We had 2.5 hours of running the boat and then about 2.5 hours of poling through the floodplain (shallow water that is dry land in the dry season). We were already tired from sitting on the boat and then when they stopped to pole, I literally thought that I was going to burst into flames - it was so hot with hardly any breeze and no shade. We finally got to where the water was too shallow then we had to jump out and wade through the water, mud, grass and finally found a path up to the village. We had mud to our knees. Levi had fell in the water, several times. Zoe had mud up to her shoulders.
So we arrived to sit in the shade for a while and Fransis (secretary of the church) sent some men, women and children to empty the boat. It was about 3pm and we had not ate lunch. We took the kid into the bush and made them scarf a Clif Bar. About an hour later, Fransis and Jeff went to the church. Jeff thought he was just going to talk with the pastor but they had assembled all the people to have a second service of the day. They were gone over 3 hours. I just sat with the women while they basically ignored me and the kids stared a hole in us. Levi and Zoe got up and played tag with the kids for a while. Jeff and Fransis got back around 8pm. We were all starving and exhausted. We were eating buhobe and our tortilla soup at about 9pm. We put the kids in the tent about 9:30pm - in their clothes, no wash off, no teeth brushed. Because I didn't go to the service, the people wanted to come and greet me. No one really arrived until about 9:45pm. Jeff sat and talked with the pastor while I dozed in and out and we finally got to bed around 11pm. I slept in all my clothes, didn't even brush my teeth. I didn't have the energy to find the toothpaste and brush. I think that was a first!
We slept until about 5:30am when a rooster that had to be right beside the tent, started crowing. He was the only rooster that was crowing in the village and he was as RIGHT beside US!!! So we left about 10:30am. We had 4 guys plus Jeff poling for us this time and it took only over an hour. Then we dropped 2 of them off and 2 more a little later down the river so it was just us for about an hour. Again, we were starving but the food we had had to be warmed up. We had 4 Clif bars left over and I ate a few pieces of dried dried apricot. So we got home, took showers, ate lunch/supper at about 3:45pm - we were so hungry. Even though I slathered sunscreen on, we are all sunburned! The inside of my ears are sunburned! It looks so much better looking BACK on it. It was definitely hard while we were there but so worth it as we look back. I look forward to going back - now there is a miracle from the Lord!
