A Week in the Life: Monday

Slightly stealing this idea from another missionary: To give you a better idea of what life is like here, and the things that come up each day, I'm going to blog each day for a week about things in detail, especially things that wouldn't normally come up with life in the States, like "I was caught in the rain on my boda boda" or "I took a cold shower because the power was out so the electric heater didn't have time to warm up." 

So without further ado, here we go! 

MONDAY

First things first when I woke up today—no different from life in the States—I made coffee. But unlike in the States, I boiled my water on the gas stove since the power was out, and made it with a French press rather than an electric drip machine.

Then at 8:15 I met my boda driver who took me to work. It’s about a 15 minute drive, and was uneventful today. I first headed up to the children’s home to have them color puppets I’ve been drawing, and we’ll eventually put together a puppet show. That’s always like a zoo. Dealing with kids in any language is a challenge, but it’s even more challenging with the language barrier. It makes it 10 times more difficult when they can’t understand “sit down and wait your turn,” and when fights break out between the kids, it’s sometimes impossible to understand the situation, who is the inciter and who is the victim, and how to handle the situation. But I made it through coloring today without too many incidents!

Then I headed to the office for staff devotions. Everyday we meet midmorning to sing songs, pray, and someone shares a message. It’s an uplifting time where we get to share about what God is doing in each of our lives. After devotions we have a tea break. It really breaks up the morning. A few hours of work, then devotions and tea, then before you know it it’s almost noon!

Denis, my program coordinator, is out of the office for the next 3 weeks on a time of leave. Our other 2 volunteers are university students, and classes have just started back up, so I’m pretty much running the exit program ship alone! Ok so I guess I should say here that there has been some restructuring lately, and the exit program is now being called Youth Rebuilders Project, or YRP. Without boring you with the details, we’re still basically doing the same thing, just with a different title. New look, same great taste. 

So with Denis out of the office, I’m unsure how things might go for the next few weeks. Most of the things I do come directly from him. For example, maybe one of my tasks for the day will to be to write an update on the situation of a youth to put in their file. Maybe something significant has happened to them recently, and we need to keep their file up to date. But Denis is the one who passes on the information to me. He tells me a summary of the kid’s situation, and I compile a report for their file. Without him, if you were to task me to write an update on that kid, I’m useless!

So I have a few things up my sleeve to be working on while he’s away—some documents I’ve been working on for the last few weeks that I can continue to work on. But I learned today that you don’t have to go looking for things to come at you if you’re the one in charge—they come to you! 

Immediately after tea, I was presented with one of our youth who needed an increase in school fees. So I needed to write a letter and fill out a fund requisition form for him. I’ve written letters like this before, so that wasn’t too hard, but I had never actually dealt with money or requisitions before. So after I wrote the letter, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Another program coordinator seemed to know who to take it to, so he did that while I started to work on something else. 

But I had just sat down when I was interrupted by a woman who didn’t speak great English. She needed something to do with money, but I’m not sure if she needed money or she was trying to give me money for something. So I called Denis, even though I hated to disturb him on his day off. It turns out she was one of our FEP (Family Empowerment Program) mothers who had received a loan to start a business, and she was paying back her weekly amount. So I drafted a very official document on scratch paper saying I had received the cash, and off she went. 

Then my colleague who had taken the request for the boy’s school fees had come back, saying that the executive director actually needed us to process 4 other requests with other youth who were in a similar situation to this boy. I had written a report on 1 of them last week, and found a report Denis had done on another one… but I couldn’t even put a face with the names of the other 2 kids, much less write a report on their current situation and requisite funds for them! 

Thankfully though, it was lunch time, so we would deal with it later. Lunch today was matooke (green bananas, steamed and mashed up), posho (made from maize flour, thick and flavorless), and beef. Mmmm. On the way to lunch, we were told by a boda driver that one of our former youth had delivered her baby just a little earlier. Unfortunately she is one of our former youth and not one of our current youth because of her situation with the pregnancy. But we still had to go see the baby and make sure that both mom and baby were doing well and were healthy. 

The boda driver told us that the baby had started coming when she was at home, and the boda driver found her and another woman accompanying her as they were heading down to the clinic. Apparently they didn’t even make it to the clinic—she delivered on the boda! Can you imagine??

So after lunch, my colleague Joseph and I hopped on a boda and headed down to the clinic to see her, and at this point I was thinking about how I won’t be bored for the next few weeks; life comes at you in large helpings here if you let it.

Both the mom and baby were doing fine. Of course the mom was in a lot of pain, but she was healthy, and so was her baby girl. I got to hold the baby, and that was amazing. I realized that I don’t think I’ve ever held a newborn baby, not just hours after birth. I’ve held babies a few days old, but this was incredible. What a beautiful thing, new life. Unbelievable. 

After visiting the clinic, we went back to the office, and Denis came in shortly afterwards. He had a couple things to take care of, and while he was on the phone with one of our upper management staff, he was asked to cancel his time of leave. Poor Denis, didn’t even make it a whole day on leave! 

So like I said, I’m fairly useless without him in the office anyway, so with him there to fill in the gaps of information for me, I was able to draft a few more requisition letters for kids needing school fees, scholastic materials, or business start-up capital. 

Just before it was time for me to go home, it started pouring down rain. After awhile it finally stopped so I called my boda driver to come get me, only to watch it start pouring again. By the time he made it here, it was only drizzling. So we made it through the mud and the cold drizzling rain, finally safe and warm at home. 

When my roommate Cassandra got home, she had quite a story! On their way home from work, they reached a flooded part of the road that they couldn’t pass. A taxi was stuck in the middle of it, and they had no choice but to pass by foot. When she and another neighbor finally reached home, their trousers were wet up to mid-thigh! Pretty crazy!

Well the power was out, and we were told there was actually a reason this time. They’re doing something with the transformer or something, so they had to cut off the lines for about 48 hours. Since I’ve been here, it hasn’t been off for that long of a time at once, but at least this time there was a reason and a little advance notice! 

So the rest of the evening involved a cold shower (the hot water heater is electric, so no power, no hot water) and then working on the puppets for the puppet show with the kids by lantern light. As long as my computer battery would last, I was able to Skype with Jeremy, then I read a book until I fell asleep, which was really pretty early! Something about the power being out and sitting in the dark for hours really just makes me sleepy, and I usually hit the hay pretty early when it’s out! 

Kwanjula

A few weeks ago, I went to a Kwanjula, or introduction ceremony, for one of the workers at Dwelling Places. “What is an introduction ceremony,” you ask? Well. Good question. But I don’t really have the best answer for you. The closest thing we could equate it to in the West is an engagement party. But it’s a very formal event, and everyone who gets married will have one, usually a few months before the wedding. The purpose of it is to introduce the groom’s family to the bride’s family. 

Uganda is somewhere sort of in between tradition and modernization if you ask me, and the area of courtship seems to be one of those areas that I’ve observed. Many people are happy to let their children date whomever they please and to choose their spouse for themselves, but tradition is that marriages are pre-arranged, and some people still hold onto that tradition. So part of this introduction ceremony carries the traditional sense of introducing the groom’s family to the bride’s family, bringing them gifts, and asking them to give over their daughter in marriage to the groom. While the whole thing seems to be a lot of pretense and whatnot, I’m told that the bride’s family can even say “no,” even after the whole charade of the ceremony and everything! 

So like any event here, it lasted all day, and even though we left around 9 pm, I was told the party went on well past midnight. We arranged to leave from the office at 10, which means everyone showed up around 10:30 to START getting ready. Both men and women wear traditional dress for these ceremonies—a gomesi for women, and a kanzu for men. It was kind of fun at first to play dress-up, but the dress is deceivingly uncomfortable. You start with an undergarment which is basically a thin blanket wrapped around your body, tied painfully tight at the waist, then folded down over the rope to give you a little extra umph in your caboose. Then the gomesi is buttoned and folded and scrunched and wrapped and draped and sent to China and back before being tied with a massive, cardboard-stuffed sash around the waist. Then voila, you’re ready to “fly away” with your “shoulder flaps” as my good friend Sarah put it. Aren’t the shoulders funny?

Anyway, so we probably left around 11:30 and arrived at 1:00, which is when the groom’s family was supposed to show up. Of course that means they showed up around 3:30. Everyone seemed to be appalled that the family was late… and I was only shocked that people were shocked that they were late. But I later learned more about how the groom’s family is actually there to convince the bride’s family to give her over in marriage, and it reflects poorly on them if they’re late. So that makes sense, but I’m still not shocked that anyone was late. While we were waiting for it to begin, there was entertainment of traditional music and dance, and a whole lot of a guy on a microphone talking for like 30 minutes at a time, all in Luganda of course, so that I couldn’t understand anything. So instead I went for playing Snake on my phone. (Oh yes, that’s right. Remember old-school snake, that eats the dots? I have a cheap phone here and while I usually miss my iPhone, the one redeeming factor of these phones is that they have the snake game!)

traditional Ugandan dance

Anyway, so the family did finally show up. Then there was about 2 hours of various parts of the ceremony, mostly greetings to the family. A group of people—friends or family members of the bride—would walk out of the house, parade around the courtyard a couple of times to music, kneel down in front of the family, then it was a whole lot of “Hello ladies and gentlemen.” “Hello.” “How are you?” “Fine, how are you? “Fine.” “Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too.” Then a little more something in Luganda, then they’d present them with gifts, then parade around the courtyard a few more times to the music, and go back in the house. 

The groom's family entering... and even better, one of my favorite aspects of Ugandan events: the action is clearly going on behind the cameraman, yet he is filming who? The audience. Every event I've ever been to has been like that-- they love taking hundreds of photos and hours of footage of the audience!! Isn't the event happening in the other direction? Not in the audience? haha

A group of relatives... parade, parade, kneel, greet, parade, parade, leave

A few groups of people did this, then there was a lot of other parading around very slowly to music… the bride, the bride and groom, the groom and an aunt… etc. 

Omugole-- the bride

Then we had dinner, then the groom’s family brought in all sorts of gifts. This part was pretty crazy! They brought in all sorts of baskets of food and various things, all on their heads. I couldn’t believe it—the gifts just kept coming! Basket after basket, and even things like a bunch of matoke bananas, and furniture! 

Then just as it got dark, the power went out. So they put on a generator. Which lasted for about 5 minutes, then went out. So we sat in the dark for about an hour, waiting for it to come back on. The DP crew eventually gave up and decided to go, and just as we were leaving, it came back on. But by then it was 9:00, we’d already changed clothes, and we had work the next day, so we left. After we left, they had other parts of the ceremony to do such as cutting the cake, exchanging engagement rings, and dancing, but alas I have nothing to tell you about those things because we were busy sitting in a traffic jam for an hour rather than being at the ceremony for those things. 

(I feel a disclaimer is somewhat necessary. I realize this is a very... outsider view of the ceremony. I'm just writing from my perspective, and don't intend any disrespect on the culture. It's a very curious tradition to me, and I really enjoyed it!)

I put together a little video of the event, but Blogger wouldn't upload it. So here's a link to it on Vimeo. It's not the best quality, but it will give you a taste of what the event was like!

Click here to go to the video!

Sprouting Wings

The kids have something called Friendship Club on Saturdays, where they go to a local church and sing some songs, pray, and have a message. About 20 or 30 kids from the community come, in addition to our kids. Normally when I go, I might be asked to share a little something—a short word, a song, a game, a memory verse, etc. But a couple of weeks ago when I showed up, the woman in charge basically asked me to run the show. 

I’m happy to pitch in, but I’m not in charge, and I’m also not expected to be there. I don’t make it every Saturday because sometimes I have other things going on, and I never tell anyone in advance whether I’ll be there or not, since I’m not actually required to be there. So to show up and be asked, “Do you have a message to preach to them? Ok now can you ask them questions about the story? Ok now do you have a game for them? Now do you have a memory verse for them? Now do you have a song to teach them?” 

My initial reaction? “What did YOU have planned today? Did you not plan anything? What kind of quality teaching are these kids getting if you show up without anything planned to teach them or lead them in? You can’t just expect me to show up and run the show without any advanced notice!!”

But I talked with a few of the other missionaries here, initially just venting, then learning about what was really going on. While my initial reaction is that the woman was unprepared and was very lazily putting the whole program on my shoulders with no advanced notice, the actual situation was the complete opposite. 

First of all, Africans seem to have this ability to “wing it.” At any given time, someone can give a sermon, lead people in worship songs, etc. At staff devotions, people fill in for these things all the time. To the Westerner, we feel we would need several days to prepare a thought-out sermon, whereas here, it’s just sharing what God’s teaching you. 

Secondly, talking about the instance at Friendship Club with our short-term coordinator here helped me to see that involving me in the program was probably this woman’s way of honoring me as a guest. Guests are a big deal here, and it’s important to make them feel honored and welcomed. She probably assumed that if I was there, it meant that I wanted to participate (not that I don’t—I just don’t have the “wing it” gene in me), and to leave me out would be rude. Moreover, if I had refused to participate, that would have also been rude because I was rejecting her attempt to honor me. 

So I’m learning how to grow wings. Not in the metaphorical sense of “flying away,” but of growing wings to learn how to “wing it.” It’s teaching me to think more about what God is doing in my life, what he is teaching me, what he is laying on my heart, and being able to talk about it at any given time. Or to just come to any event with a pocket full of mini-sermons, songs, games, memory verses, etc. so that I’m prepared! :)

This experience also reminded me how important it is to learn everything you can about different situations when working cross-culturally, especially when it’s something you have a negative initial reaction too. I was at first offended and was convinced that this woman was not doing her part with the kids. The reality of the situation, though, is that she was attempting to make me feel honored and like an important part of the team. If I had just left it at frustration and not asked questions, I never would have arrived at understanding, and I also would have offended her. 

What an important reminder of how to handle frustrations here… but isn’t it also a good reminder of how to handle situations even when I’m not working cross-culturally? It’s one thing when you’re in another country to remember “I’m in another culture. Things will happen differently than I assume is normal. I should ask questions and learn everything I can.” We don’t have this mindset when we’re working within our own cultural context, but how many times to we have frustrations over misunderstandings? Why can’t we take on this attitude no matter what culture we’re working in? “I should find out as much information before jumping to conclusions.” I hope I can take this attitude back to the States with me!

a birthday and a really long river

I had a great birthday a few weeks ago (yes it takes me that long to find time when the power is on and I’m not too exhausted to sit down and write an interesting post). Thanks to all who made it a special day! The staff and kids sang happy birthday to me and gave me sweet notes and gifts. I hadn’t expected anything, and it was so sweet of them to do that. In the evening, I went out for burgers and fries with some friends. Not a particularly African birthday! :) It was a good celebration though and I was happy to be surrounded by good friends.  

I have now celebrated a birthday on 4 continents! As much as I’d like to make it to all 7, I don’t think they do tours to Antarctica in July, since it’s winter there now :( Oh well, for now 4 in 25 years (really, all 4 in the last 5 years!) isn’t too bad!

I also recently took a day trip to Jinja, a town about 2 hours east of Kampala. It’s Uganda’s second largest city, but it’s a completely different world from Kampala. It’s much smaller, cleaner, and quieter. The countryside around the town is simply stunning. Hilly and green, covered in crops like sugar cane, tea, coffee, maize, and banana trees. 

I went with my friend Molly, who is another short-term missionary working at another ministry in Kampala. The source of the Nile is in Jinja, so we went there for a few touristy pictures, then met another short-term missionary, Sarah. She works at an orphanage outside of Jinja, and we wanted to go for a visit to see some of the other ministries in Uganda. 

The orphanage was about 45 minutes outside of Jinja, and there’s not really a taxi route that way. So our mode of transport? The ever-trusty boda boda. We somehow managed to squeeze all 3 of us onto the boda-- so 4 people total including the driver! We must have been quite a sight! 

The road there went through several small villages, and the scenery was by far the most beautiful I’ve seen in Uganda. Rolling hills of sugar can stretched for miles, and I couldn’t get enough of the view. 

It was really interesting to see the work that is being done out there. The work they’re doing is somewhat similar to Dwelling Places, but the setting was so different in that it was very secluded and rural. The compound is almost like its own village. All of the staff and volunteers live on the compound with the kids. So different from my life in Kampala, where I work normal business hours, then either head to my apartment or into the city center to run errands or socialize. 

Other than that, life is chugging along at a pretty steady pace. Learning lots at work and growing in a lot of different ways. Really starting to get attached to some of the kids here and not wanting to think that I’ll have to leave them in a few months!

I’ll write more about work soon. For now, enjoy some pictures, and I need to save my computer battery because the power is once again out!

Rwanda

I was blessed to get to take a trip to Rwanda a couple of weekends ago. It was an amazing trip, a juxtaposition of unbelievably beautiful scenery and unbelievable horrors of their recent past. 

So the thing that I’m sure comes to your mind when I say “Rwanda” is the genocide in 1994. It was an outbreak of tribal rivalry that had been brewing for years. In a period of 100 days, almost a million people were murdered by their neighbors, friends and some even by their families, in brutal, torturous ways that reach far beyond any understanding I could ever have about the dark recesses of the human heart. That’s a rate of 10,000 people per day. Can you imagine? One of the greatest tragedies of the situation is that the world simply watched as this nightmare unfolded, when organizations like the UN should have intervened and could have stopped the madness. Neighbors killed neighbors, friends killed friends, an entire nation suddenly gone mad. Weapons were largely farm tools, anything people could get their hands on. 

In many ways, Rwanda has made incredible leaps and bounds since then. The current president has brought a lot of peace, stability, and order, and has done a lot of work to completely erase tribal identities and instead unite the people as simply Rwandans. However, just about anyone over the age of 17 either lost someone they loved, or brutally murdered scores of people. 17 years is so recent, that in a lot of ways I saw that Rwanda is still a country that is very much rubbing salve on open wounds. How can the people who survived ever fully recover? They will be affected for the rest of their lives, and of course their children will be affected, and so on for generations. The country will never be the same.

How do you go on? How do you go to the butcher to buy meat for your family and hear the sounds of hacking and see the gleam of the blade slinging up and down, tearing through the meat, and not just have a complete flashback and breakdown? How do you carry on with work and school and daily life after something like that? How do you go to church and sing praises that God is good and has plans to prosper us and not to harm us?

So we went to the genocide memorial in Kigali, which gives an account of the events leading up to the incident, stories of when it took place, and the aftermath. You can give some factors that contributed to the tragedy, but where can you find answers to what turns an entire nation into madness? One day, people were neighbors and friends. Not to say they were necessarily peaceful, but the next day they were killing each other in ways I don’t even want to mention here now. The accounts of “he was our houseboy,” “they were our neighbors,” “he was a student of my father” ...“and he looked at us as though he didn’t know us, and refused to hide us/ killed my family/ etc” were so numerous, it leads the whole incident far beyond any comprehension I could ever have of evil manifested in the human spirit. 

Towards the end of the memorial exhibit, they had a room dedicated to children who were massacred. I braced myself, not sure if I would be able to handle it. They had huge photos of each child, with a plaque of sweet little things about the child such as their favorite food, best friend, what they wanted to be when they grew up-- what they would never grow up to become. Many of them had their method of death listed. I made it through maybe 4 or 5 stories, choking back tears, until I reached a child who died from being stabbed in the eyes. I couldn’t take anymore. I just had to get out of that room. The other girls told me about another child highlighted in the exhibit, a baby died from being thrown against a brick wall. Again, it’s such evil that I simply cannot comprehend. 

Mass graves of victims at the genocide memorial

We also visited a church where 10,000 people sought refuge, but were turned over to the hands of the murderers. The church we went to is supposedly untouched for the most part since the genocide. The benches of the church are piled high with clothes of the victims, and in the courtyard outside are crypts with the skulls and scattered bones of the victims stacked on shelves. I guess there's no way to know if the placement of the clothes is real or staged, but even if it was staged, it was no less powerful. Many skulls were cracked or half missing, leaving no doubt about how they died. It was impossible to imagine that the rows and rows of skulls were once people with a name and a story, and someone could have actually done this to them.

Our trip wasn’t all about the genocide, though. The scenery of the country was simply stunning. Really, just the bus ride into the country was a highlight of the trip. It’s very mountainous and extremely green. 

We took a trip a few hours outside the city to a small town with a Volcanoes National Park. We didn’t get there in time to actually go into the park, but the volcanoes surround the town. It was a very hazy day so we didn’t get to see them too clearly, but it was beautiful all the same, and nice to see a small town outside of the capital city. 

We also went to several craft markets, and I won’t lie, I went a little crazy buying beautiful fabrics. The were all so gorgeous, I could barely restrain myself from buying all the ones I liked! At one of the markets, we gained 2 little friends against our will, 2 boys around the age of 10 who followed us closely and wanted to be our personal translators and negotiators. At first I was very annoyed with them, and wanted them to leave us alone, knowing that they would expect a little money in return for their unsolicited assistance. But when I realized that the women in the market didn’t speak French or English, I let them go ahead and translate for us. They very quickly grew on me, and were super cute and amusing. 

We got very excited when we noticed that one of the boys was wearing TOMS Shoes. If you don’t know about TOMS, they’re a one-for-one organization, meaning that for every pair of TOMS shoes you buy, they donate a pair to children in need around the world. This boy said that they came to his school and donated shoes to 1,700 kids!! I have TOMS shoes at home, and it was encouraging to see them on the other end of the deal! 

We also had a spontaneous trip to Burundi! We stayed with some fellow AIM missionaries in Kigali, and one of them was kind enough to drive us to some places. After the memorial church, he asked if we wanted to go for a drive to see more of the scenery. After half an hour or so, he said we were close to the Burundi border, so asked if we wanted to go. Why not? He was kind enough to ask if we would be allowed to walk across the border and get a photo with the welcome sign, and they let us! So there you go, I’ve been to Burundi. So random. 

The thing that struck us about Rwanda that was in stark contrast to Uganda is how clean and orderly it is. In Uganda, litter rules the road, while in Rwanda, plastic bags aren’t even allowed into the country, greatly reducing litter. They search your bags at the border and confiscate them. The country had a little more infrastructure, so most of the roads in Kigali were paved, whereas in Uganda, a lot more of the roads are dirt, which means much much more dust. While apparently Uganda has rules such as “all boda drivers and passengers must wear a helmet,” “only one passenger allowed on each boda,” “only 14 passengers allowed in each taxi van,” the rules are largely not followed and will only occasionally, randomly be regulated by a police officer who really just wants a bribe. In Rwanda, however, they actually follow the rules. It was really just weird to see such order next door to the chaos of Uganda. 

A few prayer requests: 

1. We have recently been looking at the Exit Program and some of its strengths and weaknesses. I am so inspired by Denis, our Exit Coordinator, who has such a strong passion for successfully helping the kids. We're really looking at how we can re-focus the program to ensure we're preparing the youth to live on their own. Please pray for God's guidance as we work through the challenges we're facing. 

2. Thank God for safe travel to Rwanda, and seriously every day on the bodas! I've been completely safe so far. Praise God, and ask him to continue to protect me!

3. My Luganda teacher is hoping to plant a church, but seriously has no money. Currently the only income he has is what we give him weekly for our lessons (we pay him about $10/ lesson, and either have 1 or 2 lessons each week). He has such a passion for creating a God-centered church and is really facing some broken relationships in his current church, on top of his financial struggles. I want to help him, but I want to do it in a way that empowers him and involves the community, rather than just giving a handout. Please pray for God's guidance as I move towards that!

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

I’ve traveled to some places that I expected to be vastly different from America, then arrived to find that with globalization these days, I felt like I could have been in America. Sure, things were different. The food was a little different, maybe they spoke a different language, and the architecture was slightly different. But things were developed and bustling, people mostly dressed the same, American music blared and most things were fairly familiar.

I supposed I expected the same before my trip here. “Oh, don’t be naive,” I thought. “People have this stereotypical view of Africa, but it will be less ‘African’ than I’m really expecting."

Wow, was I wrong! I’ve been thinking about this lately, how I could never for an instant be fooled into thinking I’m in America. I think about my boda ride to work, and about the things that flash before my eyes, several things each second that are constant reminders of where I am.

First of all, even being on a boda, a motorbike taxi. The greetings to my boda driver in Luganda. Out the gate and onto a paved road with more potholes than pavement. Then up the hill on a dirt road with poor drainage, with a canyon cutting through it about a foot deep that gets deeper each time it rains. Don’t fall in! Goats, chickens, cows roaming around the roads. Huge bunches of green bananas ready to make matoke. Piles of trash on the road. Boda men washing their bodas in the ditch. Women and children drawing water into jerry cans and carrying them on their heads. Rows of dukkas, little shops, all selling the same items. Stores with random combinations like “Stella’s Salon, Video Store, and Phone Charging” or “Electronics and Dry Cleaners” because one business usually isn’t enough to keep the family fed. Children playing freely and entertaining themselves in the most amazing, simple ways. Children running around with knives. Don’t worry, they’re only off to peel some matoke. Houses left midway into construction, probably because there wasn’t enough money to finish it. Everything constructed of mud bricks, cement, sticks, and sheets of metal. Women with children on their backs, wrapped tightly in a piece of cloth. Women carrying the most amazing things on their heads. A field with huge storks roaming around. Bodas hauling the most unimaginable things, maybe their passengers carrying a door, holding it vertically. Or my personal favorite sighting, a whole other boda hoisted up on the seat of another boda, strapped on and heading probably for repairs. Women hand washing clothes, dishes, or children in plastic tubs on their porch, or sweeping with a homemade hand broom. Children yelling “Bye Mzungu!” Dust flying if it’s dry, mud flying if it’s wet.

I could go on. There’s maybe one place I could maybe feel like I was in America, and that’s a huge shopping center which I refer to as “Mzungu Land.” It’s very Western. I hardly ever see another mzungu except for those I work with, then when I go to this shopping center, I’m like, “Where have all the mzungus been hiding??” (At that shopping center, apparently.) But even there, my dirty feet and face, and my exhaustion from figuring out transportation, haggling down prices, the language, etc, ensure that I don’t forget exactly where I am.

sweet Juma, one of our kids at the rehabilitation home, playing one afternoon

The girls at the rehabilitation home peeling green bananas to make matoke, one of the local staples

a local market along the side of the road

Prayer Notes:

1. My prayer lately has been that God would open my spiritual eyes. DP is a Christian organization, but that doesn't mean everyone who comes across its path is a Christian. In fact, it in a way makes it an easy place to hide, to just blend into the background so no one will bother you. Please pray that God will show me those who are in need of him and how I may minister to them.

2. Please pray for Jeremy, my boyfriend, as he begins his deployment in Iraq. He left Monday morning and will be gone for about a year. I said goodbye to him on a bus from Rwanda to Uganda. Not your typical relationship! Pray for safety for him and that the year will go by quickly!

3. Part of my work here is working with the youth in drama. I would like to lead them in writing their own play, pulling from their own experiences. The truth is... I don't really know how to do that! Pray for guidance as I start this project soon.

mpola, mpola

So. I have been here a solid 3 weeks now, and I've only managed 1 blog entry. I feel like I should have written more by now, but every time I sit down to write, I find that I cant really put this all into words yet. I've been just taking everything in, and haven't really been able to process it into a blog entry just yet, but now I will do my best.

My title says it all: mpola mpola. In Luganda, it means slowly, slowly. (Also very good vocabulary to have on those boda boda rides!) There is so much I could write about, so many questions I've gotten so far. What's it like there? What kind of food do you eat? How's the weather? What kind of work are you doing? How are the kids you work with?

I just feel like I can't write about those topics just yet. "What's it like here?" Where do I even begin to try to find words to describe it? Mpola, mpola. I'll get to all of that.

Right now I feel like I'm in a learning phase, and I'm so perfectly content in that at the moment. I don't feel any need to rush in and feel like I'm really accomplishing anything right off the bat. I'm learning about the culture, about DP (Dwelling Places), how they function, who's who, getting to know the kids, slowly but surely learning a little Luganda. I'm sitting back, listening, watching, asking, learning how to dig into a culture that is relationship-oriented rather than task-oriented.

I'm learning how to sit and do nothing for hours.

Necessary skills for Africa! I'm also kind of finding my niche at work. They have me placed in a role where I feel absolutely useless. I feel like the work I'm doing could be done by the people who are already in the office. I'm going to be teaching, but the kids are on holiday for another week, so I haven't been able to start that up yet. I would also like to do some drama with them, and they seem to be interested too, but I haven't dug into that yet. Still observing, learning, getting to know the kids, etc, and then I will move in that direction in the next few weeks. So hopefully soon I will be transitioning out of my role in the office a little bit and into other projects. But mpola, mpola.

Anyway, the important thing is I'm absolutely loving it. I just feel like theres no way to be here and not absolutely fall in love with Uganda. This country does something to you, this whole continent does something to you. I'm not sure what it does to you or how, but it does. It touches your heart, it changes you.

So, in fun news! This weekend I went white water rafting at the source of the Nile! AND bungee jumped INTO the Nile!!!!!! It was unbelievable!! I'd never been rafting or bungee jumping before, so what better place than the source of the Nile? We went up there Friday night and hung out at the campsite, with a nice patio overlooking the Nile. It was so beautiful, I couldn't believe it. I didn't expect it to be so beautiful. I was just like, "oh yeah ok its a river" but the land around it was so fertile, it felt like something out of Jurassic Park.

It made for great scenery while we were rafting, too. There were long stretches of calm water where we just swam and admired the views (and prayed for no crocodiles!). Then we went over 8 rapids. Level 5 is the most extreme level of rapids, and 2 of them were level 5! The rest were level 3 or 4. Our boat flipped twice. The first time was really panicky because I got stuck under the boat and couldn't get up to get a breath. Then I pushed the boat off of me, only to have it fly back on me! I survived though! And the second time we flipped was just all sorts of fun. We all went flying out of the boat, then were swept away downstream! Safely! Not the kind of "stuck under the current" sweep downstream. The fun kind!

The Bible verse of the day was Psalm 18:16. "He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters." hahaha

So I will leave you with a few pictures. Click on the pictures for a larger view. I can't even begin to respond to the question "What's Uganda like?" so the best way I can do it is in a picture. This was taken at one of the markets downtown, and for the record, most of the city is not this jam-packed or chaotic, especially not the areas where I work or live. But every time I go down there, I feel like it is absolute chaos and madness just like this. There's a lot happening in this picture that sums it up pretty well. 14-passenger taxis stuffed with 18 passengers, battling for space on the road with bodas weaving in and out of impossible crevices, pedestrians somehow navigating it all, a garbage truck picking up garbage that is just piled openly on the ground, vendors working hard and not really selling enough to make a day's wage, the dust, dirt roads, the energy of the city, the mix of traditional African dress and very nice Western clothing.

And here we are rafting the Nile! I'm the second one on the bottom, with a face full of Nile.

And here is a link to the video of me bungee jumping!!! aaaahhh still can't believe it!

http://vimeo.com/24086614

Tsaminamina zangalewa-- 'cause this is Africa!

So the Shakira song in the title has been stuck in my head to the point of insanity since one of the other girls played it in New York at our orientation. It was the 2010 World Cup song, if you don't recognize it. Roughly translated, from what I can gather, it either means "Where do you come from" or "Why do you come." I thought it was fitting.

Right, so. Im in Uganda. I feel obligated to give an oh my gosh Im here and this is what its like and just aaahhh wow post, but I dont really know where to begin. In some ways it feels like oh my gosh wow Im here and just aaahhh but mostly I still dont think its fully hit me that Im here yet. I think Im still just absorbing it all. Im not sure if its just because Ive travelled a lot and nothing surprises me anymore, or if everything here is just so insane and Im still in the honeymoon phase so I just smile and nod.... but...

Day 1 flying down dirt roads on a motorbike taxi, dodging potholes, children, cows, goats, taxis, trekking through muddy roads, collecting a solid 2 inches of mud on my sandals, meeting everyone in the office, hmm no one seems to realize that I was arriving, oh well, meeting the kids, I am now Auntie Carolyn, rain rain rain, waiting 3 hours for a program to start that just never started because hey its Africa and things run late anyway, plus its raining so no one will be expected to be here yet, back to work, no work to do, tea time, lets just have some tea, I think Ill leave work now and go get set up on the internet, back on a motorbike taxi, oops got on the wrong one, he doesnt know where I live, theres the motorbike guy I was looking for, and away we go through rush hour at frightening speeds, again dodging everything, taxi vans grazing my knees at 50 mph, dust flying in my face, Weebale ssebo (thank you sir), dinner with the neighbors, oh the power is out, shower time with a flashlight in the corner, dogs fighting in the street, roosters crowing outside......

It just seems so... normal.

Im oddly not phased by any of it. I feel like I should be. I started out my time here with a retreat with all the short-term missionaries in this region, which was great for getting to know everyone. Hearing their stories was interesting too, but I would almost rather have been able to make my own observations first. So I guess I was prepared for the bodas (motorbike taxis) and things working on African time or not at all, and all the other aspects of the culture that seem so bizarre to a Westerner. Perhaps thats what led me to this nonchalance, or perhaps its a mix of that and previous travel experience. It just feels extremely normal that my day should involve collecting a few inches of mud on my shoes and waiting for programs to start that never start, and motorbike rides zipping through rush hour and still somehow not crashing or flipping over in a pothole. The normalcy is what I find weirdest of all.

You know, at first I didnt want to mention the bodas. Especially to you Mom and Dad, I figured you would worry. But it might be too hard of a secret to keep, plus I expect many great stories to come from them. They seem crazy to a Westerner at first, but you have to remember that the boda driver doesnt want to crash either! Plus they know every pothole and every road, so they can be trusted. The best part is, the same boda driver will take me to and from work every day. His name is Qurish (pronounced like Christ, but with an sh rather than st at the end), and the other short-termers talk about how once you get to know your boda driver, they really look after you. So not only will he take me to work, I have his number in my phone, and I can call him any time to come pick me up. I have a few other phone numbers of tried and true drivers some of the others use, so I really have an arsenal of trusty personal drivers to pick me up any time! Its great!

So, work. The big question before I came was What exactly will you be doing over there? and the big answer was I will let you know as soon as I know. From what we sort of discussed today, I think I will be splitting my time between 2 tasks. I will be working with the exit program, which is with kids ages 15 and up, to make sure that they can live on their own sustainably and dont become dependent on DP (Dwelling Places, the ministry Im working with). It looks like I will be doing some teaching as well, but that has been only developing on my initiative so far. Even though I sent in an application with my skills and experiences to them, no one seemed to be aware that I had experience teaching ESL. Well let me go further back. No one seemed to know who I was or that I was coming. haha. Not that I needed any like oh, you are here! Weve been anxiously awaiting you! But initially when I got set up with them, Rae, my coordinator in the US thought they would want me teaching. Then I was told that I might be working in the office by one of the girls already there. Then orientation in New York came and Rae still thought they would want me teaching. So I brought it up once I got here, and they were like, oh yeah thatd be good. You could teach part of the time and work in the office the other part of the time. Its just comical, I guess. A good intro to how things will probably go most of the time here. Flexible, flexible, must be flexible.

Well I feel like Ive only scratched the surface, yet Ive written so much. So I will leave you with a thought that hasnt been able to leave me since I heard it. At our short-termer retreat, a few of us were casually talking about greetings and how they differ between languages and cultures. In the US, we would say Did you sleep well? when greeting people in the morning. A couple that worked in the Congo mentioned that the phrase they use translates to Did you wake up well? which I just found quirky and intriguing. Then a couple who is working in Rwanda said that the phrase they use translates to Did you survive the night? That hit me hard. We wondered if they have always had this phrase, or if it surfaced around their period of genocide in the 90s. How blessed we are to live in a culture where the concern is whether you had a pleasant nights sleep, not whether you even survived at all or were able to wake up.