People often pray for God to stretch them, to make them face their fears and to wake them up to a new life.

Those people are crazy. I'm one of them, so I can speak for us. We're crazy.

From the moment we arrived at O'Hare to the moment we left O'Hare, nearly every experience I had felt stretching. So for two weeks, I was completely out of my comfort zone. Hopefully you will understand then why I feel two ways about my first experience overseas. I'm trying to remember that feeling two ways about something doesn't disqualify you from fully feeling either (so... I'm still being stretched).

I want to start processing the trip, but I'm going to do it in parts. Today, I'm just going to cover our very first experiences in the country, but this isn't going to be a day-by-day thing so you can read with confidence that this isn't going to go on for weeks (Also, for once I get to use pictures that either Verity or I took during the trip. Africa makes it easy to be a good photographer for a couple weeks).

ARRIVING IN UGANDA
We landed in Nairobi, Kenya after 18 hours of flying (more on that later) for a quick overnight stay with friends, and then hopped on a plane to Kampala, Uganda early the next morning. The drive to the house was my first real out-of-country experience but it didn't really feel like we were on the other side of the world. Maybe because people spoke English well or because Coke billboards were littered along the roads, but it felt like America only... tweaked. For example, the roads were paved but without streetlamps. And we were stopped by police, but they had big (!) guns hanging menacingly around their necks. Or the home felt like any home in the States, but there was mosquito netting on the beds (which confirmed my fears about getting diseases in Africa, and I was now convinced that I was not going to come out on the other side fully intact).

The next morning we woke up from our Ambien-induced slumber feeling bright-eyed and ready to go. We got our passports stamped again and were off to Uganda, where we were whisked away to our home for the next week. We stayed with the Willisons, which was worth the trip in and of itself. Most of you know the Willisons better than I do, but let me say that as a married couple, as parents and as a family, they are truly wonderful people who I feel touched to have as role models.

The drive from the airport revealed something I was less prepared for because I spent all of my pre-trip time suffering the flight and not thinking about what Africa would actually be like: it was gorgeous. The lake, the greenery, the colors. Apparently we came a short while after the Queen of England had been there and so a lot of money had been poured into beautifying the city (...), so let me clarify that it was the God-made part of the land that got me. As we drove through we put on our mosquito repellent and took everything in. The people bustled down the street dressed in suits and dresses, like pictures of America in the 40's (only everyone wasn't white). The traffic was, not for a lack of a better term, INSANE. The roads were largely washed out and ... "bumpy" (later someone said to us, "It's nice that they put a road in that pothole, isn't it?"). Stores with a small room full of one item (DVDs, bananas & cell phones seemed to be a popular choice) lined the roads and shacks served as a bedroom for many families.

So one would assume that we were in a poor part of Kampala. While you wouldn't necessarily be wrong, we did learn that you can't use western values to judge the state of non-western cultures. We learned that life in Kampala is done outside and that housing for many local people is seen as merely a bedroom. So you could be very poor or fairly well-off and live in one of these shacks. I decided to throw away snap judgments for the rest of the trip.

We pulled up to the Willison's home where they live with their five children and six dogs (most of who are guard dogs) and opened the gate covered in barbed wire. Thus begins the next part of the story: safety.

Labels: africa, Jesus, Other