thoughts thus far on poverty

Aside from all the exciting and amazing and beautiful creation i've been witness to here, it is definitely clear that it will be a little bittersweet here.

I don't think i thought about this very much until Steve (the head architect, and probably the older guy i identify most with, not to mention an old ag Whoop!) really tore out my foundations. I mean we are so indoctrinated and used to the way things are and how things are and should be and whatever.

I guess my point is that in the US we get all up in arms about poverty and about people living in horrible conditions and about how we shoudl help them and how we are going to be crusaders and save the universe and things. And i agree it is bad, and i woudln't want to live in the "poverty" that we have in america by any means. But i guess the thing though is that no matter how poor someone is in america, they can survive, they can get a job however mundane, however repetitive and low paying, and they can buy food, no matter how low in nutrients or how awful or dirty or poor they may actually be...it all pales in comparison to life here. If you are homeless in america you can make enough money panhandling to live, to eat, to move on to the next boring day perhaps, but still alive. And i'm sorry if i'm offending anyone here, and i dont mean to marginalize the extent of the problem in the US, but here it's so much worse.

Imagine you are six years old and live a block behind Gaba road (the road in town known for the furniture made and sold there) which is just chock full of muzungu's, rich westerners, people that have more money than they know what to do with. And you are dying of malaria. You are dying of a disease that is so common in your country that if you had six dollars for a pill to cure it you woudl be fine in three days. And yet you are dying and there is nothing your family can do about it. It is places like this where people actually die of starvation, not just go hungry, but die...I mean i know i knew that before, but i feel like over the course of this summer it will become more and more real to me.

I guess, however bad i think things are, however uncomfortable or distraught, or tired, or annoyed, or angry, or hopeless, or alone, or any condition under the sun...I still have nothing to complain about. Firstly because i have christ, and secondly because he blesses me with much more than i deserve, heck he blesses millions who live in america and dont know him while many who do know him here die in the streets. His ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, yet how precious are your thoughts of me O god, if i were to count them they woudl outnumber the sand...This applies to all of your beloved, including the downtrodden and forgotten.

i pray they take solace in that...

Here are a few pictures of london so i can catch you guys up on what we've done. We took "the tube" from heathrow to picadilly circus (english people have funny words) and i think this is trafalgar square here












house of parlaiment

















ok here is the office which is where half of the staff stays and one family on staff stays.

















this is somewhere in downtown Kampala, you can see two boda's (motorcycle things) and all those white vans are the mutatu's (taxis). btw the streets are backwards here like in england, but unlike the western world driving here is mass chaos, you absolutely have to drive aggresively or you will be squashed. Imagine a two lane road in the states but here you have two lanes of cars and two lanes of bodas squeezing through plus two lanes of people walking on the sides and somehow nobody gets runover and wrecks are rarer than you wuold suspect.



This is the takeout point at the end of our Nile trip. These are grade 6 rapids here (impassible by raft) which is why we got out and walked around. Notice how close the cows are to the ridiculous amount of water moving next to them.











on the left is the four interns starting with alan, james, mark, and me. Then Josh to the right of me is the intern coordinator here and also the head of the construction management here. Going on is abby who has been in africa for a year working with food for the hungry and to the right of them are brian and alec both of which are interns in the colorado springs office who are here for a short term project trip and will be leaving here on monday.

This is all of us after having torn it up on the nile river, getting our boats flipped several times, swallowing lots of water, and getting sunburned. Altogether having an absolutely amazing time.




Right now it's so weird how at home i feel here. Last night we went to see xmen 3 which was an absolutely crappy movie i dont suggest it to anyone, but that i saw an american movie and now i am at an italian place/coffee shop on my laptop with wireless internet listening to the guy next to me talk on a cell phone.



well i leave you guys with that. I set up the time on this blog to match up with the time here in kampala, except here we do not have daylight savings time and blogger doesnt know that so really add an hour to whatever time it is and that is when i posted it local time.


I love you kids

Kelly: you are absolutely amazing, i cannot wait for a hug when i come back and to hear you voice and see your smiling face

Jspence: same goes to you except ill kiss you and tickle you!!

Momma: i love you!!


much love,

Josh

monday to friday

this has definitely been a whirlwind week. It has been officially termed "intern orientation week" but i'm not sure how much orientating we actually got.

oh by the way i have my luggage, so thanks for the prayers anyone who read this!!

So on monday we (Me, Alan, Mark, and James) showed up and basically hung out all day, had our first taste of ugandan breakfast which isn't that much different than breakfast in the states. Also i've learned how good tea is when you put milk in it (sorry i didnt try it in the states nat). So we took naps on the porch in the afternoon and went to eat dinner at Chad and Shanti's house (the director and his wife).

Let me rave a second about the weather here. IT IS AMAZING!! I mean you have power half the time because the electric company is completely unreliable, and nobody has AC's anyway because they dont sell them here and no one could afford them anyway, yet i have yet to be physically uncomfortable indoors. I think the highest it's felt is about 90 with a little humidity, but that isn't the case most of the time. It basically feels like March in Texas...and it's gonna be like that here all summer!

We spent our first night in a lady named Maggie's house (who is gone on furlough in the states).

Ok when i went to Italy in highschool i felt really cool cuz you give them a dollar and you get like 2000 lire, it felt like you were really rich. It's about the same here, roughly 2000 shillings to the dollar and so i changed 200 dollars and got 363,000 shillings...the thing is here though, I really am rich. Like even the most meager of living in the US is rich compared to most who live here. The typical Ugandan needs 16-20 dollars a week to survive (so 5 days a week with 8 hour days, 50 cents or less an hour) meaning i am exhorbitantly rich here. The house our office is in looks better than any house i've ever lived in my whole life, yet the rent is the same as 608 montclair will be in the fall, for a two story, three kitchen, 6 bedroom house, with a yard and a big brick fence, mahogany trim everywhere. Although i'm not sure how well the house is actually built, i know it's very nice looking on the outside.

Sadly the house absolutely must be fenced with razor wire and we have day guards and night guards, and even though our home is obviously not modest, it's understandable why we need this much space and this much security...if our computers were stolen we could do no work here.

It's also really interesting that Kampala has no zoning laws, so in the midst of a bunch of nice fenced in houses, there will be shacks and squaters and little stores etc.

We didnt' get our luggage till last night so on tuesday we went to the market to buy some clothes to hold us over. I bought a swimsuit for 3000 shillings (approx $1.50) and apparently i got ripped off. The market is basically like a goodwill that costs less that you have to haggle at. I forgot to mention that here a white person is a "muzungu" and at the market or any place you haggle for price, we will be charged an exhorbitant amount for things. I also learned that i am bad at haggling, which i suppose comes easier when you actually know what things are worth.

Interactions with Ugandans are interesting and getting easier. typically you will shake hands and keep holding them, and you always go with the "hello, how are you, fine how are you, fine..." and you keep talking to them whilst holding their hands...Those of you who know me know thta's not a problem at all, i just found it very interesting.

Wednesday we went on a "scavenger hunt" in Kampala, until then we'd only driven through briefly since we live outside of the city. The roads here are the absolute worst roads i've ever seen, and every gas station has a "tyre clinic" because tires are changed so often due the the ridiculous amoutn of wear they get on the dirt roads/pot holes/lack of road altogether/trenches from rain runoff/etc. Needless to say it'd be really fun trekking the roads on a mountain bike and they wouldn't make a bad course for that, as far as a comfortable ride is concerned, think again, but i'm beginning to get used to that too. As you can imagine with crappy roads or just a more relaxed mindset here, it is not uncommon for a Ugandan to be an hour or two late to an appointment. The speed of life here is just much slower than that in the states...again you guys who know me know that is definitely not a bad thing for me!

Gasoline costs around $5 a gallon here, and thus public transportation is huge, add to that the fact that no one can afford cars because they are all imported and come with them a 50% tax making them prohibitively expensive.

Public transportatoin comes in three forms: a boda, a mutatu (taxi), or a special hire. A boda is some sort of weird mixture between a motorcycle and a scooter. They are also very dangerous and not officially endorsed by eMi, and thus you are discouraged from taking them. You are basically sitting on the backseat of a motorcycle on the bumpiest, holiest roads known to man, and even though they are a bit softer due to better suspension than in a car, you are not wearing a helmet and from their insane driving habits it is not uncommon to be thrown from the boda!

Next is the mutatu which is the weirdest thign i'v ever seen. They are all vans and all look exactly the same (white with a blue checker pattern down the sides). Each are licensed to carry 14 passengers, not including the driver and the money collector/guy who hassles people to get them to get in for a ride. So needless to say it's a tight fit with 3 rows of four and two front seats beside the driver in a skinny japanese van...which i guess is ok here since no one is really fat. In fact if someone says "hey betty you are looking fat lately" that is a compliment because you can afford to do so. the mutatu's run on special routes and you just get on and off like you woudl a bus and pay 500 shillings (about a quarter).

Lastly the special hires are just guys in cars that park near a stage (where boda drivers or taxis pickup/drop off) and you end up paying about 3 times as much to ride in them, the advantage is they will take you wherever you want.

All that to say we took a special hire because there were a lot of people waiting for mutatu's at the namuwongo stop. Totally got lost in Kampala, which isn't hard because everything looks exactly the same (you will see soon when i get out of the office and can make a post with pictures). It's a sad place there, to see all the little street kids begging for money, all the random people missing body parts or with leprosy asking for money, all the people that can barely walk sitting next to a blanket all day with random things to sell. The theory is that the things they sell were things made in the 80's then put in a giant warehouse for 20 years and then they sent it all to africa for street vendors to sell.

Also everyone here has a cell phone. It seems like the only real advertisements here on buildings are for the three cellphone companies (mtn(mobile telephone network), celtel, and uganda telecom), blue band margarine, bell lager, nile special lager....and taht's about it. But it's cheaper here rather than to build an infrastructure of land lines to just build cell towers and connect everyone that way. All the cellphones here are pre-pay, which gives infinite freedom to use whatever cellphone you want regardless of your provider, which is ingenious and should be picked up in teh states. it's just funny to see something so high tech in a country so underdeveloped.

Yesterday was by far teh most fun i've had in awhile, if in my whole life. We rafted down the nile river all day. The nile has several grade 5 rapids (i.e. the craziest rapids can get before they are declared impassable by raft), and we went down alot of them as well as some fours threes twos and ones. Holy crap, it was amazing, every single raft flipped several times on the fives and it was an incredible experience. I love how shane and shane calls all the stuff he's given us sensory candy and yet we still have only seen the fringes of how amazing he is. Well the Nile is a testament to about one of the coolest thigns i've seen that god has made. So much water moving so fast and violently is absolutely breathtaking and I really would like to go again before we leave for the summer. I wish i could have taken pictures while i was on the river, but even they wouldn't do it justice. The boats just get so tossed around and you just hang on for the ride and if it flips you try to hold on and hold your paddle, which i managed to do one of the two times our raft flipped. Also there were two times our guide was knocked off with us still in the boat!

I dont think any description of such awesome power could every hold a candle to how amazing it actually was, but i still believe it was one of if not the most amazing things i've ever experienced.

Today we learned alot about eMi as an organization, it's vision to eventually have 11 overseas offices from it's 4 it has now, and how the Lord has been using it to do amazing things. I've learned that eMi basically provides a place/building/whatever to a ministry to give them the means with which to equip and train others ultimately so the gospel of christ can be spread. The organization only deals with ministries who's end goald is ultimately to spread the gospel however directly or not is to be determined through prayer. But god has done some amazing stuff here and continues to.

This afternoon we were able to go and see the fruition of one of the project trips this office has done the design work on. It was located about a 30 minute boat ride from a city on teh coast of lake victoria, and was an orphanage complete with a school and homes with "house mom's" for all the children to live on, in the middle of the forest, which is basically a jungle (btw I expected more desert like land, but it's incredibly green everywhere here).

True to my stupid nature i did something girl related while we were off in the middle of nowhere. So when we got here monday morning there was another large group of muzungu college kids, which we stick out like sore thumbs here, and we found out what they were doing etc, wished them a blessing, saw a few cute girls, thought nothing of it whatever. So then today we go to this orphanage designed by eMi and see that same group of people there. The same girl is there obviously and we smile etc. I see her walking away and the Lord hit me in the face like a ton of bricks "talk to her". I was blown away, so i tried to shake it but the Lord was working on my heart in a huge way and i knew if i left w/o talking to her i'd have missed somethign and disobeyed him. So i went to try to find her and found another girl instead who said she'd gone to the village and so i told this complete stranger "here's my email, tell this girl who i dont know that i felt like the Lord wanted me to talk to her, and i'd love it if she emailed me when she got back to the states, i'm sorry if this is weird, but i felt liek i had to do this" so that's why i'm an idiot, and i dont knwo what i expect to happen from that since the group is from california, but there it is, and i know lots of you are not surprised by this at all.

We came back ate dinner, shared our testimonies with the rest of the staff and here i am posting this enormously long post.

Counselors: i love you guys and i'm praying for you, i hope god is doing amazing things and i look forward to seeing each of you in August!!

Cochairs: you are so incredibly, each and every stinkin one of you blow me away and I really miss you guys all, i wish you could all experience this alongside me here

Family: I love you guys so much and am so blessed to be so loved thank you for everything you've done to get me where i am, you guys are amazing.

first two-ish days in africa

Wow,

so i am here finally and i'm sitting in an obsolutely gorgeous house, looking out on over a valley at a hill full of houses with red clay roofs and i can say nothing other than that I am in awe. First i'll talk about my trip though:

So i left houston at 10am-ish to fly to dallas where they told me that my flight from brussels to entebbe wasnt cancelled. Then when i arrived in dallas i was told that it was not canceled so i had the baggage checked all the way to entebbe, uganda. I arrived in New Jersey about 5pm eastern time and met all my fellow interns who recognized my orange basketball shorts (most of you know the ones that i wear way too much) from the facebook picture of me running from the fire in covington louisiana. We talked a bit and hung out at customer service trying to get the whole flight situation worked out. It was finally confirmed that yes the flight from brussels to entebbe was canceled and by the time our flight was boarding we got our tickets changed to fly through london instead of brussels. The flight was from 10pm eastern time to 10am london time (roughly 7 hours...i think) virgin atlantic left much to be desired...apparently the reason the airline gets so much hype is that they have a really good entertainment selection and really attractive stewardesses...but terrible service and horribly uncomfortable seats. Anyways next time they won't be my first choice of carrier.

We spent the day in london and managed to get to town without getting lost and did the fasttrack tour of london on foot, on a sunday, in the rain. Everythign was closed but it was still awesome to see...pictures to come soon when i get a chance to post from an internet cafe and not the networked dial up modem at the office...We left London at 10PM and got to entebbe at 540am their time (we are 8 hours ahead of central time here...so right now it's 947am and there it's 147am) to find that our luggage had not come with us... <--that needs prayer, 5 of the bags are here now, but both of mine have not shown up yet.

So british airways gave each of us 35 pounds = 70 dollars = 110,000 shillings = a ridiculous amount of money to buy clothes here so i'm not naked, although im very hesitant to wear used underwear and haven't gotten to that point yet...so sadly i'm wearing dirty underwear.

it's almost ten which means the staff is about to take us into town (kampala) and we will do a scavenger hunt for most of the day getting our bearings and trying to figure out where everythign is or at least get a general idea in such a huge city with mostly dirt roads and no obvious street signs. So i will update on the time i've been here very soon and more prayer requests when I get the chance in teh next day or two.

Much love to all of you my wonderful friends and family!!!

most rushed thing ever, five seconds at heathrow about to leave for africa....i love life london was neat, the end ok bye

hello to all you wonderful people whom i love!!

well it's thursday evening and im almost squared away on packing for the whole flippin' summer, and it was alot easier than i thought it would have been.

I can't believe i leave the country in two days, it's just crept up on me and i've not really been thinking about it much.

I really want the Lord to blow me away this summer and I pray that the man that leaves Africa will be different than the one who will be arriving there on sunday morning. I just want to be broken down, and shaken, and torn up and completely refined this summer for His sake, so he can use me better and so i can be more like Him.

Next time i pick this thing up i will most assuredly be in Uganda, Africa.

Till then...

post number one

so this blog is so i can post when im in africa, and im not in africa right now so i dont care about it....it's really just there so i can use it later and start giving it out now...

ok bye