BATS!

The Bethel team arrives here in two days. And we are all pretty excited. The itinerary is going to be jammed packed: hospitals, schools, village outreach, training,  a mental hospital, jails, and a weekend crusade in the surrounding villages where 40 different churches are joining in! This also means this will probably be my last blog post for a while since I won't be around internet until November. The team is going to be made of 24 people from age 19 to age 70. So we know it's gonna be a pretty diverse group. I'm personally excited for the older people coming…being in college and then with 6 young interns makes you appreciate grown up time! :) 

Sooo…In preparation we've have all been cleaning away. This means cleaning up bat guano with bleach and a scrub brush So fun! haha You could see the seeds in the fecal matter from all the fruit these nasty creatures eat. There are so many here! and they love to hang around the Ark--the large meeting room where we eat. As we were scrubbing away we noticed that the bats were sleeping under the back overhang. I watched as Brittany took the large pink duster, we call it the "poof", and go after the bats. We thought they were asleep at first but we could see their demonic little heads follow us when we came in sight. I followed close to Brittany's rear, not wanting to miss out on all the excitement, but at the same time my heart pounding and hoping one wouldn't fly my way. At first they were cooperative and flew away from us, but then they started getting more brave and coming at our head! eek. Brittany's and my squealing brought two more interns to join in on the bat hunting. We didn't realize that when we were scarring off the last few bats that we were just at the beginning of the quest. They started going into the ark!!! and that's not okay when you have just spent an hour scraping off their tar-like feces!! They were in the back corner over the school room. Us girls all grab our choice weapon and ammo--the "poof", brooms, scrapers, partnered with wiffle balls--and climb militantly up the stairs, or as militantly as possible while giggling. Even the guard puppies join us with their own balls in their mouth. We stand around couple minutes, the bats about 15ft away, and after assessing the situation decide on a plan of action. We will all throw our balls at once while holding our defense weapons in the other hand to keep them from possibly attacking our faces. "One, two, three throw!" and after all that buildup they uneventfully fly to the other side of the ark, but don't worry we screamed anyway! Laughing we run down and see that they are now about 30 ft away from hanging from the ceiling and there is no way we can get them now. Even when we tried hitting the wiffle balls with plastic bats, we were not even close, and were more consistently dodging each others balls than getting near the bats. The Ugandans just watched us crazy girls with amusement. So the bats won this time!!! But  we declare victory over the next.

News on the Clinic:

Dr. Martin came last Sunday evening. He is the one that would be able to get us legal and setup. Because everything seems the follow the trend of taking forever here, we were surprised when he said the clinic would take only a month or more to get going! Wahooo! So It seems that I might get to be working in the clinic after all before I leave, if everything goes as planned.