Home Again

It’s good to be back in Uganda...I never realized how many little things I missed! Simple things like the natural sounds you hear at night, African tea, the sweetest pineapple on earth, and even Blue Band! Blue Band is basically the only brand of butter here and it’s so much sweeter than ours. Of course, I missed the people most of all. It has been amazing to see everyone here. In fact, it feels like I hardly left even though it’s been a year.

We arrived around midnight at the airport in Entebbe completely exhausted, but excited to be home. The most exciting part about our arrival for me was discovering that my cello was completely intact and even tuned to the same pitch that I left it in! I had heard so many horror stories about people putting their instruments under the airplane with the rest of the luggage and finding them crushed when they reached their destination that I swore I would never check mine as baggage. I was planning to just ship it through DHL but apparently something of that size costs about $2000 to ship that far...not an option! Since we found this out the day before we left for Uganda, we had no choice but to check it with the rest of our luggage and trust that God would get it there safely. Needless to say, God came through for us again! A big “THANK YOU” to all who prayed for it!

After spending the first night in Entebbe, Michael’s sister Barbara picked us up and had us stay at her house for lunch. She has 4 beautiful boys who I am proud to call my nephews. They were fascinated with my “guitar” and also had fun with the camera. I’m telling you if you just give kids here a little bit of trust and lend them your camera, they will take the best pictures. Here is some of their work...I think you can tell which one is Mr. Personality

Later that day I met some more of Michael’s family that lives in Kampala, and finally ended up in Mukono in the evening at my host family’s new house. My host father from last year, Musumba Henry, insisted that we stay with them until we find a place of our own...how could we refuse?! It’s been so good to be with this family again, especially Enoch. Sometimes he can be just as fun and sweet as he was last year, but other times he really lives up to the stage that he’s in...the terrible two’s. He’s talking a lot more now, and his favorite new words seem to be “motocar, vroom, vroom!” He really only speaks and understands Luganda, but he’s very good at copying and mimicking words and sounds – even when I cough or clear my throat he also does it!

So far we’ve been looking around Mukono and Kampala for cheap but decent apartments. There are definitely plenty of good options but it’s hard to decide where to live when we don’t know where we’ll be working. There’s a beautiful apartment in Mukono with a lot of advantages but we’ll most likely end up somewhere in Kampala. Michael’s friends and family have been so great, looking for places for us...people here really take care of you.

Unfortunately I came down with a cold about 2 days after we got here and throughout the week I’ve had it all – runny nose, sore throat, cough, fever, and aches. I’ve been taking more medicine than I knew what to do with and just to make things worse, on Friday I woke up with a very fast heart rate and almost no strength to do anything. I finally went to the doctor only to find out that it was just a reaction to some of the meds I was taking to get rid of the cold. So I guess that’s good news but we spent a lot of money to find out that information and walk away with some basic pain killers and vitamins.

Anyways, we’re really doing fine overall, though still very tired. Michael has been meeting often with his business partners about their travel company, and I’ve been attempting to rest though it’s still not enough. It’s going to take a while to adjust and really recover from the trip, so please pray for rest and strength in these next few weeks while we also look for jobs and housing. God has been so faithful every step of the way and we’re excited to see where exactly he takes us next!