Archive for the ‘travel’ Category
Hi everyone, just wanted to post a quick update that I made it home safe and sound last night, despite an unexpected diversion to Nairobi, Kenya on Thursday due to aircraft troubles. I am missing STAO, Uganda, the kids, and the team a great deal. Being home feels good in many ways, but unsettling in others. I think those latter feelings are even stronger knowing that the rest of the team is still there. Still, I’m rejoicing at the unbelievable news of 0 positive HIV results among the STAO kids. Seriously. Amazing.
Kate asked me not to write much here about my experience returning home until the rest of the team does, so I’ll do my best to honor that wish. I will be posting some pictures and videos soon, though!
Bijenda bitya (How’s it going?)
We’ve made it to Jinja after a long long arduous journey. We landed in Entebbe only to find 13 of our 15 checked bags. Fortunately the most important boxes arrived with all our personal belongings and Dale’s guitar. We were stopped in the Entebbe airport by some “security people” who wanted to “tax” us on the donations we brought over. We found out later that there is no such thing 
So it’s a good thing we didn’t give them any money.
Dale, Pastor Nelson, and Pastor David met us outside of the airport to take us through Kampala to Jinja. Here’s where the real journey began. How can I even put to words Ugandan driving? Thrilling…scary…fast…a lot of passing huge trucks with on coming traffic. If you’ve never experienced passing a truck on a two-lane road and seeing two taxi vans coming straight at you in both lanes, then you haven’t lived! Boy the rush.
The van we rented took 7 of us, and Pastor David’s car took the other 4. We had a wonderful “muzungu” (foreigner) moment in the middle of downtown Kampala where we ran out of gas. Three gracious newspaper-men pushed our van 100 yards uphill to the nearest Shell gas station with all the locals pointing and asking us, “Muzungu, how are you?” Ack. How embarassing.
After that feat and two hours of Ugandan driving later, we settled into our beautiful home in Jinja. We have adorable neighbors who befriended us immediately upon our arrival. The country is beautiful. The people are beautiful. The food is delicious and God is so good.
Thank you for all your prayers and your continual support! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update…
We’re half way there! The team is hanging around the Heathrow terminal, killing time until our flight in about 3.5 hours. I jumped on a web kiosk to add a link from the Tusubira home page to this blog. Next update will be from Uganda!
