Life...

Evrin and Britany

We have lived in this country for nearly 3.5 years now and by this time we feel we've experienced much. Many things that have made my heart sad. Tonight however, we experienced something that made my heart break. I have written a number of times about Ritha's mother. She has been causing problems for Ritha and her brother and sister time and again. Yesterday she came to our home saying that her daughter, not Ritha, was not going to come to work. Hugo told her that she didn't work for us but for our neighbours. Hugo gave her this information without realizing that Ritha and her sister have kept her workplace a secret so that their mother would not come and bother her there. She went to our neighbours and started ranting about her daughter and was escorted off the premises. She then returned this morning again and was again escorted away. Tonight however, she returned after dark and began yelling and crying at our neighbours gate. She removed her shirt and was not wearing anything underneath. She lay on the ground and was ranting incoherently about being accused of killing 10 people and wanting to see her daughter because she heard she'd been killed. There was a lot of wierd things exiting this woman's mouth. We really didn't want to call Ritha and her sister for fear that this would make things worse. The police were called and didn't answer the phone (so helpful...). Finally, a coworker went to the police and brought them back. Throughout all this she continued to rant and people came including kids, to watch the scene unfold. I told the mothers a number of times to take their little children home as they did not need to see this. They all agreed but no one left.... The police were unwilling to pick up the woman as she was unclothed. Finally Ritha and her siblings came and in spite of the mother insisting on seeing her daughter, she did not aknowledge her arrival and kept saying that she wanted to stay right where she was and would the police just kill her right there. Then she asked her son to kill her as well. He's 14 and in his anger kicked her a couple of times. It broke my heart to see Ritha and her sister trying to calm their mother down so that she would go into the police vehicle. They managed to get her shirt back on, thankfully... It took a number of men, including Hugo, to get her to the vehicle but they were unable to get her in. They wanted to handcuff her, but the handcuffs were like play ones that you can open without a key! Ugghh... Eventually she agreed to go home so they could talk things over. They walked down the road a bit and then she finally agreed to go into the police car. Ritha and siblings also went in and they brought her home. I asked the police what could be done about this situation as the possiblity of a reoccurance seems pretty high. He just said, well call us again then. That's all we can do. So what might need to happen is that we keep our gates locked at all times. Not a nice thing to have to do... Please remember this family in yoru prayers.

Today I took photos of Ritha and her girls. I wanted to do this for her before Awi is taken.

On Saturday we had the annual MAF Christmas program. Hugo sang together with all the guys who work in the hangar. There were speeches a sermon, singing and then finally after 2 hours, food. The kids were very hungry and very restless by then...

In the second photo is Ziporah. Her dad is the flight scheduler for MAF and her parents also go to our church. She is quite a character....

In the next photo is Evrin and his precious little girl Brittany. Evrin is a licensed mechanic who has gone to America for training. Brittany is not their first child but she is their only living child. When we lived here six years ago, Evrin's wife Ninksy was pregnant and they had a six year old boy with Down's Syndrome. During our time this little boy died of meningitis. Then they had their daughter and at first she seemed fine. But as she grew she began to be cyanotic. She had a hole in her heart. They brought her to Makasar for surgery but they said they couldn't do it as she was too little and so she died as well. You need to understand that in their culture there is a sense that the parents must have done something to make this happen. The burden that these two people carried was very great. So it was with great joy about 1.5 years ago, that they had Britany. She is a healthy, happy little girl who brings much joy to her parents.