About to Head Out..

in snow! I will be taking lots of digital pictures, but can't send them via e-mail from "the bush." My sister might be posting some pictures I took last summer, though, to give you a taste of what it's like there.

Thanks for the encouragement and prayers! Hopefully I'll be arriving in Uganda in a couple days, so you'll get updates after that. :)

Green Karamoja May 2004

With Three Days Left To Go...

It still hasn't quite sunk in yet that I'm leaving. :) Please pray for me! I'm thankful that I'm being very calm about this so far, but probably in a couple more days I'm going to be so excited that it'll be hard to wait. I also have a tendancy to not trust God and worry about silly things like "Oh no, what if I get lost in the airport?!" (and never think "Oh no, what if I get mugged in Africa?!" Most of the time Uganda feels like a very safe place to be, by the way). But the fact is, the weather here is supposed to turn cold, rainy, and snowy on the day I leave. I do have just a very short layover at the airport on one my stops, so I would really appreciate your prayers that I'll be able to make all my flights on time. (Or not freak out if they're delayed!)

Cows

Cattle are pretty important in Karamoja. You see little boys, often under the age of ten and wearing nothing but a ragged shirt sort of slung around their shoulders, out watching over little herds of the rather small Karamojong cows. These cattle are a major part of the culture, but not as food - they're the main currency there, what people measure wealth by. They're just stocked up unless drought gets so bad that a man will sell a cow rather than let his family starve. Sometimes bulls are also eaten for feasts or sacrificed for rain...animal sacrifices, like killing a chicken to try to get rid of sickness, is still practiced by some (or maybe many) of the Karamojong. And a chicken's not so cheap in Karamoja, either.

If a man wants a wife...or wants to keep her, rather, since marriages don't really get celebrated till after a kid comes along...he has to pay her father. Since young men don't usually have cattle, they have to go steal some from a neighboring tribe, i.e. "The Enemy," such as the Pekot. These raids often end in death - one of the young men's life, or someone in the village they're raiding. It's a pretty vicious cycle, because of course the Pekot do the same thing.

The culture is begining to shift a little, though. Here's an excerpt from a recent e-mail from Martha.

"I have a prayer request from here, too: Petro has two daughters who are in the process of being married to fellows who work for us. He is putting a lot of pressure on these men to bring him cows, which really tempts them to raid, lie, cheat, etc. Please pray for Petro that his heart will be turned to the Lord & that he & his family will come to church or any of the Bible studies that are going on. Petro's wife is not so determined to get cows & is more interested in peace.

"One of these daughters (whose younger child is named Martha after me but I don't actually remember why) is remarrying because her husband died raiding cattle just last year. The man she's marrying now is our vet & was telling me just the other day how the boys of Nakaale are giving up raiding because there is work for them now, with the mission. But he's under a lot of pressure to come up with 20 cows, which would be at least 2 or 3 years of his salary. Let's pray that Petro is not sending any more young men to their death for cows.

"We really hope these contracts Bob is getting, to repair windmills & dig boreholes (wells), will make for even more work for the young men here, so more of them can turn from raiding to honest work, improve their lives, & have the chance to hear God's Word in the process!"

Where It's At

As per Melodee's request (thanks for thinking of it), here's a map of Uganda, divied up into districts. I'll be in Nakapiripirit, Southern Karamoja. It's fun to say - try it!

Map of Uganda by district.

The PDF may take a while to load. I'll try to find a better map I can post. There are also all these other maps, which sound interesting, but I have't had time to check them out yet.

So What's This All About?

Last summer I spent two months in Uganda, visiting some friends who are missionaries there. They were super nice to me - the kids bore with me as first-time teacher for some of their subjects, Martha took me to the clinic numerous times (malaria tests are so fun) and let me tag along with her to village Bible studies, and they all put up with my weird sense of humor and habit of hanging out at their place when I was sick. :)

I got to experience things there that I never would have in the States. Some of it wasn't that nice, really: a gigantic almost-killer spider, malaria, attempted goat-stealing, a culture where you see villagers staggering around drunk in the middle of the day, and where people are often jealous of each other (but then, that's not so very different from here).

But there were many more things that made it so worthwhile! Hanging out with the two missionary families was a blast! Becoming friends with Ugandans (mostly women and kids) was great - I look forward to seeing them again. In Karamoja, you shake hands every time you meet someone, whether they're strangers or friends. I loved meeting up with little herdboys who would offer a cool little hand and ask "Ejoka?" (Basically, "Is it good with you?") and the withered old ladies with rock-hard hands who would give my hand the special shake, raising my arm up as they said "ejoknooi" ("hello" with enthusiasm!). Sometimes I think that's the one thing I miss most about Karamoja!

Getting to worship under the Big Tree was a good experience, too. I saw firsthand that God is present even in the middle of nowhere in Africa, far from "home," and there are people all around me that are brothers and sisters united in Christ, despite so many economic differences, etc. I guess you could say that trip expanded my view of who God is and who the church is - and see how it's possible for God to say that even the "gates of hell" are not strong enough to hold back the gospel!

And I like singing praise songs in Karamojong, even if I do have a hard time singing and clapping at the same time...

Anyway, the point of this blog is to share as much as I can about Uganda while I'm there for five weeks this summer, and hopefully give more people here at home a taste for life there as well as vision for church worldwide. I'll be able to send updates to the blog via ham-radio e-mail (don't ask me how it works, but it's cool!), and receive comments that are posted, so I would be delighted if you take a minute to post something. I'm so thankful for the encouragement and prayers I received last year - it really does take that kind of support from a church to make something like this work!!