An African Roadtrip in Pictures

Mitooma Ministry Excursion Photo Album


 

A roadside village scene (notice the birds on the roof.)

A bridge of "three sticks" near the hotsprings

 

(Please click "Read More" to view all)

Mitooma Ministry Excursion (Part 2)

 “They need to be encouraged to live in a consistently Godly way despite peer pressure,” the pastor’s wife explained to me as we all leaned over our plates of goat Saturday night, “and to keep using their God-given talents.”
 

We were each going to be speaking to a different group the next morning, Sunday, during a first session. Out of the groups--men, married women, youth and kids, I had been delegated to be with the kids.  We were now discussing the needs of the audiences to learn what issues we were supposed to speak about. My topics? Godly living and using your talents. These are the things I would need to be prepared to preach on for two full sessions of Sunday school teaching…in just over twelve hours! I remember asking God one thing that night: help!

(For the whole story, plus pictures of Sunday school teaching, equator crossing and zebra watching, please click "Read More.")

Mitooma Ministry Excursion (Part 1)

Mitooma Ministry Excursion - to western Uganda

Dinner by Lantern Light

“This is a night to remember,” commented Mr. Guthrie as a group of eight of us sat in the dark, lantern-lit guesthouse at Masaka. Over there in the kitchen a few people stood frying chapattis for supper, over here at the table Andrea and I bent over our reading and homework by headlamp, and nearby at the counter another person worked to light more kerosene lamps to compensate for the night’s power-out.

All around the shadowy room grasshoppers flitted through the air, clattering against the walls and furniture. The noise of their crunchy little bodies thumping along the roof as they flew sounded much like the music of snapping fingers. Occasionally another noise would contribute to the evening’s atmosphere: the piercing cry of one surprised to feel a grasshopper becoming tangled in one's hair.

Cruising Kampala and Feasting by Flashlight

Trying to shop for clothes in Canada is bad enough, but trying to find clothes among the congestion of people and merchandise in the belly of a central Kampala merchant plaza...now that's downright terrifying!

A Fruit Market

A Shopping Centre Scene

Dewinging Grasshoppers

(For the whole story, plus lots more pictures of market hopping in Kampala and the tale of a very unusual dinner, please click "Read More.")

Play-Dough Manicures

And other elements of fun in day-to-day living

“Jjaaja Rita, you see my mani-killer!” squealed one young charge, holding up two sets of purple-pointed fingernails. It’s play-dough time at the Baby House, and the creativity is flowing. After days like these, I only have to look in the mirror to remember what I did all day:

(Please click "Read More" to continue)

I Can't Believe I Actually Did That!

Link to video footage now posted at the end!

From getting up to speak in front of hundreds of youth, to perfecting the art of eating without silverware, to trying fried grasshoppers bought off the street, today was one of those “nonstop adventure” kinds of Saturdays…

(For the whole story, a lot of pictures, a video clip of downtown Kampala, PLUS video documentation of our grasshopper eating experience, please do click “Read More”.)

At the End of the Eland's Tongue

When I woke up Monday morning, I never suspected that in the late afternoon I’d be standing in the sun with one of Africa’s largest antelopes licking my hand. But let me backtrack…

 (Please click "Read More" to continue...)

Spontaneous Adventure

 

 "...So even if I can't contact you again before then," I wrote to the stranger I'd been trying all day to get a hold of, "I can have a bag packed and ready by tonight in case someone shows up to get me!"

 

Not that I had any idea where I was going. Or exactly who I'd be staying with.

But let me start at the beginning...

(Yep--"Read More" to continue!)

Kampala, on Foot

 

Hold on to your bag, run when the group runs and don't lose sight of the person ahead of you!

 

This is the survival strategy I quickly adopted while navigating downtown Kampala on foot behind Edith and Alyssa today. Viewing the city from out of a taxi window is one thing, but being caught up in the exhilarating cacophony of swirling crowds, honking horns and pushing, pulsating traffic that engulfs you as soon as you step off the taxi is an entirely different experience! And a far more interesting one.

 

 

Nothing beats the impactful "this is where I really am"
feeling of stepping off a taxi and into the raw reality
of the living, breathing urban streets.

We weren't actually in one of the downtown taxi parks, as it may have sounded from the video, but from the sheer volume of taxis we wove among while crossing the streets we may as well have been! At times the traffic flowed quickly enough that you had to wait for gaps to cross. At other times, however, the congestion was so much that weaving in and out between the many bumpers and grills was more like walking through a very crowded parking lot...except with more vehicular motion involved.

So what was I doing here, dodging taxis and boda bodas on a quest through the middle of Uganda's capital city?

 

Good question.

 

(To keep riding along for the day's whole intriguing journey, please click "Read More.")

Notes on Goats

 

"I have to order the entrée?!" I asked Isabella, the glow from the lantern on the table no doubt reflected eerily on my wide eyeballs, "but I can't even PRONOUNCE 'goat pilau.'"

 



 

Pilau and Passionfruit Juice
(I don't think either of us used
the yogurt sauce pictured here.)

A group of us were sitting around a couple of umbrella-shrouded tables pushed together on a balcony overlooking Lake Victoria, squinting at the menus before us. The family that had been staying with us this week took us out here to a restaurant in Entebbe before they left earlier this week, so that night lent me my first opportunity to order goat for dinner. Only one problem existed: I couldn't pronounce the dish that Isabella and I were going to be splitting! 

The mysterious pilau turned out to be a plate of "fragrant rice" featuring several pieces of roast beef-like meat. Ironically, because the spice--tasty though it was--covered up any distinctly "goat-like" flavour in the meat, I still have no idea what goat actually tastes like!

 

But I  have learned..

 

- That the Lugandan word for goat is "embuzi" (em-BOO-zee)

- That goat skin is great for making everything from shoes and wallets to knife sheaths and musical  instruments--all of which you can buy at your local craft market

-That goats can run down staircases. I know I was surprised!

Church, Where Least Expected

"Here we are," Mr. Guthrie said as he turned the land cruiser down a long dirt road and stopped abruptly at the bottom of the hill in front of a pile of garbage.

 

Climbing out from the backseat, I stepped up onto a surface carved out of the garbage pile and stood still. Beside me a small tin building, maybe 12 x 15 feet, awaited our entrance. Before me a group of grey-and-white speckled ducks, holes in their feet, stood placidly outside the doorway. Beyond me stretched the dump and road, meandering down to where a maze of mud brick houses comprised the village below.

Mr.Guthrie had said that we were going to be speaking at a church in the ghetto today, but I hadn't quite expected this.

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

Equatorial Tobogganing

Saturday, November 2


Slicing off the leaf...

"We used to slide down hills in those things when I was a kid," Esther, my friend from the baby house, explained. We paused, standing over a huge palm leaf that had been shed from a tree outside the guesthouse the previous night, and looked down at the great husk attached. I had seen kids riding in these things before...

The remaining husk (where the leaf had been attached to the tree)
becomes "the boat" for sledding.

Elijah, the gardener, came and sliced the husk from the rest of the leaf using his loooong work knife. Then we carried the piece--nicknamed "the boat"--like a thick, green, rolled up mat over to a grassy slope. And the rest was easy!

My first sledding experience at the equator!

After lunchtime, when the kids were napping, I remained at the Baby House to spend the afternoon making friendship bracelets with the caregivers. Esther and I sat on the floor working on ours for nearly two hours!

Lastly, to cap the day off, I returned to the guest house where Alyssa and I finally enjoyed the "jungle slushies" we've been planning on making. Ingredients: frozen tropical juice boxes + one Swiss Army knife.







Success!

Up until then Alyssa had been mentioning nearly every day how good a slushie would be. (And I thought my cravings for Tim Hortons had been bad!) But I have to agree: at the time they seemed to be about the best slushies I'd ever tasted.

So now that we've hit upon a good substitute for Canadian slushies in Uganda, now the trouble will be finding a substitute for the jungle slushies in Canada. After all, where at home will I find the ingredients for the new delicacy I discovered today of jackfruit pieces filled with guava ice?

Enjoyment in Ordinary Life

This Morning's Sunrise
You can practically set your watch by the light's activity in the equatorial sky, from 6:00 AM at the crack of dawn to 6:15, when the colours of the sunrise are at their most intense point, until 6:30 when the actual sun begins to climb over the horizon.

Fun at the Baby House

 "No really, it's actually pretty good," I insisted, grinning as persuasively as I could at the two mildly unconvinced faces before me. The faces belonged to the lovely new roommates (they're even fellow homeschoolers to boot!) who came to bunk with Alyssa and me a few days ago. We've been having a blast so far, sharing with them all the wonders of life in Uganda from teaching at the baby house to eating posho at the school. And that's where the convincing came in...

Alyssa and the two girls, Isabella and Ariel, ended up splitting a heaped plate of posho and beans three ways. Yet curiously, I had completely finished mine before the three of them had put a dent in theirs! Then somehow more suddenly appeared on my plate while I wasn't looking. Suspicious. I don't know when I started to like posho and beans this much, but it's surprising how one's tastes can change in another country.

First Impressions of Posho!

In the afternoon, after sitting in on the Bible School modular class taught by the girls' dad, a group of us took off on a hike to Quality Shopping Plaza.

We ended up compiling quite a trekking team, between Isabella and Ariel, me, the Albertan students - Alyssa and Jordan, and two Ugandan students.

During our brief poke around the grocery store I picked up some sugarcane and jackfruit (here's the Wikipedia link if you're curious as to what it is), and then the girls among us went down to the café.



Walking Scenes

But as fun as all of this has been, some of the greatest moments the four of us roomies have had have been during the prayer sessions we've started in the dorm at night. I'm learning that you don't have to be an older person sitting in a circle above a church carpet somewhere to enjoy being part of a prayer group.





You can be one of a few kids sitting a dorm floor in Africa and experience the joy of coming together as one group in agreement before God. And I do mean joy! I'm getting to see God work in people's lives like I've never seen before. We're at that age when we're able to watch God's plan for each others' lives take shape, and witnessing that is a privilege like I've never known before.

--It even beats the privilege of eating posho together.