Back to Nairobi & Home!

Thursday Oct 31, I had decided not to get up at the crack of dawn but to catch a 10 am flight back to Nairobi which got me there about 11 am.

Before I left the Namirembe Guesthouse, I took a quick photo of the lovely lady that serviced my room each day that I was there and engaged me in such rich Christian conversation - her name was Teopista.

And when I got out of immigration at Jomo Kenyatta Airport, I also snapped a photo of Patrick, the driver that Sharon Crean had organised. He was over 60, was a great conversationalist and a thoroughly good bloke!









We went straight to a shopping centre so that I could exchange some money and get some airtime for my Kenyan SIM card,collected the keys to the Crean's apartment at their workplace, dropped off my luggage and finally Patrick drove me to another local shopping centre for my first meeting.

I was to see a Bishop Gerishon, a contact that was made for me by Howard, one of the guys I work with at Christian Venues. He arrived with his daughter, Sacred, and another white guy called Mike. Mike turned out to be an Australian pastor that I had been trying to contact for about 2 months before I left home. He had been working in Uganda with his wife for 13 years but had recently run into some visa problems and wasn't allowed back into the country. He was therefore living with the bishop. Gerishon has established his own church called "The Wings of Life" and it had expanded to about 80 locations throughout Kenya.  Like in most places in Africa, the pastors of these churches are not paid anything and I really have no idea how they cope. Mike and Gerishon have a great plan do do something about it - quail farming!! Quail eggs are in high demand and can sell for about A$1 each which is a huge amount in Kenya. They bought their first batch of 100 7-day-old chicks this week, so it's exciting to see how they go. Apparently the females start laying an egg per day at about 4 months old. I might be assisting with an incubator & generator sometime after New Year if everything goes to plan. We chatted for about 2 hours over a drink and a pizza and had a wonderful time of fellowship.

Then at 4 pm, I met up with a guy called Steve Kiteto who is on the Board of Christian Camping East Africa & is the Executive Officer of Tanari Trust ( www.tanari.org ), an organisation that disciples young people and runs a camp. We spent 90 minutes talking flat chat about Christian camping in out respective areas and again, had a wonderful time. They are just starting out and so we may collaborate over certain issues in the coming years!

At about 5.45 pm, Steve had to go and I had to walk back to the Crean's for dinner - as it turned out, they had arrived home late so we ate outside in the balmy atmosphere of a local cafe. In the morning, Pete took me to see a bit of  Kibera slum, home to about 1,000,000 Kenyans and a thoroughly degrading place. It's hard to see how the problem of poverty can be fixed in this particular place but the Christian community is active there and doing what it can with the resources available.



After this rushed visit, it was back to the Crean's place where Patrick was waiting to take me back to the airport. A flight to Abu Dhabi and another to Sydney, the trip is over and I'm back home. The things I related to you are just a snippet of the rich fabric of life and people that God had prepared for me long before I left for Africa. Sure, the travel was a pain and life in that part of the world can be inconvenient and frustrating, but I wouldn't have missed a second of it! I have been mightily blessed by the experience of God's people, His protection and His provision. And for these things, I am truly grateful.

So Much to Do with So Little Time!

The rest of Sunday, I spent at Wakisa and at a plumbing store, trying to figure out how to instal an overflow pipe from one of the existing water tank to the new one - I spent 1 hour buying the fittings I needed. Finally that project was completed!

The reason for the overflow pipe was that I didn't want to waste any opportunity to harvest water. With so many girls on site, Wakisa uses a lot of water - cooking, bathing, washing clothes etc, and when the town water is off (and that's more often than you might think!) and it's not raining, the water runs out pretty quickly. When that happens, they have to buy in water via a tanker and it's pretty expensive!

At about 5 pm, I went back to the guesthouse for a shower - Miriam was coming over at 6 pm to go through some more of her budget figures in an effort to see if she could afford to move to new premises closer to work. We spent an hour on this in the coffee shop and then had a lovely meal in the restaurant.

Monday I was scheduled to go and visit another of the sponsored girls - Eunice who attends Lubanyi Secondary School. This required me to get a Coaster bus to Jinja and then a 14-seater Hiace van (taxi) to Buwenge. At that point, I caught up with Rev Paul, a local pastor who has taken Eunice under his wing - she's very fortunate that way. We jumped on his 100cc bike for the 10 km ride on a dirk road to the school. If you click on the map, you should see a larger scale version. kampala to Jinja is 80 km.

Once again, Eunice was very excited to be having visitors and it also turned out that Rev Paul's 7th child, Sarah, was the bursar at the school. We sat and chatted for about 30 minutes and I was amazed at how much more confident and self-assured Eunice was compared to the last time I saw her 3 years ago. It's amazing what a bit of support, love and encouragement does for these girls, and that's all because of their faithful sponsors.

The round trip took 10 hours and so I arrived home tired and very dusty at about 8.30 pm. But it was worth it!

Now only 2 days to go.


Most of Tuesday morning I spent writing a 3-page report on my visit to Wakisa Kisoro - like most people, Vivian thought it was a bit detailed - but what can I say, that's the way He made me. Mid-morning the computer guys came to finish the work on the network - a new router, a couple of new LAN cards and a new cable and the whole thing was working at max speed again, and wireless connections had also been added - all the ladies were thrilled!

Florence wanted to catch up one last time before I left, so I met her for lunch at her local campus of Uganda Christian Uni. She showed me around, explained about her scholarship, her course and lecturers before I had to rush into town to do a similar thing with Miriam. While I was in town, I mailed some photos off the Eunice, Rev Paul and Sarah, bought a new flash drive for Patience and made one last visit to the bank.

That evening, Francis and Pamela had invited me to their home for dinner, Francis picking me up at the guesthouse. They had moved home (they rent at the moment) 3 times in the last 3 years, one time because of theft and another time because of a greedy landlord. It's the done thing to bring something home for the lady of the house, so we dropped in to a local supermarket and got some sugar, bread, apples, juices etc. They have 2 boys, Joel and Jesse, both very cute, but also quite different. We had a lovely meal together and talked of the things of God - I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

And her's one of Pamela and the boys as well.







I'm not exactly sure what I did on my last day - I know I was busy and ran some computer cables from Vivian's office, across the hall and into the office where Patience and Suzan work. Late in the day, I also remember training the 3 ladies in the use of Google calendar and Google docs - better late than never! That evening, my last in Uganda, I went to dinner at Vivian's and joined June form the UK and a young lady from Canada who was staying in Vivian's self-contained flat. The meal was delicious (slow braised pork chops) with lots of trimmings. The conversation was easy as well as interesting! I had to leave at about 9 pm as I still needed to pack.

And my next post will be the last!

Off to Lira & Back to Kampala

It's now Wednesday Oct 23 and I catch a bus from Gulu to Lira. I sat next to an Indian guy who has only lived in Uganda for 2 years and is the manager of the Crane Bank in Gulu - he spends half of each week in Lira looking after that branch as well. We had a good chat & he told me a lot about growing cotton in the area which may come in handy for Live Connection.

After arriving, I caught a boda boda to the Lira Hotel, I nice place that I have stayed in previously. The power was off but it was comfortable. Tom, Miriam's dad, picked me up on his bike about 12.30 pm and we went to Shadrack's school (Miriam's son). It's a privately owned Primary School with 1000 students! I had lunch with Tom & Margaret, one of their sons Lawrence, two of their daughters, Santa & Molly, as well as two old neighbours that they care for and keep an eye on. I went back to the hotel to do some work at 3 pm but fell asleep instead!

At 4.30 pm, I headed off to Atin Africa (Child of Africa in the local Lou language). This ministry takes in street kids, cares for them, gets them healthy, loves them, gets them back into school and tries to get them back with their families. It was founded by Chelsea, a young Canadian woman who I met at Wakisa 3 years ago and have kept in touch with. She has an amazing heart for these kids and co-runs the ministry with Morris, a local Ugandan guy. Chelsea has a job until the end of November when she goes back home for a while, so she didn't arrive till about 6 pm. In the meantime, I chatted with two other Canadian volunteers and met some of the boys and the pet animals. I needed to go back and have dinner with Tom and the family, but agreed to come back and be involved in the kids praise & worship session about 8.30 pm. Dinner was good as usual and the family very hospitable and caring. About 7.50 pm the heavens opened and down came the rain. Tom had borrowed a car to take me to Atin so we jumped in and headed off. Unfortunately, 200 mt down the road, we broke down - we tried to get the car going for about 30 minutes and then we had to give up - I went back to the hotel in the rain on a boda boda and Tom had to sleep in the car for the night! And what happened to Chelsea - well, when I checked my phone, she had sent me a text saying that because they still didn't have any power, she had sent the kids to bed early!  TIA.

The next morning (Friday 25 Oct), I still had no power and I discovered that the water was off as well - so I decided that I may as well walk into town and get on a bus back to Kampala - luckily I caught the first bus out of Lira at 6.30 am and was back in Kampala about lunchtime! I spent the afternoon doing some work on the computers and the network at Wakisa. While I was doing that, Carol dropped in. Carol was going into Senior 4 at the beginning of 2012 but her pregnancy test came back positive. Her sponsorship was therefore halted. I asked her if she had been with a boy and she denied it - was it a false positive, I don't know. Anyway, an uncle (her father's brother) agreed to pay her fees so that she could finish Senior 4, the equivalent if the School Certificate. This year she has been doing a hair and cosmetics course at the equivalent of TAFE, and is doing very well - she hopes to open her own solon when she completes the course mid-way through next year.


On the Saturday, I spent the day installing the water tank. This involved totally emptying the tank, moving it to the other side of the yard, crawling inside to instal the outlet tap, mounting it onto its stand and connecting it up to the guttering. It all went reasonably well with only a drop of 50mm or so from the gutter to the tank. At 3 pm, I when back to the guesthouse for a shower and change as I had agreed to meet Florence ( a 26 year old, ex-Wakisa girl that I have been sponsoring to university for several years but have since stopped) and spend some time in prayer at Prayer Mountain, a property set aside for just that purpose. She showed me around African Bible University on the way (she had studied there for 2 years before transferring to Uganda Christian University). Up on Prayer Mountain, we prayed separately and together from 8 pm till 1 am, before retiring to the men's & women's tents (on opposite sides of the property). It was a real time of blessing! However, I wasn't really prepared for sleeping in a communal tent - I had no warm clothes, no mattress and no blanket. Fortunately, God provided an angel of a man who gave me a mattress and a blanket without me asking - I don't know where he came from nor where he went - but I know I was grateful. We got up at 8 am and headed off, Florence to a church service in town and I back to the guesthouse to Skype with the family.

Trouble Leaving South Sudan

Even though I arrived back home last Saturday evening, I will continue with my blog, mainly so I have a record of what I did. If you choose to come along, that would be just fine as well.

Because John and I needed to be at the airport by 9 am, the plan was to be at the Live Connection site by 7.30 am so I could finish what I needed to do. However, "This Is Africa" (TIA for short!) and things rarely go to plan, so we didn't arrive at the site till 8.30 am, leaving me only 30 minutes. So I asked Paul more questions about the school  and the second borehole they were planning to have drilled and he told me that he had finally got in touch with the 2IC of the drilling contractor. Apparently the boss was in Nairobi and wouldn't be back till the end of October and the first borehole was scheduled to be drilled on November 7th. I climbed up on the roof twice to get some panoramic shots of the fenced area and all the crops, talked to Pastor Paul (the leader of Live Connection in Australia), said goodbye to all the locals and jumped on a boda boda to get to the airport just 10 minutes late.

The flight didn't leave till 11 am because of all the UN & military activity that was going on - helicopters taking off and landing every 10 minutes or so! But the trip back was fine and I got some great photos of the Nile which was almost in flood. When we got back to Juba, we dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to the bus park and bought my ticket on the 6 am bus to Gulu (northern Uganda).

I then went to an air-conditioned internet cafe to check my emails - it was like heaven & I didn't want to leave! Eventually I had to because I had an appointment with a guy called Paul Wel - he has dual South Sudanese-Canadian citizenship and is working in South Sudan till the end of the year, teaching ex-soldiers how to farm - his family live in Canada. Live Connection are trying to register themselves as an international NGO with the Government and Paul is a willing helper in this process. That night I asked John to take me to a local restaurant where they served regular South Sudanese food. It was just around the corner and we ate Morocan-style, with a number of bowls on a large platter. I ate delicious beef stew, lentils, liver and raw onion with the aid of some very thin, soft, warm bread-like stuff - I think it cost $10 for the two of us!

Next morning we were up at 4.30 am and the bus left precisely at 6 am!! (this is where John & I parted company) The 200 km of road to the border with Uganda was beautiful - fully paved and without a pothole. Getting an exit stamp in my passport was chaotic and totally confusing but, in the end, only took about 30 minutes. Then you had to get a boda boda across to border into Uganda - about 1 km. Here I needed to get a another visa because South Sudan is not yet a member of the East African Community and so you cannot use a multi-entry Ugandan visa. Again after much apparent chaos & frustration, I had my visa and was back on the bus. That's when the waiting started - just 1 km up the road, two semis had crashed and blocked the only road out of town. Five hours later, they had moved one of the trucks and we could slowly get around the accident. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of rain in the area over the previous two weeks and so the roads were very treacherous - so much so that 10 km down the road, a petrol tanker got bogged in the soft mud on the side of the track. Trucks, buses & all assortment of vehicles were banked back for kilometres in both directions! Another 3 hours waiting for a Chinese bulldozer to pull it out and we were on our way to Gulu, arriving at 6 pm - my 4 hour trip had taken 12 hours (TIA).

It was too late to travel to Lira (about 100 km away), so I met up with Harriet, Miriam's older sister and she took me to her home for dinner - again that African hospitality and eagerness to entertain visitors. I met her two children, her son Leslee (6) and Nicole (3) - both as cute as buttons. I had always wondered about the kids fascination with white skin - Leslee explained that kids thought that if you pinched our skin really hard, blood would ooze out. No wonder they were fascinated! I made him pinch me really hard and told him to go to school the next day and tell all the other kids about what didn't happen. Harriet walked me back to town and to my hotel, the Peal Afrique, which was really very good. I needed a good sleep as I would be up early again the following morning.

More of South Sudan

The Live Connection (LC) site is about 10 km out of Bor. The land has a road frontage of 100 mt and goes back for maybe 200 mt (5 acres). It was granted to them by the South Sudanese Government. You get there on a boda boda and it can take 30-45 minutes. That's John Chol (my host) on the back - he's an unpaid pastor of a church in Juba and is a quiet, gentle, humble man.

I met Paul Deng, a nice young man who is the manager of the site. In this photo, Paul is displaying some of the local maize variety that they had grown recently. They had also grown tomatoes, ochre, zucchini, eggplant, dura, Lady's Fingers, two types of beans and pumpkin, just for starters.

Earlier this year, the LC team plus the locals, erected the first building on the site. The RH hand end is bedrooms while the LH end is a training room. It was really quite well built with timber and the roofing panels being shipped from Australia.

The people who live on site ( left to right & front to back) include Paul Deng, Nyawut (Monica's sister), Monica (Jacob's wife) & her baby, Jacob, Nyalith (someone's aunt), Nyagai (Majok's wife), Majok. John Chol is on the far right.

I asked Paul a hundred questions, given that I don't know much about farming. He explained that the initial fenced area (50 x 50 mt) has been gradually cleared and then cropped and that the first time that the whole plot will be cropped will be in next year's wet season which starts in April. They are such a hospitable people and wanted me to eat lunch with them. Monica made their favourite dish which consisted of acop (small balls made from maize flour) topped with a stew of ochre & green bean leaves. It was delicious!

After finding the boundary pegs and walking the boundary as far as possible, we headed back to town and booked our flight back to Juba the next morning. Then we headed to Pastor Elizabeth's place where Paul and I started work on a plan to build Stage II of the project - a primary school for the local kids who currently have to walk 2 hours into town. After we got as far as we could with the information we had, the others had a church meeting in their local Dinka language. Even though I didn't understand what they were saying, the dynamic was very interesting - each person was given as much time as they wanted, to present their case - and the others just sat there without interupting. It went on for about an hour and as I understand it, whatever the matter was, it was not resolved and they would have to have another meeting on another day. We had dinner (beef stew with beautiful, fresh, soft buns to absorb all the juice!) in almost pitch dark with torches. We also walked back to our hotel in the dark, bathed and flopped into bed.