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. Chris RootJanuary 29, 2019 at 10:55 PM

    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 1 - July 12th

    I have desired to write about Jack and our child rearing experiences in general for a while and I frequently push it off and it just simply isn't a "right now" priority. Starting today, on what would have been Jack's 2nd Birthday, I am going to write daily (or try to) for the next 35 days in remembrance of the 35 days he lived on this earth. It will likely be unedited, imperfect, and intentionally raw - partially for the sake of time (I work, do school and we have a toddler in foster care ok?!) and partially because that is the theme of our story, imperfection (made perfect through Christ).  Today, I want to talk about birth. More specifically, medically complex birth. I get asked often if I had to have a mandatory c-section - thankfully no I did not. But I also did not expect to go into labor at 35 weeks and 5 days either and I am certain that is the worse option here. We came home from a week at the lake with Ike's family and as we are getting into bed Ike s
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 2 - The NICU

 The NICU is a place you are extremely grateful for but you also dread its existence. You are so thankful that your fragile baby has around the clock expert care but you also hate that your baby has to be there without you. And then when you are there you feel awkward - you’re the mother but his caretaker is the nurse - you have to ask permission or for help to hold the baby (so many lines/drains so it’s not easy to pick them up). It’s also just heartbreaking to see the other babies that have been there for weeks or even months. Jack’s isolette/crib/bed was next to a baby born at 24 weeks (on April 8 actually) and it was July 12… he was still tiny with a young mom who we witnessed have hard conversations about her capacity to care for such a tiny fragile baby. The baby on the other side was born via c section because his organs were on the outside of his belly (omphalocele) and he cried and cried and cried. (We actually had a mom bring a baby with this same diagnosis to our house in Ug
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 6 - ECMO

After all that surgery talk, this seems like an appropriate time to talk about ECMO.  ECMO stands for extracorporal membrane oxygenation - basically an exterior heart and lungs. Only a few hospitals in Virginia have trained teams and adequate machines to run ECMO. We learned a lot about it because there had to be someone in Jacks room 24 hours a day to monitor/run the machine. Like for bathroom breaks or lunch breaks - they had another trained ECMO person come and sit in the room while they took a break. We met almost every ECMO worker (a few didn’t do peds) and we talked with them a ton. They were present for many hard conversations with doctors, surgeons, nurses, chaplains, etc. They did things like get us lunch when the free lunch carts rolled by, bring us honey from home, update us on medical rounds that we missed. They felt like a second family. We wrote down almost all the nurses and ECMO techs Jack had - we wrote down 15 names for ECMO and I know we missed a few (like the night
Post a Comment
Read more