After our Middle East adventure, we headed to Uganda where we are volunteering for two months. Many of you may know Blake Shubert, a friend of both Brian and mine from high school. Blake has been the director of global operations for an international Christian service organization called Light of the Lord Global Missions (LOLGM) for more than a year and a half. This organization is especially cool, in my opinion, because they strive to make their aid projects self-sustaining through small business. Their Kampala branch, for example, launched a successful dairy enterprise that funds its projects. When we decided we wanted to have a volunteer component to our honeymoon, we first thought of Blake and the good work we know he does with LOLGM.
Our flight from Istanbul got to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, early morning the Sunday before Easter. We stayed in a pretty nice hostel on the outskirts of the city that met my standards because it had hot showers and monkeys roaming around the ground! (Mention of monkeys is probably a dead giveaway that it’s Erin writing this post. Not surprisingly, monkeys have quickly ousted camels to resume their position as my favorite animal). After spending Sunday catching up on sleep, Monday and Tuesday we were shown around Kampala by two guys from LOLGM, Stephen and John, who do a lot of the on the ground management of LOLGM projects in Uganda. They took us to get phones and an internet stick to use in the village, took us to a zoo and to the “source of the Nile” – the point where Lake Victoria starts draining into the Nile. The conversations were pretty interesting with a lot of lost in translation moments where Brian and I had no clue what was going on. But we had a great time in Kampala with Stephen and John. Somehow we managed to find out that they worked in Iraq for the same company I had worked for in Virginia right up until our wedding. This is especially crazy because the portion of the company operating in the U.S. is tiny, maybe a hundred people, and they (and a LOLGM guy from the village) are probably the only Ugandans my company ever employed. Small world!! Kampala is surprisingly small for a capital city but it is full of people and sprawling, with bad enough traffic to make us miss our old commutes up 495 (not).
Wednesday we headed down to Nyeihanga, the village in southwest Uganda, five hours from Kampala, where we are spending about 2 months helping out. The LOLGM branch in Nyeihanga is really new – it began in late 2010 and already has some great projects going such as a school for vulnerable children and orphans and an adult literacy program. We’re going to be working with these and also with getting some sustainable businesses going. A highlight of the drive up was that when we would pass through towns, where traffic would slow, dozens of people in blue vests would run up to your car and shove all sorts of foods, drinks, and other things for sale into your window. Then, as soon as another car would go by, they would take off and sprint towards that car. And then sprint to another car, and so on. I guess with so many vendors, competition was fierce and you had to be fast to make a sale. Brian tried some skewers of grilled meat but I thought it was safer, and more appetizing, to stick to roasted bananas.
Thursday was our official welcome ceremony by the community. It was one of the most amazing experiences of both of our lives. The event took place on the grounds of a building that doubles as a church, a school for kids and adults, and a center for other community activities. First, we were welcomed with songs by the kids from the community school, then songs by the adult education participants, and then songs by the church choir. These songs were beautiful and personalized to welcome specifically me and Brian. They were all choreographed with dances and accompanied by drums. We took some short videos and pictures that don’t do the performances justice but at least give a bit of a picture. We’ll post when we have fast internet again. Next, some of the kids and adult learners recited various poems they had written. Finally, the kids and the choir each performed plays they wrote for this occasion. We didn’t understand everything that went on in the plays, but they were seriously funny and Brian even said his cheeks hurt by the end from all the smiling and laughing. As if all of this wasn’t enough, the people of the community all brought gifts to personally welcome us. We ended up with an enormous pile of fruits, veggies, eggs, even two sugar cane stalks two feet taller than Brian! Now, two weeks later, we are still getting daily gifts of fruits and veggies. Even today we were brought a bushel of sugar cane stalks, a big bag of guavas, and a bag of local berries! After the presentations, we found out that we were expected to make a speech (this is something we end up having to do at every community event we attend – so at least five times weekly!). It really wasn’t hard to find words to say after so much generosity! Brian said some great, heartfelt words and we passed out some measly candy and coloring books we brought for the kids. The community spirit here and the kindness of the people are humbling. We hope during our time here we are able to give back something more substantial to the amazing people here.
Over the past two weeks we have attended events ranging from Easter Baptisms in the local stream to the school kids’ term graduation. My favorite thing is definitely the adult literacy classes where we get to work with some incredibly motivated women. Mostly we are just trying to get involved in everything to learn more about how things work here. There are about a billion adorable kids that we get to play with, we’re working to get a microfinance program started … the only thing that could make me happier is if there were more monkeys roaming the village streets!!
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