The Beginning

 We made it to Uganda safely! Just over twenty-four hours after we began our journey. However, once we arrived, we still had to get from Entebbe to Lira. An eight hour drive to the north. It ended up being a blessing that we did. It allowed us to see so much more of the country.

The landscape we passed was beautiful, with stretches of thick jungle-ish (not a word?) shrubbery and other, sparser land punctuated by those striking African trees we all know from the movies. What was more interesting to me, however, were the people we passed along the way and their homes. I had seen them before, those tiny thatched huts that people use to house entire families. I had seen them in quite a few poorer countries across the globe. But this was different. Here they weren't the primitive lodgings reserved for the underprivileged few who live on the outside of society. Here they seem to be the norm.

Uganda is indisputable a hugely impoverished country.

The other thing that was striking to me was that, while everyone we've met have been very friendly, we don't seem to get the ready smiles and greetings that I've found in other areas of Africa. In fact, I don't see them laughing with each other as much either. I'm sure it's a fluke, that I've just been looking at the wrong times. I've only been here a couple of days after all. It's also likely that they're not greeting the tourists because this is not a typical tourist area. They're not used to seeing us. They're not trying to sell us anything.

I can't stop thinking that it might be something else, though. That just maybe, as a people group with minimal access to water, a shortage of food resulting in (on average) one meager meal a day, and an entire family sleeping on the floor of a tiny structure cobbled together out of sticks, clay, and cow dung... it might just be that they don't have much to smile about.

And yet, Ugandans are clearly an active, vibrant people group. Everywhere we've been, people are outside, going here and there, hanging out with their friends in front of the local shops. It feels like they are forever in motion, taking jerry cans of water home for their family or heading down the cratered dusty roads, making their way to some place I can only imagine.

It's that zest for life that is opening my eyes to the fact that God might have brought us here to bless the Ugandans with clean water, but He will likely end up using them to bless us right back.

* I'm going to post entries in order of experience. However, due to limited time, Internet access and tech issues, most entries will be a few days behind. Also, posts will be contributed by different team members. So, if some entries seem to depict wildly differing experiences or observations, it's not because of schizophrenic issues.