Uganda, Day 1

Yay! Aren't you proud of me? Uganda update is here!

We left Washington DC on Wednesday at 11 a.m. and arrived in Uganda (after a layover in Ethiopia) at around 4:00 Thursday afternoon. I had heard that flights into Ethiopia are always really bumpy (because of the topography maybe?) and I was more than a little nervous about it. But our flight was smooth - despite the fact that I slept not one. single. minute. of the entire 12 1/2 hour flight - and the landing was near-perfect. Whew.



Uganda, however, was a different story. As we were coming in for the landing I was looking out the window thinking, "We're going too fast. We're going too fast." Then all the sudden BAM! - we slammed onto the runway amidst screams from the passengers (really), and......welcome to Uganda! :)

My first view of Uganda….Lake Victoria. So beautiful!



We created a small ruckus by trying to cut in line when getting our visas (ha!), and then we were on our way! Look at all that luggage…I heard that we had 81 suitcases. :)



The Ugandan countryside is so beautiful. It’s lush and green and covered in vegetation - not at all what I think of when I think of Africa, you?



And underneath all that beautiful greenery is all-encompassing red DIRT! It’s everywhere! (you can see the red dirt underneath the trees really well in this photo)


And if you think driving in your town is crazy, you’ve never experienced driving in Uganda. It’s insane! First of all, they drive on the wrong left side of the road, and the roads are TERRIBLE. They are rough and have GIANT potholes and mostly no curbs. There seem to be no traffic laws whatsoever. In many places there’s a lane going each direction, but within each lane it’s a free-for-all. Cars don’t stay in line, and there’s just random chaos everywhere.

There are no traffic lights or stop signs (ok, I think I saw ONE light the whole time we were there) so when you come to an intersection, you just GO! Everyone squeezes through, jostling for position, accelerating, braking, honking... And honking seems to be universally used for every situation. It can mean get out of the way; hey, watch out; coming through; move over; or even just hello! We saw a couple of really bad wrecks where trucks had gone off the embankment on the side of the road. I’m so thankful we had absolutely no problems! (thank you for your prayers!)

It was an hour and a half drive from the airport to the place where we were staying. Here are a few of the sights we saw along the way....


Furniture store!



Football (soccer) game.


Small businesses along the side of the street.

Below is the Adonai Guest House, where we spent our first 2 nights. Don’t you just love the name? Instead of being numbered, the rooms were named things like Alpha, Omega, Rapha, and Elohim.





And ohhhh, the food. It was SO good! We didn’t eat anything weird in Uganda (thank goodness). They eat a lot of beans and rice, of course, but also lots of a beef-stewish type dish, lots of potatoes (fried whole – oh my goodness!), cabbage, an amazing flat bread called chapatti, and lots of fresh pineapple, mango, bananas, tomatoes, avocados, and cucumbers. I gained seven pounds!



We were all so exhausted by the time we got to Adonai and unloaded all 81 bags of our luggage! We took the evening easy, had dinner, rested, and tried to gear up for our first day of ministry the next day.

More to come! (Much sooner, I promise. :))