Visit to Pallisa

A couple weekends ago, we traveled to Pallisa to visit a friend who we taught at Pentecostal Theological College in 2009/2010.  It was an interesting adventure because we drove ourselves there on a route that was new to us.

Along the way, we saw this overloaded truck filled with cattle and baskets and people.  And it was not the only one - there were three such trucks in a row!

Another interesting aspect of the drive was how we drove from light into the darkness of a massive rainstorm.  You can see here how the sky ahead was so dark.

Once we reached the place where it was raining, it was really raining.  We crossed several spots where the road became small rivers.

But by the time we got to Pallisa, the rain had slowed down and we passed through areas with beautiful scenery.  The rocks reminded me of the Needles in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

So we picked up our friend Boniface in Pallisa town and then drove from there to his home in the village.  The roads were very muddy from the rain, but we managed to get through...until we reached the path leading up to Boniface's house.  There our vehicle got stuck in the mud in a spot where we had to squeeze between a stack of bricks and a ridge and couldn't avoid the mud.  Thankfully, all of Boniface's family and his neighbors came running and helped us get out.

The kids from the neighborhood had a great time drawing in the mud on our vehicle.  This picture only shows you a little bit of their fun - they would draw pictures with their fingers, then would wipe them out and start drawing again.

It was very fun to see our friend Boniface again and to see his family and where he lives. 

Boniface was a very good student at the Bible college and also the oldest student.  He is currently 60 years old and still very active and energetic as a person and a pastor.  We enjoyed sitting with him and talking over the evening.

Here are some photos of his house and some of his family:

The next day, Sunday, we drove to the church where Boniface is the pastor.  We drove off and suddenly realized that there were children hanging onto the back of vehicle.  After stopping to tell them to get off, we found them there again.  Finally, we left them behind.  Unfortunately, we later discovered that the bumper had broken off on one side because they were standing on it.  This later led to all sorts of excitement with car repairs that lasted a whole day, but that is a story for another time.

We arrived at church and met a very lively congregation.  It is always a joy to worship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anthony preached and enjoyed himself thoroughly in telling the story of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis.

There was more music from talented young people.

 

I gave a brief teaching about why Christians should want to take care of God's creation.  People appreciated hearing some ideas about how they can do that.

After church, we headed over to the home of one of the church members.  They fed us and all the church leaders quite the feast.  There was a very wide variety of food:

Eventually, we had to leave and go back the way we came.  Although there was no rain on Sunday, the rain from the day before had made its way down to low points in the area.  When we reached a certain swampy area, we saw a huge crowd on the road ahead and wondered what could be going on.  As we got closer, we realized that the road was covered with water!  There were lots of young men there who were earning some extra money pushing vehicles through the two-foot-deep water.  It was a good thing they were there because we only made it halfway across before getting stuck and needing a push.  In the end, we were thankful to make it home safely.

Our Family, Caleb and a Skink

Here is a picture of some of our family at home.

Just for fun, here is a video of Caleb that we think is funny.

And a cute picture of him and Sara.

And pictures of when I had to take Caleb to the vet for his vaccinations.  Sara already was away with the vehicle so I took my bicycle.  He did very well, except for when it started raining on us, then he almost bailed.  The first picture shows our failed first attempt.

In other pet news, a guard left a small part of the gate open during the night and the two hedgehogs we had ran away.  (Although the little one died, a guard had given us a 2nd adult).  But now we have none :(

Here is a very beautiful grasshopper.

My big chameleon is not doing so well.  We had a flurry of flying white ants (large termites) coming out of the ground and the chameleon ate about 40 of them.  I saw big piles that it threw up later.  I think its stomach may have burst.  It looks like it is dying, but so far it is hanging on.  Maybe it's just taking a long time to digest.  I put him in one of the trees of our yard because we were given another large chameleon and the cage is not big enough for so many.  So now we have two big ones, and one small one.  Here is a photo of the wings of the white ants just in a small section of our porch.  Likely there are no bodies in the picture because Caleb probably ate them all during the night.

And here is a skink we found in our yard.  The species is Peters' Writhing Skink I believe.  It moves and looks like a snake, but it isn't.

We added a couple more species of fowl to our household too: a turkey and a guinea hen.   We were startled one day when we came home to discover a second guinea hen in our yard with the first.  It turns out he is just our guinea's boyfriend who comes and goes as he pleases (from who knows where).

Last,  a giant beetle.  These are on our porch most mornings.

Baking in Uganda

This past week, I had the fun opportunity to teach some people in Kaberamaido (a neighboring district to Soroti) how to bake cakes using the method of steaming them and with homemade measuring cups.  World Renew works with the development organization in Kaberamaido and they arranged a time for me to come train their staff and then to go to a community where they work and do a training in that place as well.  It was a great time.  Two members of a different community, Julius and Samuel, came to the training too.  They are part of a community group that has an oven and are experts on making mandazi.  They received this training from me so they can go and share the cake baking method with others.

Baking is fun, but it is also an income generating activity that people can do to help them earn money.  The people at the development organization calculated the cost for making one of the cakes I taught them.  They said the ingredients plus charcoal probably would cost, at the most, 5,000 shillings ($2) and if you bought such a cake in the store, it would be about 30,000 shillings ($12)!  So they were pretty optimistic that learning to bake cakes could really help some people out.

Here they are using a homemade measuring cup (made from a ubiquitous plastic cup) to measure out milk for a cassava flour cake.

Everyone got really into the cake baking.  They wanted to keep making new recipes, even after we had completed the ones that we had planned to make that day.

I think we baked for six hours and they were still going when I left to go back to Soroti!

One of the cakes they made (I didn't do any of the work - I just told them what to do and they went through the whole baking process themselves):

Everyone enjoyed the taste-testing.

After I taught the technique for baking cakes, Julius and Samuel taught me how to make mandazi.  It is a much more complicated process than I thought it was, with about 13 ingredients!  You have to mix together the dough, knead it, beat it with a rolling pin, roll it out and cut it into pieces, and let it rise before frying it.

Here's Samuel deep frying the mandazi.

The final product:

The next day, Julius, Samuel, and I trained people from a community where the Kaberamaido development organization works.  The venue was a church in Apapai.  When I arrived, I was surprised to find that Charles, one of the students from the Pentecostal college while I was there, is the pastor of this church!  It was a lot of fun to see him again.

We had a group of at least 100 people who came to learn how to bake.  The training would go on for two days, but I was only able to stay for the first one.

After I taught the theory of how to make your own measuring cup, how to bake a cake by the steaming method, and gave a couple of recipes, Julius and Samuel proceeded to teach the theory of how to make mandazi.

Mixing together the ingredients:

A half-kilogram cup converted into a measuring cup:

Making cakes is so simple.  It made me happy to teach it to one group and then to let Charles answer questions himself for the second group.  They didn't need me anymore after I taught the first group of people!

Preparing to steam the cake over a charcoal stove:

This is how you serve a cake to 100 people here in Uganda:

Here's one photo of the participants working on learning how to make mandazi.  It is not a very peaceful process - you beat the dough with a rolling pin for quite some time after you have already kneaded it!