Greetings from Uganda! We finally arrived last night at 10:30pm after 19 hours of flights since leaving Huntsville on Sunday afternoon. Thankfully all of our personal and mission trunks made it through all of the flight transfers (a miracle unto itself!) and we were able to skate through customs without anyone having to have their bags searched. The closest thing we had to a hassle was that when Mary and I were going through security in Huntsville we had our carry on bags searched. I was expecting this to happen because I was hand-carrying all of our electronic blood pressure cuffs, temporal scan thermometers, and my otoscope. I imagine that all of these look pretty weird on X-ray. It turns out that what tripped us up was the quart-sized ziploc bag of batteries to run the equipment. When we went through security in Amsterdam we were sure to pull the bags of batteries out with all of our liquids and electronics and we skated through with no problem.
Here's Mark, already directing with the finger.
Going through customs at Entebbe Airport.
(We were all a little punchy by this time.)
In Kampala when we all piled into our 4-wheel drive bus with all 24 of our trunks and our personal bags we received the very good news that the new camp location was only 4-6 hours away! Considering that our team was facing a 13 hour bumpy ride to the camp near the South Sudan border we were much relieved. We also were told that since we had a reasonably short drive to arrive at camp the next day we would sleep in a bit and not leave the Tick Hotel until 9am.
Our room at the Tick. It might not be fancy but after 19 hours of flights it
looked pretty comfy to me!
Ominous name, no?
The terrace at the Tick.
Parking lot with armed guards.
Notice how Barney Fife is leaning on the barrel of his gun.
I hope this thing isn't actually loaded.
We piled back into the bus, with our African bus driver extraordinaire John, and headed north.
The First Presbyterian clown bus.
We were really packed into this bus with all of our gear.
Don't we look chipper and well-rested?
Mary, the other nurse and very good friend, and I got to sit up front on the ride to the camp. I loved this because it gave me a great vantage point to take tons of pictures. Granted, they were shot through a windshield but I got lots of pictures of the Ugandan countryside. We found, just like in other trips, that if you smile and wave 95% of the time the people quickly smile and wave back. Just call us First Presbyterian's goodwill ambassadors.
Never met this kid, but I loved his homemade Elton John frames.
Bathing hole near the road. Clothing optional.
Well-maintained dirt road
bumpy, bumpy, bumpy
This school building is where we set up our kitchen
This is where we set up our evangelism, triage, and clinic/pharmacy rooms
This building had phrases for healthy living stenciled onto it
We were very close to our neighbors
We are using one building for our kitchens. Yes, kitchens plural. The American mission group has their kitchen and the African employees have their own kitchen. With all of the problems with water and soil contamination we can't risk eating their food. Not to mention they probably would have trouble digesting some of our food too.
kitchen and gathering room
All of our tents are set up just outside the building. Next to this building is the other building that we are using for clinic. We have triage set up in one room, evangelism in the next room and the pharmacy/medical area set up in the other room.
our tent 'hood
We arrived in camp midafternoon and our very friendly African hosts were waiting for us to arrive. They very quickly and efficiently unloaded the bus and delivered the trunks to our tents. We took time to get our personal gear organized and set up before setting up the pharmacy.
Jerry and Roy worked to get the reading glasses organized to start handing out tomorrow. Dr. Michael Boniface, the African doctor that we will be working with this week pitched right in and helped us set up the pharmacy. We worked right up until it was time to stop and eat our dinner. The Here's Life for Africa guys fixed us a very tasty rice and beans dinner in our kitchen. It really hit the spot! Afterwards we headed back to the pharmacy to work on bagging up more meds.
After dinner the Here's Life for Africa guys set up the screen and film projector to prepare to show the government issued health film and the Jesus film.
Our room for medical/pharmacy. Just getting started with the amazing Dr. Mike Boniface.
bagging up meds well after dark
making labels for medicine dose bags
After dinner the Here's Life for Africa guys set up the screen and film projector to prepare to show the government issued health film and the Jesus film.
The Here's Life guys getting everything set up for the Jesus film showing
I wonder if these guys have ever even seen a film before.
The crowd was smallish at first but continued to grow to several hundred
I am sitting here in my tent having had a baby wipe bath and brushed my teeth. The Jesus film is still going (it's 9:45pm) and it is really loud! There is a crowd of a few hundred Africans in the school yard watching tonight. Sleeping might be rather difficult. We are up to the crucifixion scene and the Roman soldiers are mocking Jesus - so we all know that the worst and the best part of the movie are coming up. There will be an altar call offered to the villagers. I really have no idea how long this will last. I'll let you know tomorrow. I am not sure I can keep my eyes open much longer. I figure that I have had about 14 hours of sleep total since Friday night . I am starting to get a little punchy. I will be trying to journal each evening though the trip. Stay tuned! It's going to a adventure!
11:45 update: The villagers have just gone home and the Jesus film guys have packed up. So tired.
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