The Karamojong

Hi everyone - the trip to the Karamojong region in north-east Uganda went really well and was an amazing experience for me. The bus trip was AMAZINGLY grueling - I consider myself pretty tough when it comes to travel, but man....it was amazingly long, amazingly rough, and amazingly crowded. I didn't realize the Karamojong area was so remote - for the last 2 legs of the trip we travelled on dirt roads for a couple of hundred kilometres - it was awesome. It reminded me a lot of central Australia - very dry with stunted trees & bushes. I didn't know there were going to be mountains (well, HILLS for you Americans, mountains for us Australians), but there were, and some really cool rock formations and stuff. I saw my first chicken transition from life to death & to the plate (prepared by Aggie's sons), saw the arc of the Milky Way galaxy all the way down to both horizons for only the 2nd time in my life, bathed in an outhouse with a small plastic tub of water & candle (with a cool breeze & to the sound of insects - very relaxing), was served a plate solely of meat, liver & kidney for breakfast (to my horror - but had to eat it all so I wouldn't offend - that cliched thing you hear about happening to other people! I thanked God for the bowl of peanuts on the table!), met the Karamojong people (beautiful) & Aggie's oldest son, Brian, and her father, was given 2 chickens as gifts and smiled and thanked Aggie's relatives but thought "how the heck am I going to get these back alive on a 12hr bus trip!?" (we did! Barry & Freda are now happily pecking around Aggie's Mum's place in Kampala). Aggie's relatives were great & I really enjoyed it. Aggie's kids are now in good schools up there as well, which is excellent. The photo here is of a group of Karamojong girls we came across who were excited to have their photo taken. Amazing photo!

Click here for more Karamojong trip photos!

So 2 weeks today I leave to go back to the US, planning to be back here in late May for our wedding in the 1st week of June! Aggie & I have a lot to organize! So blog posts may be few & far between in the next few weeks, but this is not the end of the blog (although I'll have to think of a new title when I'm back in the US - "Simon Paech's a Series of Fortunate Events" maybe?). I'll use it to keep you all posted of future developments.

Thankyou all for your thoughts & prayers!

Simon.

P.S. I'm feeling better than I was 2 blog entries ago - thankyou Lord!

A Wife of Noble Character

"A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies." (Proverbs 31:10)

Ok, in this blog I haven't revealed *all* of the goings on here in Uganda! As a lot of you know, I came here for 2 reasons - to see where God would guide Agnes & I in our relationship, and to see where he would guide me as far as the possibility of working with the Kampala Christian Church Network (KCCN) and International Missionaries For Christ (IMFC) - 2 things that He put in my heart to pursue when I was here for 2 weeks last year working alongside these teams with a group from my church. After about the 1st week of being back here I already knew I wanted to marry Aggie. She is an amazing woman - beautiful inside and out, and truly a woman of noble character! After spending a lot of time together over the last 2 months, the desire to marry her didn't change, but I felt I needed to wait for God to make some other things clear (or clearer). One of these was the place he might have here for me with the KCCN and IMFC. He did speak to me about this - to start out small and be faithful to use the gifts he has given me - the strongest ones being serving and mercy - "Those who can be trusted with little will be trusted with much". So that was the direction that I needed.

The other thing I felt I needed to see was his provision for us - for me & Aggie and her (to be *our*) children. I didn't feel that I could ask her to marry me and plan to come back to Kampala until I knew that this provision was in place. We would both really like to work full time in teaching & training and evangelism with the KCCN and IMFC here in Kampala, but we need to have some way of supporting ourselves. So at that point I felt that the ball was in God's court. Over a period of a couple of weeks, God hit the ball back into my court - I felt that he was leading me to do the reverse - to move ahead with plans to marry Aggie, and trust him to provide. Yikes! But the truth of it is that all of this has been his thing - so he is going to provide!

So this past Friday evening I took Aggie to a nice outdoor Thai restaurant - and I asked her to be my wife. She said yes! I already knew she would - she has been patiently waiting for me to ask this question, *grin*. We are planning to be married in the first week of June. I go back to the U.S. on the 2nd of March, will get everything ready to return to Uganda to live in late May, and we will trust God to bring together the provision.

Wow - what an adventure! I have to be honest - I've stuggled with fear and anxiety along the way, but God keeps reassuring me and guiding me and encouraging me step by step. So I know we'll continue to see him do that!

I know a lot of you will be really excited to hear this news! Aggie and I will be away until the end of this weekend - we're leaving Wednesday to take her kids to school up in north east Uganda - which will be an adventure in itself! So I'll catch up with you all (with lots of photos I reckon!) when we get back.

Simon &:-)}

(P.S. The photo at the top of this blog entry is after I asked Aggie to marry me, *grin*)

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.

Meet Thomas Abach

On the left in this photo is Thomas Abach, 40 year father of 6 children, security guard by night, volunteer pastor for a one of the Kampala Christian Church Networks' house churches by (part of) the day. Over the past few weeks I've enjoyed getting to know Thomas and have become friends with him. I've really admired his character, joy, dedication, and obvious love of God. And he's hilarious, AND he plays an adungu &:-)}. Last night when I came back to the compound I was blown away as he shared some of the depths of his life, and life struggles, with me. Thomas is from the Acholi region in northwestern Uganda. This is the area where the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) rebel group and his men (and child soldiers who they recruit by kidnapping) reside and continue to murder & commit atrocities against their fellow Ugandans, especially the Acholi tribe. When Thomas was 15, he and a group of Christians were ambushed by the LRA. Thomas watched as they brutally tortured and killed many of his friends, and then as an LRA mercenary beheaded (and worse) his older brother. Thomas himself was just about to be killed the same way, when (miraculously) a general of the LRA decided to spare him and some of his companions. They returned to their village, stripped naked.

Twenty five years later, displaced by, and having lost everything material to this rebel war in the north, Thomas and his family have been forced to live in one of the poorest areas of Kampala, "Soweto". I've visited this area and others like it a number of times now, and my mind still doesn't seem to let me take in what my eyes are seeing. It's overwhelming. Thomas shared with me that even though he works 6 x 12+ hour nights a week for the security guard company, after rent (for the 12x15 ft, single room house) the money he earns is barely enough to provide 1 small meal a day for his family, only allows 2 of his 5 school-age children to go to school, and doesn't stretch to cover things like unexpected medical expenses. If their kids aren't able to get educations, they will be end up in the same position as their parents.

At the same time as Thomas struggles with worry, he experiences Christ as his life, which is obvious - he exudes the joy and life of God. He is committed to sharing God's life and love and truth and freedom with others as he is able to in the time he has, as a volunteer pastor. His dream is to be able to do this full time, but his immediate concern is obviously to provide for his family. God promises to provide for all the needs of everyone who is his child, and Thomas trusts and is trusting God to do this.

Unfortunately Thomas' story is very common here in Kampala. The crazy thing to me are the costs we're talking about - for example, US$20 per month for rent, US$50 per term per kid for school fees, with only a 3 term school year... but with the average annual income per capita in Uganda being US$350, you can understand the problem. 80% of people in Kampala are living in poverty. The long-term solution is not simple. Uganda is heavlily dependant on international support, and (from what I have gathered) from the top down, people have a mindset of dependancy on, & expectancy of, handouts. To make things worse, the government is regarded by many people as being corrupt and (so) social services and infrastructure we take for granted in the western world are poor or non-existent.

Today, as I enjoyed my 2nd meal for the day, I thought about Thomas, who works about 10 steps from my door in his guardhouse by the gate, and his family who live about 15 minutes walk from here. I wondered how I, personally, can help him - and other people and families like his. It's overwhelming to me, and my fear is that if I start to give to people like him, a black hole will open up and all my money will instantly cross the event horizon & disappear into it. As I thought & talked to God about this last night, I remembered that He has not given his children a Spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound mind. So fear is not a good place to begin. Trust is. If I give too much, God will let me know. I want to err on the side of generosity and trust God to correct me from that side and not the other - but I still struggle with the fear. He does want us to use wisdom in giving (2 Corinthians 8:12-15), to not give out of guilt or compulsion (9:7), but also wants us to give generously, and promises that we cannot out-give Him (9:6-11) - wow! What if!!??

As I finish writing this it's starting to get dark, Thomas has arrived and I'm grinning as I hear him laughing and playing his adungu outside the guardhouse, *grin*.

Christmas Day with The Kotolis

A repeat of yesterday! After meeting with the Church at Kibuli on Christmas morning, we ate another huge meal prepared by Aggie (and her kids, I forgot to mention that!) and then we hung out at their place again until the evening. The only missing person has been Brian, Aggie's oldest son, who I haven't met yet. As I think I said in an earlier blog entry, Brian is staying at a boarding school up in northeastern Uganda. Over the Chrismas school break, he's staying with relatives up there.

I've really enjoyed hanging out with Aggie's kids! They seem to like me too, which is a very good thing!!

Click here for more photos!