MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 04-29-2011

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It’s been a busy month! We had our annual Uganda Field Conference earlier this month. This was our first Conference in Uganda (we arrived last year just days after the 2010 Field Conference). One of the requirements of the Ugandan government for NGOs (non-government organizations) is that the NGO have an annual business meeting of all it’s members. The Conference fulfills that requirement. It also gives missionaries from all over the country a chance to fellowship with one another. It was great to get to see some of the folks we had met years earlier and renew those friendships, and also make some new ones. It was a good time. We went to the capitol a day early and got a bunch of things for Brennah taken care of, which Anna covered in her last blog entry. Brennah had her first visit to American soil when we went to the U.S. Embassy for our passport/CRBA/Social Security card appointment. This was her first venture abroad after being born, and a reminder to us how much of a drag it is traveling with newborns. 🙂

Last week was more adventuresome than usual going out to Nakivale. It was Easter, and we were having a joint service of all the churches out there. Three couples were getting married, and there was also 14 baptisms. It was a very eventful and excellent Easter. We were bringing the marriage certificates, expertly genned up in InDesign by Anna, and 35 liters of Grape Kool-Aid for the meal afterwards. Naturally, we get ourselves loaded into the car nice and early and ready to roll to get to the service in plenty of time AND the car won’t start. And it’s Easter Sunday. It’s nothing short of miraculous that we were able to get our mechanic out to look at it. It turned out to be the battery. We got it fixed and were on our way again, albeit late. On the way, one of the 5L containers broke from the bouncing and spilled grape Kool-Aid all over the back of the Pajero. The cookies Anna baked had spilled on the floor and were ruined, about half of them. It was a comedy of errors. We finally got there, and the service went great, but there was a lot of hassle GETTING there. Next time I have to do something like this, I’ll be using better containers, and making sure somebody holds the cookies. (We got the car cleaned up, so everything is cool).

In a week, my wife’s parents, our Pastor, will be coming to Uganda for a visit, so we are going to be very busy getting ready for that. We have to make a trip to the capitol to pick them up, and of course to return them when the time comes. There has been some small rioting in the capitol lately due to the loser in the Presidential election stirring up the people. Yesterday, fearing another protest march from Besigye and his followers, police and army commandos arrested Besigye at his home. He and his aides were beaten and he was hauled away in a police van while his followers peppered the police with rocks and sticks, whereupon they were promptly tear-gassed. Pray we will be able to get to the capitol to pick up our parents safely and get back without problems. Pray for the peace of Uganda. Pray our car performs well for the trip and that we can get there and back without issue. Pray for our churches and ministry here as we continue to do the work of the Gospel in Uganda.

Born Abroad

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When you have a baby in America, everything with registering the birth is very straightforward. A nurse comes to your room later in the day after the baby is born or the next day. They take down your information – Parent’s full names and birth places, and that sort of thing. They give you a paper on how to get a Social Security Number. There is no running around, no trying to figure out if you have all the right papers, very simple, very easy.

Having a baby in another country is something else altogether. We discovered that the last few weeks as we tried to register Brennah’s birth. The first step was to contact the American Embassy. James did this just a day or two after Brennah was born. A lady there sent James a list of paperwork that was needed. Here are the steps to register her birth:

  • Obtain a short form birth certificate from the town of birth.
  • Obtain a long form birth certificate
  • Turn in these along with the form for the Consular Report of Birth at the American Embassy

We were to obtain a short form Birth Certificate from here in Mbarara. Thinking this might take a couple weeks, James called the hospital. They were happy to help and he went there and filled out the paper, which was signed by the Dr. We had it only a couple days later! We were thrilled! Things normally aren’t that easy in Africa.

Then James got an appointment at the Embassy in Kampala. You have to apply in person for all the paperwork and an appointment is required. Sometimes it is hard to get an appointment. The only available times were early in the morning. Since we were already going to be in Kampala for the field conference for our mission board we made the appointment during that trip.

We’ve been trying for months to get our work permit paperwork through but things often move very slowly here. About a week before we were to drive up to Kampala James went up on the bus to turn in the short form birth certificate and get the long form one. He also had to check on the work permits so it was a trip with multiple purposes. When he got there he found out that the birth certificate we’d gotten from the hospital wasn’t the right one. We needed one from the Town Council. He called me on his way back and we sent our language helper, Osbert, to get that process started.

In order to get a birth certificate from the town council you have to first buy the paper that is the certificate itself. Osbert did this and the next day brought it to us. James carefully filled it out. The next thing you have to do is get all three LCs to sign it. You have to pay a fee to the first LC and he stamps it, then the other two just sign it. This is where the fun began. The first LC signed it and then Osbert went looking for #2. The second LC took one look at the birth certificate and told Osbert it wasn’t filled out correctly. The first LC could have told us that but didn’t. Instead, he just took the money and signed it, knowing we’d have to come back later and do it again and pay him the second time. So Osbert came back, we got a second paper and James filled that out correctly. Then Osbert went back for the signatures only to find the first LC had left on a trip to Kampala.

The worst part about all this is that we now only had 2 days until we left for our trip to Kampala with our embassy appointment that is hard to get and one of those days was Saturday when they don’t work. We started praying hard about this. That LC really needed to come back! Thankfully, he came back the next day. Osbert was able to pay him for his stamp and signature again (but not before the LC asked for huge bribe!) and then was able to get the other two signatures very quickly. God worked it out so we had our short form birth certificate in time for our trip!

Sunday we traveled to Kampala after finishing at the refugee camp. Monday morning James got up early and went to get the long form birth certificate. The lady that was helping him with that had told him the week before that she’d have the paper filled out in readiness for seeing the short form birth certificate. All that would be needed was the signature at the bottom. But she forgot. She felt terrible about it. But our appointment was in 45 minutes! What would we do? She took pity on James and dropped everything she was doing and filled it out right there for him. He got back to pick Brennah and me up just in time for us to make it to our embassy appointment. God worked it out so we had both our long and short form certificate.

Thankfully, the appointment at the embassy went well. We were able to get all the forms turned in and should have our Consular Report of Birth very soon. We’ll have her passport and SS# soon after that. There was a little issue with the passport photo. We had to go get another one taken and that took a very long time to get done. It took longer to get the passport photo right than it did at the appointment!

Now Brennah is a citizen of both America and Uganda. When she turns 18 she’ll have to choose with the American government which country she’ll be a citizen of permanently. (Uganda recognizes dual citizenship but America doesn’t. She’ll always be a Ugandan citizen.) Until then, we have a true African-American living in our house and all the Africans we introduce her to remind us that she is one of them. 😀

MISSION: Uganda Email Udpate 03-28-2011

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Mud, mud, and more mud. The rainy season is officially here! Everything is getting green and lush, and my gardens are doing well. We had our 1 year anniversary on the 23rd, which is bizarre to consider. Time has gone by so quickly. I won’t get into the gritty details, since you can read my wife’s blog post A Year in Review here. Everyone is doing very well, including Brennah, who is growing quickly and enjoying her new spot as youngest child. Gaelin is in love I think. He just adores his new kid sister.

Yesterday was entertaining. It had been raining most of the night, and was still raining when we got ready to head to Nakivale. The roads were, of course, sloppy in the extreme. Thank God for 4-wheel drive! We made it to the camp in time, but here is the catch: Djuna, the national Pastor and translator is out sick (Pray for him. He’s in Kampala seeing a doctor, which is how serious it is). He had arranged for another man to come and do the translating for me at Juru. I arrived at the appointed time, and he was nowhere to be found. Turns out, he couldn’t obtain transport because of the the rain and mud. Naturally, he didn’t do anything to inform us about it, by actually, you know, telling anybody or anything. So, I sang the two Swahili songs I know with the kids, showed them picture of Brennah (they hadn’t seen them yet), and then I had to go.

Nevertheless, I got to Ngarama, and found that rain had delayed the start of service there for 45 minutes. I was then in the position to do the Kid’s Service there so that the Bassett’s could get to Sangano in time. Then we had a good English class and came home. Always high adventure here, especially in the rain.

I will be going to Kampala tomorrow to pick up my passport and new work permit, get Anna’s paperwork turned in, and pick up Brennah’s long form birth certificate. Pray all goes well with that. We must have the birth certificate, or we won’t be able to do anything at the embassy next Monday (we’re taking her in to get all her American legal documents squared away). The remainder of the week, we will be at the Uganda Field Conference. Pray everything goes well with that, and that everything goes smoothly with the driving we will be doing. Last time I drove to Kampala, I got in a wreck. I would prefer this not happen again.

God bless and keep you!

A Year in Review

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Wednesday was the first anniversary of us moving to Uganda. It’s been an eventful year and I thought a recap of it might be nice.

March… The month started with our commissioning service. Later in the month we loaded our container and saw that ship off. Then we flew out of Chicago with 26 pieces of luggage on March 22. God blessed and all the luggage made it to Entebbe with us. Matthew Stensaas and Tom Tracht met us at the airport and helped load the luggage. Our plane got in late at about 11:30 PM and then, by the time we’d gone through the line to get our visas and found all our luggage, loaded it up, and driven to the motel it was almost 2AM the next day. We slept a few hours and then got up and going again. We looked at some appliances and then drove to Mbarara with Matt and Keila. The following day we looked at houses and a couple days later decided to take the house we’re currently living in. It needed a LOT of work. Only half of it was finished and that half had a lot of damage so needed repair. James worked out the contract with the landlady and work was begun to finish it. God also brought along a vehicle for us to buy. It needed a new engine but it was the right price and, it turns out, the right kind of vehicle for the ministry we’re working in.

April…. We spent most of the month staying with Bro. and Mrs. Brian Stensaas. James worked hard every day to get the house finished as quickly as possible – mainly he just supervised to make sure things were getting done right. He also ended up making a trip to Kampala to get some of our appliances. We got mattresses to sleep on and then we just waited for it to be done. We moved into our house as soon as it was finished enough for us to live there. We’d decided to have them tile the house and the tile on the finished side was barely dry before we moved in. They had a lot to finish on the other side and that was done about a month later. So we had workers in our house every day starting at about 7:30AM until dark (about 7PM). We also didn’t have a wall or fence around our house because of a disagreement between our landlady and the man next door.

May… May was a busy month, particularly Mother’s Day weekend. We got up that Sunday morning and someone had stolen several of the fence posts we’d put in to have them in readiness for the fence to be put up. James spent the entire day dealing with police reports and all the mess that came with it. The next day, one of our workers was planting some plants around the outside of the hedge surrounding our property and broke a water main. A 20ft geyser of water was opened and poured down our hill, through our house, and around the septic tank in the front. After that was stopped, two walls of our septic tank collapsed. It was weak already and would have eventually broken but the main break revealed the weakness and forced us to repair it sooner rather than later. The day after that happened, we got our dog Teal’c. We’d wanted to get a dog for a while so James was really pleased with being able to get that particular dog. We’re all glad he did. 😀

June… Thankfully June wasn’t as eventful as May. 😉 We butchered a cow in our garage. That was interesting! The other side of the house was finally finished completely and cleaned and we moved the kids into their rooms on that side. We also started language study and then restarted three weeks later when the Trachts wanted to join us in it. Father’s Day Sunday we found out we were expecting Huckabee child #6 and so ensued several weeks of miserable morning sickness for me.

July…. I was quite sick for the whole month and James and Osbert ended up doing most of the cooking. Near the end of the month our container arrived. First it arrived in the country and James had to take a trip to Kampala to clear it through customs. Then they brought it to our house and we unloaded it. We got most of the unpacking done in the next couple weeks. It was so nice to have our own beds and the familiar things from home! It was like Christmas!

August… We got most of the packing done and I began making curtains for the house. I was able to repurpose many of our curtains from the States and use them on the windows here with just a little work. We also started school in the middle of August with the kids and continued our language study. Thankfully, about the time we started school the morning sickness went away and I started feeling a LOT better. That helped!

September… Relatively uneventful aside from the fact that we started going with the Bassetts to the refugee camp on a weekly basis. James had gone with them one Sunday in late July or early August and really loved it. So we all went at the end of August. It was our niche. We all tremendously enjoyed it! God seemed to be directing us into that ministry and so there we are. And we still love it!

October…. We took our first trip back to Kampala. On the way there the transmission went out on our vehicle and had to be repaired. That made the time there interesting in finding transportation! But God worked everything out for us. I had my first Doctor visit while we were there. We were planning, at the time, to have the baby in Nakasaro Hospital in Kampala with Dr. Mbonye. She is really nice but kept recommending we check a hospital in Mbarara. We had an ultrasound and found we were having a girl! We got our third dog – a female Rottweiler – and she’s been fun to have around and great for our other puppy. Calmed him right down! We also had a baptismal service at the refugee camp. I ended up missing it with sick kids but James and the boys really enjoyed it!

November… Our first Thanksgiving here and we hosted it at our house. It was a LOT of fun! We bought two turkeys and had them butchered right in our yard! Definitely a learning experience there!

December… Our first Christmas here. We took another trip to Kampala the first part of the month and were able to get some paperwork taken care of and also find some special things for Christmas. Our church family sent a couple boxes of surprises to us from the states for Christmas and that was so special. It was a very special time for us and, while we missed family back home, we had a really good time remembering Christ’s birth here in Uganda. There was another baptismal service at the refugee camp and this time I got to go! It was great – a very moving service. We got there early and I got to visit with many of the ladies in the church there. It was such a blessing.

January…. We finally decided to tour the hospital here in Mbarara and decided to try having the baby here instead of going to Kampala. It was a big decision for us but we both had peace about it. Debbie and Matthew Guimon and her niece, Sarabeth, visited from America. It was SO good to have someone come from the states! James had an accident on the way back from taking them to meet Phyllis Hall in Kampala. God worked things out with that, helping him have the right people with him at the right time.

February…. Baby was due but didn’t arrive. That’s okay, though. The election took place on the 18th and was relatively uneventful.

March…. Brennah LaDynne was born on the 6th, almost 2 weeks late. Her birth went very well and I’m so glad we decided to have her here in Mbarara. She came before we’d been here a year.

So there you have it. Our first year overview. Sorry this is so long. Thanks for persevering to the end of this post. 😀 It’s been exciting to see God work in the good times and the hard and discouraging times as well. We’re really enjoying being here in Uganda and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! It really feels like home.

A Bit More of the Mundane – Food Preparation

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This part of living in Africa has probably been the most challenging. Before moving to Africa I’d been pretty good about making pretty much everything from scratch. We didn’t buy a lot of mixes. I even made our butter and yogurt from scratch in the states. But I took for granted the readiness of other parts of food prep or the availability of certain foods.

So, upon arriving I had to learn what was available, how much it cost and if that was a good price or not. Our helper, Osbert, has been a huge help with this! I’d take a trip to the central market a couple times a week for our produce. Think of all the open air markets you’ve ever seen in the movies or pictures of 3rd world countries and it looks a lot like that. Each little “eduka” (shop) has a variety of things to sell – pineapples, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, carrots, peas, and we’ve even been able to find green beans! After buying what we needed, I’d bring it home and clean it – soak it in clean (filtered) water with some cleanser in it to kill parasites or other bacteria that our bodies aren’t used to. We buy eggs by the tray – 30 eggs per tray. Every Saturday, a man comes by with lettuces, spinach, and sometimes hot peppers and broccoli. We also have two avocado trees in our yard so for about 3-4 months out of the year we have all the avocados we can possibly eat and enough to give away. That’s a LOT of guacamole.

As you can see, produce is readily available. So we eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies every day. Other things are more difficult to find. For instance, our family really enjoys cheese. When we first arrived, you could have any cheese you wanted as long as it was gouda. 😀 Not long after we got here, the man that sells us the gouda also began making mozzarella. So now we can have “real pizza cheese” on our pizza. 😉

Meat is another thing that isn’t as readily available. Here in Mbarara we can normally get minced beef (ground beef) and pork sausages – sort of a cross between a hot dog and a sausage link. But that is all. We could get chicken but we’d have to buy a whole chicken and have it butchered here at our house and then cook it. They are also quite tough so I learned to use the pressure cooker to help with that! Being Americans, we’re used to planning our meals around the meat. So it was quite the change to plan the meal and then add what meat we had later. After we’d been here about three months, we butchered a cow in our garage. It was quite interesting! Not exactly something you’d do in America. 😀 But it was so nice to have meat more often! Also, we could have different parts of meat – like a roast or steaks and stuff like that.

It’s been fun to start to find things. For instance, last fall we learned of a place in the capital that would deliver meat down to us in Mbarara, just for the cost of the transport on a bus! Through this company we can get chicken pieces – like legs and thighs, lunch meat, and stew beef. The cost is also far less than we pay in the stores in Kampala for these same things. Its been a blessing to have access to this!

Another thing that we recently found was a local dairy that delivers cheese all the way to Kampala. We noticed their label on some of the cheese that we bought in Kampala and decided to check into it. Thankfully, the dairy isn’t far from where we live and we can buy all the same cheese here for less – a wholesale price, vs. retail. For the first few months, if we wanted sour cream or cream cheese I had to make it. But we can get those things from the dairy and it saves me time!

Late last fall, Osbert showed us this HUGE market outside of town called Western Market. We’ve started going there for our produce once a week rather than making two or three other trips to Central Market in town. The produce is a LOT cheaper for us. You have to buy a much larger quantity but it is generally worth it. Also, we’ll get entire stalks of bananas for what it cost us at the central market for a bunch of bananas. It should come as no surprise that we can go through a whole stalk of bananas in a week as a family. 😀

We were able to find our African version of Sam’s Club – called Vickies, after the Indian gentleman that owns it. We can buy bulk items from him for less than what we can get them in the grocery stores. He sells canned goods, juice, bails of flour, pasta, other baking good in bulk (like sugar, salt, baking powder, etc.) and many other things, including non-food items like toothpaste and diapers. We go there about once a month or so, maybe even less but when we go we stock up.

For everything else, we go to a local grocery called Pearl. We can get a lot of the other things we need from them and often, if there is something we’d like to get all we have to do is ask the man who owns Pearl and he’ll order it for us.

So, as you can see, we’re adapting. It takes some planning ahead but I’ve learned how to make the things that my family enjoys and a whole lot more. We eat a lot of beans and I’ve learned to make some pretty good refried beans from scratch. 😉 When I got married a good friend gave me a recipe for spaghetti sauce and I make that several times a month. It makes excellent pizza sauce, too. I’ve also learned to make LOTS and then freeze some of it to make it easier next time. It’s been fun to learn how to speed the food preparation process. No grated cheese here! So my cheese grater is my dear husband. 🙂 Most of the time he is more than happy to help me with that part since it makes it take me less time to get the food ready.

Another blessing has been the seasonings that people have sent us ever since we mentioned the need in November! It’s been wonderful! We can’t even get many of the spices needed to make those particular mixes – I’ve checked! So THANK YOU to all who have sent them! We’re enjoying them tremendously!

I could go on longer but this is long enough. I hope it gives you a little picture into our daily life! We really do enjoy the African food that they have here but there isn’t a lot of variety in it. We eat it a couple times a week normally. But it is nice to have food that tastes like “home” and it has been a journey to get to the place where it really does taste like home.