The breather comes to an end...

Kampala! The city! I got a little bit giddy as we drove in Sunday mid-day and I saw the backdrop of the city…we’re going to the city! It was kind of this strange combination of a country girl getting excited to go to the big city and a city girl glad to return to the familiar…I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time so far from an urban environment, ever, in my whole life…it’s very strange…I’m constantly realizing how this effects me, and driving into Kampala was one of those times…even though nothing about Kampala is familiar to me, the urban-ness of it was familiar…the buildings all close together, the paved roads, the # of cars on the road, the signs and billboards, it’s strange but it’s comforting for me. Like in the States, I get all freaked out when I’m in the suburbs and there aren’t very many street lights and it’s really dark and there aren’t lots of people around and it’s really quiet…gives me the heebie geebies…well, at home in Bundibugyo, imagine pitch black – I’ve never seen it dark like it gets in Bundi…the only lights around are the glow of kerosene lanterns/candles spotting the landscape…and it’s quiet, but because there’s not the hum of traffic and other things, you can hear people talking as they sit outside cooking/eating, and you can hear peoples’ radios powered by batteries, but even then, it can be pretty quiet…when I walk to get the milk at the Myhre’s on the days Pat and I are assigned, I’m always flinching when I hear things move behind me or when a frog jumps up against my leg in the grass, I whip my “torchie” (flashlight) around and sweep the shadows behind me looking for snakes and small creatures…eeeek.

Kampala reminds me of some of the cities I visited in India, maybe just a little…on a less crowded scale though…kind of like a Chennai of sorts maybe…but not as green as I remember Chennai being…then there’s the driving on the “wrong side” of the road part that makes traffic patterns here still confusing to me…I’m always forgetting to look right and then left when crossing the street, which has the potential to be a fatal mistake, but luckily so far I’ve been with other, more seasoned “wrong side of the street” conscious people, and so far I’m in one piece. Then there’s the “roundabouts” concept. I forgot to ask my transportation planner brother about this theory, but I was sitting in the car going around one of these seemingly totally chaotic roundabouts trying to figure out why the world they existed and someone was talking about the madness at intersections with street lights when the power goes out (frequent occurrence here in Kampala)…and then I realized, in places where there isn’t electricity for stop lights and signals, a roundabout is maybe the only solution to moving lots of people through an intersection with some semblance of order…maybe everyone else has already thought of this but it helped me have some patience with the system, since it doesn’t seem like a very good one to this western mind.

Sunday afternoon we went to church at Kampala Pentecostal Church (KPC). It was great to be able to understand the whole service since it was all in English. It was something else to be in a service though that visually could very well have been in any large contemporary service in the States…video screens and drum sets and electric guitarists plucking the strings with their teeth during a solo, and worship leaders bouncing up and down with the beat of each song. It was really different to see such a well educated and seemingly wealthy portion of Ugandan culture…wealthy compared to their fellow countrymen in Bundibugyo. It was encouraging in lots of ways and discouraging in others. I also found out that this church is the home church of the African Childrens Choir which was one of my first exposures to Africa as a child. I vividly remember going to their concert at a church in Mount Lebanon when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old…I loved it! We listened to the tape on many a long car trip growing up and although I can’t remember any of the words right now, if you put it on, I’d probably sing along with the whole tape.

We stayed the first 3 nights at the guesthouse of Hospice of Uganda. They do outpt. Hospice care and in-home hospice mostly for people with HIV/AIDS and cancer. This guesthouse is an income generating project for the organization which has some European roots/connections. It’s clean, low-key and quiet if you’re not on the street side of the house, but I slept fine even with windows facing the street – it’s the city girl in me again, and it’s cheap too. Then the last 2 nights and tonight we’re staying across the street from Hospice at the American Recreation Association (ARA) which is owned by the American Embassy here in Kampala and has great facilities but is a little more pricey.

I’ve spent a good amount of time this week trying to straighten out logistical details with my Work Permit and Special Pass and Drivers’ License applications, we’ve shopped for medicine, groceries and office supplies, we’ve bought stamps and gone to the bank and we’ve had cars worked on, and we’ve picked people up at the airport and we’ve eaten out at restaurants, and I’ve had a diet coke every chance I get ☺ All are things we can’t do at home, and it’s been nice to be able to do here. Though my mind started getting a little foggy when I tried to think through everything I needed to get done while we were here and still try to rest and relax too…

And then there’s the Soroti situation…I got an email Monday when I checked my email for the first time in a week, from our contact at UNICEF here in Kampala, instructing us to send 2-3 people to a 5 day conference in the Soroti district from May 26-30 about the treatment of severe malnutrition in a treatment center setting…that’s NEXT WEEK! Soroti is at least 2 days of travel from Bundi, and I’m not even getting back into Bundi until Saturday night…it made my stomach turn to think about not being able to go back to Bundi this week and instead traveling on to Soroti for a week by myself…I talked to Karen and Jennifer and Pat about it, told them I really didn’t wanna go, they did all they could to encourage me to go acknowledging the timing was less than ideal, but I wasn’t really being very flexible…Jennifer emailed our contact back and I just found out a few minutes ago that she said it’s totally fine if we don’t get anybody there this time around, that they’re probably going to have another one and there will be other opportunities to learn about the topic…PRAISE THE LORD! I was having a hard time figuring out if I was being too inflexible or if it was really reasonable for me to say, I just can’t do this right now. I was talking to my brother on the phone about it and I told him, if I had like 3 months to gear up for something like this it’d be different, but I only really was given 3 days! Evidently however, you’re never given more than a week’s notice about these seminars, the timing is never good, you just kind of have to make the best of it and go and usually they’re pretty beneficial and encouraging and informative. So, I’m forewarned and at least know some of what to expect when they spring another one of these on us. It’s unbelieveably relieving to know it’s okay with UNICEF that I not go to Soroti this week.

I’m ready to go home. Home is Bundibugyo these days. That’s where my stuff is, that’s where my friends here in Africa are, where my work is…and I think it’s good that I’m ready after 2 weeks to go back. That’s not to say I didn’t start crying looking through pictures of Erik and Heather’s darling little Eleanor last night, a darling little girl I’ve never met, that’s not to say I didn’t tear up when talking to my brother on the phone about my ups and downs these last few weeks, that’s not to say I didn’t get a huge smile on my face when read a note from Sylwinn saying that my little buddy Daniel was impressed with my rope swinging endeavor, and seeing pictures of her precious little Grace (another precious little girl I’ve never met) asleep in her sling on her back like an African baby ☺ That’s not to say that I’m really sad I’m missing my little sisters’ college graduation this weekend. I’m so very proud of her and have a HUGE amount of respect for the mind and the passions God has given her, and I wish I could give her a BIG hug and tell her that face to face, but a phone call will have to do. And the list goes on and on and on. But I am still ready to go home.