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Kampala

We needed to take a trip to Kampala this month, for several reasons, but it's always an adventure - a DIFFERENT type of adventure than our Gulu adventures. Gulu adventures include cow paths, cross-cultural relationships, cultural learning, etc. Kampala adventures include traffic, ridiculously perilous stunts by boda drivers (motorcycle taxis) millimeters from our car, too many options in too many stores and restaurants, etc.

We drove down to Kampala Sunday after an early church service. No problems. Went straight to a mall for a meal and one store. Then, in one of our not-so-bright moments, decided to drive a circuitous route to the guesthouse in order to drive past the clinic that we needed to attend first thing in the morning. That took... a very long time, since roads do not, for the most part, bear road signs in Kampala, making the map more of a matching shapes game than a "turn right when you reach X road" navigation.

So we got in to the guesthouse after dark, happy to settle the children into a nice room with cooler weather. Early morning we were up, eating breakfast (NOT PREPARED BY ME!), meeting a family (also staying at the guesthouse) with four delightful adopted children and a baby on the way, and then we were off to the clinic... lost again because of a frustrating one-way street and lack, once again, of street signs. (Also traffic lights are relatively meaningless... so we just kinda follow traffic!)

We made it, only 10 minutes late, figured out what to do to have the appointment (nothing is straight forward, at least the first time around!) and finally we were off to our next engagement, hearts lightened that we had that important thing done. We made it to another mall, did shopping after a stop at the cafe for some yummy coffee and pastries, dragged ourselves to yet another mall to meet up with one of the Kampala ACTION missionary couples... already exhausted by lunch time! The children love playing on the playground at this third mall, so they were thrilled, we ordered a confusing lunch at the food court (that's a whole different post), enjoyed fantastic conversation with our missionary colleagues, and all too soon had to get moving (several hours later).

By then, there had been a few "accidents" so we really needed to get the children home, if you know what I mean. Josh had arranged to meet a Ugandan friend who would help us with some car issues... and just as this dear man arrived, Ana threw up all over the computer and the guesthouse common room. Yay.

Several hours later, everyone was cleaned up, Josh was out with Amos, and the children, thankfully went to bed...

Day #2: I needed to stop at a medical supply warehouse... just for three things... an hour or more later, we were late for our next engagement! ;-P We made our way (street-sign-less) to our other Kampala missionary colleagues' home for a lovely lunch and afternoon conversation. They accompanied us back to the guesthouse so the kids could run around in the yard while we tried to converse. On our return we found that our room lock was broken, so several hours later, the door was broken down and by bedtime, I quickly was able to move all of our stuff into another room for the night. In the meantime, Amos arrived with a mechanic to work on our car (the alarm system has been going nonstop for a week!) so Josh juggled that and conversation with our missionary friend, Mike...

I was exhausted from... what??... by 8pm.

It's a great example of why Josh and I are built for Gulu and not Kampala! We know that God would give us the grace needed if He were to ask us to live in the big city, but... we sure are grateful for Gulu's slower pace of life, the tasks that take a week instead of hours, and the limited food availability... NOT a hard price to pay!

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