The downside of rain.

This week has escaped out of my grasp, somehow. I was going to write this post soon after Sunday and now I discover it's already Thursday. And not just Thursday, it's Thursday night.

I just wanted to tell you about Church on Sunday. It wasn't raining this time, but it had been raining hard the day before. The church building was literally swimming. We waded through the hot steamy water. It smelt like a sewer. I dreaded to think about what we were walking through. Needless to say, we soaked our feet in hot detol water when we got home. It made me grimace to think of the infections, and malaria and other health issues that would spring up as a result of this excess yucky water.

In 2010, months after the big flood that welcomed us, Amanda, Andrew and Grace's daughter, had this nagging, hacking cough. Normal cough remedies didn't seem to clear it up. In the end they found out that a worm had got into her body (ok, I'm not talking about the lovely worms that chew through dirt in your garden... those are nice worms and you should encourage their presence) through a small scratch or something while walking in/around this mud that the flood had left, and had entered her lung eventually and was causing this awful cough... Terrible stuff.

My bets are that in two weeks lots of people will have malaria around here...

Anyway, back to the subject. Um, yes, excess yucky water. Worshipping with our brothers and sisters in Lunga SSEC was as usual encouraging. Theresa even sat relatively still for parts of the sermon. After Lords Supper, we waded back through the water and walked back in the hot sun.

The area where the church building is belongs to a company called Tongs. They supply building stuff etc. Anyway, they have housing their for their staff. It all got so flooded there, that they dug these trenches for the water to flow out of people's living areas and houses. Unfortunately the water just sits there (4 days later, it's still sitting there) because there's nowhere for it to run to. Perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The point of telling you about it is this:

it's so sad to see people's gardens damaged by floods. I mean, if your garden gets constant rain for 2 weeks straight, you'll probably be ok. If your vegies all die, well, that's ok, because usually, you can go to the supermarket and buy more.

But these guys... that's their food. I mean, that's almost all the food that they would eat in daily life. If the ground is too wet, the cassava (which is in this picture) will just rot in the ground. Then what do you do? Then what do you eat? I don't know.

Today it was sunny. I am so thankful, not for my sake but so that maybe some people might be able to salvage some of their crops and still have food to eat.

It's so hard for us to comprehend. In our society when (or should I say if...) your cupboards ever get empty, you go and buy more. And if you don't have money to, well, in the crowd I grew up in anyway, there's always someone who will give you food or money. It's just hard to comprehend getting to the end of the barrel and finding there is nothing left.

We are so rich. Materially, but maybe we miss out on having a firm grasp on the fact that it is God who feeds us, God who provides for us, God who supplies the harvest.