Hi again everyone :)
First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you enjoyed your time with family and friends. It was good over here, if a little strange! Christmas Day itself was better than I expected it to be; we decided to watch Love Actually before midnight, then toasted our Ugandan
Christmas with hot chocolate and mince pies :D It was awesome, made the day feel special. We stayed up till half 3 (stupid idea, we had to be up early to wash our hair before church on Christmas Day!) then went to church the next morning. Managed to get out of doing Sunday school and just spent the whole time in the service; I have to admit, it was much less enjoyable than normal Christmas church at home. I missed seeing friends and families all together on Christmas Day. It's so much smaller in the village, even though it feels like a little family to us now it's still not the same. I missed singing carols and candlelit Christmas services at school and the little traditions we all have at Christmas, like writing our letters to Father Christmas and putting some water and a carrot out in the garden for Rudolph :( I only thought about those bits in the quiet parts of the day though; once everything got going and it was all busy with the family, it was difficult to stay homesick or upset.
After church we had a huuuugeee African lunch, Mama must have been cooking for days! There was chapatti, matoke, rice, Irish potatoes, pumpkin, cassava, beef, chicken, cabbage AND greens :O We were all stuffed by the end of the meal, although somehow I managed to get away with only having one medium sized portion, which was lucky otherwise I reckon I would've exploded. We watched Shrek in the afternoon, and did crackers with the whole family, then gave them their presents and just chilled out for the rest of the day. The idea of Christmas here isn't so much about presents like it is at home-home; it's about spending the day with your family, doing nothing and eating ridiculous amounts of food. That's the main similarity with home :) I missed having cold weather desperately, it didn't feel like Christmas at all in the lead up to it, but on the day itself it was grey and rainy! Sod's law - my one opportunity to have a hot Christmas, and it does the opposite!!! It was a lovely day though. I realised yet again how blessed I am to live with the family and to have the girls here.
The other days before Christmas itself were fairly uneventful... Jocelyn, our new coordinator came to visit on Tuesday 22nd, which was kinda tense. We've had a couple of organisation / communication issues with her lately, which were difficult to discuss and led to a lot of tension on Monday when we were in Kampala. We seemed to resolve it on Tuesday, so there's no point recounting all of it now cos that would be pointless, but please pray that our relationship with her is strong and improves and that we become closer friends with her. She's only just starting this job and has never done anything like it before, so please also pray that she has wisdom about how to do it and that God helps her through all the different and stressful stuff that she's doing. We had all our decorations up by this point, so the house looked like a crazy explosion / mush of shiny paper chains and hangy things and tinsel :D
Ooo they've just started watching Shrek in the other room, LOVE that film! Which reminds me to tell you that we now have internet at home :D :D :D :D Emailing is gonna be much easier.. So anyway, on Christmas Eve we had a kids Christmas party which was awesome fun! We decorated the room that we normally have church in and played loads of games and acted out our Nativity that they made lots of crafts for. The sheep masks and shepherds' beards looked particularly cool i.e. hilarious :) Little things like the sweets and balloons that we gave out at the end made them seem really happy. I love being able to do things like that for the people here, especially the kids while we're not working at the schools during the holidays. It's made me think a lot about getting involved with more voluntary stuff when I'm home, but outside of church too.
Boxing Day we ran a youth seminar for a load of young people in the area. We did tons of planning for it but it ended up going a bit pear shaped! We thought we were using Gilgal, with access to lots of space and rooms, so we planned for craft stuff and a big game of football and all sorts to be going on at once, but in the morning it turned out we could only use 2 rooms at World Vision, where we have church. Plus it was raining so we couldn't play any games outside :( We reorganised everything, not without a little stress, but it was fine and we fitted in all the seminars that we'd planned, and some that we'd asked other pastors to come and do for us. It was a very full day cos we had a lot to cover, so we wanted to start at 10 on the dot, but in typical Ugandan style, nobody turned up till gone 11! We're kinda used to reorganising the order of talks and general day arrangements now though, so by this point it was just funny.. We ended up having no crafts or games, and just doing praise and worship to divide up the talks. We didn't get as many people as we wanted, but it's a start.. We were thinking about running another day, or maybe just an afternoon for the young people to do some creative self-expression time and some creative prayer as well. We really didn't want to miss that stuff out on Saturday but we had to :( It was exhausting doing that after so little sleep and the craziness of Christmas! Thank goodness, yesterday church was called off and we could just rest and read through the whole day. Admittedly, I was reading the Secret Dreamworld of a Shopoholic series, which I've guttingly now finished :( I'm starting on the Twilight series to fill my mind with meaningless non-theological fiction over the holidays, my reading for interview actually nearly burned my brain out!!!
Some bad news from the Christmas season - on Boxing Day a man who comes to our church died after being ill for a month or so. He was a well-known guy; when we went to pay our respects, the whole village was outside the house sitting on the floor and mourning. The grieving traditions and... rituals I guess never fail to surprise me. The women sit around the body wailing and screaming for much longer than the men, some of whom don't see the body and others of whom pass through quickly. Mama Rachael slept over at the house through the night to comfort the family with the rest of church, who went to give them their support. Such a lovely custom. The girls and I were talking about how the grief is very melodramatic at this early stage after the death; there's a real thing here with vocalising your grief and it being a communal expression of grief, so different to the UK, where people are more accustomed to leave you alone till some time after the death. Mama went to the burial yesterday but we didn't. I think it was enough to see the body and pay our respects; the burials are very difficult to handle. It sounds depressing to talk about it and it is in some respects - he has left 13 children behind, and they're only the ones who live in the village. He had 2 wives before he got saved; one of them had 16 children, but 10 of them died. Can you imagine the pain? I can't even begin to. But at the same time as being difficult and painful for his family, death here is so real and the people are resilient as a result. People don't shy away from details, they don't make excuses or put their lives on hold. In some ways I wish they could, so they could have more space to grieve, but maybe that's just an English reaction. It's teaching me that death is real for all of us, it could come at any time and that's ok cos it's natural. It's always been that way.
So that's basically the last few days, onto nicer subjects now. Today we went into Kampala to check the post and had a nice lunch (chicken sandwich with ENGLISH TASTING MAYO in it!!!!!! Woop!) and did some supermarket shopping before heading straight home. We bought sausages, bacon, eggs, salt bread and baked beans for dinner tonight - I'm so excited! We have tons of our budget left over; the money we gave to Oasis was far too much for the budget they gave us, so every now and then we buy a nice meal with it. We're having a cooked breakfast in Uganda!!!!! How cool?! On Thursday we're going on a retreat to a place in Jinja called Mto Moyoni. Apparently it's a really beautiful place where we can relax and focus on God and just chill out with hot running water for a while :D We're having New Year there, on the banks of the source of the Nile - once in a lifetime thing I think! I want to see the sunset on the 31st and have a toast out there at midnight with some music while we look at the stars *grins* By the time we get back on the 3rd January, I should have heard back from Cambridge. I reckon by my next blog entry, I'll be able to tell you whether I got in or not. That's given me masses of butterflies in my tummy!!!
Anyway, enough now. I'm hogging the laptop and I should go! Again, thank you for reading this far, I really appreciate that you're all keeping up with me and sharing my experiences while I'm here :) Sending you tons and tons of love and hugs,
Flick
xXx
Monday 28 December 2009
Monday 21 December 2009
8th - 21st December 2009
It's been a while since I wrote on here! I think I missed a week when I was at home in the UK - brief recap of the week :) I had my Cambridge interviews on the 15th and they went well. I did my best, felt as relaxed as you plausibly can in that situation and felt like I was myself and came across confidently. They felt like interesting conversations, such an awesome opportunity just to be able to talk with people who are so ridiculously clever! Whether I get in or not, I know it's in God's hands, so I feel at peace about it and happy either way. Obviously I'm hopeful, but Nottingham would be SUCH a great place to be too :) I think I find out somewhere around the first week of January.. It was pretty weird being home too though. Although the weirdest thing was how not-weird my house felt! I know that sounds strange but it's hard to explain it. The running water, toilets, fridge and washing machine felt totally normal even though I thought they'd freak me out. Maybe cos it was just a quick 6 day stop I didn't have time to get totallly comfortable, so I had to accept it for what it is without really thinking about it. It was lovely seeing my family and some friends :) Thank you to everyone who made it go more smoothly and peacefully than I expected. And thank you to everyone who prayed; I really do believe it made a difference.
I missed Uganda-home a lot. In fact, when I got back it kinda felt more like home than England did. I guess that's not surprising because it's been normality for me for the last 3 and a bit months, so it becomes what you're used to.I'm really going to miss it when we go home. Having a wash outside in a bowl was actually nice when I came back! I've been realising that home isn't just about a place, it's about the people who live there with you. This feels like home too now cos I have such a wonderful family here. I have two homes, what a blessing! :) But at the same time, it kinda felt like I have no home last week. Not because I don't fit in or because nobody wants me, but because i can't just take things at face value in the UK anymore. I question things that used to just be easy and simple, taken for granted or explained away without really thinking about it. Now I look for answers where I didn't have to before. And it's the same here in Uganda; because it's a different culture, there's a constant process of 'translation' from culture to culture going on in my head. Reading things differently, modifying my own perceptions of people and actions compared with how I know they would view things as Ugandans. Ultimately that means that life in either country feels a bit more difficult, a bit more of a struggle. But what an amazing thing to be learning :)
I wonder how God will fit into my routine of life at home too. Here, everything is centred on God in a practical way. All the work that we're doing and our general way of life involves group prayer twice a day (theoretically, we're not always very good at sticking to that!) and planning Bible stuff, doing church things and bible studies and all sorts. I'll need to make a load of extra effort to keep up with Bible reading and all that sort of thing when I get home. Getting used to the change of pace in life and the different focuses I'll need to have will be a bit of a challenge.
Right, so when I got back to Ug the girls all came to meet me at the airport with Tata :) It was awesome! They didn't recognise me when I walked through cos I had my haircut when I was home-home and now have a full fringe. Only Bex saw me, the others were just peering blindly into the distance! They made a sign for me and everything, and totally embarassed me by screaming when they finally knew who I was, then jumping over the barrier to come and bundle me :D Ah I love them! We stayed at Helen and Zoe's overnight in Kampala cos the girls had to be at training early in the morning and I got in at half 10 pm so they needed sleep. We drank tea and chatted till the early hours then I stayed at Helen and Zoe's all day on Friday to catch up on sleep and journal writing! Going home was lovely on Friday night - we booked a vehicle back to the village, which was surprisingly cheap, so it was stress free and comfy(ish!). Mama didn't recognise me either lol but once she did she picked me up and spun me round, bless her. Such a lovely welcome home :D While I was gone the family put up their Christmas tree, which looks hilarious and very Ugandan, and in the evening we put up all the decorations in our little house and made paper chains with the kids. It was so good to be home, made me quite emotional! I didn't quite realise how much I'd missed it.
While I was gone the girls also got the candle making training sorted out for V.W.G. cos it didn't happen the week before when we tried to organise it; the woman didn't bother to turn up. Frustrating times! Apparently it went brilliantly though and the ladies loved it, can't wait to make more. Bex got lots of photos :) Kids Club had a good meeting on the Saturday that I missed when they did the second part of the Christmas story and made sheep masks and shepherds' beards for the Nativity that we're doing on Thursday at the Christmas party. Some of them are quite funny! Today we went to Aristoc, the craft shop in Garden City (the shopping mall) and got a load of really cool craft stuff for the Youth seminar on Boxing Day and for the party. We're planning on making the kids little gift boxes and bags with sweets in to take their crafts home :)
Not sure what else there is to update you on.... Ooo the Bambejja holiday programme! That started on the 7th in the week before I went away. We worked with the girls at the Oasis project for 4 days during their Christmas holidays, doing games and crafts and christmas carols etc. It was great fun! We reallly enjoyed having some organised routine in our days because with the schools breaking up recently and girls and boys groups stopping for the holidays we haven't had as much to do. Admittedly, we ended up running everything at Bambejja which was pretty annoying cos we weren't meant to, but still! It was great to get to know some new kids and spend time with them outside the usual village context. We each had a team of girls, mine was the grey team, and they were awesome! I got quite attatched to them, they were definitely the best in the carol singing performances even if they didn't quite come first in the games tournament...! :D We made lots of Christmas decorations and then decorated the banda with their paper chains and angel chains and stars. We even had balloons! And we got them all to make handprints and then made a Christmas tree out of them with glittery baubles hanging on it. Ah it looked soooo cool! Made me finally feel like it's Christmas..
I've decided that I don't like being in hot sun at Christmas cos it doesn't feel like the right time of year :( I much prefer snow and coldness! Can't believe how much snow you have in the UK at the moment, it's crazy. I got a little bit of it when I was home, making the contrast of coming back here all the more harsh! We even saw it on the Ugandan news, pictures of Gatwick being closed and Kent and Esex covered in snow with the Channel Tunnel closed. Craziness! I hope you're all excited about Friday. Have a lovely Christmas with your families and friends, I'll be thinking of you from here.
I'd better go now; for once I still have loads of internet time left! And it's a bit shorter today, so enjoy. I brought a laptop back from the UK for the family so hopefully they'll have internet at home within a week. It'll make emailing much easier, so maybe I'll be in contact with you more often! Sending lots of love and hugs back home-home,
Flick xXx
I missed Uganda-home a lot. In fact, when I got back it kinda felt more like home than England did. I guess that's not surprising because it's been normality for me for the last 3 and a bit months, so it becomes what you're used to.I'm really going to miss it when we go home. Having a wash outside in a bowl was actually nice when I came back! I've been realising that home isn't just about a place, it's about the people who live there with you. This feels like home too now cos I have such a wonderful family here. I have two homes, what a blessing! :) But at the same time, it kinda felt like I have no home last week. Not because I don't fit in or because nobody wants me, but because i can't just take things at face value in the UK anymore. I question things that used to just be easy and simple, taken for granted or explained away without really thinking about it. Now I look for answers where I didn't have to before. And it's the same here in Uganda; because it's a different culture, there's a constant process of 'translation' from culture to culture going on in my head. Reading things differently, modifying my own perceptions of people and actions compared with how I know they would view things as Ugandans. Ultimately that means that life in either country feels a bit more difficult, a bit more of a struggle. But what an amazing thing to be learning :)
I wonder how God will fit into my routine of life at home too. Here, everything is centred on God in a practical way. All the work that we're doing and our general way of life involves group prayer twice a day (theoretically, we're not always very good at sticking to that!) and planning Bible stuff, doing church things and bible studies and all sorts. I'll need to make a load of extra effort to keep up with Bible reading and all that sort of thing when I get home. Getting used to the change of pace in life and the different focuses I'll need to have will be a bit of a challenge.
Right, so when I got back to Ug the girls all came to meet me at the airport with Tata :) It was awesome! They didn't recognise me when I walked through cos I had my haircut when I was home-home and now have a full fringe. Only Bex saw me, the others were just peering blindly into the distance! They made a sign for me and everything, and totally embarassed me by screaming when they finally knew who I was, then jumping over the barrier to come and bundle me :D Ah I love them! We stayed at Helen and Zoe's overnight in Kampala cos the girls had to be at training early in the morning and I got in at half 10 pm so they needed sleep. We drank tea and chatted till the early hours then I stayed at Helen and Zoe's all day on Friday to catch up on sleep and journal writing! Going home was lovely on Friday night - we booked a vehicle back to the village, which was surprisingly cheap, so it was stress free and comfy(ish!). Mama didn't recognise me either lol but once she did she picked me up and spun me round, bless her. Such a lovely welcome home :D While I was gone the family put up their Christmas tree, which looks hilarious and very Ugandan, and in the evening we put up all the decorations in our little house and made paper chains with the kids. It was so good to be home, made me quite emotional! I didn't quite realise how much I'd missed it.
While I was gone the girls also got the candle making training sorted out for V.W.G. cos it didn't happen the week before when we tried to organise it; the woman didn't bother to turn up. Frustrating times! Apparently it went brilliantly though and the ladies loved it, can't wait to make more. Bex got lots of photos :) Kids Club had a good meeting on the Saturday that I missed when they did the second part of the Christmas story and made sheep masks and shepherds' beards for the Nativity that we're doing on Thursday at the Christmas party. Some of them are quite funny! Today we went to Aristoc, the craft shop in Garden City (the shopping mall) and got a load of really cool craft stuff for the Youth seminar on Boxing Day and for the party. We're planning on making the kids little gift boxes and bags with sweets in to take their crafts home :)
Not sure what else there is to update you on.... Ooo the Bambejja holiday programme! That started on the 7th in the week before I went away. We worked with the girls at the Oasis project for 4 days during their Christmas holidays, doing games and crafts and christmas carols etc. It was great fun! We reallly enjoyed having some organised routine in our days because with the schools breaking up recently and girls and boys groups stopping for the holidays we haven't had as much to do. Admittedly, we ended up running everything at Bambejja which was pretty annoying cos we weren't meant to, but still! It was great to get to know some new kids and spend time with them outside the usual village context. We each had a team of girls, mine was the grey team, and they were awesome! I got quite attatched to them, they were definitely the best in the carol singing performances even if they didn't quite come first in the games tournament...! :D We made lots of Christmas decorations and then decorated the banda with their paper chains and angel chains and stars. We even had balloons! And we got them all to make handprints and then made a Christmas tree out of them with glittery baubles hanging on it. Ah it looked soooo cool! Made me finally feel like it's Christmas..
I've decided that I don't like being in hot sun at Christmas cos it doesn't feel like the right time of year :( I much prefer snow and coldness! Can't believe how much snow you have in the UK at the moment, it's crazy. I got a little bit of it when I was home, making the contrast of coming back here all the more harsh! We even saw it on the Ugandan news, pictures of Gatwick being closed and Kent and Esex covered in snow with the Channel Tunnel closed. Craziness! I hope you're all excited about Friday. Have a lovely Christmas with your families and friends, I'll be thinking of you from here.
I'd better go now; for once I still have loads of internet time left! And it's a bit shorter today, so enjoy. I brought a laptop back from the UK for the family so hopefully they'll have internet at home within a week. It'll make emailing much easier, so maybe I'll be in contact with you more often! Sending lots of love and hugs back home-home,
Flick xXx
Monday 7 December 2009
1st -7th December 2009
Happy Advent everyone! :)
Can't believe it's nearly Christmas. Where did 2009 go?! I can't believe it's nearly a decade since the new millennium; I remember standing on the bridge near my house looking out over London and watching the fireworks. We had a big party at our house! Very weird that it's 10 years since then. This New Year will be very different and a lot more Ugandan I suspect! The main news this week is that I fly back to the UK on Thursday for a week. I have 3 interviews at Cambridge on the 15th which I have to be back for, then I'm coming straight back to Uganda for Christmas till the 21st Feb, when I fly home properly. I'm not seeing anyone next week, just so you all know! It's not that I don't like you, in fact I'd love to see everyone, but I'm trying to limit the culture shock / emotional stressy side of coming home. Seeing everyone would just make leaving again a whole lot harder.
Anyway, onto this week's goings-on!
Tuesday 1st - The day my sickness started :( For most of this week I was stuck with a fever, pounding headache, total loss of appetite and my body ached all over. Bad times! After going to Mukono on Monday, I continued having my hair braided and had to have it done again on Tuesday. I sat for EIGHT HOURS, feeling absolutely terrible and watching ER that Becky bought for an extortionate price at the one DVD shop in the area; it was the only English disc they had! However, I will happily admit that my hair looked awesome! While Bex and I were at home, Nicky went to World AIDS Day in Kasawo (apparently it was awful!) and Lucy and Ellie went to Kampala to pick up stuff from Oasis for the holiday programme we're running this week at Bambejja. We all felt tired and rubbish by the evening. I couldn't sleep cos of my 39deg fever so that put me in a pretty bad mood for the whole week! To make matters worse, over the next few days my hair started to fall out. I didn't realise what a bad job the woman had done on my hair!
Wednesday 2nd - Half my hair braids had fallen out, no joke, so I spent the day quite unhappily in bed, feeling rubbish and trying to read my books for interview. My headache made that kinda impossible though, so I just lay there feeling silly! I got up for vulnerable women for a while; we had arranged for a woman to come from Mukono to train the women to grow mushrooms, but she just didn't turn up. It was absolutely gutting... We organised everything so that it would go ahead, the women worked really hard to collect donations and we met with Pastor Ben and sorted out all the financial runnings of the organisation and the project, but she just didn't come. Such a pain! Then I stayed up for a bit of Bible study too (we're continuing with the teaching series on Hebrews) but then had to go back to bed again. The girls did a good job of cheering me up and looking after me though :D
Thursday 3rd - My brother's 16th birthday :) It's very strange to think that he's already 16. He's chosen his A Level options already too, I swear I'm still that age though...?! So on Thursday we had a fake day off cos working at Bambejja this week means that we don't get an actual day off. Instead of going anywhere we sat at home all day and watched ER being really lazy :D I started feeling a bit better and Bex undid all the rest of my hair braids that hadn't fallen out. What a waste of 20 hours of just sitting there!! The problem was I didn't have time to have it re-done and sorted out before going home for interview and obviously I have to look presentable for that, so the only option was to have them taken out :( They looked cool but they just don't suit mzungu hair; more trouble than they're worth I think. Ah well, at least I can say that I tried it out! Not much else to report... We had a few prayer times in the evening outside in the compound cos it gets harder to concentrate when the small spaces in the house get hot in dry season. We have to COVER ourselves with Deet but it's lovely being outside. The stars are amazing in the village cos there are absolutely no streetlights, and the moon was getting full this week so it looked stunning lying down out there. We've spent some time praying for people who aren't Christians at home, which is nice, and also for stuff that's going on here. It's difficult though; we're not disciplined enough with our team prayer times and we don't leave ourselves enough quiet time to really meditate on God together as a group. Beating ourselves up about it just won't help, so there's no point in that, but I wish it was easier. I want to be better at that in myself as well as the whole team being better... I read the Bible more here and it definitely gives me more strength but it's not enough, I want to do more. It's easy to say that though, the discipline is hard!
Friday 4th - Training at Bambejja. We had a talk from Auntie Jovia, the lady who runs the whole Bambejja project, about the background of the project and all the work it does, then we visited a home in the local slum community. A girl called Florence lives with her 4 siblings and her mother in one tiny room near the project and she goes there every Saturday with the other 120 or so girls. They pay for her schooling and give her life skills training, healthcare, counselling and they give social care to the family. They do all sorts of awesome stuff,it's very cool to be a part of. Hopefully we'll visit some other houses in the community soon too. We left the project at 1 and didn't stay for the prayer meeting as usual cos we had to go to Garden City which is a posh shopping mall (mzungu central) to buy craft materials for the Christmas holiday stuff at Bambejja this week. I had large margherita pizza for lunch so I was happy :D I was starving after the lack of food during the week! By this point I was better in case you didn't realise :)
Saturday 5th - Two of the Oasis International Placements from the UK, Zoe and Helen, came to visit us in the village so we could show them where we live and work. They live in Kampala so they hadn't seen what life was like in a village before. It was SUCH a lovely morning! They brought Refresher chew bars with them, which was a ridiculous answer to prayer cos I'd been saying for about a week and a half that I had a craving for them :D In all seriousness, it was God having a laugh :) I love God!! He even provides Refresher bars! :D
Anyway, we showed them Lilo and Gilgal and Mama cooked us a giant lunch, with matoke and chapatti and rice and beans and meat and greens and everything else under the Ugandan sun, and then they left just before kids club. The kids made angels as the craft for the first part of the Christmas story and we told them about the Nativity and Christmas party on Christmas Eve. We're going to use all the crafts they make in the performance, hopefully it'll look awesome. I'm really excited about it :) We told them about the angel visiting Mary and next week we're doing Jesus' birth and the shepherds, then the week after we're doing the wise men bit. In the morning we met Albert, a guy who we first saw a few weeks ago, who does African dance and music workshops and performances all over the world. He's awesome! He's coming to kids club next week to teach the kids African dance that they can use in the choir performance when they're signing Christmas carols in the Nativity. I really hope it works out ok! He's also going to teach us how to dance like proper Muganda women :D
After kids club we went to Gilgal for boys and girls group, knowing that it probably wouldn't go ahead and our suspicions were correct :( We were all gutted, so we decided not to give it up just yet. We couldn't announce it to the village because the louspeakers have been cut off from the mains cos the people who owned the shop weren't paying their bills! We're going to tell the young people in the village by word of mouth and really commit it to prayer this week and hopefully on Saturday we'll have lots of people turning up for the groups. Please pray that we have wisdom, that people feel it on their hearts to come and that the football pitch at Gilgal will be free for the boys to use, cos that's what draws them to come along.
Sunday 6th - Church for a good few hours as usual in the morning; half past 10 till 2! Sunday School went really well. We did the same part of the Christmas story as we did at kids club, but we made 3-D angels to stand on the stage and hang around the room at the Christmas party :) (I say stage, I don't really mean a stage at all!) Then in the afternoon we had the youth seminar that we planned with Tata. It was meant to be about an hour long and it started at 3. We didn't leave till HALF PAST 6!!!!! This is sitting on backless wooden benches, so we had totally numb bums by the end! Funny times :) It was awesome though. We met a guy called David who used to work at Gilgal, who we've arranged to meet and form a choir with in the next week or so. He might be able to talk to us about Pastor Murenzi if we play our cards right... He led some fantastic worship stuff, which was a real blessing. I do miss my home church because the worship here is very different and I love that part of church at home. Bex did the talk and it went great, she kept it short and sweet which was a real blessing given the timing circumstances! :) After that we headed home and had an early night after sorting stuff out for Bambejja today.
Monday 7th - So today we've been at Bambejja. We left the house at 8, got to the project at 10 and started a few hours of games at 11 and then led the first part of the Christmas story in a devotion this afternoon. The girls are all lovely and it went really well. They even discussed in the devotion time! :) Now sitting in Steers, our usual hangout on Kampala Road, before we go home. We wanted to get a bit of internet done cos otherwise we'll have quite a few days without it. It's always nice to get emails from home etc :)
I'd better stop writing now cos I still have a few things to do - Thank you for reading this far again! I'll write when I get back to England just so you all know that I'm alive and surviving the weirdness of culture shock etc. Sending lots of love and hugs,
Flick
xXx
Can't believe it's nearly Christmas. Where did 2009 go?! I can't believe it's nearly a decade since the new millennium; I remember standing on the bridge near my house looking out over London and watching the fireworks. We had a big party at our house! Very weird that it's 10 years since then. This New Year will be very different and a lot more Ugandan I suspect! The main news this week is that I fly back to the UK on Thursday for a week. I have 3 interviews at Cambridge on the 15th which I have to be back for, then I'm coming straight back to Uganda for Christmas till the 21st Feb, when I fly home properly. I'm not seeing anyone next week, just so you all know! It's not that I don't like you, in fact I'd love to see everyone, but I'm trying to limit the culture shock / emotional stressy side of coming home. Seeing everyone would just make leaving again a whole lot harder.
Anyway, onto this week's goings-on!
Tuesday 1st - The day my sickness started :( For most of this week I was stuck with a fever, pounding headache, total loss of appetite and my body ached all over. Bad times! After going to Mukono on Monday, I continued having my hair braided and had to have it done again on Tuesday. I sat for EIGHT HOURS, feeling absolutely terrible and watching ER that Becky bought for an extortionate price at the one DVD shop in the area; it was the only English disc they had! However, I will happily admit that my hair looked awesome! While Bex and I were at home, Nicky went to World AIDS Day in Kasawo (apparently it was awful!) and Lucy and Ellie went to Kampala to pick up stuff from Oasis for the holiday programme we're running this week at Bambejja. We all felt tired and rubbish by the evening. I couldn't sleep cos of my 39deg fever so that put me in a pretty bad mood for the whole week! To make matters worse, over the next few days my hair started to fall out. I didn't realise what a bad job the woman had done on my hair!
Wednesday 2nd - Half my hair braids had fallen out, no joke, so I spent the day quite unhappily in bed, feeling rubbish and trying to read my books for interview. My headache made that kinda impossible though, so I just lay there feeling silly! I got up for vulnerable women for a while; we had arranged for a woman to come from Mukono to train the women to grow mushrooms, but she just didn't turn up. It was absolutely gutting... We organised everything so that it would go ahead, the women worked really hard to collect donations and we met with Pastor Ben and sorted out all the financial runnings of the organisation and the project, but she just didn't come. Such a pain! Then I stayed up for a bit of Bible study too (we're continuing with the teaching series on Hebrews) but then had to go back to bed again. The girls did a good job of cheering me up and looking after me though :D
Thursday 3rd - My brother's 16th birthday :) It's very strange to think that he's already 16. He's chosen his A Level options already too, I swear I'm still that age though...?! So on Thursday we had a fake day off cos working at Bambejja this week means that we don't get an actual day off. Instead of going anywhere we sat at home all day and watched ER being really lazy :D I started feeling a bit better and Bex undid all the rest of my hair braids that hadn't fallen out. What a waste of 20 hours of just sitting there!! The problem was I didn't have time to have it re-done and sorted out before going home for interview and obviously I have to look presentable for that, so the only option was to have them taken out :( They looked cool but they just don't suit mzungu hair; more trouble than they're worth I think. Ah well, at least I can say that I tried it out! Not much else to report... We had a few prayer times in the evening outside in the compound cos it gets harder to concentrate when the small spaces in the house get hot in dry season. We have to COVER ourselves with Deet but it's lovely being outside. The stars are amazing in the village cos there are absolutely no streetlights, and the moon was getting full this week so it looked stunning lying down out there. We've spent some time praying for people who aren't Christians at home, which is nice, and also for stuff that's going on here. It's difficult though; we're not disciplined enough with our team prayer times and we don't leave ourselves enough quiet time to really meditate on God together as a group. Beating ourselves up about it just won't help, so there's no point in that, but I wish it was easier. I want to be better at that in myself as well as the whole team being better... I read the Bible more here and it definitely gives me more strength but it's not enough, I want to do more. It's easy to say that though, the discipline is hard!
Friday 4th - Training at Bambejja. We had a talk from Auntie Jovia, the lady who runs the whole Bambejja project, about the background of the project and all the work it does, then we visited a home in the local slum community. A girl called Florence lives with her 4 siblings and her mother in one tiny room near the project and she goes there every Saturday with the other 120 or so girls. They pay for her schooling and give her life skills training, healthcare, counselling and they give social care to the family. They do all sorts of awesome stuff,it's very cool to be a part of. Hopefully we'll visit some other houses in the community soon too. We left the project at 1 and didn't stay for the prayer meeting as usual cos we had to go to Garden City which is a posh shopping mall (mzungu central) to buy craft materials for the Christmas holiday stuff at Bambejja this week. I had large margherita pizza for lunch so I was happy :D I was starving after the lack of food during the week! By this point I was better in case you didn't realise :)
Saturday 5th - Two of the Oasis International Placements from the UK, Zoe and Helen, came to visit us in the village so we could show them where we live and work. They live in Kampala so they hadn't seen what life was like in a village before. It was SUCH a lovely morning! They brought Refresher chew bars with them, which was a ridiculous answer to prayer cos I'd been saying for about a week and a half that I had a craving for them :D In all seriousness, it was God having a laugh :) I love God!! He even provides Refresher bars! :D
Anyway, we showed them Lilo and Gilgal and Mama cooked us a giant lunch, with matoke and chapatti and rice and beans and meat and greens and everything else under the Ugandan sun, and then they left just before kids club. The kids made angels as the craft for the first part of the Christmas story and we told them about the Nativity and Christmas party on Christmas Eve. We're going to use all the crafts they make in the performance, hopefully it'll look awesome. I'm really excited about it :) We told them about the angel visiting Mary and next week we're doing Jesus' birth and the shepherds, then the week after we're doing the wise men bit. In the morning we met Albert, a guy who we first saw a few weeks ago, who does African dance and music workshops and performances all over the world. He's awesome! He's coming to kids club next week to teach the kids African dance that they can use in the choir performance when they're signing Christmas carols in the Nativity. I really hope it works out ok! He's also going to teach us how to dance like proper Muganda women :D
After kids club we went to Gilgal for boys and girls group, knowing that it probably wouldn't go ahead and our suspicions were correct :( We were all gutted, so we decided not to give it up just yet. We couldn't announce it to the village because the louspeakers have been cut off from the mains cos the people who owned the shop weren't paying their bills! We're going to tell the young people in the village by word of mouth and really commit it to prayer this week and hopefully on Saturday we'll have lots of people turning up for the groups. Please pray that we have wisdom, that people feel it on their hearts to come and that the football pitch at Gilgal will be free for the boys to use, cos that's what draws them to come along.
Sunday 6th - Church for a good few hours as usual in the morning; half past 10 till 2! Sunday School went really well. We did the same part of the Christmas story as we did at kids club, but we made 3-D angels to stand on the stage and hang around the room at the Christmas party :) (I say stage, I don't really mean a stage at all!) Then in the afternoon we had the youth seminar that we planned with Tata. It was meant to be about an hour long and it started at 3. We didn't leave till HALF PAST 6!!!!! This is sitting on backless wooden benches, so we had totally numb bums by the end! Funny times :) It was awesome though. We met a guy called David who used to work at Gilgal, who we've arranged to meet and form a choir with in the next week or so. He might be able to talk to us about Pastor Murenzi if we play our cards right... He led some fantastic worship stuff, which was a real blessing. I do miss my home church because the worship here is very different and I love that part of church at home. Bex did the talk and it went great, she kept it short and sweet which was a real blessing given the timing circumstances! :) After that we headed home and had an early night after sorting stuff out for Bambejja today.
Monday 7th - So today we've been at Bambejja. We left the house at 8, got to the project at 10 and started a few hours of games at 11 and then led the first part of the Christmas story in a devotion this afternoon. The girls are all lovely and it went really well. They even discussed in the devotion time! :) Now sitting in Steers, our usual hangout on Kampala Road, before we go home. We wanted to get a bit of internet done cos otherwise we'll have quite a few days without it. It's always nice to get emails from home etc :)
I'd better stop writing now cos I still have a few things to do - Thank you for reading this far again! I'll write when I get back to England just so you all know that I'm alive and surviving the weirdness of culture shock etc. Sending lots of love and hugs,
Flick
xXx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)