UGANDA

So here we are in Uganda- and finally I have found time to update our blog!

Our new home:

Over one month ago we arrived in our new home:

Our new home is different from any other MAF house we have lived in. It's so different that it doesn't really feel like "our" house yet.
Instead, it feels like I just walked into someone else's life....

For a start, it is not on a compound! In our 7 years of living in Africa with MAF, we have always lived on a compound (or more recently, in an appartment block, with MAF neighbours in the same block!).
Now we live in a house set back by itself along a Ugandan street, with its own garden. A garden that we no longer share with others! The house is hidden from pedestrians and drivers behind these huge gates:

Behind these gates, an incredibly steep driveway leads up to the house:

There is a wide patio area in the garden. With the low risk of malaria in Kampala and the more pleasant temperatures than Juba, we can actually sit out in the afternoons and evenings to enjoy the outdoors and an amazing view across the city:

Living behind big walls and being separate from the MAF team makes a huge difference. 

On the one hand, we are enjoying a privacy that compound life does not allow. The children can be as noisy as they like without disturbing anyone other than their harassed parents! We can stay in our pyjamas on a Saturday morning longer than you can in a compound house- someone is always bound to pop in and see you in your nightwear when you live on a compound!!

On the other hand, we are finding that it can be isolating to live behind such huge gates. It is strange not having neighbours who we know. It requires much more effort to get to know fellow MAF families. Everyone seems very busy. There is not the same sense of being on a team that we found in Tanzania, South Sudan and even in the big city of  Nairobi.
It is harder to find the "F" in MAF here in Uganda.

We are also grappling with security issues as we try to work out how to have someone on the property to guard it as much as possible. We have been warned that crime is rife: apparently empty houses serve as an invitation to opportunistic thieves. Previously, the matter of guards was taken care of by those in charge of the MAF compounds. Now we find ourselves having to make tricky decisions over how best to avoid break-ins and how many hours and who we should employ to help keep us safe. These are puzzles we are still trying to solve!

Garden Hazards:

We love our new garden! However, Joel discovered 4 days into our arrival in Kampala that our garden is not without its hazards... He managed to have a nasty fall off this rope swing:

He landed awkwardly on his arm. We found out at this point that Kampala has great medical facilities! Andrew took Joel to the doctor and an X-ray revealed Joel's wrist was fractured and needed to be put in a cast:

Christmas in Kampala:

We arrived in our new home 13 days before Christmas. Ten days later, all of our goods arrived from South Sudan!! We were able to start the process of unpacking and making the house more like our own home.
Andrew went to the airport to help unload the MAF plane which brought our goods from Juba. He then ferried the first lot of our belongings back to the house in our car. The children ran excitedly to help unpack our house goods which have been up in South Sudan since our hasty evacuation back on July 9th last year.

A short while later, a truck followed, packed to the brim with boxes and suitcases which all needed to be unloaded:

Soon, the boxes were piling up on the patio...

... and in the lounge:

We spent the Friday and Saturday before Christmas frantically unpacking... but took a rest on Christmas and Boxing day! Christmas happened amidst the chaos of a half-unpacked home!

Despite being so new in Uganda and not knowing many people here, we had a happy, if quiet, Christmas time. It felt festive, even though we had not had much time to think about Christmas preparations.
I had bought a (fake) Christmas tree from a family who were leaving. Thankfully, someone from the MAF team helped me to locate a chicken in time to get it cooked for a traditional roast for our Christmas lunch. Gifts from kind family and friends were taken out from bags where I had kept them safe for months (from England, to Kenya, to Uganda!!) and placed under the tree. The stockings were unearthed from a suitcase... and Christmas day dawned bright and hot!

Christmas started with pancakes and fresh fruit: our first Christmas meal in Kampala:

And after a visit to a new church, we came home for our Christmas lunch: a hot roast on a hot day!

Visitors in Kampala:

One of the nice things about living in a capital city is that it can be a central meeting point. The longer we live in Africa and the more countries we live in, the more people we know- so the likelihood of passing visitors is high!

In fact, on the very day that we arrived, in the same hour that we moved in to our new house, we had visitors from Juba! It was so much fun to welcome our neighbours from MAF Juba and introduce them to the home we were just discovering!
We had managed to find essentials: the kettle, cups and tea, coffee, milk, juice and even cake, so we enjoyed a merry afternoon tea-party to launch our settling in period.
Our three children were absolutely thrilled to have their good friend here from Juba and to show him their new bedrooms, garden and house!

A few days after Christmas, we were delighted to welcome more good friends from Juba. My French friend Nathalie and her family came to stay for 3 days. It was such a wonderful time of catching up and having fun! We had not seen each other since the day we evacuated from Juba, so it was far nicer to see each other again in this more peaceful setting!

The last time we had all shared a meal together was the night gun-fire broke out in Juba. Instead of eating eagerly anticipated pizza at the hotel, we had to take shelter in the hotel courtyard, before escaping to the safety of the MAF compound for a late dinner in our locked and barred house. This time, however, we ate dinner outside on our patio without the slightest hint of political tension or gun-fire! It is good to feel safe!!

Again, our three children were so happy to have friends from Juba to catch up with. It was a precious few days.
Nathalie knows Kampala far better than I do, so she was great at showing me some of the shops and useful venues, which is such a massive help when you are new to a city.

The mums:


The dads:


The boys and girls:


After this lovely visit, we had a few quieter days,,, and then enjoyed some special visitors from America. Special, because I had not seen them for 30 years!!!! (I can hardly believe I'm old enough to say that!!).
Sharon and Lynn are missionary doctors who have been working in Kenya and South Sudan for over two decades. I first knew them when they rented the top flat of the vicarage where I grew up, For three months, they and their newborn baby son stayed in our house. Lynn was studying a course in tropical medicine at Liverpool University before their departure for Kenya.

I have a photo in one of my older albums of me as a young girl cradling their tiny baby boy. I can still remember that time. When Sharon and Lynn came to visit us here in our Kampala home, they showed me a photo of their same son, all grown up and married and in his thirties! I FEEL OLD!!!

Like us, they had to evacuate their home suddenly in South Sudan last year. Unfortunately, the place where they were living and working in Yei is far more damaged by the events of the fighting than Juba was. Yei has become so dangerous that they cannot yet go back to retrieve what might be left of their goods, although they had the foresight to gather their essential documents and medical equipment before they left. They are now working among South Sudanese refugees in the north of Uganda.

It was amazing to be able to see them again, catch up on 3 decades and introduce them to my family!

In addition to these visits, we have also been able to have another British friend who we know from Juba here at our Kampala home for a meal. Again, we had not seen each other since the evacuation, so it was good to have this chance to catch up on news, chat about the events of July and share our evacuation stories.

I am so grateful for these visitors. Life in our new Kampala home will take some getting used to, so I have really appreciated the links with our Life before Kampala as we start to adjust to a very contrasting life among new faces, in a new country.

One of the biggest changes has been the children starting school here... real school as opposed to home school! But that is a new topic and will have to be a new blog-post!!