A Day for New Experiences

I can't remember the last time I sang along to Sunday School songs performed on a goat skin drum.

 

 

Nor can I remember the last time I've enjoyed a traditional plate heaping with rice, matooke and ground nut sauce without the assistance of any silverware.

 

Yeah--Sunday was a day for new adventures.

 

(To access the story of the full day's events, please click Read More.)



Public Transport

Saturday, Oct 26

Saturday's particularly striking sunrise moment

Our "Jungle Cookies," as we called them,
 have a slightly different flavour due to the
course pure cane sugar we used. But they're good!

Saturday didn't actually start with the taxi trip to Entebbe. It started with cookies.

The journey via public transport to the beach came later, after a morning of baking followed by an hour or so of helping with lunch at the Baby House. But 1:20 PM (or so) found me, Alyssa and Edith playing musical chairs in a loaded taxi van headed toward "Sports Beach" at Lake Victoria. Here's how the transit works:

How to Ride a Taxi:

1) Hike downhill to the main road. Attempt crossing, depending on which direction you're headed, and stand waiting for a van with enough seats to come by. There are so many taxis it should only take a few seconds...

2) A horn will beep and a hand will wave out the window if a van comes past with an empty seat. Nod your head (or at least your eyebrows) if you want to hop on.

3) Climb into the van and go as far to the back as possible. On the end of each row of seats is a jump seat folded up to make a walkway--you may need to flip one down to complete a row.

4) Sit back and enjoy the ride! There are no seatbelts, so hang on tight! Also, keep in mind that you may very well end up in a completely different seat in a few minutes, as you'll shuffle around a bit as the people beside you get on and off. Finally, be ready to squish! Especially if you're sitting by the door, it's not unusual to end up as one of four or five people packed into a row of seats built for three. (The most I've seen in so far in one row is six people, including two kids, plus a stack of five pillows someone was carrying.)

It takes at least two people to work a taxi: one to drive and one to sit by the door, communicate to potential customers outside, let people in and out and collect money from everybody at some point during the ride. (Usually a fare costs between 1-2500 shillings, or up to the equivalent of $1. The time is not metered; it's more like a bus system.)

Our van finally stopped at a little gravel pull out in Entebbe, but the fun wasn't over yet. Three boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) stood waiting by the roadside, and to my utter surprise I discovered that I would have to ride one.

"You're sitting in front!" I told Alyssa, who grinningly complied. I'd heard stories about these things. In fact, the missionary ladies here had already shared with me their single strategy for riding bodas: hang on tight and pray!

After an exhilarating, if prayerful, ride, we landed at a fenced-in section of sand overlooking Lake Victoria. Time to sit back, kick off the shoes, and eat some of those cookies.

Back to Normal





There must have been at least eight of them banded together there, their shrill battle chants pounding through the open air as they prepared to charge at me.

I looked up, squinting against the sun, and braced myself for the onslaught. The chanting drew nearer. It sounded suspiciously like my name. Suddenly I found myself being rammed into by a half-dozen little preschoolers excited for a group hug. I had come back to the Baby House after my "sick-leave" absence!

Crossing the roads here reminds me distinctly
of a certain old video game involving a frog.
Which is why it's a good idea to cross with a
Ugandan who knows what they're doing.  

Having finally recovered from the repercussions of the weekend's adventure (so to speak), these past couple of days have been for sliding back into action for Baby House work and Bible School activities. Besides helping again with the PK class today, I also enjoyed a particularly nice batch of posho and beans at the school--the first I've had there in over a week! It was good to be back.

















Right afterwards, Alyssa and I walked with Edith, a third-year student, down the hill, across the street, and up and down a series of roadways to Quality Shopping Village. There, we stocked up on snack supplies at the grocery store before sitting down at a café/coffee shop area to rest our feet. Between the three of us we ordered ice cream, ''Afergado's" (ice cream poured over with espresso) and (my selection), a "queen cake"--a sort of pastry resembling a muffin. Edith is an awesome tour guide--tomorrow we're planning a Saturday trip to the "beach" at Lake Victoria with her and possibly the two new room mates who are supposed to be arriving tonight.

As an update to the request for prayer about our visas, I'm happy to report that it's all working out just fine. Apparently the rules have changed about needing to pay to extend a visa, so there's nothing to worry about anymore. Alyssa had to pay about 24$ because hers was only a few days from expiring, but the rest of us should (should) get away for free. I'll let you know if anything changes. So THANK YOU for your prayers over the past few days. I know I say that a lot, but they're all very much appreciated and they're all being answered.

At the Source of the Nile

Boat Tour

Sunday, Oct 20

 

 

Passing the jungle-carpeted cliffs along the banks of the Nile in our little thatched boat, we saw vine-endowed trees which were literally shaking with wild monkeys. Watching them swing over the cliff side was like sitting on the couch watching National Geographic...only without the couch.

 Or the popcorn. Or the pause button.



 

Our journey started from here, where we were staying near the shore of Lake Victoria. Our boat was very similar to the one pictured on shore: a long, wooden craft covered with a thatch canopy. Upon pulling out from the dock, we first circled around an inlet of the lake, following the shore for bird-watching purposes. 



Vivid canna lilies on shore near where we were staying

 











A woodland kingfisher sits atop a papyrus plant
 on the shore of Lake Victoria







 

A monitor lizard camouflages  into the papyrus



A yellow-billed stork stands with an egret
on a cage for tilapia fish-farming



"Mile Zero:" The Start of the Nile
Looking down the mouth of the Nile from a position on Lake Victoria

We next cut across a tilapia fish farming area to get towards the mouth of the Victoria Nile. Right where the current begins, near a small island where the lake meets the river, is the place that is considered to be "Mile Zero" of the Nile River. 

Long tailed cormorants filled the trees along
the banks of the river and the shore of the lake

A female African fish eagle

A majestically ugly marabou stork

You can't actually travel too far down the Victoria Nile from the lake, as you'll run across a large dam used to harness electrical power. But we did get within sight of the bridge before the dam before having to turn around and head back to Lake Victoria.

Traditional fishermen on Lake Victoria

I'm OK, Really!!

I've heard those stories too...

You remember--the stories about all the bright-eyed kids before you who also wanted to be missionaries. Then they went overseas and oh! the misery and pestilence with which they were stricken!

Now the last thing I want to be is the next scare story used to frighten kids away from the mission field. (Did you hear about the last girl who decided to go to Africa?) So lest this occur, please allow me to describe from first hand experience what it's like to BE the "last kid who went."

(Please click "Read More" if you dare.)

African Caracals and Matt Redman

Last night was the first night I've ever spent in the same room with a couple of wild lynx.

How did this happen? It all started very dramatically at 4:30 AM with these words:

"BLESS THE LORD, OH MY SOUL, O-O-OH MY SOUL..." my alarm was going off at full volume, waking up the entire Upper Guesthouse on our first day back here. (We just moved back from the Lower Guesthouse yesterday.) Trouble was, I couldn't turn it off. As I struggled to frantically cover the speakers with as much material as I could find, I heard Alyssa whisper, "Our new roommate came in last night." Great.





"I'm SO sorry," I said into the darkness, continuing to introduce myself. "I'm Elise," a voice groaned in response from somewhere to my right. Matt Redman sang on.

Finally managing to turn the phone off, I climbed out from under my mosquito net to find a wide-eyed Alyssa beckoning me over to the far end of the room. There stood a box, and from that box peered two tiny faces. Kittens? But the steel blue eyes and black tipped ears of these animals spoke of something a little more wild than your typical house cat.

"They're Caracals," Elise explained, "a type of African Lynx." What a morning!
Someone brought the orphaned kittens to Elise a couple of weeks ago, so now she's here to take them to the Entebbe Wildlife Centre. I'd love to go along for the ride, but am leaving with the Guthries for Jinja (pronounced like it's spelled: JIN-ja) on Lake Victoria this weekend. It's just for a getaway, as it's Andrea's week off from School. So I'll be gone for a few days, but will be sure to share lots of pictures upon returning to home base.

Feeding the Caracal Breakfast

A couple of prayer requests before I wrap up: one is that I haven't been feeling 100% physically these past couple of days. None of us has gotten too sick so far this trip, but I pray that I can just get over this illness/fatigue quickly to continue work in strength. The other request is about our visas. All of us Canadians were given one or two month visas, even though we wrote that we were staying in the country for an amount of days requiring a three month one. To get them changed, we are told, will probably mean doling out up to a hundred dollars each unless negotiations can lower the amount. Please pray along with us that everything goes smoothly, and especially that as little extra expense is involved as possible! Thank you!

Overnighting in a Village

How many people can fit inside a land cruiser?

If you had asked me this weekend, you would have heard a muffled reply "All seven Canadians plus a couple of local students plus a couple of kids," coming from the backseat of one such cruiser headed to a village near Masulita (Mozz-uh-LEET-ah), Uganda.



Papaya Trees

Even though Masulita is only 40 km from Kampala, it takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours to drive there because of the road conditions! By the time we arrived at the house of the pastor we were staying with, everyone was quite ready for a walk.

First we visited the homes of a few of our hosts family members, and then toured the family farm.
Then, after a huge traditional lunch, we visited the associate pastor's home for tea.

 "Tea" turned out to include a meal with eggs, cassava
and (really good) fried gonja--plantain.

Coffee Growing

Cassava Drying
(Cassava root is another staple food, a starch source that can
be planted at any time and can stay in the garden
for anywhere from 3 months to 2 years before harvest.)

If I thought that the frog that had serenaded us to sleep later that night had been loud, the rooster and cows on the other side of the wall the next morning proved me wrong!

Despite this unusual awakening, Sunday morning proceeded as planned with a drive to church. After worship service, Mr. Guthrie preached while Alyssa and I attempted to teach Sunday School!

The Sunday School Class!

A Soccer Ball

Passion Fruit Growing

I feel like the pastor's family we stayed with this weekend really showed me what Jesus is like, right down to hand washing the red, rainy season mud off of all our shoes while we ate. How surprising--and wonderful--it was to find all the "lived in" footwear we had left outside the door suddenly lined up along an inside wall, ready for use and sparkling clean. 

Children's Prison and Destiny Villages

"This is the school's first ever graduation ceremony," some one told me as the Seattle group plus one stowaway (yours truly) filed into a big Yesu Akwagala bus. Destination: Destiny School and Orphanage; occasion: student graduation.

Enough funding has been raised to send about five

out of thirty-six students on to University.

 

 

 

On Friday at Destiny we got to go through every classroom,

 listen to a welcome from the students, and distribute candy

Following the ceremony everyone enjoyed a huge Ugandan lunch, including chicken and matooke. Then came a really fun time of hand shakes and photo ops with the grads on stage.

 

The next morning, Friday, we returned to Destiny one more time to hand children rescued from prison gifts from their sponsor families. You should have seen the smile on the face of the little guy I was helping when he opened a picture and card from his sponsor family! 





With Friday afternoon came Children's Prison ministry. The majority of the kids there, so I'm told, haven't actually committed crimes. Rather, they were beggars and street children who were picked up by the police. Things used to be rough there, but apparently the conditions of the kids has bettered considerably since last year, ever since the facility came under new Christian management.  



 

 

It was a long dining hall lined with tables and benches on either side that I found myself in, seated among what appeared to be a crowd of a few hundred preteen boys. We introduced ourselves. We sang songs. The team let me give the string figures-through-the-Bible presentation I learned after being thrust in the kids ministry at the clinic. People preached. People gave testimonies. It was an experience I'm not about to forget!

Outreach, Day 2

"I have a request," a team member said, tapping me on the shoulder.

"All the kids are out of school because it's Independence Day. Now there are too many people here and not enough chairs, so would you take all the kids and go do something with them while the adults listen to the teaching?"

'Go do something with the kids.' It was a vague duty, but it didn't seem like it should be that hard. Right?

A little while later found about five people, translators included, trying to keep a program running for about two hundred children--all of it improvised! One of the team members, a girl from Bulgaria, performed a crazy routine with a tiny, invisible puppet, making the whole thing up as she went along!



Worship break after Bible stories with a smaller
group in the afternoon.
 

I for the most part told Bible stories, using balloons and string figures as props. It's incredible for me to think that only 2 1/2 weeks ago the prospect of "preaching" to a group of kids on a given Bible story had me shaking in my flip flops. Now that's exactly what I've been doing all day! "What story do you want next?" I'd ask, hearing everything from "The Prodigal Son!" to "The Ten Virgins!" in reply. How does one tell that with string?

 

Apparently the prayer and medical teams witnessed some beautiful transformation stories taking place in different people throughout the day as well. Between that, the kids ministry, and a youth meeting that happened in the evening, it was a great day. Thank you for your prayers!



Outreach, Day 1

“I have demons,” the girl told me quietly. “They do not want me to study.” What the details of this situation were I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had been positioned at the “individual prayer” station of this outreach mission, and this Islamic girl was asking for that service. We waited until some of the other members in the group who were already busy handling a similar case had finished, and then the praying began.

 

(To continue reading, please click "Read More.")

Prison Ministry

You know you're deep enough into the forest when your friends on the other side of the van say they just saw a monkey out the window.

 

Just where were we going, driving out here in the bush, navigating rutty red roads through the monkey-inhabited rural hills of Southern Uganda all day? To prisons. That's where.

 

(To access the full story, please click "Read More.")

See for Yourself

 

For some time I've been meaning to actually post pictures of all the places I've been talking about for the past week: the church here, the school, the preschool class... So this is that post!

Above is a video of a morning sunrise here, as pictures alone don't include the sound and motion that are as much a part of the sunrise than the view itself. Below is a video taken of the same scene about half an hour later, when the choir starts.

 

 

 

The big short-term team whose arrival everyone here has been talking about is finally supposed to be coming in today, so the next couple of weeks will be very busy ones! I'll hopefully be able to tag along with them on some of their many outreach excursions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesu Akwagala (Jesus Loves You) Church, here on the hill,
 is the one we attended last Sunday.

There's so much else going on this weekend--a trade show today, a prison ministry trip tomorrow, a drive to a village church on Sunday--that I'll have to pick and chose when to go with the incoming group and when to go with the students here. Whatever happens, new chances to be challenged, to be scared, and to start praying are close at hand. So thank you for all your prayers thus far--now's the time they're coming into play!

The preschool classroom at the Baby House,

This is just a really cool bug that we found on the Guesthouse floor.

 

 

A Moving Experience

 

 

I mean that literally.

 

We moved.

 

A large team is coming over to the guesthouse on Friday, so the Alberta Students and I had to pack up all our earthly goods and move downhill. The new place we're staying at, a family home, is down the hill from the Church--which is down the hill from the Bible School--which is down the hill from the Guesthouse where we still eat breakfast. So we get to enjoy a scenic hike every morning!

 

Alyssa and I have met up with a few interesting creatures on these hikes so far, including snails, frogs and several large cows.

The view from the Guesthouse is different every time I see it--
A different sunrise, a different sky, different patterns
of mist on the hills





The Bible College students receive posho and beans for every
lunch and every supper. On Tuesdays they fast.

Otherwise, things have been holding steady. I still glean a ton of information from World Religion class at the Bible School, still eat lunch there at the school with the students a few times a week, and still help teach the preschool at the baby house once or twice a day. Today the class made a bright paper chain! Esther, a caregiver at the Babyhouse, helped in class today and the two of us hung it all around the ceiling. When the kids saw it later, they started screaming with excitement!