We've Arrived!

Mulembe (hello) from Mbale! After a long journey (50 hours…with only a four hour nap in Calgary), we arrived in Kampala, the capital city, on Monday night at 11 pm Uganda time. We stayed in Kampala for 1 ½ days at the Adoni guest house where we met the staff at the FH Uganda national office and went through a day of training. On Wednesday, Jan 14 we were driven by taxi to Mbale, where we will be staying for the rest of our time in Uganda. During the three hour drive we enjoyed very beautiful scenery including dense forests, sugar cane fields, tea fields, and sadly, monkey road kill. We found it amazing that during the three hour drive there was not a time where there were not people walking or bike riding on the side of the road…there were people literally everywhere you looked, most of whom were children, as they are still on school break till the beginning of February.

The seven staff here in Mbale are very kind and hospitable and we already have become very good friends with them. We were pleasantly surprised by the room we’re staying in, and the shower offers a refreshingly cold shock in the mornings! We could use the shower bags we brought because they would definitely heat up in this weather, but so far the cold shower here has been a needed cool down.

There is a lady named Victoria staying in the compound with us. She has been cooking us wonderful meals, even ones that Frank will eat, which means that she is an amazing cook. The fruit here is amazing! They have every kind of fruit, and in abundance. I think that if a person can get sick from eating too much pineapple and mangos, we will as we eat a lot of them. Cooking in Uganda, we have realized, is a full time job for a cook. Since there is no kitchen, cooking is usually done on a kerosene burner (similar to what we would use for a camping stove) and there is no refrigerator or sink, so she must walk to the market before every meal to buy food (not a short walk) and clean up is done in a little wash basin. This is amazing since she sometimes cooks for the whole staff. Amber had the opportunity to help prepare a meal, which took about an hour and a half, as preparing rice requires the separating of each grain of rice from tiny stones, and cutting fruit and vegetables with a knife which would cause bruises instead of cuts if used as a weapon.

In the morning we are awakened by roosters (who don’t stop for about an hour) and dogs. There are also goats here that try to steal the bananas from our banana trees in the back of the property, but our guard (Abraham) who is approximately the size of Amber, usually chases them away. The guard comes in the evening to guard during the night and is armed with a bow and arrow.

We are thankful that we are already over our jetlag, and today was our first day in the field in a village called Makhai.

Thank you for coming alongside us in this journey. Some specific prayer requests include:
We would be able to adapt to the heat.
We could be a blessing to those around us.
We would understand the culture here and be able to offer our knowledge and skills in an appropriate and useable manner.

As we need to use an internet café, we will usually be posting on our blog on the weekends. We’d love to hear from some of you back home!

Love, Frank and Amber

PS: Forgot to put pictures on my computer before comming to the internet cafe, so I will post them later.