Driving

I was driving myself to get some needed groceries the other day, and I thought to myself, "This has become 'normal'."

It has been ten and a half months since we arrived here in Uganda, and ten months since I have been driving the kids and myself around the city. If you had told me then that I would be driving around Kampala and area with confidence ten months after arriving here I don't know if I would have believed you.

Learning to drive here has been an adventure. For one thing the driver sits in the right seat of the vehicle and we drive down the road on the left hand side. You also have to stay alert at all times. You need to watch the other vehicles, "boda bodas" (motorcycles), and the people, anyone of them could go where you don't expect them to go. You have to try to expect the unexpected. Another thing about driving here is that Kampala is pretty much made up of many hills, I think 21 all together, and we have a manual transmission vehicle. It has been interesting to learn how not to let it roll to much in the wrong direction.

Now you will find me driving every day as I take the kids to school or pick them up. You will also find me going about once a week to get groceries to keep my family fed, and the laundry done and the house clean. Oh, and to make sure our puppy's have the food they need too. You may be thinking that is not so much, but here there is no one stop shopping. I may have to go to three or four different shops in one day to get everything I need.

Thank you all for your prayers as I have learned this valuable skill for living in Uganda.      

Laundry "Fun Times"

Laundry is something that always piles up in our family, and I never seem to make the pile smaller for long. Just when I think I have got it licked the kids come home from school or Dallas comes home from a flight.

Living in a third world country comes with it's own challenges for doing laundry.

I am very thankful that I have a machine that washes the clothing, towels and sheets for me, if the power is on.  But I do not have an electric machine to dry them.  I have three lines in my back yard, and four small lines under cover for when it rains.  I can still dry the laundry but not as much as on the bigger lines in the back.  After everything is dry it needs to be ironed to kill all the bug eggs that might have been laid on it.  And again this only happens if the power is on.  Sometimes I have been able to wash and dry the laundry but then the power says good-bye and the laundry just sits there clean but unable to be used.

Take the last few weeks for example.

Three weekends ago we were without power for the whole weekend. So no laundry was done but everyone had to wear clothes and the pile gets bigger and bigger.  The power came back on Sunday afternoon, and I was able to do one load because it was late in the day and had to be hung on the smaller lines.  On Monday I had great plans to get a lot of laundry done but with the piles so big and a small washer I knew it was not all going to get done.  Monday morning I got the kids off to school and proceeded to get laundry started, but the power went off again for the whole day.  So the piles of laundry got one day bigger.  The rest of the week the power plaid tag, and I only got about 5 loads done all week.

The next week was a lot better and I got the piles down and did some extra that was waiting for smaller "need to wash" piles.

 All was going great until last Sunday, when the power company thought we had had enough power and could be off for the day.  On this day our neighbors behind us also decided that the trees between us were getting too big and becoming a security problem so they needed to come down.  As they were cutting things down they did not realize that one tree was not going to fall where they thought it would.  It came over our wall and hit the power lines.  Now we were going to be without power for longer then just that day.  The power company was not going to turn the power back on until our neighbors were done with the cutting.  Everything was done and the power back on by 2pm Monday afternoon but because of the time of day only one load got done again.

The rest of this week has not been good for laundry. 

Tuesday the power plaid tag again, and I didn't get any done. 

Wednesday it rained all day, and I don't have a lot of space for drying in the rain so no laundry.

Thursday I got two loads done and then the power went off.  It came back on later but by then it was to late in the day to get things dry.

And that brings us to today, and my great plans to get a small load done because it was raining again. I was just about to get the load going when the power went off and has not come back all day.

All this to say when everything is right you do laundry. I even found myself doing two loads on Christmas day this year.  Something I thought I would never do.  But there was some laundry that needed doing so it got done.

The joys of keeping house in Uganda!

Christmas

Since we moved to Uganda 8 and a half months ago I have come to the understanding that we as a family need to approach some celebrations differently then we would have in Canada. Christmas for me was the big one that needed some refocusing. In Canada it seemed to be easier to get into the the feel of the season. About mid November the temperature would drop and the snow would start to fall. Then you would start to realize that Christmas was on it's way. But being in a country were the temperature doesn't drop below +18 degrees Celsius all year long and there is no snow it was a little harder to realize that Christmas was approaching.

This year as Christmas approached I noticed that I was having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit and the understanding that it was coming fast. So I decided to focus on why we celebrate at this time of year. I really like to listen to music and Christmas music is probably my favorite. So I thought that would be a good place to start.  This year as I listened to the music I decided to not just have it on in the background, but to really listen to the words of the songs. As I listened I began to remember why we celebrate Christmas.

We celebrate this baby's birth because if this baby had not been born we would not have Easter. Our amazing God loves us so much that He wanted to save us from certain death. The only way for Him to do this was to came down to earth and be the sacrifice we needed to be saved.

After realizing this it wasn't very hard to feel like Christmas was coming and to be excited about the celebration.

Why a blog

We have now been in Uganda for 8 months and for the last few months I have been thinking it would be nice to share some of my experiences as the wife of a pilot and the mom of three great children here in Uganda.  The best way to do that we have found is to blog. So I have created a blog for myself that we will link to on "The Flip Side".  I called it "In The Potter's Hands" because with every experience and lesson I go through I can feel myself being molded into the person God wants me to be. The posts here will probably not be lengthy but I hope you will be able to get an idea of how I am doing, what I am doing, and how God is working in my life as I serve Him here in Uganda.
Enjoy!!