The Dreaded Call From A House Guest

Before launching into the slated funny story, we had a scary experience this morning. The neighborhood transformer box meets in our front yard. I was teaching school and a neighbor came to tell me the box was on fire. I went out and saw flames and neighbors running. I called Jon and a friend went into town to the power company. I stood in the front yard with the girls and we called on the name of Jesus to stop the fire. I’ll chalk it up to a surreal experience to watch and know no fire department exists. I pulled down our evacuation box and made sure all of our important documents were present in case the fire spread. The power company turned off all power and the fire stopped, praise God. Two employees came out with much cajoling from us and again, did a band-aid fix. Jon has become quite the electrician but he can only work in our house were he has control of when to turn off the power. A deep paradox, so thankful my family and all our neighbors are safe but frustrated at the band-aid solutions. Thankful to be in faith-building situations and seeing God work but also fighting the anxiety of the “what-ifs”. 

A power worker who was finally convinced to come and look at the problem. His job is high risk and he shimmies up these poles…

Cutting down leaves too close to power lines.

Sigh. Now for something more light-hearted.

Deep breath because I originally wrote this one for laughs. :)

We are hosting a small group from Addis as we have KIBIR team meetings. Always a special time for our family of cultural learning and community as we laugh into the night and learn around the kitchen table. Uncle Misikir is one of our guests and our four love him and vie for his attention. 

With guests, we also have increased probability of critters entering the house as doors and windows are left open more frequently. I warned the guys staying in the attic, “Just make sure to close your window before dark because things get in.” They were out late and so I scrambled up the attic stairs while stew simmered on the stove and I shut the window and door. 

Jon and I were laying in bed, talking through the day when Jon phone rang, caller ID showed it was Misikir, who was sleeping in our attic bunk area. Nebeyu was up there. We’ve had enough guests and enough hilarity/trauma to know when someone calls you from your own house, there’s a critter situation. As the story goes, they were chatting about the day when a moth flew up from Nebeyu’s blanket in the dark and it scared them. Then something started swooping at their heads.  They tried to ignore the bat and close it in another part of the attic as they decided if it crossed over a narrow curtain barrier, it was out for humans. Then they proceeded to tell each other scary stories about vampire bats killing donkeys (we don’t have vampire bats) but when the bat crossed into the bunk area, they were already in a frenzied state and they called for reinforcement. Bats are in the male jurisdiction in our home and so I stayed in our cozy bed as Jon climbed the ladder to the attic.

As the story goes, and I can’t stop laughing as I write this, one of the men (whom I shall not name), huddled under his blankets, only his eyes peering out while calmly giving instructions. (I was specifically told not to use the words “shouting or crying”).  The other two, were trying to get the bat. Jon couldn’t find a badminton racket and so grabbed a ping-pong paddle. The other man had shed his blanket that was covering him as he didn’t want the bat to fly into the blanket with him and had the idea to instead use tote lids. As the cheerleader recounts, “I looked out and it was like they were playing tennis”. A bit of swinging, a lot of swooping from the bat and they destroyed it. 

At the breakfast table, our houseguests said, “Yeah, when you said close the windows or things will get in, I thought you meant mosquitos!”. They said they had all grown up with rats and they would much rather have a rat than a bat, as a bat is “a flying rat”. 

Oh, life isn’t boring.