Things to note about my stay here in Uganda

• Every day I open the cutlery drawer, watch at least 2 small roaches and a few ants scurry over the silverware into a safer hiding place....then I shrug it off, and grab a fork.
• Mosquitos in Uganda are incredibly loud....I hear them coming but cannot feel them biting.
• 3 of our Ugandan volunteers have gotten malaria since I have been here. They have all recovered...it is basically like getting the flu for Ugandans.
• Rafting down the Nile as tourists, we floated by at least 15 different areas where village kids were gathering water or washing clothes from the same waters. We each paid $125 for the rafting trip, which would have bought food for a family for a few months. And yet, I acknowledged the contradiction and continued.
• Thanks to Kristine, I am now going to try to mimic the Uganda episode of "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern"....supposedly there is goat stomach on a stick, cow intestines,stomach and heart (sounds like menudo to me), some sort of forbidden fruit called impafu, roasted grasshopper, and lungfish. I have already recruited a Ugandan volunteer to help me find some of those when we are in the city....hopefully, there will be a blog post.
• The bungee jumping required me to be weighed...66.0 kg (exact same weight as James, oddly enough), which converts to 145 lbs....so I have not lost or gained any weight here.
• I bought a massive drum from the craft market and am currently contemplating how I am going to bring it home....wonder if they will let me carry it on?
• So, the blog has focused on events and the work we are doing for God's glory...I believe my emotions and spiritual thoughts on those events show through in my writing style....but the huge hole in my blog relates to the relationships I have been building here. I have purposely shied away from detailing my fellow co-volunteers...really to respect them. But, I think the pictures I have posted on Picasa probably can describe the amazing fellowship I have experienced here at Empower A Child. I do not have enough space to write about all the amazing people who have touched me here, but I hope to delve a little bit into it in a future summation post.
• The Ugandan volunteers all have amazing stories, and many are heartbreaking. I have found it easy to identify with them based on my past, yet in most cases, their traumatic events trump mine. Sadly, much of their personal trauma is mirrored across all of Uganda...so relatively, they shrug their shoulders at their own experiences. In church on Sunday, I heard that roughly 80% of all Ugandans are under the age of 30........what?! This figure is primarily due to civil unrest/war and disease (HIV, etc) in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Ugandans have a different value on life...they celebrate it and do not take it for granted...life becomes a blessing because it is so often lost.