Hello!  I (Amanda) am back in the land of communication & technology!  Before we get into anything too serious, I wanted to share these lessons with you.  (Some of it is a little tongue in cheek, be prepared.)

1.) All snakes are poisonous.

I tried to disagree with this, after all, “I know cause my dad’s a biologist.” (Um, technically he’s retired, so maybe my tense is wrong on that?) However, I have to concede that when you are many hours from medical treatment, its probably best to just assume that the snake is poisonous and kill it.

2.) If the water you are washing with is dirty, just keep adding more soap.(for example, if you are washing dishes, clothes, etc.)

Sometimes its a little hard for me to swallow that putting my plate in there will make it cleaner, no matter how much soap I use.  But in places where water is often short…

3.) If a black person and a white person have a baby together, the baby will be white.

I wasn’t even sure where to start with this conversation, because I quickly realized that she was starting from a VERY different place than me.  It also included “Who will own the baby?”  (The answer there possibly being the woman’s parents, if a proper dowry hasn’t been paid.) This was from a teacher.  Speaking of babies…

4.) Once she has breasts, any woman can breastfeed at any time.

This was from one of our team members.  My favorite part was listening to one of our 19-year-old male team members try to correct this belief.  I did my best to back him up,  but even in the end I am not sure if we were convincing.

5.) Big companies are the antichrist taking over the world – especially soft drink companies because you can often find 3 sixes in the bar code on bottles.

Tough one.  Not a huge fan of big companies, and I don’t think pop is good for you. (Although “evil” might be a bit far, even for me.)  But the logic that led you to this conclusion!!??  It came out of nowhere as we were drinking Cokes… but it did lead to a great conversation about the bible and culture.

6.) At night, mosquito nets also protect you from rats, bats, and frogs.

True story.  Now, I know what you are thinking: “nets aren’t rat proof!”  I can attest that they DO keep the rats from running over you at night (and frogs that come into your room at night seem to only hop through the maze outside the nets.)   We didn’t have issues with bats, but we met a team that told us that their mosquito nets kept the bats out.

And with that, I’ll leave you with a picture of South Sudan.  I only sorted through several hundred pictures, I’m sure there will be better ones once I have gone through the 1000’s.  But just to show you a bit of how beautiful it was there.