Musiibire muta baasebo na baanyabo!

Hey everyone, I don’t know what time it is there but I have just greeted you in Runyankole, using the afternoon/evening greeting. Now you have to say “Nsiibire gye, Nyabo!” As you can see my day of language training has really payed off! Until you hear me try to pronounce it that is.
So I have officially arrived on the continent! After two 8 hour plane rides, separated by a 10 hour layoff at heathrow airport [where I randomly met a Jamaican reggae band! networking for the next trip ;) ] we finally arrived bedraggled but excited to the messy, busy, fascinating city of Kampala. We had 3 days in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to acclimatize so to speak. Our beautiful guesthouse was a very “westerner” oriented bubble. But we had the experience of venturing out into the city in the best way possible for newbies… our mini-bus! With our faithful driver at the wheel we went into downtown Kampala, all 14 “Muzungu” (white person) glued to a window. It is impossible to describe, pictures help, but you have to be there (or a similar foreign city) to really know! I loved driving around because the city is right outside your window, quite literally, in fact if you put your head out to peek you are face to face with somebody! Any space between the van taxi’s and cars is filled with a scooter, bicycle, or pedestrian!
But at least in the bus you are also protected from having to actually step into the madness! And that way when you draw awkward attention, as we always did, we could zoom away after a few seconds of interaction!! Like the time I tried to take a picture of some guys on the street because they were waving, but then I realized one of them had a rifle, which is a big no no to take pictures of everyone tells you. And they were calling out for us to give them money for the picture, of course this was when traffic decided to stand still!! Then there was the time we actually ventured out of the bus to go find the office of Boaz, who provided us with the drivers, and we ended up in some back alley ….now you have to imagine this….14 white people just randomly show up in this big herd, every eye is on us, and we’re awkwardly standing around and laughing at what we can only guess they are saying about us!! It was a pretty funny sight and I can definitely appreciate the absurdity of the situation!
Moving on, we left Kampala after recovering from jet lag and accomplishing a few key tasks…ie. getting cell phones, registering as nurses…the usual. Took a bus ride for 5 hours, crossed the equator! and arrived in Mbarara. This is our “home base” sort of, the closest town to Rubingo the village where I will be living most of the time. When we get days off or have business we come into Mbarara where ACTS has a home aptly named Canada House!! We have almost a week here to get some language learning done, review the paperwork from the past interns, go into town for errands etc. And also enjoy the luxuries of our own home, own cooking/food, and electricity!!!....well every other day on that one! That is where I am at the moment, typing out this message that I will hopefully send to you all tomorrow with the SUPER SLOW internet connections of rural Africa!!! God bless!! Miss you all!!

LOVE TANESSA