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!