I hope everyone has had lovely Christmas (yes people in "Africa" know it's Christmas... Despite what Bob Geldof tries to tell us...) and a very happy new year!!
We have had a good holiday season, so I will tell you a little of what we have been up to over the past couple of weeks.
Christmas
Unsurprisingly it was quite a different Christmastime than usual. On Christmas eve, we enjoyed a wee trip to the cinema to see Exodus; Gods and kings (wasn't the greatest film really...) and then we got ourselves an Indian takeaway as a treat! On Christmas morning we headed to church for a short service, and then met Alex at the supermarket to do the shopping for dinner. It was very interesting Christmas here as it isn't really much of a big deal compared to back home with the big lights/sales/decorations/parties. For quite a lot of people it seemed like Christmas was just another day, in fact we bought the food for our dinner at 12pm on Christmas day.. It would be near impossible to do that in the UK!
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| Nice apron.. |
We had invited a few members of the 'Smile family' over for dinner so it was a fun occasion! At one point there was about 15 of us gathered round the table! Everyone either brought along a dish or helped with the cooking, so it was a good team effort. I was in charge of making the pigs in blankets (which were obviously the best part..) but we all helped out, with a mix of British and African dishes! Including roast chicken, goat, pasta salad, roast tatties, pigs in blankets, lots of various veg, to name a few! Needles to say there was plenty of food for everyone. We even managed to have 3 courses of pudding having fruit salad, then ice cream, and then cake!! All in all it was a very good day :)
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| Crackers! |
Rwanda
On the 27th - 30th of December we were in Rwanda for a few days, as we had to leave Uganda and re-enter to renew our visas for a further 3 months.
This involved getting a 10 hour bus from Kampala to Kigali (the capital city of Rwanda), which was long and bumpy! Our time in Rwanda was very relaxing, spending most of our chilling out and not doing very much. Rwanda was a very interesting country to visit. Quite different to Uganda in my opinion. The differences were apparent from them moment we crossed the border really, with properly tarmacked roads, and driving on the right hand side! The scenery was very beautiful, VERY hilly (Rwanda being called the land of a thousand hills..), but incredibly beautiful driving through the hills and seeing the great valleys bellow. The city of Kigali was also much more ordered than Kampala, our bus driver even complained that people didn't queue up properly when getting the service bus to the hostel. People were quite friendly and in a way it felt safer than Kampala, with streets being well lit, and an obvious police presence.
During our stay we spent sometime visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial. This is a museum and mass burial site dedicated to the thousands of Rwandans who were killed during the genocide of 1994. It also serves as a reminder to the terrible atrocities which took place in the country, aiming to educate the population, and the world, so something so terrible never occurs again. This was a very interesting experience as I didn't know much about the history of the country. It pretty much went through the whole history of the country, highlighting several factors that contributed to the genocide taking place, as well as how the country has tried to change and heal. There certainly appears to be quite a strong community spirit and sense of forgiveness in the country.
Other than that, we spent our time around Kigali enjoying a couple of lunches out etc, Which was nice and relaxing. On the 30th we traveled back to Uganda on an overnight bus! We crossed the border and we renewed our visas for a further 3 months, relatively hassle free. Not much sleep was had due to the bumpy roads!! (9 hours of the journey took place in Uganda, and only 1 hour of nice smoot Rwandan roads...) so we spent most of the day on the 31st catching up on sleep.
New Year
As I just said we spent most of the day catching up on sleep on the 31st as we only arrived back in Kampala at around 7am. At around 9pm we headed to church for and evening of prayer and worship. This was a nice time of reflection and a good chance to focus on God as we entered into 2015. When it turned 12am, there was a particularly joyful time of worship which I couldn't help be reminded of the scene in the movie 'the Blue Brothers' when the go to church,, (found here if anyone is unfamiliar with it..) It was quite a different experience to enter the new year to say the least! All good fun though.
We didn't really do anything on the 1st (in fact I actually washed my clothes.... fun times!) and we spent the following weekend relaxing, going in to Kampala for a small shopping trip.
Last Monday work at Smile resumed, however we were supposed to be at a camp for students and youth at the church, but this was unfortunately cancelled.
Instead we have spent the time preparing posters and teaching materials for the coming term at Ruth Mother Care. We also went on community outreach to the Slums, it was nice to see the people in the area again after the Christmas break.
Tomorrow we head off to Murchison Falls National park for a safari! I am very excited as we will get the opportunity to see a very large number of different animals living in their natural environments! I will keep you when we get back as to what we got up to and what we saw!
Hope you all had a restful holiday season, and have not blown away in the recent storms!!
Ken
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