Boating in Uganda

In her guest post, Marissa mentions a trip we made across Lake Kyoga to visit a friend's church on the other side of the lake from Soroti.  Anthony and I had visited this place in 2010 when we were teaching at Pentecostal Bible College in Mbale.  One of our students (at that time), Silas, is a pastor there.  And we were able to go back and visit him again.  But this time, instead of driving all the way around the lake (it took us 9 hours the time we went from Mbale and Soroti is even farther away), we decided to take a boat.  Now, by boat, we don't mean a ferry or riverboat or anything like that.  We mean this boat, below.

It looks quite small because it is.  I think it could safely hold around 20-25 people.  Somehow, however, they managed to carry 19 head of cattle across the lake before we got on the boat.  You can see the animals in the picture below.  I still don't understand how they did it.

The boat can even carry motorcycles (they put it on a little canoe to get it to the bigger boat).

Yeah, so this is the boat that held 19 cattle on it:

It was a beautiful trip - the boat ride took about an hour.  Much better than traveling 9+ hours around the lake.

Anyway, we made it across the lake and to Silas' church, where we spent the night.  The next day, there were lots of people outside preparing lunch because there was not only going to be a church service that Sunday, but also a wedding during the church service.

Girls cleaning rice (a very important task because no one wants to bite into a rock when they're eating their rice).

Signing the ubiquitous guest book.

Since it was the Sunday before Christmas, Anthony preached about slowing down and being quiet as we contemplate Jesus' birth and the meaning of Christmas.  It was especially appropriate because we were kept up all night by loud music coming from the youth of the church singing and dancing in the church for an overnight!

Like me, Marissa also studied Environmental Science, and she has been working at A Rocha (a Christian conservation organization) in Kenya, so we taught together about why and how Christians can take care of God's creation.

After church, we entertained hordes of children by sitting on a bench and doing strange things, like pretending to run after them, throwing an orange up and down, etc.  At one point, we counted 70 kids!

Then, we took the boat back to Soroti.

Entering the landing site: