A Complicated Life

After our morning shot of cockroach coffee, Derrick and I joined Mark on a mission to find his family a freezer. Finding good meat here is a challenge and when it can be found it would be nice to be able to stock up and keep it handy in the freezer. (See the picture below)

After somehow managing to drive through the market without running over someone, and after we had been on the road for about 20 minutes, Mark pointed off to the right and said, “If you look past the rice fields up in that hill you can see our house.”

I responded, “You mean to tell me we have been driving all this time and we can still see your house over there?”

“Yep. Welcome to Madagascar.”

We found a freezer. Then we figured out how to squeeze it into the vehicle (part of that involved me squeezing myself into the shotgun seat for the ride back). We got it to the house and up the stairs into its new home. It was 12:30.

After a sandwich, we set out again, this time with Naomi, one of Mark’s daughters. Mark had a package at the post office.

We made the arduous drive again. He went in and got a yellow slip out of his PO Box and then had to walk around to the back of the building where a woman was sitting in a dark cave of a room. He handed her the slip of paper. She did some paperwork magic and handed him a different piece of paper.

Mark said, “Now we need to go over to the other building where the package is.”

I wrongly assumed it was within walking distance. It wasn’t. We drove to another narrow, crowded street lined with street vendors on one side and the post office building on the other.

Nothing is easy here.

We walked into the large warehouse like building and Mark walked over to a counter on the right side. “Is that where you get your package,” I asked.

“Well, no. She takes that paper and gives me a different paper which I will take over there to the customs desk where I will pay a fee and get another piece of paper that I will take to another person and that person will go find my package…I hope.”

Sounds efficient.

Nothing is easy here.

We started the drive back, arrived at the market and found it was log jammed for some reason. We were in a sea of people, carts, bikes, autos, and motorcycles and Mark like Moses of old parted that sea and backed us out of there and took a back road through the rice patties back to the house.

It was 5:30. All day. Two errands done.

Nothing is easy here.

The wives had spent the day helping Aimee do meal prep. They cleaned and cut up chicken to stock in the new freezer, along with other things to use in future meals.

Nothing is easy here.

Hopefully today we did some things to help these missionaries lives go a little easier in the months ahead.

Meat on the street