Uganda At Last

We arrived at our hotel, Mt. Elgon Hotel, at 3:30pm local time after a long 43 hours for most of the team.  We are both tired and excited to be here and ready to get to work.  We praise God that all bags and boxes arrived in one piece and we zipped through customs without any problems.  Our hosts, Pastor Morris and Aidah Ogenga, with warm hugs and greetings, greeted us.  It is a balmy 70 degrees with scattered showers.  It sure beats the 105 degrees in Texas!  We are the only team staying at Mt. Elgon this trip, which means lots of hot water and good water pressure.  All the conveniences of home sure spoil us.  All we need now is a good glass of ice tea.

We stopped on our way for lunch in Jinja at Ling Ling’s Chinese Food restaurant.   We came halfway across the world to Africa to have Chinese food!  It was wonderful and everyone got all they wanted to eat.  Every time I come to Uganda, I see something new while we are traveling through the countryside.  There are still people everywhere in Kampala, people walking along the road, and no traffic laws being obeyed.  I look forward to the chaos of driving through Kampala.  It is like bumper cars with everyone trying to get to the same spot at the same time.  The traffic police seem to be standing there watching and not wanting to get involved.  It is quite interesting.  Since we are still in the rainy season, everything is green and pretty.  I am told the tea and sugar cane fields were as pretty as ever.  (I wouldn’t know because I was asleep during this part of the ride.)

At dinner, I asked for observations and impressions about Uganda from the team.  Here are some of their observations:  crazy traffic, people walking or riding motorcycles all along the road, what a Ugandan can carry on the back of a bicycle, ie. Lumber, steel poles, big metal boxes, a child using the bathroom on the side of the road without any care in the world, goats being hauled on the back of a bicycle, ladies holding a baby riding side saddle on a motorcycle taxi.  I just thought most of them were sleeping on the van ride.

 

Tomorrow we begin the construction of the bookshelves for the library and getting the books in order to shelf.  Hopefully the team gets a good nights rest, because tomorrow I become the slave driver!