The Kotolis have moved in!

Hi everyone. It's been a few days since I've written because I'm still not feeling well. I think the whole cold/sinus thing is starting to go away, but I think the thing I had for about 5 weeks before coming to Uganda (feeling out of it in my head when I start to do things physically or mentally) may be back. I'm hoping it's just a side-effect of the cold thing. Trusting (and re-trusting, and re-trusting) God - He knows exactly what it is & what's going on. It's a shame because I haven't been able to do much with the volunteer team that's here at the moment. God is in control.

I've been meaning to tell you that Agnes and her family have moved out of their rented place & into the house that was being worked on - they've actually been in it for a couple of weeks now. In this photo you can see that the front wall has been plastered, and the porch area cemented. The inside also has been plastered, and floor cemented, so this is excellent. It feel so much bigger in there - and it's a much cooler place. What's left now is some iron sheeting to form a gutter of sorts on the right side (where at the moment rain from the place next door pours onto the outside wall and soaks through to the plaster inside), glass (& hopefully insect screens) for the windows, plastering the side walls, having the wiring etc for electricity installed, putting a door and window in the store-room, and painting the inside and out. That's quite a lot still, but this place has been built on faith & God's provision from the beginning when Aggie expressed to God that she needed a new place, and believed He said to go ahead. So in faith she had her old mud place knocked down & took on the extra cost of renting another place. And now, about 3 months later, she is in it, and looks around at what God has done, and in faith knows it will one day be finished. I believe it too!

Holy Giant Snails!

The snails here are another thing I wanted to tell you about! The first time I saw one, I exclaimed to myself quietly "Holy CRAP!!" and started grinning and wanted to run off and tell someone! I'd been waiting to come across one again (hopefully not in a dark alley, *chuckle*) so I could get a photo, but the dry season has pretty much set in here, so I think they went into hiding somewhere in the bowels of the earth. But the past few days we've had some impressive rains, and so they've emerged again. This fella accosted me & begged me to scratch him behind the ears as I trooped up the steps here in the compound. How could I say no!? I hoped his slime (or he) wouldn't eat through my hand, or that I wouldn't hear later "WHAT - you picked one UP! You can catch [insert name of exotic African disease here] from those!! What were you thinking!!?".

There are some other critters here that I'll tell you about in future blog entries, including, but not limited to "The Pirates of Kampala City" - the Marabou Stork - a bird with the 2nd biggest wingspan in the world! Stay tuned!

For the 2nd half of this week I've been resting, I've caught an African cold or something (huhhhhhhh - the snail?) & haven't been feeling too crash hot. John Barnett said to keep an eye on it, as us Muzungu's aren't used to some of the "tropical colds" here. If it hasn't gone in a couple more days I might go and get some antibiotics - you can get them without a prescription here.

In other news, last night a volunteer team just like the one I came with in July arrived from Alabama. They'll be here for 2 weeks & I'm hoping to get better soon so I can go out and be involved in what they're doing. It's been interesting seeing things from a different perspective as the guys here planned for them to come. I wanted to go the airport last night to see the looks on their faces when they got off the plane, *grin*, but thought I'd better stay "home" and rest.
Kaale - tu jakulaba gana! ("Ok, we will meet again" (literally, "we will see eachother continuously)).

P.S. I've been watching the first season of "LOST" with Aggie and others since I've been here - cool! Didn't expect that! John & Rebekah have it on DVD.

Monkeys!

When I was here in July, I saw some baboons, but no monkeys. I was told that they were around though, and that there were even some up on Tank Hill. A couple of weeks ago I saw some for the first time! They're really cool! Just like you'd expect monkeys to be, curious and pretty intelligent. In this photo, I accidently used the flash, and the monkey was a bit shocked right after I took it, but didn't run away. Yesterday I saw one holding a tiny baby but didn't have my camera - d'oh! I'm not sure what kind they are - spider monkeys maybe? This guy was about 1 ft tall.

The Source

Today Aggie and I and our friends Benon and (his wife) Betteth travelled to Jinja, the next largest town in Uganda next to Kampala, and about 80 km (50 miles) the east. We were going to a wedding, to see Jinja, and to see the source of the Nile River. On the way, we almost went to see THE Source! We hired a special taxi with a driver for the day, and we had entered a forest area about 3/4 of the way to Jinja when we hit a big pot-hole in the road, and I thought "Maaaaaan, that's SO bad for the car!!". I heard a noise like a wheel out of balance, and was wondering if I'd heard it before, when a couple of minutes later one of the rear tyres blew out. We went straight into the oncoming traffic lane and then fish-tailed back towards our lane and I thought "MAN I hope we don't go into those trees!", and then in the other direction again and I thought "MAN I hope we don't go into that ditch!", and then we went sideways and started to go into a spin and I thought "We're GOING into those trees!!". Aggie yelled out "Yesu!" in Luganda, Betteth yelled out the word for Jesus is in her tribal language, and I yelled out "Jesus!", and we stopped, in the middle of the road, facing the opposite direction. This all began at full highway speed! It was a miracle that we stayed on the road, a miracle that it didn't happen about 2 seconds earlier when a truck went past in the opposite direction, and a miracle that there wasn't any oncoming traffic, or traffic behind us. On top of it all, Betteth is pregnant! We were pretty shaken up afterwards, as we changed the tyre and proceeded on to Jinja, thanking God for protecting us, and reflecting on life and how it is in His hands! (I reflected more on that as we
returned back to Kampala at the end of the day on the tiny "doughnut" spare tyre, still at
full speed!).

I guess that's the dramatic highlight of the day, but the source of the Nile was beautiful! The source is Lake Victoria, the 2nd biggest freshwater lake in the world, and where we went was where the river begins. Men were out fishing in long wooden boats, the water was a deep, clean green, and there was a beautiful cool breeze blowing. It's estimated to take water 3 months to complete the trip from that point to where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean sea! Wow!

Click here for more photos, accident and Nile River source!

Tank Hill

I've mentioned it, but I've been wanting to write more about Tank Hill for a while. I'm living on the side of it. It's one of the 10 hills of Kampala. It's called Tank Hill because there are 3 pretty big concrete water tanks up there that are part of the citys' water supply. There's a road that goes to the top that I like to slowly walk up early in the morning, and up there, there's usually a beautiful breeze to complement the view - complete with Australian eucalyptus trees! The photos here are panoramas from the top - the one with the wetland valley is my favorite view from up there.

It's interesting that in some ways I feel very out of my element here, but at the same time there are things that resonate deeply with my roots - like the eucalyptus, bottle brush, and other Australian trees, banana, sugar cane & pineapple plantations, obsessive tea drinking (I just had a cup myself), biscuits (the type I grew up with), Cadbury chocolates, Milo, British spelling including "Zed" instead of "Zee" for "Z"). Like Australia, Uganda was colonised by the British, and I find these familiar things nice, as well as comforting. I don't know how the Australian plants got here though...I think they're native to Australia, so maybe were introduced from there, unless they're native to Africa as well??

Click here for more Tank Hill photos.

The new year begins...

Hello & happy new year! December was a quiet month here, as far as the work with the Kampala Christian Church Network (KCCN) team goes. This turned out to be really good because Agnes & I were able to spend a lot of time together getting to know eachother. Over Christmas things shut down completely for 2 weeks (including easily accessable internet service) but now things are picking up again. Today I went with Agnes to a district of Kampala called "Salama", a city/village area to the south of Kampala. It took us about 30-45 minutes to get there, changing connecting taxi van services twice, and travelling over some back-jarringly rough roads. Here a group of about 10 men & women from the KCCN Salama house church meet every Monday for "T4T" - Training for Trainers. This is a 3-level training course designed to empower Christians to live a supernatural life (a life that walks daily with God) by equipping them to evangelize (share with other people the good news about the forgiveness and new life available to us through Jesus), and to make disciples (to train and teach others in turn). It is based on the scripture of 2 Timothy 2:2. In the photo here, Aggie is teaching. 95% of these groups are taught by the Ugandans, which is awesome. This is the plan of John Barnett (the team stragegy leader) and the team here - for the Muzungus (white people) to work themselves out of their jobs by equipping & empowering the Ugandans to build God's Church and look to God themselves, rather than depending on and looking to the Muzungus. An excellent plan I reckon! Tomorrow I start level 1 T4T myself.