Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Baking post
As you may have already guessed from the title of this post, there is a food post that can be found at: http://sarasglobalcooking.blogspot.com
There is one post on Monkey Bread and a second one on Fried Biscuits.
There is one post on Monkey Bread and a second one on Fried Biscuits.
Daily Life in Uganda
We wanted to give you a little more information and pictures so you can understand a bit more about our day to day lives here.
First we have a snake picture. This snake was found by Harriet in our yard this last week during the evening, in the dark. She called the guard and he killed it. They thought it was poisonous but we do not think it was after looking on the internet and asking around. But though it’s not good to kill harmless snakes, it’s not worth the risk to figure it out when it’s crawling at your feet in the dark. If you can figure out what species it is, let us know, we haven’t been able to figure it out. It is all green, and a white belly. We do not think it was long enough to be a green mamba.
This next picture is of a caecilian, which is an amphibian. It was at least a foot long or more. I found it while digging a hole to put our compost in. I also found a much bigger and more silvery one in the garden while digging earlier this year. They are pretty unusual, and I wish I had a picture of the first one we saw because it looked almost like metal it was so silvery and shiny. They remind me of pouring liquid metal or something.
This next picture is for you to get a feel of the roads in Mbale. Some of the roads are decent, but many are like this. This is part of the road to get to our church. Since the time of Idi Amin, the roads have been deteriorating and not getting repaired much. As you can see, the challenge is not to avoid potholes, but to avoid the chunks of road :)
So it is quite fun to have a dog, 5 chickens, and 2 goats. A couple of the hens have been sharing the responsibility of sitting on some eggs that we have left to them, and there might be some baby chicks soon. Sara feeds them and lets them out first thing in the morning, and they return on their own to their room in the evening and Sara locks them up. In the morning I put ropes on a hoof of each goat and take them down into the garden, tie them to a tree where they can eat grass and plants. They have to be tied so that they do not eat Sara’s crops. I bring down a water bowl for each of them (can’t have the goats together or they get tangled up super fast, also Silas likes to mate with Zoe quite often, and sometimes she doesn’t really feel up to it), then at the end of the day I bring them back up. Sometimes I feed them a huge banana leaf which they enjoy and we feed them food scraps that we don’t eat. The picture below is the result of Zoe sneaking out of her room while I was putting them away and then galloping across the compound like a gazelle. Sara tempted her with food allowing me to catch her. And she is heavy! Also, they do make funny goat noises, they do stink, they poop a lot, gorge themselves on grass, and are very cute.
Sara and I made our own bow and arrows, and I am proud to say that mine can shoot a distance of 50-100 feet. Sara and I had a tournament using my bow and Sara won 3-0.
For all of you who are enjoying winter, it’s been really hot here. It’s been the dry season but this week, we just all of a sudden got dumped on with rain. Overall though it’s very hot, and the whole time we have been here in Uganda I carry a cloth in my pocket which has the sole use of wiping the sweat from my face constantly all day, otherwise I would use my shirt and quickly stain them with the dusty sweat.
There are people running for political offices right now. This NRM (the main political party here) campaign parade went right by our house that was very loud. The pictures are taken from our gate.
First we have a snake picture. This snake was found by Harriet in our yard this last week during the evening, in the dark. She called the guard and he killed it. They thought it was poisonous but we do not think it was after looking on the internet and asking around. But though it’s not good to kill harmless snakes, it’s not worth the risk to figure it out when it’s crawling at your feet in the dark. If you can figure out what species it is, let us know, we haven’t been able to figure it out. It is all green, and a white belly. We do not think it was long enough to be a green mamba.
This next picture is of a caecilian, which is an amphibian. It was at least a foot long or more. I found it while digging a hole to put our compost in. I also found a much bigger and more silvery one in the garden while digging earlier this year. They are pretty unusual, and I wish I had a picture of the first one we saw because it looked almost like metal it was so silvery and shiny. They remind me of pouring liquid metal or something.
This next picture is for you to get a feel of the roads in Mbale. Some of the roads are decent, but many are like this. This is part of the road to get to our church. Since the time of Idi Amin, the roads have been deteriorating and not getting repaired much. As you can see, the challenge is not to avoid potholes, but to avoid the chunks of road :)
So it is quite fun to have a dog, 5 chickens, and 2 goats. A couple of the hens have been sharing the responsibility of sitting on some eggs that we have left to them, and there might be some baby chicks soon. Sara feeds them and lets them out first thing in the morning, and they return on their own to their room in the evening and Sara locks them up. In the morning I put ropes on a hoof of each goat and take them down into the garden, tie them to a tree where they can eat grass and plants. They have to be tied so that they do not eat Sara’s crops. I bring down a water bowl for each of them (can’t have the goats together or they get tangled up super fast, also Silas likes to mate with Zoe quite often, and sometimes she doesn’t really feel up to it), then at the end of the day I bring them back up. Sometimes I feed them a huge banana leaf which they enjoy and we feed them food scraps that we don’t eat. The picture below is the result of Zoe sneaking out of her room while I was putting them away and then galloping across the compound like a gazelle. Sara tempted her with food allowing me to catch her. And she is heavy! Also, they do make funny goat noises, they do stink, they poop a lot, gorge themselves on grass, and are very cute.
Sara and I made our own bow and arrows, and I am proud to say that mine can shoot a distance of 50-100 feet. Sara and I had a tournament using my bow and Sara won 3-0.
For all of you who are enjoying winter, it’s been really hot here. It’s been the dry season but this week, we just all of a sudden got dumped on with rain. Overall though it’s very hot, and the whole time we have been here in Uganda I carry a cloth in my pocket which has the sole use of wiping the sweat from my face constantly all day, otherwise I would use my shirt and quickly stain them with the dusty sweat.
There are people running for political offices right now. This NRM (the main political party here) campaign parade went right by our house that was very loud. The pictures are taken from our gate.
School and Church
Church this morning was very interesting. They went over their budget and what they spend their money on. They were explaining what the offerings are used for. Among other bigger things, they also mentioned buying airtime for the pastor’s cell phone, and buying water and sodas for the pastor while he is preaching. Very different from a budget presentation we might hear in the US.
We get prayer requests from students very often, and don’t usually tell you about them. Here is a quick sampling of prayer requests from this last week. My student Silas has a pastor who was poisoned by a neighbor and he died, leaving a wife with 9 children. My student Emmanuel needed prayer as he had to take his whole family into the hospital for treatment because they were all sick. We had a huge handful of students asking for prayer because they lack funds for school or for their families. Another student, Theophilus, told us about how his wife hurt her back and now cannot do the garden work that they were counting on. He might have to go back home because if they do not plant soon they will not have money to live on or pay for his school, so he may not be with us next term. It is also very frequent to have a student tell us they are really sick with malaria on a given day and need prayer for that. These are normal challenges, and these are the types of things you can be praying for our students about.
We had our 1st year students come over the other day for a visit. We gave them sodas and banana bread. They really enjoyed the time here and asked us a lot of questions about US culture, such as “is it true that husbands in the US have to do whatever their wives tell them to do?” and “is there a dowry or brideprice for you?” and they asked us a lot of questions about marriage, as most of this group is not married yet.
They also communicated to us their language challenges and asked us to have mercy on them in classes and to help them along, and we said we would do so if they agreed to be willing to ask us questions.
Sara’s lectures on the environment have been going well. This last week she spoke on population, family planning, and wealth and their relation. The students asked many questions including, “If a woman goes a long time without conceiving, will it damage her health?” “If a rich person has few children, does it mean they are selfish?” “Is it okay for
believers to use condoms?” and “Is there an age when women can’t have children anymore?”
We get prayer requests from students very often, and don’t usually tell you about them. Here is a quick sampling of prayer requests from this last week. My student Silas has a pastor who was poisoned by a neighbor and he died, leaving a wife with 9 children. My student Emmanuel needed prayer as he had to take his whole family into the hospital for treatment because they were all sick. We had a huge handful of students asking for prayer because they lack funds for school or for their families. Another student, Theophilus, told us about how his wife hurt her back and now cannot do the garden work that they were counting on. He might have to go back home because if they do not plant soon they will not have money to live on or pay for his school, so he may not be with us next term. It is also very frequent to have a student tell us they are really sick with malaria on a given day and need prayer for that. These are normal challenges, and these are the types of things you can be praying for our students about.
We had our 1st year students come over the other day for a visit. We gave them sodas and banana bread. They really enjoyed the time here and asked us a lot of questions about US culture, such as “is it true that husbands in the US have to do whatever their wives tell them to do?” and “is there a dowry or brideprice for you?” and they asked us a lot of questions about marriage, as most of this group is not married yet.
They also communicated to us their language challenges and asked us to have mercy on them in classes and to help them along, and we said we would do so if they agreed to be willing to ask us questions.
Sara’s lectures on the environment have been going well. This last week she spoke on population, family planning, and wealth and their relation. The students asked many questions including, “If a woman goes a long time without conceiving, will it damage her health?” “If a rich person has few children, does it mean they are selfish?” “Is it okay for
believers to use condoms?” and “Is there an age when women can’t have children anymore?”
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