One Month!

One Month in and still going strong ☺ We have officially hit the one month mark of being in Uganda. We just moved down to the land in Masindi last Saturday so we have been on the land for almost a week now as well. The land is great and the staff have been really good to us. We are starting an internet routine so I will only be online on Friday or Sunday from here on out so if you post anything, don’t expect much until then but, here is how it all shakes down…

9-10-10
Adam leaves for Kampala this morning early to meet his parents. He leaves us a nice note and we are all gonna miss him because we probably wont see him again unless he comes to the land in Masindi. Tom and I did not sleep well so we sleep in today as there is nothing on the agenda for the day. The girls go to the market to get their dresses picked up that they bought on Wednesday, (custom made) in the morning. We head over to Coffee Hut our Caribou Coffee away from home around noon. Read and hang out till around 6 when we head back to the hotel. Make a quick run out to the supermarket to grab last minute things before we go to the land tomorrow. Bedtime and getting excited for Masindi.

9-11-10
We wake up and get the suitcases out of our rooms and take a lot of pictures with the staff, who we will miss dearly. They have been so good to us. We leave for Masindi around 11:30 that morning. It is a quick ride about and a hour and a half south. On the way we see some wild monkeys and stop for some pictures. We are definitely in Africa. We arrive at the land and a bunch of the kids help unload all of our suitcases. Tom and I have our own mud hut. It is really nice inside and we are very excited. The girls have the hut about 10 steps from ours. We have lunch and talk with Mike and Janelle about VOH. Mike and Janelle are the on site and live in a hut about 20 steps from Tom and I. They tell us how they got started with VOH, what the land looked like two years ago (African Bush, that’s right the whole place has gone up in 2 years) and funny stories on the way. We tell them our story and then we need to get some laundry done so we gather around for another fun filled afternoon of hand washing. One of the kids from the land, Fred, helps out with the laundry because he just couldn’t stand to see us stink at washing. Great kid. We finish just in time for dinner and a campfire. Life is good.

9-12-10
Church in the morning around 8am. That sounds nuts but it is actually not hard. When the sun sets around 7:30 and you are doing everything by flashlight, it is really easy to go to bed at 9pm. So 11 hours of sleep, I guess I’m not mad. Church is great and is translated into both Acholi and English. Brynn and I do some filming at church and It is really good. Some of the most authentic worship I have ever seen. After church we have lunch and have more discussion with Mike and Janelle. Mike starts to tell about some of the future plans for VOH as far as self-sufficiency for this land. It is really getting me excited for the future of VOH. Tells us about a potential for honey farming, mango farming, cattle farming. I get to play some soccer and there are some pretty good kids. Another campfire and find out that is a nightly thing. This is the best camping trip ever.

9-13-10
Wake up around 7am and do some Yoga before breakfast. Breakfast is literally going to be bread and butter for the next 3 months. Mike then takes us to the sandpit. A Muslim family runs the sandpit and Mike tells us they have been super good to them. For a truckload of sand that the family hand shovel in, it is 20,000 shillings or about $8.32. Mike says the sand is perfect for the concrete; they never have to sift through it. We come back dump off the sand and then get ready for lunch. After lunch I head over to the office and fix a few things on the office computer for Janelle before heading back to camp and having a great discussion with the head of the agriculture department, Geoffrey. Geoffrey tells me that he lost his dad when he was 13 and moved in with his Uncle, who then died the next year so they moved in with his other Uncle. He died the next year. Then the year after that his mom died. So from 13-16 he lost both uncles, his mom and his dad. Geoffrey was just finishing up some of his schooling and changed his path to be a mechanic so that he could afford to put the rest of his 6 siblings through school. He then proceeded to put his whole family through the rest of their schooling from his mechanic job and once he finished there he went back to school around age 30 and did what he actually wanted to do which is agriculture. This is a day in the life of a Ugandan. He now has been married for 11 years has 3 boys and is putting all of them through school. I tell him about how bad my life is growing up in Minnetonka with all of the opportunity in the world and everything that I could have ever wanted but maybe not like that before we head to dinner. It is stories like this that make me wonder why I have been so lucky and so blessed and would I be able to stand there like Geoffrey if that was my life? We have dinner and then, as I am getting used to, the sun is down so I head to bed.

9-14-10
Wake up at 6:20 and go for a run before breakfast. After breakfast Geoffrey takes us for a tour of the land and everything that they are growing. They have a total of about 25 acres of a variety of things planted. Unfortunately they had some problems with neighbors cattle running through their fields so this year’s crop has been a big disappointment. There is a fence that they have been putting up and is almost completely in place now so next planting season should see some much better results. Before lunch we do some brainstorming because we will be teaching an English class to the kids. After lunch I get some washing done, yes I am hand washing my clothes still, before I head out to play soccer with some of the guys. After getting pretty winded the whistle blows. Halftime, we are playing a full 90-minute game with stoppage time. Awesome. The 2nd half is actually much better because I scored. Not gonna lie, feeling really good about scoring a goal my first full game of soccer with a bunch of workers who are anywhere form 24-40 years old and play literally every day. After soccer we eat and bedtime.

9-15-10
Getting into a routine here, workout in the morning, breakfast at 7:30, bread and butter then head over to office and help with more computer stuff. 4:30 rolls around and we call it a day. I work on some of the video stuff after that. Rose and Charles the driver come in around 6:00 and everyone is excited. Great to see them and also because Rose always comes with a plethora of great food. Pineapple for dinner tonight, fresh picked this morning, never mad about that. We do some chatting with Charles and then head off to bed.

9-16-10
Like I said, Rose; bananas, bread and butter for breakfast. I don’t know if it is possible for life to get any better. Bananas! After breakfast we have a team meeting and it goes very well. Get to hear Erin’s testimony, which is great and also get to hear about some fun stories that are happening to other people. God is so good. Mike, Tom, Ochen, (the master carpenter) Bonnie and David (two of his workers) all head into town, Bweale, to pickup some wood for Ochen and his team. The town is very different from Gulu. Say stuff being sold but much cheaper. We buy two huge Avocados for 600 shillings. That’s about 25 cents for those of you keeping track. Ya know, quarters that we find on the ground, two avocados. For the same size avos in Gulu, that would have been about 1000 shillings. Lesson for the day; thing can get cheaper. Besides prices I find out from Mike that there are tons of different tribes represented at Bweale. So Swahili and English are the two main languages spoken. Very different to speak English to everyone and not try to through in the Acholi that we have learned. We come back and have a late lunch before a nap. After that nap, Tom and I head out for some more soccer. After soccer is dinner, a fire and bed.

And that’s how the cookie crumbles for the first month in Africa. I am really starting to learn some very important lessons about how much I can and should be doing with my time and money. Just seeing how even the smallest amount of money makes a huge difference here is incredible. Also getting to spend at least an hour with God everyday has easily been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I now wonder why I have never made it a priority before now to spend at least that amount of time is almost unthinkable. Life has been good and I cannot wait to see what is going to happen over the next three months. One thing is for sure, if I keep playing soccer for 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week, I will come back at about 100 lbs.