Kapchorwa

So, I am heading to a place called Kapchorwa tomorrow morning and which is at the base of Mt. Elgon here in Uganda and will be gone until the end of October.  It is also right by the border of Kenya.  It is pretty much a rural village and will take about 5 hours to reach from where I am staying here in Kampala.  I will be doing a practicum for the program I'm with and I applied to do the agro-forestry practicum in Kapchorwa and that is the one I was selected for so I was really excited!!  I will be pretty much shadowing and working with the Food for the Hungry staff who are currently working with the agro-forestry and local farmers in that area.  All of the FHI staff are Ugandan so it will be really awesome to interact with them and get to know them. 

I will not have internet access except for maybe once every couple of weeks....so when I do I will make sure I keep my blog updated so I can relay my exciting experiences up on the mountain of isolation :) Along with no internet includes no electricity or warm water (luckily we do have a western toilet...don't know how i lucked out with that commodity), and more often than not non-working cell-phone service.  I am going along with one of my fellow classmates, Kyle, and he will be doing research for the Child Development Program that Food for the Hungry has in Kapchorwa.  They sent us all out in pairs so that is nice that I won't be completely by myself.  So, if you think of me keep me in your prayers!! 

Uganda....green again!!

So I arrived here in the beautiful country of Uganda on August 24th at 3:45am. The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the airport was that there was mist in the air and I wasn't struck by an intense wave of heat the instant of first contact. I certainly wasn't in Egypt anymore. So, I went through the immigration and visa line and went and looked for someone holding my name on a sign. And there was no one. There was no one hardly waiting in the arrivals lobby. I was just thinking "Oh no...the airport taxi guy forgot about me." Luckily I had the phone number of the taxi driver that was supposed to be picking me up and one of the other taxi drivers let me use his cell phone to call him. So I called Godfrey (taxi man) and with a thick African accent he said "Oh yes madam...I am so sorry...I will be there in 10 minutes madam." Yep....an hour later (approx 5am) he showed up and drove me from Entebbe to Kampala which is about an hour away. So I arrived at the Food for the Hungry compound around 6am Sunday morning. I wasn't too tired because there is no time difference from Egypt to Uganda and I just slept for most of the flight. So, unlike my classmates who had flown the day before from the States, I was fortunate enough not to get jet lag.

I should tell you what I'm doing here in Uganda and where I'm living, with whom, what I'm eating, assurance that I'm brushing my teeth every day, drinking enough water, etc:) So I am doing a semester abroad program here in Kampala, Uganda with a Christian organization called Food for the Hungry. They are an NGO that is here working to develop sustainable living and education for people throughout Eastern Africa and many other parts of the world. They have a compound here with an office and a guest house on it and my fellow classmates and I are living in the guest house. There are 12 of us college students from various colleges around the States and there is only 1 guy. Lucky guy:) Yeah so we have class for 5 weeks through Uganda Christian University here in Kampala, then we all leave September 29th for our practicums which are for 4 weeks. During our practicums we are all sent out to various villages and towns in either Uganda, Rwanda or Ethiopia to work with Food for the Hungry field workers. So I will be without communication for that month I am doing my practicum so pray for my mother that she survives this lack of communication period:)

After we are done with our practicums at the end of October, we are heading off to Rwanda where we will study there for another 5 weeks. Then, we come back to Kampala on December 6th and we will have one week here before I leave to go back home on December 14th. I am really excited for all of the things we get to do!!! I have a feeling time will go by really fast and before I know it, I will be home and it will be Christmas!!

I've already had a pretty exciting time here so far as I went white water rafting down the Nile on Saturday (feel free to ask me about because I can't possibly describe this experience properly on this blog). It was soooooo amazing...probably the most amazing adrenaline rush/experience I have ever had. Then, on Sunday we were able to go to this cultural dance and that was a really cool experience too. Well, I promise I will stay more faithful in updating this blog since I had a long stretch between posts even though so much has gone on. If you have more questions about Egypt or Uganda feel free to ask me!! I love to talk about my experiences thus far!!