Alex & Danika's 2010 Adventures: Uganda- North Kigezi

Well, so much has happened in the last 3 weeks that I don't think a lifetime of conversations would do it justice, let alone one blog post. We have experienced so many different things, and have been very blessed and challenged.

We're more or less here because of the sister-link relationship the North Kigezi Diocese shares with the Armidale Diocese, which is what our church at home belongs to. The diocesan youth worker (Rev Enoch Karamuzi) visited Armidale in Jan 2009, where we met him, and expressed our desire to come and visit during our travels this year. We'd been communicating back and forth, but nothing would prepare us for what lay in store!

Uganda is a beautiful country, very green with rolling hills and valleys. Very fertile, with lots of plantations, crops and animals everywhere. The population's something over 30 million, and was one of the first things we noticed. South America had done a lot to educate us about poverty, but just the sheer number of people here is amazing. It also seems to be a step down developmentally compared to other countries we've visited.

After 8 hours on a local bus we arrived in Rukungiri from Entebbe/Kampala. Rukungiri is the main city within North Kigezi, with about 17000 people, although it feels much, much smaller than Armidale. While we were on the bus, Enoch breifed us with the plan for the next 3 weeks. We'd seen a itinerary showing a number of different villages we were visiting, but what we didn't know was that we'd be speaking to the pastors and youth leaders at each of the Arch Deaconaries – in sessions up to 4 hours! We had nothing prepared, so after getting the basic topics Enoch wanted us do discuss, we spent the following day feeling a little overwhelmed, nervously preparing lots of notes :-)

Everywhere we go we are treated like royalty, to the extent we feel embarrassed! We were always given seats of honour at meal times, in church services and driving in the car (no riding shotgun in the back of the ute for us!). Each day's schedule was usually breakfast at the hotel; travel up to two hours on poor dirt roads (no more than 50 km); morning tea; a session with the pastors and youth (3 hours); lunch; return travel then dinner at the hotel again.

At each of the Archdeaconary Centres, the pastors and youth leaders from all the parishes and sub-parishes had been invited, as well as various other church figures. This usually resulted in somewhere between 20 and 40 people each day, from up to 11 parishes. Nik and I shared with them our thoughts on the biblical foundations of youth ministry, our experiences, and explained about the different groups at St Pete's. Nik also shared an encouraging message with them, usually regarding hope. Q&A sessions taught us a lot about the issues the youth here face.

We were also very pleased to visit 8 Compassion Child Development Centres, that are usually on the same site as the ADCs. Compassion has 13 centres in North Kigezi, with over 4000 kids involved. We can't speak highly enough of them – they're doing a wonderful work in all areas of their mission: spiritual, educational & physical.

Here are the places we visited:

Bwambara Arch Deaconary Centre

Bugangari ADC & Compassion Child Development Centre

Kashenyi ADC & CDC

Nyakisoroza ADC & CDC

Rubirizi ADC & CDC

Rujumbura East ADC

Kakinga ADC

Kyamakanda ADC & CDC

Nyakagyeme ADC

Kakinga CDC

Kinyasano CDC

Rwerere CDC

Word seemed to spread that we were here and visiting these places. Initially we hadn't planned on speaking at the Compassion Centres, but we were invited to do so at one, and then proceeded to speak at most of the rest. I was also asked to speak (as in give the sermon!) at All Saints Rukungiri, Emmanuel Cathedral Rukungir and Rwerere Church on the three Sunday's we were here, and we spent Saturday at a “youth convention. I was able to use some of the same messages on different occasions, but I'm indebted to Danika who worked hard with me preparing. John 15 and James 1 both received a good working over :-) This was all topped off by speaking to up to 5 million people this morning via Radio Rukungiri.

We spent one Saturday visiting people involved in the Mosaic Project, which directly assists child headed families. These kids are often AIDS orphans, where a 13 year old might be looking after 4 or 5 younger siblings. Mosaic help them by finding live in carers, repairing or building housing, providing school fees etc. It's very encouraging to see the progress families that have been assisted for a few years have made.

The Ugandan people are very welcoming – we've never shaken so many hands or received so many greetings! Everywhere we drive, kids point, jump up and down, smile and shout “mxungu!” which is kinda like Gringo but basically means “whitey!”. I've been offered 100 cows as dowry for Danika, we've been promised many plots of land, and so many people have asked us to come back for longer. We feel very loved!

The food here's amazing, and we thought we were eating a lot before! Loads of rice, maize, potatoes, sweet potatos, some other root vegetable, boiled eggs, bananas, beans, “greens”, “eggplant” (which is nothing like ours), millet bread, beef, chicken, goat, paw paw, pineapple, Matoke (savoury baked banana mash), chapati (which is like naan bread) and ground nut sauce are new favourites. A high carb, low vege diet.

The internet in Uganda is pretty hard to come by. No access at the hotel, and the modem at the Anglican Diocese office which we were most welcome to use was hit by lightening in our first week here :-) Add to that it being nice and slow, intermittent power supply and us being flat out, we have lots of updating to do! It made managing our affairs at home in Aussie much harder also, thanks to everyone who's been help us! We're now in Kampala (briefly), where we're meeting our 4 week Uganda/Kenya/Tanzania tour. Hopefully we'll blog again soon!

Alex