Blog Post 8 - Arua and Safari
Door: John
17 Januari 2017 | Oeganda, Arua
So many things have happened here in Arua, lots of frustrations, lots of blessings, some unforgettable experiences, and now our time here is almost up. We got to see creatures of all different kinds in the safari and the beauty of Africa on the savannah. (PHOTOS FOR THE SAFARI CAN BE FOUND ON JOHN’S FACEBOOK!) To be honest I just don’t know what else to say here haha, so enjoy the blog!
Thursday was wow, it was just a fantastic day. We got our best night of sleep in a long time on mattresses. Even though they’re hard African mattresses, it was still super restful and like sleeping on a cloud compared to the floor in the refugee camp. We woke up to an amazing breakfast, one bun for each of us. That’s it, one bun, so that just wouldn’t do so we spent less than a euro and got the whole team 2 bananas and a bag of biscuits each, for less than a euro for the whole team! It’s crazy cheap here. In the afternoon we all just relaxed, cleaned some of our dirty, dusty clothes from the refugee camp, worked on our responsibilities and some of us got in contact with our family and friends for the first time in a long time. We then physically and mentally prepared ourselves for the evening at Sid’s family’s house. (The Texan family). We also got a surprise visit from a friend of one of the girl’s here and we got a nice little brownie appetizer to prepare the way for our feasts later that night. On the way to Sid’s house and the heavenly food, we got free admission to Sid’s roller coaster adventure and made a short little stop in the Congo! It’s only 10km away from the base and it was so crazy. We were just driving on the road and brought our passports for the border just in case but all of a sudden the jeep turned off into the bush and we were in the Congo! On one side of the road is Uganda, on the other side is the Congo with people just walking down the road and no fences or sign or anything. You could just walk into the Congo. Most of us even took a leak and claimed the territory as our own, without that you can barely say you’ve even been there. After our little stop in another country we stopped at a cool catholic church and then arrived at the house. His family has 9 kids including 2 adopted down-syndrome children so it was very busy and quite exciting but we were served 8 different varieties of home-made pizzas, 3 dessert pizzas and ANOTHER tray of brownies! We all ate as much as our tiny African stomachs could handle and I’m not ashamed to say that some of us got a tummy ache that night and we were not disappointed about it. We came back fairly late that night and headed straight to our cozy mattresses.
The next morning, we couldn’t arrange any ministries so in the morning we joined the base for intercession and fasting. (It was perfect timing for fasting as we couldn’t eat anything in the morning even if we wanted to because we were still so full.) It was supposed to start at 9 but when we arrived there, there was 50+ chairs and it was only our team there. Communication isn’t great in Africa and apparently the day had been switched and most of the people didn’t get the memo and out of the 10 or so people that ended up coming, 6 of them were our team. Intercession then proceeded to last 4 hours when we got through about 2 hours of information because of the nature of slow African speaking. It was seriously baffling, it took so long but then when we looked back at what we actually went through, it was definitely not 4 hours worth of material. In the afternoon we had some more free time and then had a nice team time in the afternoon. We were able to pray for the other outreach teams and write encouragements for them and then we shared the love and encouraged one another so that was nice. Just before that, the German team left the base and headed to Rhino camp so the number of people on the base decreased dramatically and the girls were very happy about that. Their room went from 18 girls down to 8, so they were quite excited. It also was just way too busy with both teams here, it’s nice to have chats with them but it was so crowded. The other frustrating thing about Arua has been that the power works ¼ of the time. We went for 2 days without power which isn’t so bad except for the fact that the water pump is connected to the electricity so the base had no water for 2 days. No showers, no flushing toilets, no washing hands, it’s just another frustration here. In the evening just before heading to bed, Sarah had a little surprise visitor. The Muizenberg team had a fake snake which actually looks quite real and gave Josh and John both a good fright when they saw it in the showers. So what better opportunity then to show it to Sarah when she’s not expecting it late at night and scare the crap out of her, which is exactly what the boys did. And man, if you want to hear an ear-piercing scream just throw a fake snake at a girl and she will shatter glass with her scream and break the record for high-jump as she flies out of her seat. It was definitely a good way to head to bed.
SAFARI DAY! (PHOTOS FOR THE SAFARI CAN BE FOUND ON JOHN’S FACEBOOK!). I don’t even know how to talk about this day because it was so incredible. We all got up bright and early at 4:30 in the morning and our driver was able to pick us up ON TIME! It was incredible, a true blessing here in Africa. We then had a 2-hour drive to the park and most of the team took the opportunity to have a little snooze. It was perfect when we arrived there, before even entering the park, we saw elephants, hippos and Josh and Steven saw a crocodile! What a start! At the entrance to the park, we put our bed mattress on the roof of the vehicle and we got to take turns riding on the top. From up there it’s perfect because you get up way closer to the animals and can see so much further over the landscape. And John’s mom, we promise we didn’t go above 60 km/h, don’t worry! We then had our bathroom breaks and entered the park just as the sun was coming up. It was so beautiful and just what you picture when a westerner thinks of Africa. The blazing red sun rising over the savannah with hundreds of animals grazing on the grass. It was so beautiful to see God’s creation and have that experience. The first animals we saw were antelopes and then right after we saw giraffes right up close! We weren’t expecting to see giraffes for a while but they were everywhere. And the list just went on, within 30 minutes, we had seen elephants, 3 kinds of antelopes, warthogs, monkeys, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, and soon after that we saw crocodiles and hippos. It was so crazy! And one of our favourite animals were the warthogs. They are just so funny looking and they remind us exactly of Pumba from the Lion King, so stupid and running along with their tiny legs and crazy hair everywhere, they were fantastic! We also got to see elephants right up close, like 4-5 metres from the car and this one huge one was trying to push down a tree, they’re just so majestic and large, so beautiful. And we saw soo many babies too! The little antelope babies bounding around were so cute and then we saw the tiniest little baby elephant which was just adorable! At lunch time we took the ferry across the Nile to the other side of the park and got to visit the Murchison falls, (What the park is named after.) But at the ferry crossing there were so many of those stupid baboons! The darn things tried to take our precious chapatis from right out of our hands! If you have any food watch out because they are sneaky little things and they are super clever. It was alright though because their butts are hilarious with their bright colours. Like this huge monkey which has a bright red ass, so hilarious! God definitely had a laugh making those things. Murchison was so beautiful and it was crazy to see how much water was flowing through there, it was the most powerful rush of water any of us had ever seen. It was so beautiful and we had an amazing view of the Nile. On the ferry back we got to see a hippo breach the water right beside the boat too which was super cool. We then spent the remaining part of the afternoon searching for the majestic lions. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find any, but it wasn’t for lack of effort! And we were still thrilled with all of the animals we saw, such an incredible experience and we felt so blessed. On the way home we got more chapati’s since we missed dinner and then once we were back at the base we did not stay up for too much longer. We were all exhausted from the long day in the sun and getting up early so we headed to bed. (PHOTOS FOR THE SAFARI CAN BE FOUND ON JOHN’S FACEBOOK!)
Early in the morning on Sunday the Muizenberg team left, so it was only our team remaining on Sunday. That was actually really nice because we had no other teams around and it was back to normal with just our team. Jonathan and Geerte had the day off to figure out some details for our upcoming arrival in Jinja and do some administration work. The students broke off into teams and went to two different local churches. Josh and Sarah went to one church and Sarah gave a very passionate and challenging preaching to the people, she did a fantastic job. Her preaching was only 50 min but just like Africa, the service went on for a little over 3 hours. It’s crazy to be in a church here in Africa, a totally unique experience. The doctrine and the theology are just so different. Josh and Steven went to a separate church and Steven gave a great preaching on hearing God’s voice and rocked it. Their service also lasted over 2 and a half hours even though his preaching was only 30 minutes. Everything here is just so long. In the afternoon we came back and were so excited for some nice warm lunch, only to find out that it hadn’t been communicated to us that there is no lunch on Sundays. Surprise! Well if we don’t have food you know what that means here in Uganda, CHAPATI TIME! Ugh, they’re just so good! After that we had a nice team time to discuss what we would be doing the upcoming days, have some worship and intercession time, and evaluate Soroti. And of course the water and power wasn’t working again so that was fun. We then had the rest of the day to do things for ourselves and get done what we wanted to.
On Monday, we had 3 ministries so it was a much busier day. To start the morning off we were supposed to have Base Worship time for an hour. It was supposed to start at 8, didn’t start until 8:30 and went until 10:30. This is the perfect time to use one of our favourite sayings, TIA, This Is Africa. Again, so little information in so much time, announcements alone took 30 minutes when it would’ve taken 5-10 minutes back home. After that we headed to the hospital to pray for the kids there who were staying in the ward. There were so many sick children and it was just so encouraging to pray for them and bring a smile to their face and the parent’s face. Some of them had spent their whole lives in a hospital so just playing with them and being able to see muzungus was exciting for them. Definitely was a highlight ministry moment here because really, it was our first ministry outside the base. Another thing that has been a bit frustrating about Arua, our contact people are really nice and great people, but they’re a bit older and aren’t actually great at contacting people haha. But we felt privileged to be able to pray for those little kids. After the hospital we tried to take money out from the bank for the 3rd time because we literally had no more money and add that to the list of frustrations. Simple things like taking money out of a bank can be so frustrating here. But they’re all just small things and we are headed to Jinja very soon. After lunch we got to go and do some door-2-door evangelism. We just went to a local church, grabbed some translators and went out around the neighbourhood sharing the word and encouraging people. Geerte and Steven had a really nice conversation with a Muslim family who was very interested in the gospel and even wanted their own Bible, and asked a lot of different questions, super encouraging. Jonathan and Josh also had good experiences talking with a Muslim lady and couple different families and encouraging them. Sarah and John first talked to 2 ladies who weren’t strong in their faith and encouraged them and then John gave a small preaching to a Christian family to encourage them. On a side note, some of the kids had never seen white people before so that was quite the experience. 10 of them gathered around Josh and was touch his skin, his hair, and stroking his beard, just climbing all over him. When John and Sarah arrived at the first location there was this little girl who just stared at us wide-eyed as we approached and then burst out crying because she had never seen white people before and wouldn’t look at us again. Also there was a few guys digging a latrine and they had spent the past 4 days digging this huge hole about 4 metres down! And they were using shovels and pick axes! It was crazy, and they didn’t have a ladder to get down, they just made hole on the side of the wall of the hole to climb down but if you missed a step that would not be a good time. It was insane and they were planning on digging another 3 days! That was all for Monday, we had power in the morning but then it was gone in the evening again so no water, bleh!
Arua has not been our favourite outreach location. We are still staying positive and it has had some really god highlights but so many small frustrations which just keep adding up. We only have 2 more days here and then we head off to our final destination, Jinja, which is run by Australians and seems much more organized so fingers crossed. Keep praying for Sarah as she now has antibiotics for her infections which she has to inject 4 times a day but her infections are doing so much better now and are really healing up nicely. They are almost all gone! Thank God! Other than that the team is doing great and we realized we are already half-way done our outreach now which is crazy! Time just flies by when you’re here. This will be the last blog post from Arua as we are heading out on Wednesday night to Jinja. We are taking a night bus from Arua to the capital Kampala which is 8ish hours so pray for safety as we travel in Ugandan public transportation. We are then picked up in the morning and head to Jinja. We love you guys and miss you all!
Thursday was wow, it was just a fantastic day. We got our best night of sleep in a long time on mattresses. Even though they’re hard African mattresses, it was still super restful and like sleeping on a cloud compared to the floor in the refugee camp. We woke up to an amazing breakfast, one bun for each of us. That’s it, one bun, so that just wouldn’t do so we spent less than a euro and got the whole team 2 bananas and a bag of biscuits each, for less than a euro for the whole team! It’s crazy cheap here. In the afternoon we all just relaxed, cleaned some of our dirty, dusty clothes from the refugee camp, worked on our responsibilities and some of us got in contact with our family and friends for the first time in a long time. We then physically and mentally prepared ourselves for the evening at Sid’s family’s house. (The Texan family). We also got a surprise visit from a friend of one of the girl’s here and we got a nice little brownie appetizer to prepare the way for our feasts later that night. On the way to Sid’s house and the heavenly food, we got free admission to Sid’s roller coaster adventure and made a short little stop in the Congo! It’s only 10km away from the base and it was so crazy. We were just driving on the road and brought our passports for the border just in case but all of a sudden the jeep turned off into the bush and we were in the Congo! On one side of the road is Uganda, on the other side is the Congo with people just walking down the road and no fences or sign or anything. You could just walk into the Congo. Most of us even took a leak and claimed the territory as our own, without that you can barely say you’ve even been there. After our little stop in another country we stopped at a cool catholic church and then arrived at the house. His family has 9 kids including 2 adopted down-syndrome children so it was very busy and quite exciting but we were served 8 different varieties of home-made pizzas, 3 dessert pizzas and ANOTHER tray of brownies! We all ate as much as our tiny African stomachs could handle and I’m not ashamed to say that some of us got a tummy ache that night and we were not disappointed about it. We came back fairly late that night and headed straight to our cozy mattresses.
The next morning, we couldn’t arrange any ministries so in the morning we joined the base for intercession and fasting. (It was perfect timing for fasting as we couldn’t eat anything in the morning even if we wanted to because we were still so full.) It was supposed to start at 9 but when we arrived there, there was 50+ chairs and it was only our team there. Communication isn’t great in Africa and apparently the day had been switched and most of the people didn’t get the memo and out of the 10 or so people that ended up coming, 6 of them were our team. Intercession then proceeded to last 4 hours when we got through about 2 hours of information because of the nature of slow African speaking. It was seriously baffling, it took so long but then when we looked back at what we actually went through, it was definitely not 4 hours worth of material. In the afternoon we had some more free time and then had a nice team time in the afternoon. We were able to pray for the other outreach teams and write encouragements for them and then we shared the love and encouraged one another so that was nice. Just before that, the German team left the base and headed to Rhino camp so the number of people on the base decreased dramatically and the girls were very happy about that. Their room went from 18 girls down to 8, so they were quite excited. It also was just way too busy with both teams here, it’s nice to have chats with them but it was so crowded. The other frustrating thing about Arua has been that the power works ¼ of the time. We went for 2 days without power which isn’t so bad except for the fact that the water pump is connected to the electricity so the base had no water for 2 days. No showers, no flushing toilets, no washing hands, it’s just another frustration here. In the evening just before heading to bed, Sarah had a little surprise visitor. The Muizenberg team had a fake snake which actually looks quite real and gave Josh and John both a good fright when they saw it in the showers. So what better opportunity then to show it to Sarah when she’s not expecting it late at night and scare the crap out of her, which is exactly what the boys did. And man, if you want to hear an ear-piercing scream just throw a fake snake at a girl and she will shatter glass with her scream and break the record for high-jump as she flies out of her seat. It was definitely a good way to head to bed.
SAFARI DAY! (PHOTOS FOR THE SAFARI CAN BE FOUND ON JOHN’S FACEBOOK!). I don’t even know how to talk about this day because it was so incredible. We all got up bright and early at 4:30 in the morning and our driver was able to pick us up ON TIME! It was incredible, a true blessing here in Africa. We then had a 2-hour drive to the park and most of the team took the opportunity to have a little snooze. It was perfect when we arrived there, before even entering the park, we saw elephants, hippos and Josh and Steven saw a crocodile! What a start! At the entrance to the park, we put our bed mattress on the roof of the vehicle and we got to take turns riding on the top. From up there it’s perfect because you get up way closer to the animals and can see so much further over the landscape. And John’s mom, we promise we didn’t go above 60 km/h, don’t worry! We then had our bathroom breaks and entered the park just as the sun was coming up. It was so beautiful and just what you picture when a westerner thinks of Africa. The blazing red sun rising over the savannah with hundreds of animals grazing on the grass. It was so beautiful to see God’s creation and have that experience. The first animals we saw were antelopes and then right after we saw giraffes right up close! We weren’t expecting to see giraffes for a while but they were everywhere. And the list just went on, within 30 minutes, we had seen elephants, 3 kinds of antelopes, warthogs, monkeys, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, and soon after that we saw crocodiles and hippos. It was so crazy! And one of our favourite animals were the warthogs. They are just so funny looking and they remind us exactly of Pumba from the Lion King, so stupid and running along with their tiny legs and crazy hair everywhere, they were fantastic! We also got to see elephants right up close, like 4-5 metres from the car and this one huge one was trying to push down a tree, they’re just so majestic and large, so beautiful. And we saw soo many babies too! The little antelope babies bounding around were so cute and then we saw the tiniest little baby elephant which was just adorable! At lunch time we took the ferry across the Nile to the other side of the park and got to visit the Murchison falls, (What the park is named after.) But at the ferry crossing there were so many of those stupid baboons! The darn things tried to take our precious chapatis from right out of our hands! If you have any food watch out because they are sneaky little things and they are super clever. It was alright though because their butts are hilarious with their bright colours. Like this huge monkey which has a bright red ass, so hilarious! God definitely had a laugh making those things. Murchison was so beautiful and it was crazy to see how much water was flowing through there, it was the most powerful rush of water any of us had ever seen. It was so beautiful and we had an amazing view of the Nile. On the ferry back we got to see a hippo breach the water right beside the boat too which was super cool. We then spent the remaining part of the afternoon searching for the majestic lions. Unfortunately we weren’t able to find any, but it wasn’t for lack of effort! And we were still thrilled with all of the animals we saw, such an incredible experience and we felt so blessed. On the way home we got more chapati’s since we missed dinner and then once we were back at the base we did not stay up for too much longer. We were all exhausted from the long day in the sun and getting up early so we headed to bed. (PHOTOS FOR THE SAFARI CAN BE FOUND ON JOHN’S FACEBOOK!)
Early in the morning on Sunday the Muizenberg team left, so it was only our team remaining on Sunday. That was actually really nice because we had no other teams around and it was back to normal with just our team. Jonathan and Geerte had the day off to figure out some details for our upcoming arrival in Jinja and do some administration work. The students broke off into teams and went to two different local churches. Josh and Sarah went to one church and Sarah gave a very passionate and challenging preaching to the people, she did a fantastic job. Her preaching was only 50 min but just like Africa, the service went on for a little over 3 hours. It’s crazy to be in a church here in Africa, a totally unique experience. The doctrine and the theology are just so different. Josh and Steven went to a separate church and Steven gave a great preaching on hearing God’s voice and rocked it. Their service also lasted over 2 and a half hours even though his preaching was only 30 minutes. Everything here is just so long. In the afternoon we came back and were so excited for some nice warm lunch, only to find out that it hadn’t been communicated to us that there is no lunch on Sundays. Surprise! Well if we don’t have food you know what that means here in Uganda, CHAPATI TIME! Ugh, they’re just so good! After that we had a nice team time to discuss what we would be doing the upcoming days, have some worship and intercession time, and evaluate Soroti. And of course the water and power wasn’t working again so that was fun. We then had the rest of the day to do things for ourselves and get done what we wanted to.
On Monday, we had 3 ministries so it was a much busier day. To start the morning off we were supposed to have Base Worship time for an hour. It was supposed to start at 8, didn’t start until 8:30 and went until 10:30. This is the perfect time to use one of our favourite sayings, TIA, This Is Africa. Again, so little information in so much time, announcements alone took 30 minutes when it would’ve taken 5-10 minutes back home. After that we headed to the hospital to pray for the kids there who were staying in the ward. There were so many sick children and it was just so encouraging to pray for them and bring a smile to their face and the parent’s face. Some of them had spent their whole lives in a hospital so just playing with them and being able to see muzungus was exciting for them. Definitely was a highlight ministry moment here because really, it was our first ministry outside the base. Another thing that has been a bit frustrating about Arua, our contact people are really nice and great people, but they’re a bit older and aren’t actually great at contacting people haha. But we felt privileged to be able to pray for those little kids. After the hospital we tried to take money out from the bank for the 3rd time because we literally had no more money and add that to the list of frustrations. Simple things like taking money out of a bank can be so frustrating here. But they’re all just small things and we are headed to Jinja very soon. After lunch we got to go and do some door-2-door evangelism. We just went to a local church, grabbed some translators and went out around the neighbourhood sharing the word and encouraging people. Geerte and Steven had a really nice conversation with a Muslim family who was very interested in the gospel and even wanted their own Bible, and asked a lot of different questions, super encouraging. Jonathan and Josh also had good experiences talking with a Muslim lady and couple different families and encouraging them. Sarah and John first talked to 2 ladies who weren’t strong in their faith and encouraged them and then John gave a small preaching to a Christian family to encourage them. On a side note, some of the kids had never seen white people before so that was quite the experience. 10 of them gathered around Josh and was touch his skin, his hair, and stroking his beard, just climbing all over him. When John and Sarah arrived at the first location there was this little girl who just stared at us wide-eyed as we approached and then burst out crying because she had never seen white people before and wouldn’t look at us again. Also there was a few guys digging a latrine and they had spent the past 4 days digging this huge hole about 4 metres down! And they were using shovels and pick axes! It was crazy, and they didn’t have a ladder to get down, they just made hole on the side of the wall of the hole to climb down but if you missed a step that would not be a good time. It was insane and they were planning on digging another 3 days! That was all for Monday, we had power in the morning but then it was gone in the evening again so no water, bleh!
Arua has not been our favourite outreach location. We are still staying positive and it has had some really god highlights but so many small frustrations which just keep adding up. We only have 2 more days here and then we head off to our final destination, Jinja, which is run by Australians and seems much more organized so fingers crossed. Keep praying for Sarah as she now has antibiotics for her infections which she has to inject 4 times a day but her infections are doing so much better now and are really healing up nicely. They are almost all gone! Thank God! Other than that the team is doing great and we realized we are already half-way done our outreach now which is crazy! Time just flies by when you’re here. This will be the last blog post from Arua as we are heading out on Wednesday night to Jinja. We are taking a night bus from Arua to the capital Kampala which is 8ish hours so pray for safety as we travel in Ugandan public transportation. We are then picked up in the morning and head to Jinja. We love you guys and miss you all!
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