After a restful sleep and the last chance for a warm shower, we left Kasese to head to Ugandan Martyrs University in Nkozi where we will be working with the students we trained last week to help them get started with their campus ministry. The drive was like no other. As soon as we left the town, we encountered a large family of baboons on the side of the road. We stopped to feed them bananas and take their pictures. We even got a video of a baby baboon hanging off his mama (videos coming soon on Facebook). The epic nature of the drive didn't end there. A few minutes later we saw another family of elephants just on the side of the road. As we continued, we passed through many small towns filled with cows in the middle of the road, houses painted with full-scale advertisements, palm trees covered in dust, and cute little children. Then we stopped by the town of Mbarera for lunch, which was your typical Ugandan meal consisting of matoke, g-nut sauce, posho, and rice. We were tempted by the pirated DVD store downstairs – but we controlled ourselves. Once we left Mbarera the road seemed to worsen. It became a gravel surface filled with potholes and speedbumps every couple minutes. It is rare to see a paved highway in Uganda.
We took a break from the bumpy road with a stop in Masaka to pick up our luggage and reunite with the rest of the NETers. We had taken three members of this past year's NET team, but would be joined by all eight of next years team at the university. After a brief hello we headed back onto the road which, surprise surprise, was even bumpier and dustier. Finally, after seven and a half total hours of driving (which in Canada would have taken about four hours) we arrived on campus.
Relieving our sore bums from the long drive, we stood outside our van to find out some news that changed our entire plans. The previous plan was that Andre was going to give a talk to the administration of the university, and throughout the week we would be working with the students during the evening – meaning that we'd have our daytimes free with the exception of mass at noon. Well, that changed as we found out that we had to pull together a thirty minute presentation of CCO in front of 400 freshmen and that our days would be way different than what we expected...no mass at noon! It was at 7am each day! We quickly settled down in our dorm rooms, freshened up a bit (praise the Lord), and had a meeting with the student leaders we trained in the previous week. After dinner, the team gathered to discuss our plan for our presentation.
The presentation went well. Daniel, Ben, Megan and Eloisa attempted to show off the traditional Ugandan dances. It gave the crowd a laugh. Then the rest of the team joined in to teach the 400 freshmen the Chicken Dance. It went OK – freshmen are shy, after all. After introducing ourselves, Andre explained what CCO was to the students. After our presentation, the student council made the freshmen sing the UMU (Ugandan Martyrs University) anthem over and over and go over some university policies. This whole orientation made us all realize that we are now in the real world...ahh!
Pray for us!!
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