Simon & Carina Gruber

Simon & Carina Gruber spent two months with us in Karamoja on a survey visit (14 Feb to 13 April). They are German citizens and like us, he is a seminarian and she is a veterinarian (though, unlike us, she is from the south and he, from the north ... of Germany, of course). They started with Jean still in Jinja, so Carina wasn't able to get into vet work as soon as expected, but she still had a month with Jean in the end. We did a bit of language and storying. We went to our two churches (Anglican and Catholic). We took them up to Kaabong and showed them Lotim (twice - they flew out from there). So, they saw everything we had to show them. Carina attended some of a community animal health worker training led by the District Veterinary Officer and Simon & I took a bus to Nairobi for the Nomadic Peoples Network conference (Summer also joined us there, arriving from a Pioneers new missionary orientation week in Yei, South Sudan). Traveling like that is an orientation in itself. Simon struggled with malaria before and during the conference but eventually just took the medicine and got better quickly (another life-in-Africa lesson - we provide a FULL service orientation here). I think we all got a lot out of the conference and I'm sure Simon got everything he wanted from the malaria: pain, suffering, sleeplessness, misery (you know, the usual). Of course, we hope they will join our team, though not because Simon seems to pick up interesting artifacts everywhere he goes. He would Never, to take a Very unlikely example, just walk out into the tall grass of a game park amongst the wild carnivores in order to obtain a ... ooooh, let's just pick a wildly random "big 5" type trophy ... the head of a Cape Buffalo! Sheesh! No Way!! Come on! Never happen - not even when invited to do so by a gun-toting Park Ranger? no no no noooo! - but if he were to do something like that, it would look terrific hanging from the stone walls of the house - I'm just saying ...

Tom