Nyahuka and Kampala

Crazy how fast the last 9 days have flown by... and now only ten more days in Africa!

We spent the last 3 days in the Rwenzori Mountains in western Kenya right along the Congo border (in fact we were able to see the Congo from the Mountain Pass road!) in a town called Nyahuka.  The town has a very small team of missionaries living there as it is pretty isolated and relatively unaccessible.  The only way to get there besides flying in a small airplane is by taking a very bad road which scales about the outskirts of the mountain range. Its quite bumpy but the scenery was beautiful.  One positive fact for the people of Nyahuka in being so isolated is that whereas in other parts of Uganda the HIV infection rate is almost 60% of the population, in Nyahuka it is only about 6%.  It is also quite encouraging that the Bible is currently being translated into their tribal language: Laboise (not sure exactly if that is spelled right!) and should be completed soon! 

Its amazing when you go to places like this where there are very few 'mzungus'... its like you are in a parade... we literally stopped an entire soccer team with hundreds of people in the crowd just by driving by... the little kids at the beginning of the crowd screamed MZUNGUS!! and then the rest of the crowd including a lot of the soccer players turned and stared and waved at us as we drove by.... where else in the world would something like that happen??  I also got some fun pictures of the little kids who chased after our car.  They love to wave and look at us from a distance but some of them get quite scared if we come too close. Apparentely somewhere along the line, the older ones thought it would be a fun joke to tell the little kids that white people will sometimes eat them... we didn't know this at first and Jeannie made the comment "You are just soo cute I could eat you right up." She meant it as a figure of speech of course but learning about their jokes it probably very much scared the kids !!

Now we are in Kampala (the capital of Uganda). This morning we visited a state of the art mission hospital that specializes in orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation as well as plastic surgery to treat things like cleft lips and burns. Patients come from all over Uganda and northern Tanzania to get treatment here. Surgeries are done for free and all the patient needs to come up with is money for their stay in the hospital and their food... in desperate circumstances it is possible for them to get assistance in this too. It was really encouraging to see the clean hospital well stocked with medicines and medical materials and they even had an xray machine which is not always common to see in hospitals in more remote areas. When they have the money this is the kind of thing they are working to create, its pretty cool and obvious that they do make a difference in the community for those they serve. 

We will be in Kampala for 2 more days and then back to Kenya for the final week.  Please pray for safe travels through this busy city and for safety  in general (several of us had money stolen from our purses yesterday). Please pray that God would expand our hearts with love and give us wisdom towards what he wants us to do here in Africa. 

Thoughts on Missions

As American Missionaries, people from the ‘West,’ we often go out with an agenda, we go out hoping to accomplish great things, its often what drives us and I have to admit it has driven me. We want to know that our ‘mission’ and thus our time was productive. How many people were converted? Who was healed? What advances were made medically? What did we teach them? Honestly this is pretty backwards, especially for a short term trip. An an article we read, a Nairobian pastor commented that we ought not to call them ‘short term missions’ but ‘short term learning opportunities’ because the most benefit that is gained is learning about each others cultures, and because everyone knows about American already from news and media, most of the learning happens on the side of the West.  The same pastor also commented that although churches love to send mission groups to other countries to “paint walls”…. They often paint right back over them when the mission teams leave. In the same way, even here in Mbarara where we are currently, a church in northern US decided they really wanted to help the hospital so they sent 2 large bath lifts over here…. This would have been expensive to ship and no doubt there hearts were in the right place but …. Ugandans here don’t take baths like we do in the states, they don’t like to take baths (it is more often showers or sponge baths) and further more it is really the families that are involved in the patient care, not nurses… the bath lifts are never used. Thus the lesson is for me that if a short term team or even a donation is to be sent, especially by a church, it should be in response to an EXPRESSED need of the community to which the team is going.  

Another very important aspect of short term trips, which I think very much applies to this group, is that it opens up our minds and hearts to God’s calling on our lives.  One of the reasons this entire group came here was to see if we felt called to come back with our professions and serve long-term.  And the community here welcomes people who commit long-term, because you become part of the community and you work together as a team… instead of just someone who is coming to ‘impart knowledge’ although they really know nothing about the people or their culture.  

Please pray for us, that God will make it clear during this trip if he would have us spend our lives here or if he has other plans for us.  Please pray that we will maintain a servant like HUMBLE heart, and that we would act as learners in this culture instead of teachers as we are just like babies here, pray that we would be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to judge. Pray that God would give us wisdom and understanding and that he would use us as He wills.

We are learning so much as we travel around, and I feel like I have a much better picture of what it looks like to be a missionary here and what the culture itself is like. If I had not come back I would have though about Africa purely from my experience in Jinja 4 years ago, and although I learned a lot there, Jinja was all I knew and only a little part of the town as we did not have a vehicle. My mindset about Africa is more comprehensive.. from how the younger people are becoming more Western, to the different tribes and their different customs and languages as you travel throughout the country and between countries.  Africa is beautiful, the people here are extremely beautiful and very unique, God did a good job here.  

I've included some pictures.. the first is when we went on a community visit to a couple of schools to do deworming. Then some zebras we saw a long the road... me and and one of the girls who is from Australia posing by the equator statue... what its been like about every other night when the power goes out and we use lanterns and candles... some food we have been eating and a couple of the girls in Tenwek by the dam.

Homestay and more travels!

The home stay turned out to be a really great experience. Church was mostly in Kipsigese/Kiswahili so could not understand a majority of it, but every now and again they would throw in some English for our benefit… and the singing was beautiful.  We were also asked to get up and 'say a word' so we each introduced ourselves and said something small and Jeremy (the only guy of the group) gave a short message which they loved.  Church was a bout 2.5 hours and they seemed to very much enjoy it... although I think in the states most people would get annoyed with that much of their Sunday taken up! After the service we were asked to stand by the pastor so that each member of the church could shake our hands. 

Jeremy, Felicity and I stayed with the Reverend. We also had Kristen and Katie with us for most of the day until their home stay family got back from the next city, so we all had lunch together and had a tour of the land.  They lived about 10km away from Litein in a 'village' environment, but being the director of the hospital as well he had a nice place considering the surroundings. In our tour of his property we saw chickens everywhere, 4 cows, a plot of maize, banana trees, animal feed growing, and of course tea.  Its amazing how self sufficient they are.  Also on his plot of land he is building a house for his mother who is getting very old, in this culture it is the responsibility of the youngest son to stay with his parents and take care of them until they are gone.  The food was very good and they fed us and gave us tea all day, they made us feel very welcome.  The reverend also told us a lot about cultural norms and told us a little about what it was like to be in Kenya with all the last post election violence when many people were killed.... and of course we discussed Obama, as everyone you meet here knows him and is proud of his Kenyan heritage. 

After lunch we dropped off Kristen and Katie (but of course we did not leave without taking a cup of tea and visiting for two hours... this is a very relational oriented culture after all!) We also got a tour of the land where they were staying which was much more traditional with a separate cooking hut and separate little mud/clay buildings where they would sleep.  They had a tremendous amount of tea and also rows and rows of pineapples! Which we had sliced up with our tea and are absolutely amazing... you haven't tried pineapple until you eat it here! We also had guava fruit right off the tree and were shown a number of vegetables they use that I’ve never heard of.  All in all it was a great experience that I'm glad we were able to do.

Yesterday, we left Litein early in the morning and began our journey to Uganda.  It was a drive that should have only taken about 6 hours... but of course DBA (Dis Be Africa) so it took 12.. and due to some unforeseen circumstances the van we were suppose to use fell through... so 9 of us crammed into a sm range rover... after 12 hours we were struggling a little bit and all getting a little delirious! But the landscape was beautiful, we passed over the Nile River and past rolling green hills, we even got to marvel at some baboons with babies on their backs hanging out by the road after passing the border of Uganda.  Finally around 9pm we arrived at Matoki Inn in Kampala, Uganda (the biggest city in Uganda... traffic like L.A. YUCK).  The Matoki Inn is the nicest place we have stayed so far and is a missionary hub here in Uganda, its like a breath of fresh air with actual SOFT pillows, sheets I know are clean and wireless internet! I wish we could stay another night but we are leaving off to Mbarara where we will stay for the next week in a couple of hours.  Only a five hour drive today (so we have been told) and a short training session than more community work starts tomorrow. Pray for safe journeys!!

Litein and things

After a week at Litein, I feel like I have learned much and grown closer to God but am also ready to move on.  This place is absolutely beautiful with rolling hills you've never seen so green, and there's sooooo much tea!!! The custom here includes two tea breaks, one at 10am and one at 4pm... what a life!

We have  had a lot of discussions at night with the team and have had a lot of Bible and prayer time as it is not safe to go out after dark.  I am beginning to feel more and more that as much as my heart was full of a desire to come here and just serve in every corner, that does not seem to be a reality on this trip.  We are serving in a little ways relationionally and in deworming kids in local schools and doing medical exams in orphanges but as a whole I feel like Im getting a lot more out of this trip than I am giving, which is sadly dissapointing. I feel very blessed to be able to shadow nurses and doctors here and its amazing how many times they have asked us to scrub in on a surgery or deliver a baby they are sooo very eager to teach us ( which because of africa inland missions guidelines we have had to refuse except for minor assistnace sorts of things). As a whole, the people here are extremely welcoming and they happily cook food for us and offer us tea and offer to show us things... never in my life have i been able to walk up to a theatre (surgery room) knock on the door and have them greet me although i came unannounced and give me scrubs and then teach me what they were doing.  What a crazy thing!  Please pray that I will be able to ascertain how i can truly serve in the way that God wants me to on this trip.  I am struggling to find any nitch in which I am 'needed,' Kenya in a lot of ways has a good system going (although definately not perfect), but since i have not been to medical school as of yet I have nothing to teach in the medical arena and if i did being a shortermer, it would not be appropriate.  More than anything this is a taste of medical mission life in Africa, it will be extremely helpful in helping me decide if this is something I can do longterm after i get my doctor of medicine... please pray for God to show me this clearly as well.

Tomorrow morning we will go to a church in the village and then meet up with a family in the community who we will be staying with for the next few days...it will be a look at what real life for a kenyan family is here in Litein.  And then on Tuesday.... its off to Uganda!

Thankfully our schedule has gotten much busier over the last week and we have been doing a lot of work in the community. Since my last blog about the giraffes and elephants, we spent a day in an orphanage doing medical examinations on the children and providing medications there and also just playing with the beautiful children. We also spent a day in Kibera, which is the largest slum in all of Africa and sits in the middle of Nairobi. We worked with a ministry there and made house visits to HIV positive Kenyans. We prayed over them and just spent time with them and it was amazing the stories we heard, we definately got a taste of real poverty which is quite disturbing and frustrating. Many of those with HIV are also widowed or their husbands have ran away. they live in very small shacks, often without electricity and have a very strong social stigma which makes it hard to have strong relationships which is very emotionally hurtful since by nature they are extremely relational people.


We spent 2 days in Kijabe a smaller town with a missionary hospital where I was blessed to shadow a plastic surgeon as he repaired a man's completely fractured mandible and in the afternoon i volunteered in the women's ward taking vitals. The hospital was very beautiful (although defnately not on the same level as the U.S.) and was not at all what I was expecting to see after my last trip. The next day in Kijabe we spent at an orphange called "Naomi's Village". I would definately encourage you to look this up online as it just brought me to tears to see. A couple from Dallas TX started this orphanage this year and in it they show tremendous grace to orphans, bringing them out of slums and out of terrible situations and putting them in a stunning home with real wooden floors, an actual roof over their head (not tin sheets with holes in them), HOT showers (almost unheard of here in daily living) and flush toilets...and most importantly THREE meals a day and access to education. I was almost in tears during the tour, i think this will change lives here and the hope is that by showing them such grace, that they will grow up with self confidnce and know that they want more for their kids and for their friends and so will be active members of community.

We are now in Litein which is near the Uganda border. We will be here all week and our working in a local hospital each day. Please pray that we will learn a lot and be of use to the people we are trying to serve and develop meaningful relationships. Until next time!!

Giraffe kisses, baby elephants and new team members!

Besides waking up tired, we all are getting over our jet lag and were excited to make our way into the city today.  We were blessed to be gently introduced into Africa with some fun activities in the morning and a training session in the afternoon with a leader at an outreach we will be working with next week.

The morning started with a close encounter with some giraffes! A driver from the mission organization graciously drove us to Giraffe Park.. a place where you pay the equivalent of about $3 US ... get a handful of feeding pellets and make your way up a platform where giraffes freely make their way up to you and lick them right out of your hand...and mouth! ... we took a ton of pictures of course and some of us decided to be brave so we stuck a longer pellet between our lips and got a big fat kiss from the giraffe as it got the pellet out!...a little gross with the slobber but its just one of those life experiences where its like...when else are you ever gonna be able to do that?  One of the national workers also gave us a short talk on the giraffes, and we were informed that their saliva actually contains antiseptic as their favorite food is a type of cacti which often produces sores in their mouth, making the antiseptic very advantageous...and making their kisses very safe for us :) 

Our next stop was an elephant orphanage a couple of kilometers away. Unbelievably, the elephant orphanage was only about $7 US and we arrived just in time to get a good standing posistion for their feeding time.  A thin rope attached to flimsy poles was all that seperated us from 6 young elephants that immediately came running up towards us and headed straight for the 6 workers standing with bottles of formula 2 feet in front of us. The elephants were incredibly eager for their feeding (although they get fed every 3 hours, they still have a hearty appetite!) After they consumed their milk, they started to play with the twigs on the ground, wrapping them up in their long noses; they got drinks from the buckets of water and squirted them at each other. It was obvious that the elephants were very social and had a tight bond with the human workers.  The smallest elephant there, only a couple of months old, stayed by his human worker the entire time after feeding, wrapping its nose around his arm and following just behind him wherever he walked. We were told that all of the 11 elephants who stayed at this orphanage were rescued after their mothers' had been poached for their ivory in the south of Kenya or had died of natural causes such as starvation. When they reached 2 years old they would be transferred to another orphanage sight in a protected area in southern Kenya where they would slowly be reintroduced back into the wild. It really seems like a great program and it was a joy to touch their prickly skin and see their playful spirits. Our God is SO creative! We rode back in the van and thought about what joy animals can bring!

We made it back to Mayfield Inn in time for a duumpling and mashed potato lunch after which we were met by a lady we will be working with next week. She works in a ministry called "Changing Times" in the middle of Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya...and in fact the biggest slum in all of Africa. They provide health care, education and spiritual support for the very poor population in the slums...many of whose inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day. We learned a lot about the economic and social conditions of Nairobi as a whole but especially relating to the Kibera slum. We will go in next week in small groups accompanied by nationals and ministry workers where we will assist in doing physicals and giving medications and will do our best to love on the kids we find there!

Other news, the last 2 memebers of our team arrived today, they are a married couple in their 20s from Melbourne, Australia. They both work as nurses in Australia and will be with us for the next 4 weeks before they will go back to their jobs at home. Like most of us on the trip, they are thinking about a future in medical missions and hope that this trip will give them some insight on whether or not it is for them!

Lightning storms, language lessons and jet lag

I'm now writing from the comfort of the Mayfield Inn, a missionary housing establishment for the country of Kenya. There are probably 20 other missionaries besides us staying here currently, from all over the world. We are staying in bunk beds, in what I can most compare to a dorm environment, we are comfortable.

We arrived at the Nairobi airport late last night (11pm) local time. I feel like I entirely lost Thursday as we left NYC Wednesday evening and after 2 long flights and a time change crawled into our beds almost immediately when we got here. Our first flight was from NYC to London which was around 7 1/2 hours. 3 of us from the Mediquest team sat together and the flight went fairly quickly. The next leg from London straight to Nairobi was an 8 hour flight and I ended up sitting next to one of the other girls and also a native Kenyan man named Steven. Steven grew up in Kenya but traveled to the United States where he attended undergrad and grad school at Boston College, he graduated with degree in computer science and came back to Kenya to live and work, he told us his family owns a coffee farm just outside the city!  One of the perks of sitting next to Steven was that he was very excited to tell us about Kenya, he was sure we would aboslutely love it here, and after hearing from him, I am too! He looked over our itinerary and commented on each clinic we will go to, and says we MUST do a safari, although I'm not sure we will have the time in our schedule or enough personal finances. Steven also gave us a Swahili lesson. We learned several words:

Jambo: Hi
Wapi Choo: Where is the bathroom?  (ALWAYS an important one!)
Habari gani?: How are you?
Nzuri: Fine
karibou: Welcome
twende: let us go
Asante sani: Thank you very much
Samahani: excuse me

...A good basic starting point I think, we learned several other things, most of which I have a hard time remembring now! Another perk about the flight from London to Kenya is that we flew over some beautiful areas.. including the Sahara dessert which is just an unbelievable expanse of sand cut through by nothing except for the Nile River, flowing north towards the sea. We also flew over an incredible lightning storm over Sudan/Ethiopia area, that was really cool to look out at from the airplane window as it lit up the sky below us.

It feels very natural to be where we are in Nairobi. I am confronted again with the familiar scent of Africa that I remember from Uganda several years ago... a mixture of dust, gasoline, burning trash and extra particulars you cant quite put your finger on. We met Kate at breakfast this morning, Kate is a nurse and she has worked in Africa for almost 30 years, her husband will meet us at the beginning of July and will continue traveling with us then. Today is our rest day, so we have been taking it easy around the compound. We also took a walk into Nairobi to exchange money and get a sense of where we were at. Most of us are quite jet lagged and will enjoy having the evening to recooperate and go to bed early in preparation for the days to come.

Excitement for tomorrow: Giraffe park and Elephant Orphanage!!