Fare thee well, Uganda

As I write this, I am sitting in a cafe in Mombasa, Kenya. Where did 6 months go?? Let me bring you up to speed with my final week in Mbale…

Spent one night with the lovely Grace K, her husband Julian and their adorable baby, Isaac. The day before I arrived, their electricity had finally been connected after over one year of waiting! They were very excited. Stayed in the spare room which Grace had set up all nicely for me, and had my first shower/bath in a bedroom! Felt a bit weird washing myself standing in a plastic tub in the middle of a bedroom, but hey, I’m getting used to weird in Africa. Had a late dinner, prayed together and went to bed ready to drop off. The next morning I opted to use the outside shower, which is really just a concrete area around the corner from the toilet, with no door or roof! Grace promised me no one would come and poke their head around the corner, so I washed myself with a jug of water while looking up at the blue sky and the palm-like fronds of matooke swaying above the wall – how’s the serenity? My stay was short but sweet and I promised Grace & Julian that if I return to Mbale, I will stay longer next time!

After work on Tuesday, I headed to my final destination – Namabasa. I arrived as the sun was setting and Debbie made me a cup of tea, that I drank outside, perched on a small wooden table that doubles as a stool. Ahhhhh. Spent the week at the office, finishing up bits and pieces that I have been working on over the past few months, while my nights were spent either at Sam & Debbie’s or catching up with Jenga people for goodbye dinners. 

The week passed very quickly, and before I knew it, it was the weekend. On Saturday I did some washing the Ugandan way – just a tub of water, a bar of soap and your hands! I then headed to my final Ugandan wedding (thank the Lord!) which was supposed to start at 11am…I arrived at 11:30am to find people still setting up…the groom & his guys arrived around 12:30pm and the bride maybe an hour after that! The reception was supposed to start at 2pm, but thanks to “African time” and a preacher that gave a long-winded sermon about unmarried women coming home pregnant and causing their father shame…so bizarre!!… we didn’t reach the reception place til around 4:45pm and it was supposed to be all done by 6pm! Clearly that was not going to be the case. Debbie and I basically snuck out after “lunch” was served just after 5pm. I think the novelty of an African wedding has worn off. Grace’s daughter, Priety, was a flower girl though and she looked very cute indeed!

Sunday morning, Sam and I headed to a church up in the mountains that Debbie’s mum, Margaret, pastors. It’s only a dozen or so adults and a few kids, meeting together in a small brick church in a fairly rural community, and Sam managed to con me into preaching! I spoke about love and the importance of not only loving God, but loving people and taking Jesus’ teachings seriously – praying for your enemies, blessing those who curse you, turning the other cheek etc etc. I also highlighted 1 Corinthians where it says you can have amazing faith, or miraculously heal people or give away all your possessions to the poor, but if love is not the motivation behind it all, then you gain nothing. The listened attentively and were very encouraging at the end of the service. I think I survived my first preaching engagement…

On Monday I went and visited the school that Sam set up in the local area, called Divine Care. Debbie is the receptionist there and they have almost 150 students at the moment but are hoping to expand once their new buildings are complete – they’re building bit by bit as funding allows. It’s school holidays in Uganda at the moment, so I didn’t see the kids, but it was cool to see the classrooms (where around 40 kids cram into at the moment!) and hear Sam’s future dreams for the school. They already have a large plot of land growing maize & ground nuts next to the school, but Sam hopes that one day they will be completely self-sustainable (i.e. have cows on the property for milk and grow additional crops. There are two swings and a metal merry-go-round (which recently broke!) that serve as the only play equipment for all 140+ kids! They don’t even have balls or skipping ropes to play with, but somehow African kids just learn to make do with what they have. 

Monday afternoon I said my goodbyes to Debbie and Caleb (their 3 year old son) and took my final picky ride back to where I had been living before my adventures into real African life! Made Mexican for dinner with Nat, Manna and Tiff and ate it by candlelight – what would my final night in Mbale be without a power failure? I awoke in the early hours of the morning with a very upset stomach, that had me getting up a couple more times before the sun did. So on my final day in Uganda, with a 15 hour bus ride ahead of me, I had an unpleasant situation in front of me. I think you know what I mean! Thankfully, I had some tablets left over from my last brush with a stomach upset, so I downed them and prayed for the best. Sam came and picked me up from the house, so I said goodbye to our house girl Anna, our gardener Peter and the four dogs (George had already been taken to live at the school with his new friends) and off we went! Dropped by the office to say goodbye to all the Jenga staff, and before I knew it, it was 11am and time to get going to Malaba. I still wasn’t feeling 100% and was a little bit worried about the long trip ahead of me. Leah & our friend Brenda had planned to come to Malaba to see me off, but Leah had to stay back to work , so it was just me, Sam and Brenda in the end. We headed off on our 2 hour journey to the border on a scorching hot day – not unlike the one in which I first arrived in the country. We got to the border with no troubles and passed through Ugandan immigration before trekking over to Kenyan immigration, swapping all my Ugandan shillings for Kenyan ones along the way. Sam and Brenda kindly carried by bags, so I didn’t have to plod along like a pregnant snail, with my large pack on my back and my small one on my front! Sam kindly negotiated an exchange of Kenyan shillings to American dollars with some money peddlers for my visa payment, which apparently can’t be paid in local currency as I had presumed. We hurried off to the office of Modern Coast bus company, as we had called them upon arrival at the border to confirm that we were on our way and they told us they didn’t have my booking and that the bus was filling up. Great. So we arrive all sweaty at the office, only to find that there’s still plenty of seats on the bus and they have no idea who told us the previous information – that’s Uganda for you! So I got to pick my seat and I chose #1 – a “VIP” seat right up the front, on the other side to the driver with plenty of leg room and an uninterrupted view of the road ahead. Bought my ticket and had an hour to kill before boarding, so shouted Sam and Brenda lunch as a thankyou for escorting me all the way to the Kenyan side of the border and making sure I was okay – I would have been very frazzled without them! It was Brenda’s first time out of Uganda. Said goodbye to my last two friends and suddenly I was on the bus, about to head off to Mombasa.

The trip passed remarkably quickly (aided by loud Arabic dance music and remixes of everything from Lady Gaga to Enrique Inglesias and a whole myriad of early 90’s songs)and luckily I didn’t need any emergency toilet stops!! I started to regret my uninterrupted view of the road however, as ignorance is usually bliss with African roads and the interesting styles of driving here! There were a couple of close calls, but thankfully no accidents. Arrived in Mombasa this morning at 6:20am and was picked up by Adele’s taxi-driver friend, Davies. Arrived at Adele’s apartment and chatted with her about life in Kenya before she had to head off to work. So now I’m across the road from her place at a cafe with free wi-fi, trying to get my head around a new country and a new chapter of my adventures abroad!

I will add some photos soon, but given my limited battery time here, I will leave it for another day. Will write again when I have something more interesting to report!! Signing off from Kenya…

Lou :)