Man, it’s been a minute since I’ve written a blog. Sorry
about that, I’m going to blame it on not having power and being busy and the
traffic jam of cows on my way to work. Also my dog ate my homework. In all reality, it gets harder to write as time goes on because everything becomes normal and you get into a rhythm, so when I almost get in an accident, or get stuck in between a herd of cattle, I don't even think about saying anything about it because it's just life. Lots has
happened since my last update, but don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a 20
page novel like normal. Or maybe it will. Yeah it probably will be. I think I’m going to aim to do shorter updates more
often so I actually do them. We’ll see how that plays out. Where did we leave
off? This is actually a legitimate question, I can’t get on the internet to
reread my last blog… OK cool it loaded. Safari adventures with Brucie!
August was a pretty good month here, but sad at the same
time. A handful of good friends left
Gulu, which sadly has become a trend. My three housemates left, one of them to
go be a complete badass in the middle of a war-zone in Congo. Seriously, I wish
I had balls like she did. The other two Rousseau sisters went back to the
Northwest to move onto the next chapters of life. It was tough saying bye to
them all, but I’m stoked for what God is doing through each of them. Restore lost another awesome member when Jenna got a sweet job running a hair stylist school, so that was also real tough. But we got a new volunteer that moved into the house, Hunter, who is here to do
farming, but enjoys fishing. Hunter Farmer is a legit guy from Nashville who is
really good at guitar and singing (very similar to my own talents). He's got crazy long hair, which if Jenna was still here, I would have convinced her to cut off. Along with
Hunter, there’s some new interns for an organization called Krochet Kids, who
you should check out if you haven’t heard of them. They employ women (not kids)
who make beanies while going through a program that gives them life skills.
It’s been fun making those new friends and going on adventures, making meals,
or having Christmas in July together. One thing that is awesome about Gulu is
how much time people spend with one another. When you don’t have TV, or power
half of the time, your options become read by yourself (which I’m guilty of
very often), or hang with people, make a meal together and have a candlelit
game of Charades, Bananagrams, or some Mafia.
Plus, having everyone live one quick boda ride from each other helps
too. Except when it rains, then you just stay home. It’s actually funny how the
rain creates pretty legitimate excuses for a lot of things. “Ah, I didn’t make
it to school today because of the rains” and people totally understand. Riding
a street bike without good treads on the rain is like trying to line dance on
an ice rink. Which I’ve never tried, it just seems pretty difficult. That can
be pretty frustrating when it comes to getting construction work done, but it’s
part of life and you just gotta deal with it.
September was pretty freaking awesome. Brett came to visit
for 3 weeks, and Evan Luchaco came for a couple weeks also. Brett got to come
up to Gulu for a few days, meet the people, meet a crew of our workers and
throw some bricks around at the school, and see the town. Unfortunately, my
visa needed to be renewed a few days into him being here, so that meant going
to Kampala. On the bus down, two windows were broken, one was shattered and
tiny pieces of glass were falling out on the passengers, and the other one was
cracked, so they were more of shards than small pieces of glass. This was the
start to our pretty poor-luck of Ugandan public transportation. Half-way to
Kampala a rather large shard of glass falls on the nearby passengers, luckily
no one was hurt. Half an hour later, the bus conductor went and punched out the
rest of the window so that no glass pieces were falling. Seems like a good
idea, except then really fine pieces of glass were flying several seats back,
so I had to wear a sweatshirt and pull the hoodie over my head. Good thing
there was a lot of airflow on the bus that day or else I would have been
extremely hot. So it was a pretty normal bus ride and then we get to
Kampala. Well I got denied for a tourist
visa extension at the office, which was a bummer because that meant having to
go to another country. Well, we decided on Kenya. I wasn’t feeling too great at
this point, but had to get out of the country or else I’d be in trouble.
We hopped on a night bus taking off at 7, and the ride is
supposed to be 4 hours. It started out pretty uneventfully, so Brett and I get
some restless sleeping in. At about 10 at night, the bus breaks down. Sweet.
They’re not able to fix it, so they have to send another one, which means
waiting 3 hours for the next bus to come, then moving on from there. It’s about
3:30 in the morning by the time we get to Kenya. We cross over then look for a
place to stay since we’re just going back to Uganda the next day. We’re walking
towards what looks like the city center and some guy (he seemed friendly) talks
to us and starts leading us to a hotel to crash in. We follow him into the
“city center”, which isn’t much of anything, and is totally dark at this point
because there aren’t streetlights over here for the most part. It starts to
feel a little sketchy, but we keep going. We enter through a couple storefronts
into sorta an alleyway, and it opens up into a courtyard. I notice that some
guy had started to follow us as we crossed through this passageway, and on the
other side of the courtyard the guy tries to direct us through an unmarked gate
claiming that there is a hotel in there. Even though it was 4 am after a long
day of traveling, Brett and I both knew better and decided to go off by
ourselves and not go through this sketchy gate into a dark area with the empty
promise that there is a hotel through there. I’m not totally sure, but I think
we might have been mugged if we had gone in. Once we turned away from here, the
guy stopped following us and we went to the nearest building with lights on. We
get a room, and after entering into it and our nostrils being filled with the
stench of some rotting animal, we request a new one. Second one seemed decent
enough, so we crash there.
The next day we go back to Uganda and decide to spend a
night at Sipi falls, which is this beautiful retreat place where the weather
was cooler (like, maybe even in the 60’s at night) and there is some beautiful
waterfalls to hike around, and also freshly roasted coffee available to buy. It
was pretty crazy realizing how refreshing it was just to be around mountains of
some sort and not the flat landscape of Gulu. Back to Kampala the next day and
we have Evan picked up from the airport and taken to the house we were crashing
at (which was on top of a hill overlooking Kampala, maybe the coolest view in
the city). Ev gets in around 2, so we all get some good sleep, get some
breakfast the next day, then head on to Fort Portal, which is the city where
we’re doing a triathlon the next weekend. The week was an awesome mixture of
some outdoor adventures, randomly meeting a guy I’d been corresponding to over
email about renting bikes, then biking to some caves, seeing lots of smaller
crater lakes (nothing compared to ours in Oregon), a safari, and also just
relaxing and enjoying having some time together.
The safari was pretty sick. We went to a different park from
the last time I safari’d with my Dad. We got to go on a boat tour and also
drove around the park searching for the elusive lion. Unfortunately, no such
luck. But, on the way back to Fort Portal, we saw a group of elephants. I think
it’s technically called a herd, but I prefer the term hellaphants. Over ten of
them crossed within 20 meters of our car, including one straggler, who was
smart enough to look both ways before he crossed. Impressive, especially
considering a ton of people in this country don’t even do that. We stopped at
the equator point, took some touristy photos and then went back.
Our country director John came down for the triathlon,
which was one of the more fun days I’ve had yet. The swim was in this crater
lake with clean, perfect temperature water, then the bike ride was around the
surrounding villages (more of a BMX race than a road race, which made it extra
fun and extra sketchy at the same time, considering the quality of bikes). The
race finished with a run around the rim of the crater lake where the swimming
leg of the race was. John got 2nd behind the guy who coordinated the
whole thing, and I was pretty average. At least I beat that 9-year old. The
rest of the day was spent hanging with all the other contestants, then heading
back to Kampala so we could get up to Gulu the next day.
The plan was to grab some breakfast then go to Gulu as early
as possible, except we didn’t account for the biggest storm I’d seen in Kampala
hitting. Luckily we were stuck in a café with a group of Gulu friends, but
there was some serious lightning happening within a kilometer of where we
were. That delayed our departure until
2:00 where we went to the bus park and prepared for another bus adventure. Well
2:00 turned into 4:30 by the time we left, then we got stuck in traffic and
didn’t end up getting out of the city until 6:00. Not the best start. The rest
of the drive was extremely slow, so it was 2:00 am before we got back. Oh the
joy of a crammed 12 hour bus ride.
Well something hit Evan pretty bad and he felt like crap the
whole time he was in Gulu, which was a bummer. He was a trooper and made the
half-hour boda ride to the school but I could tell he wasn’t feeling too great.
Unfortunately, sickness is just part of life here but it sucked that it had to
hit him during his short stay here. We got to celebrate his birthday together,
probably not one of his best, but a memorable one none-the-less. He took off
the next day but luckily some of my friends were heading to Kampala and were
able to accompany him during his ride. Brett and I had a handful more days to
julk around in Gulu before he went back to Switzerland. One day we decided to
go to the abandoned railcars. We left Epona a couple miles away and started
walking on the tracks. We meet Michael, a friendly teacher who turned out to be
a primary school teacher. Mid-conversation, an old lady comes up and speaks Lwo
to Michael and says hi to us, then walks off. A couple minutes later we’re
still talking with Michael and this old lady comes back screaming bloody murder
and swinging her arms above her head wildly. I wasn’t immediately sure what was
going on, maybe she was trying to put a curse on us, or it was some new Acholi
dance. When she got closer, we realized she had a swarm of bees attacking her.
Brett and I looked at each other and realized we couldn’t really do anything to
help her and started to run away like little school girls. I’ve heard that bees
can sense fear, which is probably why they went after Brett and not myself, he was
fearing seriously, I was just fearing somehow. Torn between trying to help this
lady and not wanting to get killed by a swarm of African bees, we’re asking
people around to try to help this lady, but we seemed to be the only ones
concerned and most people were just laughing about it. Sometimes I just don’t
get this culture, although I did receive an email a week later from Michael
saying the lady survived so that’s good.
Well Brett and I take yet another Post Bus ride back to
Kampala which just happened to be on his birthday. We went out for a nice
dinner where we ate different type of game meat, mostly types of Kob (deer
looking things) but also had some crocodile and stuff. Pretty delicious. As the
car pulls up to take Brett to the airport, we’re bracing for a goodbye, which
may have been sad if the driver wasn’t playing backstreet boys in the
background. It was hard not to laugh at the situation. That is one positive of
Uganda music, they still play those hits from the 90’s and 2000’s. There’s been
a handful of nights where I drive home singing backstreet boys out loud because it’s stuck in my head, and
I’m not even ashamed at it. Everyone things we mzungus are crazy anyways, so
might as well reinforce the stereotype!
The next month was pretty uneventful besides moving houses
and playing spikeball. I am now living with 4 other guys (Don't call it a frat house) in
another part of town than before. Two of the guys work with Krochet Kids, one
with Restore, and one with another company called Remnant. We have our own
compound, which is pretty sweet. We have room to play spikeball, and are also
in the middle of making a sand volleyball/spikeball court. It’s going to be
sick. I’ll put up pictures once it’s done. Spikeball has become a favorite
pastime here and everyone is getting pretty good at it. It’s a nice stress
reliever at the end of a long day.
At the end of October we had a group of people comKK, 31 Bits, and an Invisible Children project called Mend. You should all buy
Christmas presents from them, it’s a great way to give great products that also
contribute to helping not only fund the work here, but also teach the workers
life skills like saving, budgeting and planning for their futures. Ouch. Just
sprained my ankle jumping off of that soap box. Anyways, the group was in
Uganda for over a week, and 4 of those days were in Gulu. The graduation at the
school was pretty awesome, and also a bit sad. I knew quite a few of the
graduating students, and although it was awesome to see their faces as they got
their diplomas, the thought that I may not see some of them again wasn’t easy
to think about. After a long day of picture-taking on corny backdrops, we all
head back into town for a dinner with the group. The next day was going to be
our traditional healer graduation.
Small backstory: traditional healers, or witch doctors, are
pretty common over here and they often resort to things like animal sacrifices,
or in extreme cases human sacrifices as a means to receive “powers” from evil
spirits. Bob has been working with traditional healers, running sting
operations, convicting them of murders, and holding regional meetings to let
all the witch doctors know that Uganda now has a law in place and they’re not
afraid to put them in prison for life for any illegal activities for their
practices. But this practice is shunned in the majority of Uganda, and
therefore these traditional healers are seen as outcasts of society and not
accepted into the community. They don’t go to schools, and don’t allow their
children to go to schools so they’re not educated and can’t speak English. This
is where some former Restore students got involved. They held bi-weekly classes
to not only teach them English, but also share God’s love with them and show
that they’re not stuck in their practices and can continue to learn in order to
rejoin society as a contributing member, not someone who is feared by the local
village people. All that to say, we had a graduation for this group who had
gone through our program. The graduation was great, even some local news came
to do a story but we turned them away. They put on graduation gowns, got
certificates (Ugandans LOVE certificates), and even presented a drama for us
(they love those too). Although it was long and drawn out (much like my blogs),
it was interesting to see. The story basically was showing what their life had
been like when participating in child sacrifices and when they were involved in
their former practices. The group of visitors took off after this, and I then
had about 5 hours to make a Halloween costume for the party we were hosting at
our house. Luckily I had the easiest costume of the group and went as the
Yellow Brick Road from Wizard of Oz. I thought it was funny, but people took
advantage of the situation and made fun of me. I really got walked all over. We
ended up having like 50 people over and had a really fun night.
And that brings us to the present. I’m sure I missed some
fun stories, but you got the highlights. The Sportscenter Top 10, if you will.
I’ve decided to commit to another year over here continuing construction
projects, doing some accounting, and whatever else I find time to do! I’m really
excited to come back and keep the work going. Oh yeah, I’m coming back to
Oregon mid-December for a month to visit, so I hope to see you all around! I
don’t think I’ll have a cell phone, so Facebook message might be the best way
to get ahold of me. I’ll update you all if that changes. Anyways, thanks for
spending time reading this, sorry I took so long between updates, I’ll try and
be better in the future! Here's a couple bonus pictures that I think are kinda cool.
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