Heather is a muzungu

The king came to church yesterday.  At first, I wasn’t certain he was the king but I had a pretty good idea. As the second service was starting, I ran down to my house to get some more stickers and when I was getting back, a newish SUV was pulling up in front of the cathedral.  The fact that the car had diplomatic type flags on the front was the first clue.  The second was the truck full of armed guards whose fatigues all said “Royal Guard”.  One of the guards greeted me and I asked who was in the car…actually, I asked “May I ask who that is?”  And he said, “No.”  So I dropped the subject.  But I asked one of my Ugandan friends, Reuben, about it and he told me what was up.  The Omusinga, which is his official title, spoke after the service was over.  I’ve got to be honest, it was a little dissappointing.  He didn’t really LOOK very royal.  But his name is Wesley which, when pronounced with a Ugandan accent, sound like Weasley…as in Ron and Ginny and the Burrow. So I’m choosing to be a big fan.

PS. He was bringing the prince to church for the first time. http://www.trekeastafrica.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/bakonzo-bamba-celebrate-birth-of-rwenzururu-prince/

Updates!

-I had coffee for the first time the other day! I was hanging out next door at the bishop’s house and Dorothy, his wife, asked me what I missed most. When I said coffee (sorry everybody who I miss less than coffee) she went and got a French press and some ground coffee. It was delicious and made my stomach hurt for the rest of the day/I was totally cracked out all day. The grind was completely wrong for a French press and I think it was really old coffee but I don’t care…It was awesome and delicious. I smelled it for like 5 minutes first and then made all of my Ugandan friends try some. They did NOT like it.

-Apparently I like my tea black (made with water) because I am white and the Africans like their tea white (made with milk) because they are black or so someone told me.

-I have to stop casually mentioning things. I was at a church where it turned out my driver Chris “prays from” on Sundays. I correctly assumed he must live nearby and he said he would drive past it on our way back. Next thing I know I’m in the 10x10 room which Chris calls his home, sitting on a couch with a naked baby on my lap, and sipping passion fruit juice concentrate. This kind of thing happens all the time.

-I watched a goat get slaughtered. I couldn’t watch them actually kill it but the rest was kind of interesting. They use every part of that thing.

-Pretty much all the time I have ants in my bed. If one crawls on me in my sleep, I wake up just long enough to smack it off and then I go back to sleep. Well, the other night, it kept happening. I’d feel something crawling on me, smack it off, try to fall asleep and it a few minutes later, it would happen again. Naturally, I started to go slightly crazy imagining all sorts of creepy crawlies in my bed. And the more I imagined it, the worse it got. Eventually, I was curled up with my sheet wrapped tightly around me. I was lying there and finally managed to stop imaging bugs all over me. But then I was too hot to sleep because of how tightly I was wrapped up. So I trusted that there were no bugs, untucked my feet and fell asleep pretty quickly. Yeah, next morning I woke with a mostly dead roach in my sheets.

-What I’ve been doing: speaking at schools during chapel, preaching, training sunday school teachers.

-Zebiaus told me recently that my arms are brown, my legs are white and the bottoms of my feet are black.

-I have a hard time explaining tattoos (is it for identification? Wait, they use a needle?!) and NASA (where is the house where they live in space? So the space shuttle is an airplane?)

-I was speaking at a school last week and the head teacher definitely said Obama while introducing me.

-I went grocery shopping for myself for the first time the other day. I decided to splurge on some peanut butter. It cost 9,500 Ush. At the market, I bought potatoes, tomatoes, a cucumber, a watermelon, green peppers, onions, carrots, green beans and bananas for about 12,000 Ush. And I probably got cheated on the produce.

-I recently realized that my malaria medication makes me extra sensitive to the sun which helps to explain how I got a sunburn in the rain.

-When asked to list the states in America, I got 48 of them. I forgot Iowa and Wyoming, but really, who wouldn’t.

-I can go a week without thinking about home and the next day not want anything more than to change my plane ticket and leave immediately. Mostly though, I love it here but am often bored.

Not a typical day but…

Friday was a great example of life in Uganda.  There was a big storm the night before and when I woke up it was still raining and there was no power.  I had a breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, watermelon and tea.  After breakfast, I considered taking a shower but since it would have been in the dark and there was a roach dying in my shower, which I didn’t feel like dealing with, I decided against it.  Instead, since I was still in my pajamas and didn’t have any plans for the day, I went back to bed.  I didn’t actually go to sleep but finished the book I was reading.  As I was lying there trying to decide what to do next, I got a call from Canon Josephat letting me know that the Bishop wanted me to go to a meeting with him and that they would be sending a car up shortly.  I hopped out of bed and threw on some clothes and was still getting my shoes on when the truck pulled up outside.  They took me down to the offices where it turned out the Bishop had just left.  Canon Josephat called him to find out how far they had gotten and Chris, the driver, took me there, where they were waiting on the side of the road.

So I traveled with the Bishop and Casey, the bishop’s driver, to the Kasese district headquarters where they were having a discussion about a bill about children’s rights.  We arrived at the meeting place around 11:15 and the bishop took me around to show me the offices and introduced me a bunch of people. We went in to sit down and the bishop showed me the letter which invited him to the meeting, at which point I realized that this meeting was supposed to have started at 9.  We arrived more than two hours late to this meeting but it was okay because it wouldn’t actually start until almost noon.  And even after it started, people would be coming in for this meeting for another hour or two.

It was a pretty interesting discussion.  There were lawyers, representatives from Save the Children, a woman who worked for the Dept of Children and Families and various other community members (i.e. the bishop).  The meeting was about a bill for children protection that they had started working on and they wanted to discuss some of the feedback received from people in the community; how they could incorporate what the community wanted.  It was honestly a little hard to sit through the meeting quietly (I’m sorry, what? You want to legally enforce a dress code? Doesn’t it seem like a better idea just to make sure all of the kids in your community have clothes in the first place?). But since I’ve only been in this country a month, it didn’t really seem appropriate for me to comment. The bishop invited me along so I could see what the people of Uganda were doing for their children.  And really, it was all very positive and pro-child, some of it just seemed…unnecessary.  But what do I know.

After the meeting, the bishop took me to lunch.  They don’t really have restaurants so much as hotels where you can also eat a meal.  And the food choice is exactly what you would eat at home.  It’s actually less varied than the food I eat here.  I had chicken, rice, Ugandan eggplant, (which is little, green, incredibly bitter and not something I want to eat again) watermelon and a Coke.

After that, we went to see the school which the bishop is building.  He is very proud of his school and will become a teacher there when he retires.

So yeah, that was the day.  As per usual, I pretty much never had any idea what was going on or what I would be doing next.  It’s more fun this way, right?

Also, I have been informed that the wet season is here which means it is winter, it’s time to pull out your jackets and that today was cold.  It’s in the 70s.

I’m not really sure what to write about on here.  Which is why I don’t update very often.  That and I would rather spend my time on the internet on facebook/looking up ideas for sunday school.  But since I know I have family members who are expecting something, I thought I would say hello.

Maybe a little about where I live.  I live at the Agape Guest House.  It is in Kasese, Uganda.  Its actually more on a hill overlooking Kasese.  At the top of the hill, about a two minute walk from the guest house, is the cathedral that they are building. They been working on it since like 1992 or something crazy like that.

I live with Biira Helen and her niece Muhindo Asingya Zebeeas.   I have no idea how to spell the niece’s name so that it how I imagine it.  Muhindo and Biira are both names but they refer to birth place so pretty much everyone has the same name.  So its Helen and Zebeeas.  I’m Muhindo too, which is second child who changes sexes.  In other words, I have one older sibling who is a boy.  Biira is the second daughter.  Anyway, Helen is 18 and Zebeeas is  11.  Helen is the housekeeper here and Zebeeas goes to school at the bottom of the hill which is, I’m guessing, why she lives here.

Then there is Peter.  He doesn’t live here, he just comes and goes.  He is in charge of the place.  If I need anything, i can ask him for it.  And there is Amos. I have no idea who Amos is or where he comes from but he comes over everyday for dinner and he usually takes a shower too.  Actually we tend to be the communal house.  So if you need a shower or some water or to iron or something, this is the place to be.

That’s all for now.  I’m going to attempt uploading pictures.  We will see how it goes.

A question I was often asked before I left but unable to fully answer was about what I would be doing while I was here.  Well, I now how more of an answer.  I won’t swear that this is exactly what I will be doing, or rather, all that I will be doing but its the gist of it.  The plan is for me to go around to the different areas of the diocese, meet with leaders to teach on the importance of children’s ministry, train sunday school teachers and identify strengths and weaknesses of the what they currently have going on which I will then use to work on curriculum.  There are a few difficulties in this, the biggest one being transportation, but its being worked on.

So, yeah.  That’s the big news.  Things have been going pretty slowly so far but not neccesarily in a bad way.  And it turns out that Heather is incredibly difficult to pronounce and so I mostly am called Muhindo or Williams.  Or muzungu, of course.

Thank you all for keeping me in your prayers.  I am now going to see if I can download an episode of Lost while I still have internet connection.  I don’t thing the connection is going to be fast enough but there is no harm in trying.

Hello! I have made it safely to Kasese.  There’s not much to report since I haven’t really done that much yet.  I’ve met about thousand Ugandans, although I can probably only recall about ten of their names.  I went into town and through the markets once.  I went to a funeral.  I’ve been to the cathedral a few times.  I put together a couple of telescopes. I accidentally read an entire book the other day which is a really bad idea since I did not bring very many books.

That is pretty much the highlights.  But I am going to go now since in my excitement about having internet I’ve ignored basic daily procedures.  Specifically bug spray in this instance.

I bought my plane ticket today! Jan 25 - Jul 25.  I am officially going to Africa.