Uganda!

After a few days of radio silence in Kampala, we find ourselves up north in Gulu, Uganda. At a nearly new hotel with excellent internet access. Who knew?

This morning we travelled 5 hours by minivan through the bush country of Uganda, across the River Nile (spectacular, and a first for me, really), into AcholiLand to the town of Gulu. Along the way we ate G.O.A.S. - goat on a stick - (delicious) and grilled casaba root from roadside vendors, fed bananas to baboons right out of our windows, and had 437 near misses with trucks, motorcycles, bikes, and walkers. Every day's an adventure.

To catch you up, quickly, here's a little rundown of our time since we left Kigali on Tuesday.

After a relaxing morning of coffee, bird watching on the deck, breakfast and one last quick soccer game with the kids in Carter's yard, we said goodbye to Rwanda and headed for the airport. Travel  to Kampala and losing an hour to the time zone ate up the rest of the day.

Wednesday, plans got thrown for a little loop. A former president of Uganda died earlier in the week, so Wednesday became a national holiday. He was buried somewhere near the slum we were supposed to visit and work in, so that was out. Everything there was on lockdown. No cars in or out. Turned out there was a national team soccer game in the afternoon so we scored some tickets and got to see Uganda outplay Zambia. A nice treat. And such is Africa. You make a plan. Something throws a wrench in it. You wait a few minutes and sure as sugar, something good comes up.

While we waited for the game, we took a couple hour walk from our hotel through a nearby slum, saw living conditions that are hard to believe, ate jack fruit, and played hackey sack with a ton of kids. Oh yeah, we did that in the rain. That accentuated the difficulty of the living situation. This is the dry season. Much of the year, it rains part of every day, flooding these packed communities. That's rough.

Thursday we split up. I stayed back at hotel as, beginning about 4 am the night before, it became critical that I be near a toilet. After one try with Immodium, I started to hit the Cipro hard. It had me in and out of bed for about 12 hours. Could have been worse. But it wasn't awesome.

Mike headed off to the orphanage where our friends, Andy and Sarah Ribbens' little baby is waiting for paperwork to be completed so they can come pick him up and take him home to Santa Barbara. He was able to deliver a care package and hang out for a few minutes with the cute, little guy. It was good.

Meanwhile, Josh, Garth, and Bryan headed into one of the slums where Sports Outreach guys are living and working. Moses, now 32 yrs old, and one of the SOI staff members moved into this paritcular slum 5 or 6 years ago to better understand how to serve and help the people living there. Along the way he has adopted 9 boys, who were living alone on the streets, ranging in age from about 4 to 14. Crazy to know they were all alone, with stories like Amos', now 18, whose parents died of aids when he was 6, no siblings, no extended family, literally living off trash all by himself for two years. He told the guys regarding those years, "I was very sad." Has there ever been a greater understatement? Others took him in at age 8 until he began to play soccer with Moses 6 years ago. There are hundreds, probably thousands more like him just in this sprawling city of Kampala, but for those 9, life is very different now. Moses and his 9 boys run a small bakery, a feeding program for kids, a kindergarten for 35, and a soccer club much like ours at home, with Under 12, U14, U16, and U18 teams. The U18's could give a US college team a good run. There are probably 200 kids playing on the various teams. It's an entre into the kids lives and a point of hope.

After a celebration dinner with the staff and another team from Ohio, we hit the beds tired. We are now sitting at our hotel waiting for our ride out to the Koro farm, the center of Sports Outreach operations here in the north. We've been told to be ready to see some amazing things. We'll let you know if we do.

I hope to pop some pictures up if we get some time tonight. We have lots more good ones.