Update ...We are in Mbale

Another brief post ... hopefully something fuller tomorrow, but tired now.

We a great day today.  The highlight was seeing Christine and (extended) family at her home, where she fed us lunch and we got to meet ... well, everyone - Sam her husband and Solomon her son of course, sisters, mom, etc., etc...!  She and Shalom are well ... Shalom is significantly taller (Christine isn't ;-)

After that it was a long drive to Mbale, although the road is now paved and so is pretty good (other than the speed bumps in every village, many the size of a respectable foothill).    We met some of the FH staff for supper (Molex, Miriam, Irene and a new staffer Sam, who is a recent social work grad), and are now at the hotel.

I suspect that most of my postings from now on will be centered around Marare and the work there, so I'm going to just post some random things I've observed so far not directly related to Marare that some may find of interest....these are my (Rob's) personal observations and feel free to ask other team members about their perspective.

I was less shocked at the admittedly short glimpse at the poverty in Kampala than I thought I would be.  Don't get me wrong, it was worse than anything I've seen, but much of it was not orders of magnitude worst than things I've seen in Southern Europe. 

What did strike me, which I think gave me  hope, was the sheer volume of small businesses I saw along the road - stores, beauty salons, pharmacies, restaurants and bars,  metal fabrication, etc., etc., etc.  Whatever else you can say, entrepreneurship is alive and well in Kampala.    Some interesting things:

• outdoor furniture stores ... lots of bed frames and also even soft furniture such as sofas.  Soon after we passed some of these it started to rain torrentially ... did they get the sofas in in time, and where would they put them anyways?
• many, many stores with overtly Christian names.  My favourites: "Leviticus Real Estate" and "Amazing Grace Collection Agency"
• yup, I saw it ... outdoor coffin sales.

Almost all the signage we have seen is in English ... in some senses I feel more at home here that when I was in Croatia or Italy ... at least I can read the signs here.
 I will say that the poverty in the villages, or at least the face they present to the highway, was more evident.  I'm glad I saw Kampala first as a transition.  In the countryside dirtier, more garbage (what we saw of Kampala was not significantly worse than most other large cities I have seen), buildings much more run down.

We saw tea, rice and sugar cane growing.  I'm told they also grow coffee here around Mbale and I did see a building that was the coffee co-operative (processing I assume)

The countryside remains lush, lush, lush.


It is thundering and the crickets are chirping.   Good night to the rest of the world from Uganda.