"Student" Life

It’s crazy to think that we have consistently been back on campus for over a month since rural home stays – in some ways my time in Kapchurwa feels lifetimes ago and in another sense I still cannot believe we completed that.

Nonetheless, we have spent the last month studying at UCU…for the most part!

A typical school day is refreshingly similar to a school day in America (or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it) – classes for a couple hours each day, hanging out with friends during meals, finishing homework, writing papers etc.

I am learning a ton in my classes right now! We recently finished a unit about poverty (what it actually is, what are common misconceptions, effectiveness of alleviation efforts, and what our proper response should be, etc.), compassion, and now we are moving into a unit focusing on identity and faithful living in the US. A lot of my previous assumptions have been exposed and blown out of the water in the past couple months – it is awesome but not easy to sort through all the questions and implications of new information and perspectives.

We have gotten very creative with our food lately - rice twice a day has gotten pretty old by now, so we have begun capitalizing on local ingredients. Here are some of my favorite combinations:

-         -  Vanilla “yoghurt” mixed with “ottie butter” (peanut butter) with chunks of bananas

o   I also make yoghurt parfaits with fruit and cereal – yum!!

-         -  Chapatties (the tortilla-like food) with avocado  (ok… avocado on anything is great and hundreds are ripening on campus right now!)

-        -  Pineapple and papaya always – I think I could singlehandedly keep the fruit stand in business if I needed to!

Although we have been on campus during the weekdays, USP students have organized a couple weekend trips that have been a BLAST!

The first trip was to Jinja (about an hour away) to what is commonly considered the source of the Nile. We spent Saturday white water rafting and I loved it!! Before heading to the rapids we were briefed on following the guide’s commands and how to be safe when the boat flips – which it did! The rapids were big but thankfully the water was so deep we didn’t have to worry about rocks. We were rafting for about 5 hours and I loved every minute of it!

We spent the night at the company’s lodge right on the river. The next morning we began bungee jumping! There were 14 of us that jumped off the 144 foot platform over the water – I was tied by my ankles and once my toes were over the edge they had me wave to everyone, countdown, and literally dive out off the platform. Thankfully I took their advice and did not look down – I just shut off my brain and went for it! It was so scary and so fun!

2 weekends ago we went on a safari to Murchison Falls National Park! After 7 hours in the car, we had lunch at the lodge before heading out for the animal drive. We had two vans full of students which morphed into safari vans by popping the roof up – this allows you to stand inside the van and be in the shade while looking over the top of the vehicle. My favorite, though, was being able to sit on top of the van! It was an incredible view and the plains just enveloped me as we drove through the park. We got to see families of African elephants, antelopes, warthogs (they really are like Pumba in the Lion King!), water bucks, and giraffes! I kept needing to remind myself that it was real life and this was their actual habitat – it was amazing! The entire day we were praying we would see a lion but our guides told us they are often hard to find...BUT right when we were heading out of the park, the driver started speeding around (which made holding on kinda difficult.. but it was fun!). He drove us around a bush and right there –a couple feet away, was a LION! He was just hanging out in the bush. He was an unbelievable animal and he looked at us with piercing eyes that were incredible! All of the sudden our driver started speeding around again, and we got to see another lion out in the open who was chillin’ near a giraffe next to the water. It’s still hard to believe the experience was real!

The next morning we took a boat ride on the Nile – we saw a bunch of very pretty birds, big reptiles, crocodiles, and many hippos that looked just like big rocks until they moved! The boat took us to the bottom of Murchison Falls where we hiked to the top of the mountain. The view of the waterfall was so beautiful!
We “grabbed” (it took at least 2 hours) lunch before heading back to campus – it was quite the weekend adventure!

This past weekend we were “on campus,” although a couple of us are headed into Kampala for the day and went on a nice hike on Sunday. Next weekend we are going to Luwero (I don’t actually know the spelling) for my cross cultural ministry class. It’s hard to believe that we will be done with the UCU semester and headed to Rwanda in less than a month from now – I can hardly fathom we are at this point! More adventures to come!

Rural Home Stay: Glimpses of a Great Week! (With lots of pictures!)

Home stay #2 was located 5 hours away in Kapchurwa, Uganda – fairly close to the boarder of Kenya. This home stay was a week long and designed to show us a rural and more traditional tribe. I can’t say that I was particularly looking forward to this experience as we headed out – I was definitely thinking it would a week of pure perseverance. But God had totally different plans and He absolutely blessed me throughout the whole week.

I will attempt to give a rundown of the experience through brief descriptions and pictures:

My house was located near the top of mountainside and overlooked the valley and town below. I was mesmerized by it the whole time! (this hardly begins to capture the expanse of the beauty…)

My family was AWESOME! I had a 3 year old sister named Phoebe, and two sisters who were 17 and 21. The father was a Reverend in Kampala during the week days, and the mother worked for Compassion International – I visited her project and baked a cake there one day! Everyone was incredibly encouraging and inviting – I felt like part of the family right away.



I learned a ton of typical Ugandan skills throughout my week there – I definitely was not as fast and efficient at anything, but it was fun to learn and I think it was amusing for them to watch me!

Went to fetch water from the borehole:

As we were walking down the mountain side, the children playing in the river below saw me coming and literally started screaming “mzungu” (which means white person) and started running! Here is a picture of the kids sprinting away:

They did come around later, though, so it wasn't too traumatizing after all!

We milked the cow:

I learned how to make chipatties (my favorite Ugandan food). We cooked in a mud house over fire, so that was a new/interesting experience all together! The phrase “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen” had zero meaning here – if it was hot and smoky (which it often/always was), you just kept cooking!

Roasting corn at the neighbor's house - they truly do have wonderful community

They asked me if I waned to weed the garden... turned out "weeding" is actually hoeing.Those were definitely two different activities in my mind, but I did it!

We did quite a lot of dishes, but the view was so pretty that I didn’t mind at all!

They had 4 puppies and 3 kittens that were all the perfect age to play with! I named them and domesticated the cutest ones (which conveniently happened to be the most social ones as well!).

The kitten's name is Bennie and the puppy is George!

Both Bennie and George became cuddlers by the end!

We did other tasks such as pick vegetables, sort rice, cook cabbage, wash clothes etc. My sisters were inspiring as they found joy and put spunk into even the mundane tasks – I learned a lot from them. The week was a perfect combination of physical labor and relaxation. Life was a whole lot simpler in the village and it was so refreshing to see the natural cycle of the earth and vegetation when it is stewarded well! I loved the whole week and am so thankful for the experience!

The USP program ended with a retreat in Sipi Falls - our porches looked out onto a lush valley and gorgeous waterfall cascading over the rocks. It was so surreal that I often found myself unconsciously thinking it was a fake backdrop, but no! We hiked to the top and bottom of three waterfalls that weekend and they were most definitely real and really beautiful!!

I am now back at UCU for a while. We have a couple weekend trips planned, but I will be on campus for the majority of March! I cannot believe the semester is half way over, but I am so grateful for the experience I have had thus far and I am so looking forward to the second half as well!