New house

It has been a long few days here in Cameroon, at least for me it has. Last week our team mates decided it was time to move back to Chad, while Dave and I decided that we would stay here in Cameroon. There are a lot of reasons for them to go, and there are a lot of reasons for us to stay. I won’t go into the details of all these things…. But the result of this change in address for our team mates made us decide to move out of the village and to the hospital compound which makes it possible for me to see more of the team. Living in the village, taking care of Benjamin and being pregnant AND not having a car, has made it difficult for me to see the rest of the team socially. Since we are leaving on home assignment in August I felt it would be good for me to see the team more before they left for Chad. So we asked the hospital grounds coordinator if we could move into an empty house here. They weren’t able to give us a definite yes right away. We had a team get away on Monday the 16th and that morning we found out that we could probably move in on Wednesday but that depended on the situation in Chad. Isn’t that just the way? Everything always depends on the situation in Chad! I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about…I mean why the move depended on Chad.




Well, just after our team decided to move back in to Chad the rebels started moving into villages and towns in Eastern Chad. It is always difficult to figure out which reports are true and which are simply “hear” “say” so no one was sure if they were coming into the capital or not. Since the missionaries were so recently evacuated (February of this year) most of the people who are in the capital now would leave before the attack if the rebels tried to take it. Meskine, where we live, is only four hours from N’Djamena (Chad’s capital) and so if missionaries were to evacuate the hospital wanted to make their housing available. And that is why we could “probably” move in on Wednesday. When Wednesday morning did arrive we sat down to breakfast and I asked Dave if we had a positive go yet. He said that he couldn’t call and find out until 8, and then immediately asked me what the packing plan was. I’m sure my tone was tense and stretched when I told him that we could hardly begin packing without knowing if we were moving. So he called, and then texted the man in charge (because the phones weren’t working) and within thirty minuets we had a go. We were packed, the house was clean and we were in the new house by 3 in the afternoon. We are getting very good at relocation!


The situation in Chad has calmed and it isn’t clear if the rebels will move west toward N’Djamena or not. Our team has postponed its departure for about one week, and we are happy to spend more time with them before we go. Ben is having a great time playing with Jocelyn, the youngest McKenzie child, and I’ve already spent a couple hours just hanging out with my friends here. Dave got a call around 8 tonight from someone watching a soccer match and was able to run over to the main gathering house to watch it with some other “football” fans.