Tea Plantations...

This past Saturday the Wilks and I went about an hour northwest of here to visit some tea plantations. We are in the rainy season now and this is a big harvest time for tea. It's amazing the amount of work it takes to pick all these tea leaves by hand and place them in these baskets. There were hundreds of rolling acres like this...it was beautiful! For all you tea lovers....lots of tea is grown here in Uganda. If you come visit I'll make you a nice cup of hot chai (milk tea)!

Here's the Wilks family, my teammates. Barry, Scarlett, Emily (13), Jared (12), Sara (soon 10), and Anna (2 1/2). I love these guys! 

"Kids Club"

Every Sunday afternoon the Wilks have started a 'kids club' where the Wilks kids share Bible stories and then play games/sports. About 30 kids and teens that live nearby come. This has been a really neat ministry for the kids and I have enjoyed getting to know some of the teens as well (a teen here can be a person up into their 20's as long as they aren't married). Please remember this group that kids might come to know Jesus as their Savior and then share the good news with their parents at home!

After the Bible story everyone has time to play around. This is our homemade basketball goal in the banana plantation at the Wilk's house :) Trying to teach Ugandans how to play basketball is kind of interesting (football or soccer is the big sport here), but as a good Kentuckian I have to help share with them this wonderful sport!  

This is me and my friend Lillian, soon to be a fourth year medical student at the University here. I was able to have her and her roomate, Brenda over for Lillian's birthday. Brenda and Lillian are also active members of our town church. I enjoy hanging out with them a lot. Thanks Lillian for supporting the USA! haha 

This is one of our clients, Kakazi. We went to visit her in her home and found one of the poorest living conditions I have seen yet. She rents a small mudd room where her and her 6 children stay (her husband died a few years ago). There was only one small, very thin mattress under the mosquito net we had given her. I asked where all the children (some of whom were as old as 16) slept. She pointed to mats on the ground and clothes that they must have used for blankets. Thankfully we were able to give her this blanket, and also with some of the money donated by FBC Henderson's VBS offering I was able to buy two more small mattresses for the children to sleep on. She was so appreciative...you would have thought we had given her a million dollars! I look at her situation and think, "how does she do it?" But Kakazi knows our Savior and has much joy even in circumstances that look 'bad' to us. Praise God...I can learn a lot from people like Kakazi! 

"You're too fat!"

Shopping here is not a leisurely Saturday afternoon outing where you can walk around in a nice air-conditioned mall browsing at clothes nicely hung on their designated racks (this applies to most stores in America except maybe Old Navy :) and then stop at the food court for a quick lunch from Chick-Fil-A. 

The only shopping we have here in Mbarara consists of going to the used clothing market where you have to walk past raw goat's meat and step through muddy sewage only to dig through piles of used clothes that are often dirty and stained. Sometimes though if you look hard you can find pretty nice clothes from places like GAP and Abercrombie. Well one Saturday I went to the clothes market here with my teammates. I was looking for some skirts (of course...what else would I wear here!) and found one that I thought would be good for going out to visit patients. As I was holding it up to see if I thought it might fit (because there are no dressing rooms here) the woman who ran this particular 'stall' said, "You are too fat for that one"! As if I don't have enough of a complex already about my weight being a woman! 

Here in Uganda it is supposed to be a compliment to tell someone they are 'fat' or 'big' because it means you eat well and have money. Well, I don't care how long I live here being told that I am 'fat' will never be a compliment to me! First of all I thought, this woman is dumb....why would she tell me I am 'too fat' she should want to make a sell regardless, right?! Secondly by her telling me that I was 'fat' she totally ruined her chance of making a sell from me at all! And thirdly, this lady was huge compared to me...how could she even call me 'fat'!!! She tried to show me another skirt and I told her as politely as I could (even though I was furious inside) that, no I did not care to buy from her. I tried to explain to her that telling an American that they are fat is very rude in our culture, but I don't think she understood. Can you imagine...being at the mall in a store in America and a salesperson walking up to you as you look at something to buy and them saying, "You are too fat to wear that"? Some things I will never understand about the culture here!

Our first bunch of bananas from our very own 'plantation'!

Here is Anna, who stays on my compound with me, cutting down our first bunch of bananas from our little 'banana plantation'. There are three types of bananas grown in Uganda...matooke, which are the large green bananas that are cooked and eaten as a staple food here; bagoya, which is the large yellow banana most similar to our bananas in the States; and kabalagala, which are the small sweet yellow bananas that are so good here! Usually you cut them down when they are a little riper (but still when they are somewhat green). Unfortunately this tree became top heavy (we have too many banana trees planted in a small place with poor soil) and after attempts by my yard worker to brace the tree...the limbs began to break so we had to cut this bunch of bananas. I learned that banana trees only produce one bunch of bananas ever! So know this tree will be useless. People gain a lot of their income off of bananas here. But a bunch of bananas like this might only sell for about $3 and it takes trees sometimes years to produce. Then Ugandans have to strap about 7 bunches onto their bicycles and push the bananas far distances into town to sell them. So much work for such little money!

Here I am with my first bunch of bananas from my very own 'plantation'! These are the bagoyas that will eventually turn into big yellow bananas most similar to what we have in the States. This is a heavy bunch of bananas! 

My new car!! I can't tell you how thankful I am to the Lord for this car. I had been having so much trouble with my truck and the clutch was really hurting my left knee. This one is still a stick shift, but it has a lot more power and is so much easier to drive! This picture is taken from my front porch. So you can see a bit of my compound..it's mostly concrete (I only have a little bit of grass in the front and the back). But I do have a few banana trees and pineapple plants growing in the back (I'll be surprised if they ever produce while I am here though!) 

Tour of my house.....

Finally after living here in Mbarara 6 months I feel like my house is somewhat 'home'. I wish you could see pictures of it when I first moved in, but thankfully I have been able to slowly 'make it my own'. I was able to get curtains made so I picked out this material as well as the dining room curtains (to follow..i really like those). I spend a good bit of my time in this room especially over in that corner on my laptop (so now you can picture me emailing you).

The dining room is probably my favorite room of the house. I really like the rock wall and it's just 'homey' feeling to me. I don't eat at the table a lot though by myself, but I try to have people over a few times a month to share this big house with!  

It's hard to get a picture of my kitchen, but this is at the doorway entering in. I spend a lot of my time here cooking since I have to do some much from stratch. I am learning a lot! Just call me Betty Crocker :) 

This is the hallway I like to call 'the dungeon'. My house is enormous for just me...there are 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. So I have plenty of room for visitors :) I won't bore you with pictures of every room, but my room is the last one on the left. The garage that has my washing machine is right across from my bedroom. Someone told me I should calculate how far it is from my bedroom to the kitchen....I probably walk a mile everyday in my own house! 

This is my bedroom. I finally decorated it a bit. I went and got this really pretty bedspread at the used clothing market here for really cheap. Don't you love the designs on my floor? None of the houses here have carpet because it would constantly be dirty from all the dirt, but I don't know why they can't just put normal solid color tiles on the floors instead! I guess it makes them unique.

This is the view from the other side of my room (and this isn't even all of it)...my room is huge! The small room in the right of the picture connects my room to my bathroom. I use it as a room to hang my clothes to dry (cause if I hang them outside I have to either iron them or wait 3 days to avoid mango worms that can get into the clothes and then into my skin!) 

And finally my blue bathroom (I am sitting on the bathtub as I take this picture). Unfortunately I don't have very good water pressure, but I do have hot water (when I remember to turn on the hot water heater)! Hope you enjoyed the tour :)

How many car problems can I have?!

So today we were having a meeting/workshop with the Words of Hope counselors at our church here in town. The morning had gone really well and when it came to lunch time I went to my truck, parked at the church to go get some food for us. I put my key in the driver's side door to unlock, but the key wasn't fitting exactly right and wouldn't open the door. I thought, 'that's strange'. Then I went around to the passenger's side door and found that it was also messed up.....someone had tried to break into my car!! Can you imagine...broad daylight, middle of the day....at the church! I mean this is small-town Mbarara....not down-town Nairobi! They had tried using a key in the passenger's side and half of it was now broken off into my lock. It look liked they had even tried to remove the side mirrors, but thankfully they were not able to enter and nothing was missing! Praise the Lord. 

Thankfully I was with the Words of Hope team and Pastor Naboth, our new counselor, was able to go get a mechanic friend of his to come and open the small window on the door and unlock the car. I really don't know what I would do without my Words of Hope teammates....they really look out for me. So what would have been a 15 minute run to get some food for lunch turned into a 2 hour process of getting the doors open and then going to buy new locks and having them installed. I couldn't help but laugh....it seems like everything that could have possibly gone wrong with cars has happened to me in the last 8 months! I must have set a record or something among journeymen.....(let's see I've had an accident and flipped my truck over, flat tire with no jack and a bad spare, a counselor left one of my seat belts hanging outside the door and I ran over it, been pulled over for speeding although no ticket was given), gotten my tire clamped twice for wrong parking, backed into my gate at my house, gotten stuck/had to use 4-wheel drive, have had a mud flap fall off twice (it's still currently off), and now have had my truck almost broken-in to)! 

But unfortunately the story doesn't end there...tonight I went to give my guard some tea and I noticed that the small window the mechanic had maneuvered to open and unlock the car was now shattered and looked like if I touched it the whole window would break into a million tiny pieces. Apparently it had been 'cracked' during the day and then tonight the decrease in temperature made it shatter. So looks like tomorrow will be another fun day as I go to get this replaced! It's crazy that this happened only a few days before I am going back to Kampala this weekend to get a different vehicle. I have had a lot of difficulty driving this vehicle because of the size and now the past few weeks I have been having a lot of pain in my left knee from the clutch as well as some other problems, including the air conditioning. I had been praying about this car....ever since my accident I have had a lot of fear of driving and have never really felt confident driving this truck. God really is good...there is another vehicle available for me to drive that is much smaller and has an 'easier' clutch! Well, at least I had one more exciting thing happen in this vehicle before trading it for another one....and who knows what tomorrow may bring!

There's always room for one more....

This picture is through my windshield so it is a bit blurry, but it's so African! This is a cheap way to get from place to place here...I don't know how they do it though cause the back tires are so flat!

This is at a 'dump' just a short walk from my house. Pretty huh? Sanitation is a hug problem here and Ugandans litter all the time. On top of this dumpster you can see a Maribou stork...these are the most disgusting birds I have ever seen. They are like vultures. The first time I saw one fly over my head I thought it was a pterodactyl! Of course the goats like to join in on the 'feast' as well.
 

A closer view of my 'friends' the Maribou storks 

Here I am with a little girl, Zam, during home vists. She latched onto me when we visted her mother, our patient, and she followed me around for a few more visits. Each day I meet sweet children like this one, but it's so sad to know that in a few years they will be orphans. Most of them their fathers have already died and now and are being raised by their mothers who are HIV+. 

Here is Evas, a Words of Hope nurse/counselor giving a quilt to one of our patients who lost all his household items when his little son (pictured here) caught the house on fire playing with matches. Thankfully most homes here in the city (rented homes) have concrete walls so the house itself wasn't lost. These quilts were made by some ladies from a church in Houston, Tx.  

Just a picture of my home...big downtown Mbarara...no McDonald's or Pizza Hut here :) This man carrying about 15-20 mattresses on his head is a normal thing around here! Can you imagine? 

These children are so precious....they attend our Bible storying group in Kiyanja every week. When I arrive they run up to me calling me "Kenyangi" (my Runyankore name). I don't think most of them know my real name. They always stand up in a line and sing before we start the Bible story. Some songs are in English....my favorite one is "Jesus never Fails". It says "Your father can let you down, your mother can let you down...son of man can let you down, but Jesus never fails"..then it repeats with uncle, auntie, sister, brother. Such a simple song, but such a good message. The little boy in the plaid shirt is a strong singer and is always leading...it's so sweet. 

Some ladies from the Bible storying group in Katete. We meet at Joventa's home (far left) in this bananna plantation. All these ladies are also clients at our clinic, which is how the group began...from home visits. Looks like w're in a jungle doesn't it?! 

This is praise and worship at our Bible storying group out in a nearby village called Katete....our 'leader' is playing a "jerry can" (used for collecting water, oil or anything else) as a drum....Africans have such rhythmn!

Another fun day on home visits....

Today was another interesting day out visiting patents. The day started off in a very poor area. We entered into a lady's home who had substantial hearing loss from the AIDS virus. And to make matters worse there were about 20 children standing in her doorway that kept saying "Muzungu bye" over and over (I guess that was the little English they knew)! It was so bad we couldn't talk to the patient and I had to go outside and physically push the children away. For those of you who didn't know I AM a celebrity here in Uganda. Everyone wants to see me and touch me and talk to me! 

Next, we went to an area near the Army Barracks here just outside of town. We were having trouble locating a new patient's home (which is very common because it's almost impossible to give directions here since there are no street names and many people live in these 'slum' areas). As we were looking a man came up to my truck and asked what we were doing. We said we were trying to find a friend's home (we try to keep some degree of confidentiality for our patients) so the man just went away. We finally found the patient's home and entered. A few minutes later the same man came back and asked us what we were doing. We told him talking about Jesus with our friend...then he left again. So we carried on talking to our patient and her husband who was a new believer, but the wife was not. It was interesting because the wife spoke better Runyankore but the husband spoke more Luganda (language spoken in Central part of Uganda) Although most Ugandans can 'hear' many languages, which amazes me!

Then another man came in, a friend but he spoke only Swahili (which is used mostly with military people here). So I encouraged Juma, the husband, (a former Muslim now a new believer) to share with his friend about the TRUTH. He took out a gospel of John he had in Swahili and began to share...it was pretty cool to watch. Then I shared some with them which was crazy because we were having to translate from English to Runyankore/Luganda to Swahili....4 languages! But Praise Him both the wife and the friend accepted Christ as their Savior. Thankfully God knows all languages. Pray that Steven and Charity will grow in their new faith. 

So after visiting them a lady who lived across the road asked us to come visit her. She said she was HIV+ but not a patient at our clinic. We sat encouraging her to come for treatment and talking about her faith when the man who questioned us twice earlier came back (it's not uncommon for Africans to walk into each other's homes without invitations especially since the doors are always open) and told us we were not welcome in this area to share 'these things' (the gospel). He had a large stick in his land and said we had no permission to be there and that we had 5 minutes to leave...he was pretty upset. I being the confrontational person I am asked..."who said we can't be here". He said we hadn't talked to the local chairperson (although we had) to inform them. Uganda is a free country and has freedom of religion so this man had no right to come into someone else's house and tell us to leave! These people are crazy at times. There is so much corruption in the government and people take any 'power' they are given to extremes. 

 Even though I did not want to, the other counselors said we should leave. We had no formal documentation that gave us clearance with the local chairman. As we were going, the lady we were visiting said this man was apart of the Uganda People's Defense Force; whatever that means. So we will be doing some investigating on this one...I think it was probably because we were near the military base and they keep a close watch on everything and because a white person was there (I just can't blend in for some reason). 

Can you imagine though if you had friends in your home visiting maybe praying together and someone came in your house and told them to leave?! There is freedom of religion here, but at times there can be some persecution from friends and family when people get saved here, although this man supposedly has no specific faith. So after we left this area we stopped at a hotel for the restroom and found military men with guns outside the gate. I was like "what is this now?" We were told the President was going to be coming through! Imagine that, like it was no big deal. If President Bush was coming through a town the whole town would know and be going crazy. But then again Uganda is the size of Oregon so not quite the same as big America. I wanted to hang around and see President Museveni, but unfortunately I couldn't. So that's a typical day in my life...being followed by my "fans", trying to witness through 3 different languages, getting chased out of a home, and almost encountering the President! :)

My life...the "Amazing Race"

Sometimes I feel like my life here is like the "Amazing Race" (by the way Mom thanks for sending me last season's tape!)....not so much the "race" part but all the other crazy stuff they do. For those of you who saw last season...I can totally identify with the brothers' (Brian and Greg...I think) car crash out in the African bush of Botswana! I could see it happening....I have learned from experience (unfortunately) that dirt/gravel is like ice and you easily lose control when your tires hit it at just the right speed!

Well, today I learned from another experience....how to use 4-wheel drive. As you all know I drive a pretty large "monster truck" as I like to call it (look back to pictures from December if you don't remember). Most Ugandans can't believe this little muzungu girl drives a truck like that (honestly I can't believe I do at times either). But anyways, today I was out in town doing home visits and found myself in a pretty tight area to try and turn my "monster truck" around. I reversed and got half-way turned around. Then I pulled up to get more room to try and back up again. Well, unfortunately the dirt area in front of me sloped down and was full of ruts. I found myself sliding down although I 'floored' the gas pedal. And to make things worse there was a huge pile of dirt/rocks to my right, small rented-rooms in front of me with a big gate, and a large "rut" to the back. I only had about a foot to go forward...and I think I came within a millimeter of the cement house! Of course at this point everyone has come out to see me try and get this truck out. I tried not to panic, but I knew I couldn't get out in the space I had available. Then thankfully a man came to open the gate, which gave me a little more room. I inched forward and then put in my 4- wheel low (without locking in my 4-wheel drive), but as I reversed I just kept digging my back tires deeper into the dirt. Now I was getting pretty scared because I thought we were going to have to get a tow truck (or 'break down' as they call it here) to come get me out. I called my supervisor, he told me to go lock in my 4-wheel drive on the front tires and then get some men to try and help push me out. There was only one man around so the two female counselors with me helped this guy push me out as I floored it...and Praise the Lord it worked!!

Everyday I learn something new...I never thought I would have to be doing some of the stuff I do here each day. Driving/car issues has definitely been one of the hardest things I have had to deal with here, but God has carried me every step of the way....not giving me more than I can handle. Thought you might enjoy this story of another day in Africa....

Happy Birthday America

There were no fireworks, sparklers, or homemade ice cream at Aunt Julie's this 4th of July, but we didn't let the day go by uncelebrated! Here I am with Emily, the oldest kid of my new teammate's family. We made sugar cookies in the shape of American flags. We grilled out with good ole hambugers, baked beans, and watermelon. It was an interesting group of us...there were Americans, a Canadian, a Ugandan, and a British person celebrating with us....definitely a different 4th of July, but a memorable one.

I really do love our country...America is a wonderful place! God sure has blessed our great country. It's amazing how much more patriotism I have now after living away for 7 months. Oh the things I took for granted....so for your reading enjoyment the top ten things I miss most about my homeland....

10. having a dishwasher (washing every dish takes forever, especially when cooking from scratch)
9. Being able to go to the gym (even though I have found an aerobics class here...its just not the same)
8. Being able to talk to anyone and them being able to understand me without having to talk slow, enunciate everything, and use phrases I would never use back home!
7. The seasons, especially Fall (it is always the same here...sunny and warm/hot)
6. Being able to go to one store for everything (Wal-mart is such a time saver)
5. Paved roads...with people who actually know how to drive...and a normal sized car!
4. Entertainment...(Starbucks, restaurants, bookshops, plays, movies, shopping, you name it)
3. Church and good solid teaching
2.Friends (and being around people my own age who are "like" me)

and the number one thing I miss......
Family (of course!) And family gatherings...I've learned nothing can replace family.

Of course I can live without these things because He is enough. But no matter where I go or how long I stay, I am certain that America will always be my home...God Bless America!