Skip to main content

Settling

Last Monday, Jan 21, we left Kampala around 9am and headed west to Bundibugyo. At this point, all we had seen of Uganda was Kampala (lots and lots of cars and bodas) and a short ride of forest/open areas between Kampala and Entebbe (which we drove on the new bypass road and that felt like we were on an American Highway for a hot second!). So getting out of such a densely populated area sort of felt like leaving Harrisonburg on the Friday after JMU finished for thankgiving break - awful traffic getting on 81 and then finally you get to a point on the highway where there are very few cars around and you can breathe again! The view was breath taking - rolling hills of banana trees or eucalyptus or cassava. Of course the occasional matatu (taxi van with 20+ passengers and way too much luggage on top) or boda would pass by....or we would pass a herd of cattle. But overall, it was an open road.

We got to Bundi on Monday evening, greeted by the Carrigan kids (another family on the mission) running after the car and later they fed us an amazing Italian meal on their screened in porch and we watched geckos eat moths on the outside.


We have felt so loved and cared for this past week - we were fed dinner three other nights by other teammates which was so fun to spend time with each of them and to eat such delicious food together!
We went to the Nyahuka (the smaller town closest to the mission) market and visited Bundi town and ate local food at each place. The portions are outrageous!!! But it is typical for people here to eat one large meal a day so it makes sense that the we portions are gigantic!
This is rice on my plate and ground nut sauce with beef in the bowl.


 This little cat won’t leave our back door (and kitchen window). His name is Cody Cody which means Knock knock here ... because he will literally knock or push on everyone’s door.

Guys come to the misssion twice a week to play basketball and Ike played both nights! Such a great view! 

We hiked the old road on Saturday which took about 3.5 hours. The old road goes through the northern end of the Rwenzori mountains and in the past it took much longer to get to Bundi because of the poor road conditions and it was a much more isolated place because of it. Now we have a paved road that goes around the end of the mountain range so this road is no longer used.


Comments

  1. Thanks for posting! I've been wondering how things were going for you. It sounds like all is well so far--I pray that will continue.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 32 - How grief changed me

 I obviously missed quite a few days - I took about 2 weeks off - turns out blogging about heavy stuff is draining and I probably bit off more than I could chew by aiming to do 35 posts.  I have been reflecting on how grief has changed me over the last two years.  In many ways, I am not the same person I was when 2021 began. Grief has changed my thought life, my friendships, my work.  First - My world got tiny. I often felt myself looking inward (at my usually crappy situation) and feeling a lot of pity, sadness, anger and occasional shame. In those seasons, it’s so hard for me to be an engaged friend. Essentially grief has made me selfish. When you are going through so much stuff, you don’t have capacity to extend yourself to be there for your people. There’s nothing wrong with that - that’s the reality of grief: other people are checking on you for a long time - for good reason. But that’s hard for me- I wasn’t built to be needy, to mope or even be able to answer “how are you doing”

Arrival

We arrived on Saturday evening, the 12th. All but one bag made it to Entebbe (five out of six is pretty good) and the last bag arrived a few days later via boda boda (motorcycle). It was dark when we flew in so we did not get to see much of anything (besides the loud clubs and street vendors) until we woke up on Sunday morning and the view was beautiful! Actually we were up at 4am (jet lag) but when the sun came up it was quite peaceful. It was a cool morning, we ate breakfast at our guest house and sat on the porch and watched birds - so peaceful!  We have spent this week in Kampala and two nights in Entebbe, getting adjusted to the time difference, visiting places we will come back to during our resupply trips, and having time to do some culture and Serge orientation before we get to Bundibugyo.  Guest House #1 - Adonai House  Guest House #2 - Guinea Fowl   Dinner at Faze 3 overlooking Lake Victoria - where we celebrated Malachi's birthday (