Jekyll and Hyde?

I could really use a warm cup of something like this right now.

If I had a dollar for every time I've thought, "This place is freeeeezing!," I wouldn't need to be looking so earnestly for a job right now.  I still can't quite get over the shock of going from the pleasant warmth of Uganda to the chilly temperatures we're getting here - and I'm only in Alabama!  Forget culture shock; we're talking about some serious cold weather consternation here.

Since I got back, lots of people have been asking me if I'm experiencing culture shock, and "I don't know" is certainly not the response they probably expected.  But it's sort of true - I feel like I'm not so much in a crisis of cultures as a crisis of lives.  It's like I have two lives now: one here in the States and one back in Uganda.  

Have you ever moved away - maybe for college - and then had someone from your old home come visit your new place?  It feels like two worlds colliding.  That's sort of what I'm talking about, except in this case my two worlds are so far removed that they really do seem to be worlds apart.

I am so very glad to be home and to see the people I love here, and it's been surprisingly easy to fall back into life here.  In some ways.  I'm also keenly aware that I have been forever changed during the past year of my life, and while I can still carry on great relationships with people here, there is another part of me that knows life apart from here.  

This is all a bit difficult to articulate, so please bear with me.  What I'm trying to say is that I think I simultaneously feel at home and not at home.  And I think that's ok.  After all, we weren't meant to really be at home here, right?

Some good news: I still get to be connected to my life in Uganda through Refuge & Hope.  I'm still doing some part-time work for R&H for the time being.  And while I'm not certain how long I'll be able to continue working with them, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to dip into both of my lives - to be both here and there, in a sense.

Photos

Just posted a few more photos from Uganda to my album on Facebook.  Check it out here (even if you aren't a social networking robot like the rest of us!): 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2074215&id=41804530&l=121b85b52f

Like I Said..

I really am a terrible blogger.  Clearly, because SURPRISE - I'm home!

On the (very long) plane rides during my journey home, my mind was reeling with so many thoughts about leaving Uganda...one of which was this silly blog and how I didn't even post before I left!  So when I say I'm a terrible blogger, what I mean is that I'm not very consistent.  Consider this omission just another bit of evidence to corroborate that statement.

But there it is.  I'm home and have been quite busy with friends and family and turkey and football and the abundance of Christmas music and decorations.  It's great to be home, and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family.  I also miss Uganda, though, and I hope to take some intentional time over the next month to reflect on the past year and on what God has done in my life during this time.

So for now, here are a couple photos from the airport right when I got in to Nashville (after 30+ hours of travel, mind you!)

With my parents and friend, Jamie

With my sister, Heather

I thought it was just Jamie and my family there to welcome me..

..but then a few more friends showed up as a surprise!

Here I am!

So it's been a while since I've posted personal photos.  It's because sometimes it feels vain to post photos of yourself, and it may or may not have something to do with the fact that I'm a bit of a negligent blogger.  So I figured I'd try to make up for it here and post a few.  I'm thinking that after I leave Uganda I may try to make an online photo album of highlights during my time here, so this might just serve as a preview to that!

This is one of the first photos from my time here and also one of my favorites.  A friend took it in February during a visit to a school in western Uganda.

Learning to make a "rolex" - one of my favorite Ugandan dishes.  It's basically a Spanish omelet rolled into a chapatti (flat bread), and it's delightful.  I'm currently applying to graduate schools, but if the whole school thing doesn't work out, I could totally get filthy rich by introducing these things to every college campus in the world.

My friend took this photo one morning when we walked out to the rock quarry near our house to watch the sunrise - a favorite past time.

This is one of the widows that we're doing projects with in Kaberamaido.  I just went on my last trip out to Kaberamaido, which was really sad for me, because Kaberamaido was the first place I went after coming to Uganda and where I've spent most of my time out of the city.  And those women are just great.

This is Suellen, my wonderful roommate for my first 6 months in Uganda.  She's gone back to Brazil now to finish school, and I miss her!  I don't even have a photo with my new roommate, Jaclyn, who is also wonderful.  This must be put right.

Here I am with my small group during a youth conference we held in Kaberamaido a little while ago.  We played a name game with motions - thus, the (somewhat) dramatic poses.  

Birthday!  Here I am with Anna-Grace, Jade and Shelah's 3-year-old daughter, blowing out candles at my birthday party at their house in July.

Friends!  In September while Jade and Shelah were fundraising in the US I skipped over to Ethiopia and hung out with my best friends, Kristen (left) and Jamie (middle)!  Kristen serves with Peace Corps there, and Jamie came out to travel around with us.  It was a perfect trip.

Oh my.  You gotta love the awkward stand-beside-each-other-but-don't-touch-or-look-like-you're-friends pose.  Here I am with some pastors in Kaberamaido a couple weeks ago during my last trip there.

Uganda!

Presenting: The Longest Post of My Blogging Career!

I'm the type of person who likes to have all of her stuff together.  Before I present anything on here, I'd really like to have all my photos and everything in order.  But I'm realizing that with the speed of internet here, I might keep you waiting until Christmas for this update on the past month.  So against my best instincts I'm just going to go with what I've got now.  It feels kind of liberating, actually.  Like my own personal freedom on Independence Day.  God bless America.

Ok, anyway.  Speaking of the US, this past month we had a small group come from the States to do some ministry here.  It was three students - Carson, Abby and Anna - and also my mom, Debbie!  They came primarily to do distributions of mosquito nets and to do sports camps/VBS activities.  They stayed for three and a half weeks, and they were really fantastic!  Their time here was very packed, so I definitely won't be able to sufficiently cover everything in just one post.  But here are the high points.

First off, after arriving at the beginning of June, they went out to a slum area here in Kampala to meet a widows group that makes beaded jewelry to generate income.  Many beads were bought.  Then we headed out for Kapchorwa district near the Kenyan border and ended up doing four different mosquito net distributions and a day of playing with the local children in the community of Greek, which I think I've talked about before.  My mom also found a ladies' sewing group and stayed with them for a day - getting a beautiful, authentic African outfit out of the deal, which all the Ugandan ladies said was "very smart."  

All in all, we were in Kapchorwa for a few days, finishing it off with a hike around beautiful Sipi Falls, and then we headed out to Kaberamaido district.  Our time was very full there!  We spent each afternoon that week at the orphanage, playing with the children, doing Bible story skits, and giving them enough mosquito nets so that each child can now sleep under a net.  We moved around each morning doing different things, including going to a fishing village on the lake to do a net distribution, meeting with the widows group we're working with there to pray with them and distribute 2,000 notebooks and 500 pens for their children and orphans they care for to use in school, and meeting with the Arrow Boys group we're working with to pray for them and hear more about their stories.  We finished off our time there with a youth conference we organized for 100 secondary school students.  Our friend who is actually from Kaberamaido led the conference on issues of character and developing a vision for their life, and it went really well!  It was a great way to end our time in Kaberamaido.

Next, we headed back to Kampala and joined up with a ministry called Sports Friends International.  Sports Friends combines Christian ministry with sports activities for several different communities around Kampala - many that target at-risk children.  We spent one morning with a group of street boys, for example, which was a rather moving experience for me.  But more on that later!  We also got to do a few more mosquito net distributions along the way (the team has provided nearly 2,500 nets - an amazingly large number!  We're still working on getting them all out to people..).  Then, to wrap up the "ministry" portion of the team's trip, we helped facilitate a games tournament called Kids Games for about 800 orphans and other vulnerable children, which was a really wonderful experience.  A great way to top off their ministry here.  

Before the team left, we all took a quick trip up to Murchison Falls in northwest Uganda and went on a fun little safari tour.  A rather momentous occasion for me, actually, as I discovered that the warthog could possibly be one of my new favorite animals!  

So the team left out for the U.S. the last week of June, and we are just so grateful for them and their willingness to come out and serve.  I could say so much more about them and their time here, but this is quickly becoming a mini-novel, and I know all too well (being one myself) that blog readers are not known for having the longest attention span.  : )  So I'll stop here for now.

But not without showing some photos!  I'll post one below, but I'm also working on uploading several hundred photos to my photo site online - a gargantuan task, given how slow internet is here.  So here's the deal.  I'm going to go ahead and give you the link so you can begin looking through the photos, BUT there is one quid pro quo: you must promise to go back later after I've uploaded all of the photos, because I have so many more to share and have very ambitious plans of also adding captions later!  So class, if I let you know when everything's up can you promise to go back and look?  Please and thank you?

Ok, now that we have that settled I'm going to continue killing mosquitos with my own bare hands.  Ha.  They're all over our house, and they really are nasty little suckers!

Thanks so much for reading and for supporting me here.  And thanks for the many well wishes for my birthday yesterday.  It was a great day!  I've been so encouraged in so many ways lately.  I love and appreciate you all, my family and friends.  Now go eat some barbecue and set off lots of fireworks for me!

From L to R: Carson, Abby, Anna, me, Debbie (aka "Mama Jennifer")

Special Delivery

After much internal debate over whether or not to share this story, I feel that I must because a) it includes a little cultural lesson, and b) it's kind of hilarious.

So two days ago I was downtown going to a couple meetings with Harriet. We had finished and were waiting on the side of the road for a taxi to get home. Suddenly, something hit me. For a split second I was irritated; It felt as though someone had decided to pick on the mzungu and dump a bucket of some warm liquid on her. The next moment, though, I looked down at my arm to inspect the damage and realized it was definitely not that innocent.

My head, shoulders and arms were dripping with something white, and it certainly wasn't a milkshake! One of these hideously unattractive storks (that I've actually been afraid of, they're so huge) decided it was time to go. On my head ... all over me, actually. It was very public. And I had no tissues.



It's hard to describe the sensation, but I would say it was reminiscent of the slimings on the Nickelodeon hit show You Can't Do That on Television. Except the Nickelodeon slime was supposedly edible and delicious, but my warm, white and sticky brand of slime was seriously anything but.

Imagine my further surprise when I found out the next day that what I considered to be a rather unfortunate event should actually be considered the exact opposite. After recounting what happened to another Ugandan friend, she told me that here - and apparently in many other places in the world - it is actually a sign of good luck!

So, I guess the morals of my story are:
- If you expect to be within 5 miles of a huge bird with poor bladder control, always - always - check the ground underneath your feet for enormous white stains and avoid these spots like the plague. Unless you have an umbrella or you're looking for good luck, of course.
- If you do find yourself in a highly populated area with white poop all over yourself, make sure you have a friend like Harriet with you. You may, like me, actually find yourself strangely grateful for the chance to share some wonderful laughs with a new friend!

I feel like I have a brain clog. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here a whole month! So much has happened to keep me busy, and what with power outages and sketchy internet, I have lots of things in my mind that have just been waiting to debut in the blogosphere. Thus, I am going to try and do a string of posts to catch up, starting with a little glimpse at my new home here in Kampala.

I heard it snowed back home. Apparently, Birmingham even got a few inches. Normally I would be really jealous to miss out on this winter anomaly, but there’s something about sitting practically on top of the equator that makes you forget about things like cold, wet snow. Sometimes it feels like eternal summer; other times the heat makes it feel like you’ve been sent to some other eternal place.

I live in a house with four other girls who are interns at a Christian non-profit called eMi (engineering Ministries international), and our house is sort of the hangout for all the other interns. That’s what you get when you have a kitchen and internet. They’re all great. They’re also all architects and engineers, so naturally since coming here I’ve asked myself several times why I studied something so abstract as political science in college. I’m really so grateful for all of them, though. It’s nice to have a good community here.

We live in a neighborhood of Kampala called Kansanga, home of KFC – Kansanga Fried Chicken! Ha, who knew that good old Colonel Sanders took his secret recipe all the way to the pearl of Africa?

I work in the office attached to Jade and Shelah’s house in Buziga, which is about a 15 minute drive from Kansanga. I think I touched on the joys of transportation here in my last post, but I usually take either a taxi/matatu (small sardine can van) or I ride in style on a boda boda (small motorcycle taxi). The sardine can vans are fun because people don’t expect mzungus to take them and you get to sound ridiculous trying out different Lugandan words and seeing which ones actually get the driver to let you off the taxi. The bodas are fun because, well, motorcycles are fun.




A boda in front of the roadside market








Tickles and Giggles! & new friends!

It's happened! I'm actually here in Uganda!

I arrived here late on Wednesday night and was greeted by Jade, Peter (a Ugandan who I'll work with), and a crowd of eager taxi drivers. To be honest, I actually felt a little fear as we drove through the dark back to the city (I would advise people moving to a new country to arrive when it is daylight!). As I went to bed, I asked God to take that fear away, and my prayer was definitely answered. Things have been amazing! There are so many reasons that I feel this is exactly where He wants me to be. Let me just share a few.

The couple I'm working with, Jade and Shelah, are wonderful. I have spent a lot of time at their house getting to know them and their family, and they have been so hospitable and welcoming. They have two daughters, Anna Grace (3) and Kaela Joy (1) and a Sudanese teenager named Lino who they've basically adopted, and they are all so fun. It's good to be included in a good family environment as I adjust here, and since our office is connected to Jade and Shelah's house, I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time getting to know this family.

I also have a Ugandan counterpart, Harriet, who is my age and is wonderful. She'll travel with me and has already taken me around town for two days trying to teach me places in the city and how public transport works (which is intense! I'll have to expound in a later post.) It's been fun, though. She's a self-identified "born again" Christian, and we get along so well - it feels as if there are no cultural barriers at all, which helps so much! I'm hoping we can spend time outside of organized work and that I can meet her other friends. I want to make sure to focus on building friendships with Ugandans.

I'm living in a house on a compound owned by a Christian organization called eMi with a small group of other people my age. Most of them are out on projects, so I haven't met my roommate and some of the others, but I really like the ones who are here and I think it will be an encouraging community for me.

I also really appreciate so far the way Jade and Shelah are approaching their ministry here. They are just getting started here in Uganda, so I will be basically facilitating a lot of the discernment process of where they think God is leading them to work. My first official day in the office we spent the morning praying over possible communities to minister in, asking for God's direction. I know it will be challenging making those decisions of where to minister and what to do, but it's also exciting to be beginning and planning things. Jade and Shelah have lived in several African countries and have a great passion to share Christ's love with people here by ministering to both physical and spiritual needs, and I am excited to learn from them.

This Wednesday I will be traveling to a village in central Uganda called Kaberamaido with Harriet and spending a week there meeting with local pastors and many others to try to discern what their needs are and how Refuge and Hope (Jade and Shelah's non-profit) can be involved there. This is one of the communities we prayed for last week and one where Jade and Shelah have made some good contacts, so I pray that it would be a fruitful trip and that the Lord would give me ears to hear and eyes to see what He wants to do there. I will be sure to write and update you all when I get back!

Thank you all so much for your support - for all of the phone calls before I left, the emails, messages and prayers. Love to you all!

                                                                      View of Lake Victoria from Jade & Shelah's home