Mzungu Mzungu!

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Lorna

Greetings from Uganda! (Mzungu means ‘White Person’ and its what all of the children always call us) I’ve now been here for a week and I feel so at home. We’re all getting on really well and even learning some of the language. The house is so lovely. Its on the side of a hill so we have lovely views and the girls bathroom even has hot water! (Although we ran out of water altogether yesterday!) We’re working with a team of local volunteers who are all amazing. Its so humbling how much time they give to God’s work. Innocent and Olivia, two of the local volunteers are staying at the house with us along with Alex who lives here permanently so there are 10of us living here at the moment and we often have lots more people over.This week we’ve been so busy visiting all of the projects and schools and people that we’ll be working with over the coming months. On Tuesday last week we visited the Steven Jota Children’s Centre on Boda Bodas (motorbike taxis – so fun!) where we played with the children and saw them getting fed. We also saw the hostel where many of the children that go to the school live. The next day we visited Chosen School where we will be teaching and the kids were so excited when they heard that we’ll be teaching them that all us girls almost cried! We also played with the kids there during their lunch break and organised an enormous game of the Hokey Kokey which I’m sure would breach
health and safety regulations in the UK but no one was hurt and the kids absolutely loved it! (As did we!). That afternoon we visited the slums where we’ll be doing lots of work and split up to go and visit some of the people that live there. It was such an amazing and humbling experience. Two people gave their lives to Christ! But I also heard about a little girl who had been abducted in the night. On Friday we got to go on Bodas again to Meyenga School which is a secondary school where we met some of the children that are sponsored through Smile. We then went to the slums again to the Friday children’s club and afterwards I got to learn how to make beads for necklaces out of paper with some of the widows. In the evening we went to Kampala Baptist Church to the Friday ‘TGIF’ meeting where we Esther, Finch and I danced (well, attempted to dance!) with some of the others from KBC for hours, it was so much fun and great to start to bond with some of the people as this is now our new church.
Saturday will always be our ‘day off’ but it was still incredibly busy. We ‘popped into town’ to get sim cards and to do our food shopping, but in Africa this can take a lot longer than expected!
Yesterday was a lovely day, we went to church at KBC which is quite similar to Christ Church and then we travelled to Goshem which is a rural village about an hour and a half away where we shared in the Jubilee celebrations with the older people in the village. It was here that we had our first taste of traditional Ugandan food, which was actually delicious! (And no, sorry to disappoint you John but I haven’t eaten any goat!) After we gave some gifts and cake to the people in the village the older people danced with us and before long the children joined in and we danced right into the evening.
Today we visited another secondary school called Trust School where we talked with all of the sponsored children there. It was such an inspiring experience – these people really do appreciate letters from their sponsors – one guy was quite upset because in 7 years he hasn’t has a letter from his sponsor. This afternoon we spent several hours sorting through an organising all of the aid that Smile brought out to Uganda in a sea container earlier in the year. Its been our most relaxed day so far and its been really nice to just chill out a bit together.
Sorry for writing so much! I’ve been trying to cut it down but we’ve done so much that’s been so great. I feel so at home here and am having such an amazing time. This coming week we’ll continue to be introduced to the work of Smile in Uganda before we start to get into a routine of work. We’re going to Goshem again tomorrow I think. If I could I’d write in so much more detail!
Prayer requests…
- Thanksgiving for such a beautiful country, beautiful people and an amazing time so far
- For continued good health and safety
- For good relationships to develop
- For my family
Thank you so much! All my love xxx