hello friends
first of all I wasn't actually on CNN, but i was really close…we were here last night for the premiere of the invisible children kony 2012 video in Lira:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2012/03/14/pkg-mckenzie-kony-2012-screening-in-uganda.cnn
lots of other people already blogged about it so you can read theirs for the full recap.
I don’t have a big blog ready to post this week so instead I’ll give you some random glimpses into our life here:
transportation: we get most places by “footing” (walking). when available we take a truck owned by the church and pile the whole team into the cab and the bed of the truck. things get a little bumpy as most of the roads are dirt with large ruts that get washed out in the rain. We also occasionally take boda boda (motorcycle taxi) rides when just a few of us are trying to go somewhere. The streets don’t have any traffic lights or stop signs and they are packed with people and these motorcycles flying around, yet everyone just slows down through the intersections and I have only seen the aftermath of one accident the whole time we’ve been here.
money: the currency here is Ugandan shillings (conversion rate is about 2200 shillings/dollar) They have plenty of banks in town where you can exchange US bills (if they are 2006 or newer and clean) and ATMs. Most of us are starting to think of the value of everything in terms of chapatts (flatbreads sold by street vendors)….so now when I think of buying a ten dollar movie ticket back home I think “that’s a rip off …that’s like 60 chapatts!” Please forgive me if I’m really stingy for a while when I get back…I’ll need some time to adjust haha.
Entertainment: we (and when I say we I mean Marissa) recently purchased two ducklings (florence and ferdinand) which stay in the courtyard. they are great friends and always follow each other around wherever they go when we let them out in the yard – if you take one away from the other one it will just chirp and chirp until they are re-united. They have to sleep in an old smoker at night so they don’t get eaten by dogs or wake us up early in the morning.
Local Phrases: I’ve learned a bit of the local language – Langi dialect of Luo (including the basics: how are you? – kopango?, i’m fine – kope, what is your name? – inyi nga?, how old are you? – mwokani tye adi? thank you – apwoyo etc.) I really like hearing the english phrases that they use here that sound odd to us like: this one is fearing, this one is stubborn (stubborn means funny….I think), nice time, good friend, first you come, and saying aaahh in a high pitch tone followed by the tut tut noise with their tongue. Interesting side note – many of the people here can hardly read Luo, even though they speak it as their first language, but they can read English.
This weekend we’re going to stay in a village called Amolitar and get a taste of daily life in rural Uganda. We’ll stay in local homes and hopefully get to do what the people do with no special treatment. Amolitar is surrounded by some lakes so I think there may be room for a day at the lake or some fishing in there somewhere…I’ll keep you updated!
Prayer requests:
-safety as we travel
-love for our enemies
-Blessings for a couple programs we’ll be doing in Amolitar this weekend (skits and songs and a Bible lessons for a school and a church)
-love john
