Favorite Memories in Uganda

Marc and I took over 500 pictures during our two week stay in Uganda. I am having a hard time picking through them. I thought it might work better if I finish off our time in Bundibugyo highlighting our favorite memories. This post is still monstrously long. :)

A bit about the home life...

The missionary homes are all nestled together on a "compound" of sorts though it is the most integrated Western/local setting we have visited. A few local families live on the property that belongs to Serge and many others in the community bump right up to it. The local kids come and go freely which I really enjoyed. I frequently had knocks on the door requesting water or food or if my children could come play. I'm sure this is a challenge for the long-term missionaries as they try to establish boundaries for the continual requests. I learned a lesson or two in compassion from Eli who was always quick to go scrounging for our leftover breads and food when I would have politely just said, "No, we don't have anything for you." Eli referred to every child as a friend so it didn't make sense to him that you wouldn't help a friend who has a need. If he answered the door before me he would come and tell me, "Mommy, my friend is at the door and he is hungry. Do you have anything I can give him?" I think Eli might understand more about Jesus' teachings on some days than I do.

Some local children playing on the compound basketball court

We stayed in a two bedroom house on the compound that had indoor plumbing and electricity. There were no ceiling fans or swamp coolers but we had two plug-in fans that we used on hot days or on days I was in the kitchen cooking. The temperature was in the high 80s to low 90s though the humidity always made it feel much hotter. It cools down at night into the 60s and 70s and most nights we were comfortable sleeping with a light blanket. The electricity was a bit unreliable. Many of the homes have solar panels to back up their freezers and refrigerators to protect their food. The longest we went without power was about 2 1/2 days. Those were also cloudy days so the solar panels could not charge up. Our fridge/freezer did not have access to the solar back up so we did lose all our food at that point. It was thankfully towards the end of our trip and we were able to do without the meat and dairy products we lost. I had to revamp our meal plan for the last week and we just ate a little more vegetarian than I had originally planned. I also had packed some foil packets of chicken and tuna that came in handy. :) This is an issue that the missionaries living in Bundibugyo deal with on a regular basis.

There is real milk in Bundibugyo! This was a surprise as I had initially expected shelved milk or powdered milk. There are two cows owned by the missionaries that provide fresh milk each day for the team to use. It has to be pasteurized, but it was a real treat for the kids to have fresh milk for breakfast a few times. Our kids actually drank the shelved milk without hesitation. The powdered milk they had to drink in Niger took a bit more getting used to.

Isaac getting his first taste of fresh milk while enjoying the banana bread one of the families made us

Groundnuts (or g-nuts) are what they call the local peanut. The taste varies a little from the peanut, but when roasted they are still a nice snacking treat.

Rwenzori Mission School (RMS) is a one-room type schoolhouse providing the education for the missionary kids living there. There are six kids currently on the team ranging in age from 1-10. They have two teachers working with the school age kids. Eli and Hailey joined the preK class (and the addition of our two doubled its size!). You certainly get a great student-to-teacher ratio! They had an amazing time with Miss Alanna. Hailey, nearly two months later, is still taking about how she misses her school in Africa and often asks when she can go see her teacher again. She has been eagerly anticipating starting school this Fall so RMS was just a little taste for her of how much fun school can be.

The kids took a language lesson a few times at school with a Christ School grad. Lubwisi is the local language of the Bubwisi people.

A science experiment..

 ...turned into a writing project.

Half-way through our trip, we were able to spend a few days in Fort Portal. We enjoyed the break from the heat and humidity and having access to groceries, restaurants, and even a swimming pool! It was a real treat for us and we had the best time.

No, this isn't a pond. It is is indeed a pool. The only pools we have come across in Africa have been a little on the green side in color. If I can smell chlorine, then I consider it swimmable. :)

We stayed at the Rwenzori View Guesthouse and were so impressed. Granted our standards and expectations get shifted quite drastically in Africa, this place was nice. The food was delicious as well!

Our back sitting area view

Enjoying some soup appetizers at dinner

We had the family suite which had two rooms separated by a bath. This was much more relaxing than all squeezing into one room space. However, our bed was huge and a favorite place to gather. :)

They even provided us a tub to help bathe Isaac in the shower.

The Dutchess is a pizza restaurant in Fort Portal that has delicious wood oven pizza and homemade ice cream. We loved it so much we ate there twice. :) The kids loved watching the workers make pizzas. This is where we were able to meet up with Serge's regional directors for East Africa, the Myhres, for lunch during our stay. They are both physicians (now working at Kijabe Hospital in Kenya) who worked in Bundibugyo for 15 years and raised their family there. They are an amazing family and have a wealth of knowledge on the medical issues facing the Nyahuka health center. Though short, we really enjoyed our visit with them.

We took some dessert to-go after dinner one night and enjoyed an ice cream party before bed!

One of the missionary homes in Bundibugyo also has a wood oven for baking pizzas. Every Friday evening the families all get together after their team meeting to makes pizzas. Because Fort Portal is so close, mozzarella cheese is now easily accessible (previous missionaries were making their own cheese from the fresh cow's milk) as well as fresh pepperoni. Pizza is a family favorite for us so this night certainly made a big impression on our kids! The Stevens also have a great yard and the kids all loved running around and playing together.

 The oven master for the evening

Time to make some pizza with a little CHEESE

Some other favorite pics...

 Bundamalinga Church

 A walk to the river with the Stevens

 Tasting cocoa beans for the first time

The produce market in Fort Portal was large and plentiful!

 Hailey enjoyed watching Frozen with her new friend the night before we left for South Sudan (and it poured rain that day so all the clothes on the clothes line had to be brought in to dry, which they didn't, and I ended up just packing them wet. :))

And just in case the pictures don't represent all the reality of missionary life, here is one of the MANY creatures we encountered during our stay. This one had made his way onto our bedroom wall, but don't worry, he's harmless. :)

Eli sure enjoyed playing with the millipedes.

I killed plenty of ants, cockroaches (bigger than I thought possible), spiders, and centipedes to fully qualify this trip as a "missionary experience." :) And the bats in the attic serenaded us to sleep each night. Even with all the above mentioned unenjoyable things (and the unmentioned creatures that slither with fangs that I kept my eyes peeled for), we all had a great experience.

Ministry in Bundibugyo

***Shortly after we arrived home, World Harvest Mission changed their name to Serge. You can read about the name change HERE. I am trying to use Serge in these posts but may slip up so just know that Serge and World Harvest Mission are the same mission group.***

Serge (formerly known as World Harvest Mission) began its ministry in Bundibugyo, Uganda in 1986. Bundibugyo is in western Uganda along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The district has about 265,000 people and is situated at the base of the Rwenzori Mountains. The people "on the other side of the mountain" were quite separated from the rest of the country and have been considered lesser to many in Uganda. Being an unreached area made it an ideal location for Serge to start ministry. The initial emphasis was on church planting and evangelism and with time, projects in education, medicine, community health, and safe drinking water were incorporated in. Marc and I were first drawn to this location because of how multi-faceted the team is. We find it encouraging and rejuvenating to see ministries outside of medicine at work in missions. It provides a much needed balance to the heaviness and weight that can come with missionary medicine in Africa. We were thankful that during our stay we were able to see many of these ministries up close, hear the history of how they began, and ask questions along the way. Thank you to all the Serge ladies who helped watch our kids sporadically during our first week allowing us the opportunity to see so much!

Our first trip was to the BundiNutrition program. Children eligible for this program are moderately malnourished. Some have recently been discharged from the hospital for severe malnutrition but have improved enough to continue care in an outpatient setting. The children come with their mom or caregiver once a week for a weight check. The caregivers then listen to an educational lesson on nutrition with Bible teachings woven in. At the end they receive a free supplement which is highly valued by these families struggling to provide the very basics for their children. The supplement is a high calorie, protein paste made from ground nuts and is locally grown and processed.

On the day we visited we even ran into a Chicago Bears fan! :)

Our second site to visit was Christ School. This boarding school was established by Serge in 1999. The school currently educates around 350 children in the primary and secondary grade levels. Bundibugyo district is one of the poorest districts in Uganda. They consistently rank in the bottom 10% for nearly every statistic, including education. Serge saw a need to raise up educated leaders for tomorrow to improve the overall health of the region. We were so impressed by the quality of the kids we met at the school. They were polite, very smart, and are being rooted in the Christian faith at an early age. We were very encouraged.

The views really are panoramic in Bundibugyo. This picture was taken from the soccer field at Christ School.

Below, Michael is showing us some of the improvements that have been made to the school's kitchen to improve ventilation for the cooks who work at Christ School. Africans cook over wood fires and lung disease is a common problem due to years of smoke inhalation. When you cook for nearly 400 people each day, having a safe place to prepare food is important.

Some beans were cooking over the fire while we were there.

Christ School is striving to become more self-sustainable. They have a farm where they grow some of their own food and they also have a bio gas system that is providing a "green" gas through a pipe into their kitchen for use with cooking. This system uses human waste and other organic matter waste to produce the gas. Crazy, I know. But it really is ingenious once you get past the uncomfortable part of it all. You can read more about it HERE. Behind the outhouses are large tanks that collect the gas that is formed from the digestion of the waste. Then, the pipe just needs to run in a direction above the tank to provide a flow of gas to cook with. Impressed??? We were amazed.

Here is the bio gas pipe in the kitchen

We enjoyed worshiping with the students for one of our Sunday mornings in Bundibugyo. As in most African settings, boys and girls sit on opposite sides in church. As visitors, we were allowed to sit together near the front. Our kids did very well for a long church service.

There are two health care operations serving the Bundibugyo area that Marc visited. Nyahuka Health Center and Bundibugyo District Hospital are both government run facilities where Serge missionaries have served for the past 20 years. In the past few years, there were two missionary physicians working in the health center who needed to leave the field early (one for illness and one to get married). There is a physician's assistant (and his family) and a physical therapist (and his family) who are currently the only medical providers on the team. There is a need for a physician (or several!) to come back on board with this team and help serve in a medical capacity.

This was Marc's first experience working in a government run clinic/hospital in Africa. The other hospitals he has worked in were built by missionary agencies and were funded through private donations and fees from the patients receiving care. The dynamics are quite different between the two. Many had cautioned us before our trip about the current state of the hospital and the intensity of the medical needs of the district. However, I think seeing it up close was far more challenging than what Marc could have imagined. The biggest challenges that Marc found in this setting were the lack of medications and supplies (including no water or electricity) and the lack of hospital staff to take care of patients and give medications. It is quite hard to help people get well even from common diseases like malaria and pneumonia without having those two things in place. As a medical provider trained in a Western context, you must surrender so much to an environment defined by a  "lack of" when practicing medicine in Africa. It is really defeating to not be able to treat even the most basic things to save lives. Marc is continuing to process this opportunity and whether he could see himself being functional and useful. No one person is adequate to take on this task that lies ahead. The needs are far too great and the infrastructure needs much improvement. Yet God is more than able to sustain, equip, and provide for whoever He does call to this task. We know that fully well, yet it takes a great step of faith to actually believe it.

Marc and Derek (the PA serving in Bundibugyo with Serge)

Along with the inpatient and outpatient medical work at Nyahuka Health Center, a sickle cell club was started a few years ago. At one point it was thought that Bundibugyo had the highest rate of sickle cell trait in the world. The rate of death from the disease is the highest in the first five years of life so a program was established to help those with sickle cell disease receive prophylactic antibiotics, folic acid, and education on the disease to hopefully reduce its morbidity and mortality. The program meets once a month and the families pay to be enrolled in the program for a full year. This allows the children to receive daily doses of penicillin and folic acid. Derek has been doing a great job with the program.

One last thing I want to highlight (especially because Holly took some beautiful pictures and told me I could swipe her blog photos!) is a new program that one of the teachers (Eli and Hailey's teacher while we were there) from the Rwenzori Mission School  was working on during our stay. The idea behind this children's reading room was to provide local children an opportunity to read and enjoy books in a safe and quiet environment. I LOVE these pictures. :)

If any of these projects interest you, you can follow this link to Serge's old website and click on the "related projects" tabs on the side. These are very easy and practical ways that you can become involved in some very cool things going on in Bundibugyo, Uganda. Stay tuned for more trip updates!

Travel to Uganda

***I wrote this blog post shortly after we arrived in Bundibugyo, Uganda. I could not gain access into our blog during our trip since I couldn't verify my identification (via my cell phone that was not in service) from a foreign country. So, I am taking time this week to catch up on some blog entries from March and April.***

I suppose you might never feel fully prepared to travel 30 hours with three children under 5, but heading into our journey on March 20^th, God had given me a great sense of peace. Amidst the chaos of packing while still taking care of the kids, I was able to rest in the peace and the plan that God has for our lives. Not only do I trust that God is walking each step of our travels with us, but I know He has also come before us to this other side of the ocean to prepare a path for us. It really is hard to put a description around the peace of God, but it is an amazing thing.

I learn lots about packing for our family each time I get the opportunity to do so. I have learned less is FAR better when at all possible. We ended up checking three large and two small suitcases, and I enjoy the challenge of filling them to the brim. There was not an ounce to be spared in any of them. I packed fun treats to give to those hosting us along our journey which always brings me joy. :)

All four of our flights arrived and departed on time which was wonderful. Eli and Hailey did an awesome job traveling and received compliments from those around us. Isaac, on the other hand, refused to sleep more than 1.5 hours in the first 24 hours of travel and just reached a point of utter exhaustion and irritability. He was difficult to keep happy at several points but never unleashed anything unbearable for me or the others around me. Poor boy just wanted to sleep in a bed! We had a total of 10 hours of layover time in the flight itinerary that was unavoidable this time around. All in all, we survived and have made a fairly quick recovery from the jet lag.

Once we arrived at the Entebbe airport, we were transported to a nearby guest house where we spent the next two nights recuperating. Our kids were so excited to be greeted by sunshine and warm weather after such a long and cold winter in Peoria! They were hard to corral back inside when it was time for meals. Isaac was also feeling quite adventurous and has learned how to climb up and down steps and attempts to keep up with Hailey and Eli.

Uganda is a well watered country with many lakes including Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa. We had some delicious tilapia during our stay in Uganda. Once you get past the look of a whole fish on your plate, it is quite tasty. The kids thought so, too. :)

Who needs a fork when you can just use your hands as shovels???

David (who had been hired to drive us from Entebbe to Bundibugyo) warmly greeted us on Sunday morning and joined us for breakfast at the guest house before we headed out to Bundibugyo. David has a long history working with the missionaries of World Harvest Mission and we enjoyed getting to know him. Since Uganda is an English speaking country, we have been able to engage most people in conversation which is very helpful.

We were quite surprised that Isaac made friends with David so quickly. He offered him some of his sausage at breakfast, and let David hold him while Marc put the car seats into the vehicle.  I told David that Isaac is not usually so friendly with strangers which made David quite happy.

Mike (pictured below) is interning with World Harvest for a few months. He majored in nutrition and came to learn more about malnutrition in Africa. He was great company for the few days we spent in Entebbe as well as on our eight hour car trip.

All set to go! 

The drive out to Bundibugyo was beautiful. The country is lush and mountainous. It was hard to capture the beauty with a camera (particularly from a moving car!). It was interesting to see how the quality of the homes changed the further we got from the capital. It was obvious the poverty was greater in the rural regions.

Marc and I have done road travel in Guatemala where you might wait on a herd of cattle to cross the road and in Niger where you watch out for a flock of sheep or some goats, but this was our first experience waiting on a troop of baboons to cross to the other side. It was at that moment we realized we were officially in the jungle. :)

Fort Portal is a town about 6.5 hours from Entebbe and the last major destination before crossing the mountains to reach Bundibugyo. Fort Portal is known for its tea plantations, higher altitude (and cooler temps) and spectacular vistas. We are looking forward to touring this area while the WHM team has a meeting there for a few days during our stay. Fort Portal has become a destination for European backpackers and has some nice places to stay and eat.  In the past year, the road from Fort Portal to Bundibugyo was paved. This has made the trip much easier as it now only takes 1.5 hours to get to Bundibugyo (compared to 4 hrs. before the paved road). 

Just after Fort Portal, we began the drive across the Rwenzori mountains. On the other side of those mountains is Bundibugyo where we will be spending the next two weeks.

More updates to come...