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

OH and S isn't a big priority... This was holding up a bulldozer!



One of the Mosaic children



Not sure how they do this. They must have very strong necks



Means of transport



Rolling clouds



view from Prayer Mountain



Alovely landscape



Compassion



Cute Compassion children



The groups we spoke to with the bibles our church provided

Chile & Argentina

Chile & Argentina

Being in Rukungiri means the internet is much harder to come by, so it's been a while since we've blogged, and probably will be a while before we do again. But, we haven't described the end our our South American adventures yet, so here they are!

After flying down to Santiago from Quito in Ecuador on the 21st (a good 2 weeks ago now), we caught a bus straight way to Valparaiso, a town 90 minutes from Santiago on Chile's coast. Note to those flying into Santiago – Aussie's are hit with a US$60 arrival tax. Pretty exhausted from flying and not sleeping much, we crashed at our hostel for good few hours. Valparaiso has around 300 000 people, so it's no coastal village, but we found it quite charming. We enjoyed catching a funicular up to Bellavista and walking around its surrounding neighbourhoods, with quaint cafes, interesting architecture, great views and odd graphiti. Chile's probably the most expensive South American country we visited, so we opted for cheap dinner; shopped at a supermarket and made pasta at the hostel.

More exploring the following day, before catching a bus back to Santiago in order to catch another bus to Mendoza (Argentina). So far we'd been mightily impressed with their bus services, but then a small nightmare involving 1 bus leaving without us, the bus we did catch breaking down half way back to Santiago, getting lost when they delivered us back to a different bus terminal than we expected and our printed internet receipt for the next ticket not being good enough for their liking. Thankfully the bus driver himself accepted it, and we finally were on our way! Their buses are pretty luxurious, with big comfy leather seats that recline, meals & snacks and movies. We managed to sleep ok (it was an overnight bus), and after being interrupted at 2am for the Argentinian border crossing, we arrived in Mendoza on Saturday morning.

Mendoza is famous for being in the middle of a wine producing region, and Argentina is famous for its amazing steaks, so that was all that we set out to achieve while we were there. We had a pretty chilled time the first 2 days; eating out, walking around the city, exploring parks, avoiding the street scam artists (the same deal as the guys in Venice for those of you that know), and celebrated ANZAC day with a quiet (1L) beer. We went out for a nice meal at a fancy restaurant one night, after which we could tick off both of our goals. Argentinian steak = very, very good.

On the Monday we checked out of the hostel and caught a bus 45 minutes away to a wine area, where we hired bikes and cycled from winery to winery. As well as tasting a number of wines we also visited another place that made liquors, condiments, chocolate & olive oil, all of which we sampled. We probably cycled 20 km along nice flat roads, though avenues of trees lining roads that are flanked by vineyards, surrounded by snow capped mountains. Picturesque indeed!

As it turned out, it was a good thing we headed back when we did; we were sitting in a restaurant, had just finished our meal when I happened to notice that the clock on the wall was an hour later than mine. Turns out Argentina's an hour ahead of Chile, and after 3 days of being there, no one had pointed it out, and we had no reason to notice! So instead of being an hour early for the bus, we were 5 minutes.

Bus to Buenos Aires was very similar to the previous one, although about 14 hours long. BA probably rates as my favourite big city we've visited so far. It reminded me of Sydney lots (in good ways), with lots of parks, giant old buildings and statues. They have crazy roads though, 14 or more lanes of traffic which is quadruple carriage way (if that's what you call it). Makes crossing the road a whole new experience!

Over the 3 days we spent there we explored a lot of the city on foot, or caught the metro for A$0.30 a trip :-P The hostel we were at had bikes for free rental so we braved the previously mentioned roads and set off exploring. We ended up in the huge nature reserve that lies between the city and the Atlantic, and cycled our way around that, joined by sweaty, hairy, shirtless Argentinan men jogging on their lunch break – delightful!

We also kept seeming to end up walking down Florida Ave, a big pedestrian mall with stacks of street vendors and artists. My pick of the street artists was a headless man (major points for effect, I haven't seen it before – see photo), although I think Nik may have preferred the Tango demonstrations. Also enjoyed the best value-for-money buffet ever, a Parilla (BBQ grill) with huge salad, side dish and desert bar, complete with self-serve ice-cream freezer. Yes, I am putting on weight :-)

The morning of our departure I went cycling again, this time by myself. I went way up through the North of the city, finding little suburbs that had quite a modern European feel to them. Along through parks, up around the zoo, Plaza de Italia and around the famous cemetery which seemed to be shut when I was there.

Another overnight bus took us back to Santiago, where we only had 1 night before we flew out to Uganda. We packed it in though; a funicular up the top of the hill to see all of Santiago and its smog spread out before us, squeezing in with all the uni students grabbing a beer on a Friday evening, cooking dinner and enjoying a bottle of wine, and then a great “free” 4 hour walking tour of the city the next day. The tour was pretty good, definitely recommend it for anyone visiting Santiago. Being May Day and therefore a public holiday, everything was shut and the city empty, except for the Plaza de Almas, which was packed with security because half the Chiliean parliament seemed to be attending a church service.

So that takes us up to our journey to Entebbe, which was a journey indeed. 13 hours to Madrid, 2 hour stop over, 2 hours to London, 4 hour stop over, 8 hours to Entebbe, where we met Enoch (our host for the next 3 weeks) and an 8 hour bus ride to Rukengiri. More about Uganda later, but safe to say it's amazing, we're busy and loving it!

Blessings,

Alex

Valparaiso - Chile

As above

More Valparaiso

At one of the wineries we visited

On my morning cycle in BA

And you though Danika was short!! Wait til you visit South America!

The statue of the virgin Mary highest point in Santiago

Looking out over smoggy Santiago