Tastes Like Chicken

If two weeks ago was a workers strike, then this past week was mutiny of the cooks. Part of the earth leveling and ground preparation contract is that breakfast and lunch are provided. So, when the cook decided not to show up for two days last week, you can imagine that the workers weren't overjoyed. Fortunately, one of the teams was excavating an area which happened to contain a giant ant hill (like the one pictured last week). Not only did this hill contain the queen ant, but it also was habitat to thousands of soirs (white ants), which as I found out were also edible. Tuesday night I had the pleasure of indulging in fried soir. Mmmm. But that was just one step down from my experience of eating live, raw soir the next day. They're really not that bad if you can crunch them quickly before they have time to crawl around in your mouth.
Fried soir (no, you don't eat the wings)

Another interesting experience last week was my trip to the nearest trading center to purchase some tomatoes on Thursday night. I say "trading center," but think lemonade stand in the pitch dark. The center had quite the night life though; it seemed to be the hangout place for all of the surrounding villages.

Much of the week was hampered by lots of rain, which only compiled the problem of slow progress do to the missing cook situation. When it wasn't pouring, I spent a lot of time with the teams digging, and also preparing for the water pipeline trenching project. I expect to be working primarily on the pipeline this week.

The heavy rain also made transport back to Jinja an adventure on Saturday. Two wipe outs on the boda-boda (motorcycle) on my journey back to town renewed my fear for these sinful machines and their operators. For the life of me, I can't figure out why I didn't start praying until our second spill. Thankfully, both tip-overs happened while we were traveling at a very slow speed, so none of us (the driver, Joseph - one of the workers, and myself) sustained any injuries.

Many situations over the past few weeks have caused me to think a lot about the issue of compassion and generosity again. I'd like to share one in particular. On Monday, a new worker traveled with me from Jinja out to the development site. After we arrived, I discussed with him the plan for the week. He then told me that he didn't have any money for supper. Immediately, I jumped to the defensive position thinking, "Come on; didn't you plan ahead at all? Or were you just expecting to take advantage of me, knowing I'd be able to help you out?" While my flesh was brewing over his presumed negligence, the Spirit convicted me as it occurred to me that maybe he didn't even have any money to bring with him. I ended up spotting him some cash so that he would be able to go to the "trading center" and at least eat supper for the next few nights. My initial reluctance bothered me, though. I've found that I can become indifferent about the needs after being over here for this long. When so many people are always asking you for favors, I start to think, "Why do I always have to be the hero?" until I remember that my material wealth has very little to do with myself and everything to do with God's overwhelmingly generous and abundant blessings on me. I need to stop looking at helping people as a burden, and start seeing it as a way to share God's love. On that note, it was such a blessing today to be able to help a woman at the Jinja hospital pay for a surgery that she couldn't otherwise afford. She was one who we had been praying for over the last four weeks as we visited patients at the hospital.