Day 2~ Meeting the Guys and the Streets of Kampala!

Now again, most of these pictures were taken by my beautiful friend Taylor. She did amazing with her pictures! You will see some of my pictures in later posts...but for this post I needed her pictures. 

Finally in UGANDA. All of our bags made it safely to the airport!! All 40 something of them! Now I'd say that is a miracle considering on the way back, about 1/3 of the bags did not make it home. 

The air port of Uganda was very different then the one we were just at in London. The one at London was AMAZING. Shops, food, more shops. It was like a mall. Wow, was it a stark difference of the one in Uganda. It was very small and much of there security was not machines...but dogs that would sniff your bags out. It was very interesting to see. And the "customs" consisted of three ladies dressed in your traditional African outfit and masks (because of the scare of the Swine flu). They asked as questions like "do you have a cough, runny nose, sore throat?" and of course we all said "no no no". We then waited outside for the "5 guys and Jess" that Dwight said would pick us up. We all sat outside...waiting and passing around the bug spray. Finally they were here! They came walking up with huge smiles and lots of hugs! They were so excited to see Dwight, Emma and Graham. I later found out that Dwight was there "adopted Dad". On the trip before Dwight had asked these five guys "Does any of y'all not have a Dad?" to which they all raised their hands. Then he said "Who wants a dad?!" to which they all raised their hands again! It was the sweetest thing to see each of them calling Dwight "Daddy". 

These five guys hung out with us the whole trip! They were like our "tour guides". These guys will forever have a special place in my heart and I hope that one day when I go back to Uganda I will see them again...I have never laughed so much than I did with

 these guys. They were the most selfless, and loving young men of God I had ever met. 

Junior

George (one day we said started singing "george george george of the jungle!"...he told us..."no, its george george george of the desert!") 

Tony (he works with little girls that have been takin' of the street and put into his home. You can see them in the background of this picture. The sing, dance and make jewelry. The girls love Tony and he is such a great example for them. I will talk more about this organization in a later post) 

Abbey (He works with boys that are taken off of the street. He teaches them how to play a brass instrument and they have formed a band. We went to a concert of theirs...that I will also talk about in a later post :) ) 

Kennie

They helped us load all 40 something bags into 2 taxies...some how we all fit with all of our bags. And we were off. It was amazing to see the streets of Kampala. The rush of people was amazing. It reminded us of the song "Give Me Yours Eyes" By Brandon Heath. 

It took us about 1 hour to get to our hotel. This would be our sleeping place for 3 nights, the rest of the nights we would be staying at a nicer hotel. We all found our rooms and settled in. Me and Emma were sharing a room. It was nice because all of the team was in one hallway. We did get one complaint for being too loud though...oupps :) 

After dragging all of our 40 some bags up the stairs we then all met in our "devotion room" where Jess told us about what we were doing for the rest of the day! Jess is a sweet girl who lives in Uganda and was the one that did most of the planning for us! She is awesome! I think its safe to say that she is the only white girl in her village. She runs a boys home of about 13 boys. I will tell y'all about that amazing place in the later posts. 

She told us that we would be heading into the city to exchange money and eat lunch! Wow, we did not know what we had in store for us. It was a crazy experience! We broke our team of 19 into 4 smaller groups for the walk into town. It is not wise to have 19 Mzungu (white people) all walking together in town. The reason you ask? It is very hard to cross the streets by yourself, let alone with 19 people. There was also a less likely chance of loosing people in smaller groups. So there was about 6 people in each group. We made sure that the guys were surrounding each of the girls for protection. Many times guys would grab the girls hands and the men in our group would have to tell them to back off. Running across the street was NO easy task. Jess told us that the best thing to do was to grab a guys arm and walk very close together. You have to be looking in ALL different directions for cars. It was very exhausting. The walk seem like it lasted forever! It was an eye opening experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. Some sights broke my heart, like seeing small children begging for money. 

Finally we made it to the place where we would eat. For some reason I had lost all my appetite but was able to eat a few bites of my chicken burger. 

After eating we went to a coffee shop. It felt like I was at Star*bucks. It was very nice... Kennie and George sat at my table and we asked them all sorts of questions about Africa. They then asked us questions about America. It was very interesting and humbling to hear them speak about their dreams and hopes. We asked them if they could go anywhere on a plane where they would go. Kennie said he would go to New York or maybe somewhere that snowed (he has never seen snow). And George told us...he'd go anywhere. He just wanted to fly. He didn't care where he went! They also told us that it is very hard to get permission to leave the country and one of the only ways to leave would be through marriage. 

Next post coming up will be about the Sanyu babies home that we went to later that night! What an incredible place! I will have lots of photos to share... :)