Yesterday, after having spent a week and a half with Dr. Krabbendam, a retired professor at my college, I made a long journey to Soroti to begin my work with Amecet n’ainapakin. We left that afternoon around 1pm and didn’t arrive to Soroti until 8:30pm.
I made my journey with a beautiful Ugandan woman named Kristin who Dr. K called his daughter. This was one of the biggest blessings. We made our way through the dirty overpopulated streets of Kampala passing child beggars and street venders to the “bus station”.
Muzungu, my new name, meaning white person, was yelled from right and left. I tend to stand out here. At the bus station, hundreds of busses were standing but inches from one another while people squeezed through the surrounding area. I held onto Kristin’s hand for dear life, knowing that if I lost her, I would be completely lost and alone. I don’t think I have felt so dependant on anyone in quite a long time.
We made our way to our bus of choice and were shoved in like cattle along with luggage and other passengers. Then somehow the driver maneuvered out of the tightly packed station and onto the tightly packed streets. I don’t understand how more people do not die in the streets of Kampala. People move by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, bus, and there is no room anywhere. We actually saw quite a few accidents on our way to Soroti, but God went with Kristin and I and covered our bus.
Along the way, we were bombarded by hundreds of merchants at every stop, selling any and every type of necessity, including live chickens, which one passenger bought and successfully used my feet as a storage area – that was interesting.
After making our way to Soroti to the Amecet base, we were in for a little bump in our travels. I haven’t had any opportunity to use a phone, find internet, or contact Amecet whatsoever. So once we arrived late at night we stood outside the gate for about 15 minutes knocking until Els, the base director, answered. She hadn’t been expecting me until the following day and she was really busy trying to nurse one of the baby boys that she thought she might loose that night. So Kristin offered to take me back to her house to stay. We began walking, then called a borde (a man driving a bike with a seat on the back for passengers), successfully mounted, and made our way to a bus stop.
After waiting for a bus we got on and made our way back to Kumi and arrived at Kristin’s house around midnight. Her family had made preparations for a meal since we hadn’t eaten since that morning and we ate. I ate something however that made me hallucinate that night and wake up vomiting and extremely sick to my stomache.
Looking back on it though, I count every circumstance as a blessing – I know it sounds weird, but I was with a woman that I had gotten to know and who called herself my mother, her husband was a pediatrition who was able to prescribe me something for food poisoning, and I was able to sleep and get all of the food out of my system before making my way to Amecet and trying to help with the children. God is so good.
I know my mom would be happy to hear that Kristin really cared for me and nursed me back to health before I arrived at Amecet this night. Right now, I am writing this by lamp light due to the town’s electricity shut down and am about to go to sleep before my first day caring for the babies. I met them briefly tonight and my heart is already broken and completely in love.
Please be praying for my complete healing and praise the Lord for his rich blessings so far. I miss you all very much but I know that I am right in the place I need to be.