My mom sponsors several children through Compassion International, one of whom lives in Kisoro, along the western boarder of Uganda. Since I wasn’t exactly up to driving my small car quite that far (I wasn’t sure what conditions the roads would be in), we agreed to meet Rosemary about half way, in Mbarara.
It took us about 7 hours to get to Mbarara on Wednesday, but that included our stop at “The Equator”. When you live the lifestyle we do, you take any chance you can get to play tourist and get some tourist pictures! The Equator consists of this thing and a line of souvenir shops along the road (of which Ella wanted to check out each and every one!).
We spent Wednesday night at a nice hotel in Mbarara (boy are the prices better in the west than in the eastern part of the country!), met with Rosemary and her Compassion worker on Thursday morning, then left for home at noon and made it home in only 5 ½ hours!
I had never quite seen anything like this posted in a hotel before. “2. Bed-wetting or acts leading to the same should be avoided.” Luckily they didn’t bust Frankie or Ella at dinner when they shared a Pepsi! (normally I don’t give my children pop at night but we were all really dehydrated!)
The wee ones were tuckered and thankfully, didn’t wet the bed!Ella is quite enthusiastic about traveling and staying in hotels. She reminds me SO much of my sister Becky when we were young! Not only did she just LOVE the hotel, but she gasped at the view and raved at how beautiful it was. I eagerly looked out the window and cracked up because...
....this was the “beautiful view!” Ha ha!!
We had a lovely visit with Rosemary and Peace. It was so fun to sit back and watch the delight on Rosemary’s face as she talked to my mom and looked at the pictures and small bag of doo dads that Mom had brought for her. I am so, so impressed with the work of Compassion International and trust me, I am a HARD, cynical person to impress.
Mom had brought Rosemary a Uno game which we played and it was a GREAT way to spend some time together getting to know each other.
Mom and Rosemary. She is a LOVELY 17 year old girl who is a hard worker and is at the top of her class of 92!
A large part of the success of Compassion is the quality of their field staff – people like Peace here, who has been with this project for 9 years. It’s so encouraging to see a Christian organization that cares for the holistic needs of those in poverty. I think that it is SO important to help support families in poverty stay TOGETHER and children out of orphanages or abandoned on the streets.
I had been in western Uganda only twice before – once in 2005 for work (it was a fun trip and we covered a lot of the western country!) and once in 2008 when my parents were here before. So it had been a while. After this trip I have come to the conclusion that western Uganda is my favorite part of Uganda because it reminds me the most of “home” in Montana!
We passed a LOT of cattle and matooke trucks headed with full loads to Kampala, and you could see why! They have big fenced fields for their cattle (as opposed to here where they either tie them up here and there or wander around after their herds) and huge fields of matooke “plantations” that they use TRACTORS to cultivate. None of this manual labor stuff! The terrain was much flatter and drier and more like southern Montana and northern Wyoming (although still not half as dry as they still don’t have to irrigate here). It is also less heavily populated than in central and eastern Uganda. I really liked it!
Western Uganda reminded me bit of the “old West” with it’s little sparsely populated towns with tall fronts. Of course many of them were bright pink thanks to the Zain, the mobile service provider : )
Just like in the States – a little “farm house” and out buildings surrounded by dry land. I imagined myself galloping through the brush (on a horse OR a camel!) rounding up my cows the entire way home...
Add a couple of hitching posts, change these boda’s to horses and put a few people in cowboy hats and this could be a scene from the old west! Kind of.... ;)
Drums
Chickens
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