I always laugh at my old high school chemistry teacher when I tell the story of how he blew up his experiment. In my head I recall a loud explosion and glass flying past one of the students unfortunate enough to sit in the front row of lab benches. I have no idea what he was trying to teach us. Woke us up though.
Sometimes the unexpected happens.
Last night, when I told Leo that I was trying to put some of my old Congo memories down in writing, he asked me if I remembered the incident with the hydrogen peroxide.
Yeah, I do.
Hydrogen peroxide is a good medication to use in the treatment of mouth infections. It is also cheap. And I knew that in a place where antibiotics were scarce, this could be a good way to treat some infections. We use this medication in infections where the infecting bacteria prefer to live and grow in an absence of oxygen. That is because, the medication when applied to infected tissue, gives off oxygen in a mass of tiny bubbles. The bacteria are killed then by the exposure to the oxygen.
But H2O2 was difficult to find in Kinshasa.
That should have been a clue.
We searched till we found two large bottles of this seemingly scarce liquid. It came in large brown GLASS bottles. I was happy and we found a place to store them – up on the top shelf of the closet, out of Eric’s reach. We didn’t want him accidentally breaking those bottles!
As you can imagine, it gets warm in Kinshasa in the mid-afternoon. And heat rises – right? Now, I knew that but I did not think about what effect the heat might be having on my closed bottles of hydrogen peroxide. As H2O2 is heated, it also deteriorates into its component parts -oxygen and water. And it expands. Boy how it expands!!!!
We were staying at the Protestant guest house – CAP(Centre d’Acqueille Protestante). The accommodations were small independent units. Two sleeping rooms with a shared bathroom between. Not much room. A crib too and lots of stuff – all the belongings we had brought from Belgium and things we had picked up in Kinshasa for our work up at Karawa. The afternoon heat had driven us out of doors. Fortunately.
I have done some really stupid things in my life. Usually with perfectly good intentions. By the time I am finished doing them, I am either rolling my eyes at myself or someone dear to me is laughing – in which case I am likely not.
I learned a few lessons that day.
One – Hydrogen peroxide is explosive!
Two God has unique ways of cluing us northern missionaries in to the facts of life in the tropics.
Three We may provide God with a good laugh every now and then but he still takes care to protect us.
By the time we had picked up the broken glass and tiny bubbles everywhere, we were laughing too.
We never bothered to buy that stuff again!
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