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Dear faithful readers,

From my blog stats, it looks like quite a few of you are popping onto this blog to check out what’s new. This blog has been retired, with thanks for its faithful service. But don’t fret, because I’m still blogging! From now on I’ll be blogging at kristahanson.wordpress.com. See, isn’t it pretty?

 You can subscribe to this new one just like before – just go to the homepage and follow the instructions under “Subscribe to this blog” to get it delivered to your inbox. I’ve just written a new post, so please check it out!

Over and Out from Africa

It’s my last night in Kampala. It’s been a full weekend of goodbyes, of laughter and sadness, last-minute shopping and packing. In the interest of time I decided to kill two birds with one stone and combine my last blog and newsletter into one. So if you don’t currently subscribe to my newsletter, click on this link: July/Aug 2011, to read my reflections over the last 46 weeks.

This will be the last post from ‘a year in uganda‘, but I hope you’ll continue to follow my blog which is migrating today to a more generic kristahanson.wordpress.com.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything. For all the comments and blog hits and encouraging emails from around the world. You are all blessings to me!

Fleeting Moments

56 hours before I am on a plane bound for London. It’s 1 am but I don’t want to go to bed because I hate spending any of those 56 hours sleeping. The days are full, from early in the morning to late at night, with so many moments to treasure:

A hectic week at work full of 10-hour days wrapping up, organizing, and training the new EA –  last emails written, last papers filed, last meetings confirmed. A Friday night dinner with IJM friends – last chance to laugh about office jokes in IJM-acronym-speak, followed by a late night cup of tea at Endiro Coffee, my favorite coffee shop.

Saturday afternoon visiting Claire at her new house, playing airplane with her 18-month old son, learning how to make eshabwe, a southwestern Ugandan ghee-based delicacy, spending hours curled up on her couch talking about everything from family to marriage to swearing to church… wondering if we’ll have more face-to-face conversations this side of eternity… a tearful goodbye.

A misguided boda ride that stretched from 20 minutes to a full hour, taking me the scenic way back to Kampala, through villages and gardens and schools and dirt roads.

Dinner at Francis’ and Harriet’s house, a dear family who have adopted the IJM interns as their own… singing, laughing, dancing, and praying late into the night with their two young kids and the neighbors.

Tomorrow morning I am up early to meet a friend for breakfast, followed by my last day of church and Christ Community fellowship. Monday is full of last-minute shopping, an exciting trip to the clinic to see what amoeba and bacteria have made my insides their home, and of course, the dreaded packing.

I hope to write a post in the next few days about looking back over my year here, but I’m not going to make any promises. I’m finding it hard  to tear myself away from the people and moments that have made life here so full and beautiful. There are just too many precious moments to catch hold of before they are gone.

But for now, in case you were wondering – it’s all still surreal to be leaving in just two days. Very surreal.

Snapshots #27: Inside My Head

I’ve been doing a photo-a-day this month, with the hopes that my readers could get a better glimpse into my life in Uganda – you know, the daily ins and outs. But I realized that you haven’t really gotten a good glimpse into my recent thoughts – you’ve stayed up-to-date with my recent comings and goings, perhaps, but not my recent thoughts. So here they are, in all their articulate glory:

This just stinks.

This leaving. This saying goodbye. This looking back and wondering where the time when. These short conversations with staff in the office when they ask for the 77th time if it’s really possible that I could be leaving so very shortly. These rumblings of new and exciting things happening with IJM Uganda – and knowing I won’t be around for it all.

I told myself the other day, “Krista. You’ve really got to stop investing yourself so deeply in people and places and seasons. It’s just not sustainable. Who can live with so many goodbyes and transitions and changes, every year, without fail?”

I still have 10 days here before I leave, but the thoughts of goodbyes weigh heavily on my mind every day. I try to look on the bright side, reflecting on how grateful I am to have had this year here. How proud I’ll be to tell people I worked for IJM Uganda. How much I’ve learned. How much confidence I’ve gained. But all that’s for another reflective post on how Uganda has changed me for the better.

I’m hoping that a reflective, happy post will be coming shortly, but for now, I’m just in the “this just stinks” phase.

*PS. I know that today is the 28th, not the 27th, as the title hints –  just trying to do a little catch-up since power was out last night.

Snapshots #26: My Favorite Neighbors

There’s a lovely sight I wake up to every morning when I go into the kitchen and look out across the clean, bright world beginning its day in Uganda. I feel fresh, invigorated – then I see them, stalking silently, furtively, around the trash pile – a disaster of ripped bags and food debris.

Turning away from the window, I realize that my garbage can is overflowing, and the pineapple scraps are attracting an army of ants. It’s time.

I head out, fingers gripping tightly around the handle loop. As I approach the garbage pile with all the courage and bravado I can muster, one bird gives me a beady eye stare, others shy away, and one approachs me boldy for the appetizing scraps of food and garbage I have bundled up tightly in a bag at my side. I start the wind-up from about 3o feet away, launching the bag into the air as the birds swarm to find the edible junk inside. While they’re distracted, I turn on my heels and fly back up the stairs to my flat, praying that marabou storks can’t sense fear like horses can.

Turns out that my fears have been mostly unfounded, since there are no documented cases of human death at the hand (or claw) of a marabou stork. But I wouldn’t put it past them.

Marabou storks are just about the ugliest birds in the universe, in case you are unfamiliar with this fine specimen. Their wingspan is more than 8 feet; their preferred form of food is large chunks of raw flesh, 2 pounds or bigger – but when that’s hard to come by, they feast on garbage. Word on the street is that marabou storks are so acidic inside, due to their diet, that when they die, they don’t decompose, they just mummify.

Can someone please tell me that my fear of taking out the trash – when I have flesh-eating, self-mummifying birds waiting to pounce –  is justified?

Snapshots #25: Simple Plants…

… can make a whole lotta difference in someone’s life (one of the many valuable lessons I’ve learned in Uganda).

This is a typical village house with the empanyi plant surrounding it:

Empanyi is the local Luganda word for a short, bright green plant that people use as boundary markers, to separate their land from their neighbors. For such an unassuming plant, it often has a big role to play in our casework. Some of our cases have directly involved planning these boundaries as  the binding sign of agreement between two opposing parties in a family – marking the final act of reconciliation between victim and perpetrator.

I love that IJM works with traditional customs to secure property security for our clients. And now, I always get a little twinge of excitement when I see it circling a random house in the village.

 

Snapshots #23 & #24: Island in the Sun

For the last weekend adventure hurrah before I head back to the States in two weeks, the IJM crew headed off to the Ssese Islands, a little touch of the tropics in Lake Victoria. We got on a mini-bus in Kampala, traveled an hour to Entebbe, and after 3 1/2 hours on what might be the only working ferry in Lake Victoria, arrived on Bugala Island, less than a degree south of the equator. Of course, there were more than just two snapshot-worthy pictures, so here’s an assortment:

We hiked to the top of the hill for a panoramic view.

Scott had a swashbuckling sword fight with the village kids.

We wandered through forest and village and palm oil plantation to find a hidden beach on the north side of the island.

Nicole and I promptly frolicked (yes, that’s the best way to describe it) in the water.

On the way back, we wandered for 40 days in the wilderness (well, maybe it was like 40 minutes in the jungle), and encountered all sorts of prehistoric trees, lizards, and monkeys.

And walked along the beach at sunset.

I think Ssese Islands might be my new dream home. It’s just like the beach, except a) not as humid, since Lake Victoria sits at 3,700 ft. elevation, and b) it’s not salty like the ocean, which makes it lovely for swimming in (if you just ignore the bilharzia amoeba thingybobber that can make you violently sick for months).

I can’t believe my weekends of adventuring in Uganda are coming to a close, but I’m happy to say that I’ve hit most of my Uganda bucket list while I’ve been here, having been completely spoiled by the cheap cost of these weekends away (on the island, it cost $30 for breakfast, dinner, and accommodation for two nights!). It’s been a fine year for adventuring indeed.

Snapshots #22: The Shoe Man

This is Mr. Shoe  Man. He fixes my shoes.

Every day, he sits outside the side gate to the Brown Flats, where I live. In between the seamstress with her foot-pedal-powered sewing machine, and the chappati guy who fries up the hot flat bread over charcoal fire all morning, Mr. Shoe Man sits. Armed with twine, a knife, and a sharp nail atached to a wooden handle, he works wonders with shoes.

For less than 50 cents, he can re-fasten soles, re-attach the thong of a flip-flop to the base, and probably a host of other shoe-miracles that I’m not even aware of. He’s saved my shoes a number of times (Kampala roads and rocks aren’t exactly shoe-friendly).

He knows next to no English, and I know next to no Luganda, but almost ever day we have a conversation – hello, welcome back, how are you – in varying combinations of Luganda and English. As strange as it sounds, it’s honestly little interactions like this that always make me pause and realize how much I’m going to miss life in Kampala.

Snapshots #21: A Foodie’s Paradise

It probably comes as a surprise to none of you that I just happen to really enjoy food. Like, a lot. Baking, cooking, eating, even just reading cookbooks makes me one happy girl. My absolute favorite is any sort of ethnic food, and Kampala is an absolute gem when it comes to cool international restaurants. Granted, the quality isn’t as good as you might find elsewhere, but the variety is great. Indian, Turkish, Ethiopian, Italian, Lebanese, even a token Mexican restaurant (good fajitas, but their chips taste like fried sandpaper) – it’s all here in Kampala.

The cost of eating out is much lower than it is in the States, so while it’s still a treat to eat out, it’s a much more affordable treat here. Last night found Ryan, Jon, Gloria and I at Casablanca, enjoying a family platter of injera and traditional Ethiopian coffee – with incense wafting across the table for atmosphere (all I could think of was being in an Eastern Orthodox church).

I’m definitely going to miss nights like that when I’m back in the States – somehow I doubt I’ll find any authentic Ethiopian restaurants tucked away on the country lanes of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Snapshots #20: Skype Date

So I know our society is already over-inundated with technology and instant communication in every shape and form, and I should probably wax eloquent about how good it is to live the simple life here in Africa… But sometimes, modern technology is just the best thing ever. I love being able to text my brother from 10,000 miles a way, see friends face-to-face with the click of a button, and have my parents available almost any day of the week to chat.

Today, I got to talk to this dear friend:

Jennica and I have been friends for just a year or two now. We lived in the same dorm at college, and I always thought that we would probably be kindred spirits, but we never really crossed paths until my senior year, second semester, when we took Biblical Theology together.  I discovered that she loved to ask questions and ponder the answers as much as I did, and almost every day after class we had animated discussions about the political and social implications of the Kingdom of God as we walked back to our dorm. We were instant friends.

When I graduated from Taylor last summer and headed off to IJM, we began talking about her plans for saving the world after graduation this May. She expressed interest in an international IJM internship, to which I promptly responded (very professionally): “oh-my-gosh-it’s-the-best-thing-ever-you-HAVE-to-apply!!!!”

I’m happy to report that she did apply, and got accepted, and will be joining the IJM Rwanda team in August as their new Executive Assistant. So, when I head out of Uganda, and you’re having blog withdrawals, click over to her blog: A Window in Rwanda (she’s a great writer). And stay tuned for future parallel-life ventures. We’re already talking about going to get our PhDs in Theology in Scotland (during which time we’ll bake copious amounts of brownies and pick wildflowers along the loch – yes, we are very liberated females). 😉