The opposite of rall...

It’s been a pretty full on past two weeks as I’ve been dashing about the East of the country, frantically trying to fit in bits and bobs I’d hoped to see before I left (muffled sob). What’s made it more busy has been that there have (predictably) been a few jobs that have decided to become more complicated than expected or have been resurrected from the near-dead by forces beyond my control. What’s made it even more busy has been the desire to spend lots of quality time with friends here before I ditch them and go back to my real friends in the UK. And to top it all off, I keep stumbling across great books that are keeping me up at night reading. Needless to say, I’ll get back either be miserable company or sleeping, get excited!

Top of the list of exciting things was a little trip up to Karamoja which is a couple of districts north of where I am and has a wonderful reputation in Uganda (you probably can’t tell I’m being sarcastic here so I added this). The Karamojong are generally looked down on by everyone else in Uganda for being nomadic, cattle raisers who drink the blood of their cattle (like the Massai), often wear blanket things (I may have forgotten the word) (and until recently often didn’t wear anything), uneducated, thieves and violent people. The Karamojong are spread out in five different districts, none of which has a single paved road leaving you travelling on dirt roads that have been ruined by the huge ‘marble trucks’, gasping at the remote, arid, rocky, rugged and beautiful surrounds. The plus of the roads being in a dire situation is that it gives plenty of time to pause to take photos, especially if they carefully designed the worst bits to coincide with openings in the long grass where you can look up at Mount Elgon.

I liked it

Anyway, enough background! I travelled up on Sunday (22^nd) afternoon with Dr Jim (who worked with Dr Jan for a bit before moving up in Uganda) and stayed until Wednesday on the base the Presbyterians have there from which they do medical, church, health and education work, as well as running a really impressive engineering team that runs around drilling boreholes and the like. It was really interesting to see a very different clinic to both the Hospice and Buwasunguyi, due to the community, the aims, the funding and the people involved. Whilst at the clinic on Monday, I got invited to watch Dr Jim suture someone’s finger. I thought this would be a great idea as I was free and hadn’t gotten to see much medical stuff up close whilst I’ve been here (heard quite a lot though). A young boy had gashed open his index finger on his left hand and I survived the excruciating looking manner of anaesthetising the finger (so did the boy) but midway through the extensive and invasive cleaning process, I began to feel a bit queasy over the wound. I retreated and, realising I had drank anything for over three hours, rehydrated and re-entered. I lasted until Dr Jim started liberally tugging at the flaps of loose skin to line them up so he could finish the neat stitching before deciding it was probably wise to leave rather than embarrass myself. I’m thinking it might be quite a good thing I didn’t become a doctor…

Generally, I had an amazing three days in Karamoja, found the locals lovely and welcoming (even if some of the ladies did look like a little scary with their ceremonial cheek-bone scars) and those Presbyterians are really nice people! Different people took me in and fed me every evening and kept me well supplied with ginger beer.

I’ve also been doing travelling closer to home and, on Thursday last week, I finally set my eyes on Mount Elgon which was a great experience! This happened in the midst of training day for pastors in the Church of Uganda around HIV/AIDS (which I was naturally attending). I stole away after lunch to find the mountain and, after rounding enough corners and passing through enough banana plantations (I exaggerate only slightly) I saw it. Boom. I was a very happy man.

So, maybe I'm still quite a long way away, but it counts!

Even better, on Thursday some of us went out to a pork joint! Thursday was a public holiday set to honour one of the political parties (surprisingly it’s the one that’s been in power for over 20 years that has it’s own public holiday called ‘Liberation Day’ from when the present President led a coup) and we felt it best to celebrate with enormous quantities of pork. The weird thing is that I’ve gotten myself used to the ratio of meat to carb here (typically three pieces of meat which require careful rationing) but the pork was more meaty than one of those crazy, meat-fuelled places you’d get in the US somewhere. Needless to say, my stomach was responding like that of a vegetarian seduced by a bacon butty throughout Friday.

At a pork joint with friends, does it get any better?

Just as exciting as the pork joint was Saturday (21^st)’s entertainment which took the form of crazy golf! That’s right, one of the hotels here has a crazy golf course. Book your flights now. Brilliantly, the careful mismanagement of the course has ended up making it even more crazy with tree roots making straight lines an even more difficult ambition.

One week from now, I’ll probably still be writing a blog post but from the very different surroundings of my home (though I also might just be asleep in bed already). Needless to say, leaving is now quite a large part of life here and I’m slowly working out who I still need to say goodbye to, what I still need to finish etc etc. Effectively, this sprinkles special-ness over normally mundane aspects of life (I had my last posho and beans last Friday). I’m looking forward to being home and all that involves, especially Michael’s wedding, but there are huge numbers of things I’m now preparing to miss. What’s weird is that the things I’m going to miss from Uganda are almost the opposite of those things I miss from university; I’m intrigued as to whether the two will cancel each other out…

Anyway, needless to say I’m looking forward to seeing you Brits soon. I’m intending to be using the same UK number as before (+447815015582). Please do pray for my last week here, that things come to a good and Godly conclusion, but also for my future! That thing that lurks ever larger before me, needing slightly more attention than it’s currently getting…