Bénédictions

Ok so I have changed the setting on my blog that anyone can comment on my blog not just users of blogger world. If only I knew it was that easy. So feel free tear me apart, tell me what your thinking.

It is a very interesting part of anatomy. Some are long enough to touch your nose. A Giraffes tong is so long it can even touch its eye . You can even make designs with a tongue making 3 or 4 ripples, or rolling it even flipping it upside down. We use it to even cleaning our teeth. We even use it for feeling, weather it is the texture of our food or feeling a tooth or a sore that is in pain. It has all sorts of taste buds placed differently and strategiclly on the tongue. I remember my dog Annie has two black birth marks on her huge pink tongue and but for the longest time I thought she was eating dirt. Not to mention that dogs tongues to stick out and drool is just cooling them down. I mean the variety of movements of a tongue helps make the sounds of speech. Man especially hearing all the languages here in Uganda. Some of them even sound like birds chirping when they talk. And from what I hear the tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.

It’s powers are many. But that dosn’t mean they all can be good things.

You know the bites that we put into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal to where we want. Or take ships for example. Although they are so large and driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder to where ever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Look a a forest fire for example when what started it was so small of a spark of fire. The tongue is also fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It can corrupt the whole person, setting his whole life on fire, and is set on fire by hell itself. All sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil that is filled with deadly poison.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. It should not be this way! Can both fresh and salt water flow from the same spring? Can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

So some one asked me the other day how I was really doing and what have I been learning right now. So these are some things that have been going through my head the past few days

HenryT
James 3

This is the taxi park in down town Kampala. This is were everyone goes to go. You ride a taxi (matatu) to the park to go get on another taxi to get to your destination. Lets say where ever your destination is, is about 15 miles. It will take you like 1 hour and 15 min to get there by matatu. And if the long wait doesn't kill you, just wait to you get inside one of these babies. Think of an old VW van with the mid engine underneath the front seats, you cram 4 bench seats that seat 3 all in the back then you have two seats in the front minus the driver, even if the stick shift is right in the way, it is still a seat. So count how many seats there are to carry people. I counted 14 not including the driver. When I first saw the lay out of the matatu I thought, man that has got to be a crammed taxi with 14 people in it. Boy was I ever wrong! They cram 30% more than the licenced amount of people they are supposed to!! I had a record that I made the second month I was here and it was a total of 17 in one taxi with 2 children. Then yesterday is when that record was broken which made me write this entry. 20 fully grown men and women in one taxi. I think one of my legs was on top of some one and the other was underneath another with 2 people standing up hunched over. It was funny because my dad tried to call me right when I was in the taxi and I just started laughing because I knew there was no way that I was going to get to my phone in my pocket non the less I didn't know where my hands were. The culture thing about all of this. As much as it makes all of you laugh and tell friends about this. It is nothing but normal here. It is absolutely normal. The Ugandans here would be bored to death if they had to read what I just wrote because this is normal every day life here.

So I learning not to laugh when someone willingly just plops on my lap in a taxi.

Normal



H

It means the world to me that you would consider listening to what I have to say. None the less suport me as well. Thanks

The practicality of Africa is amazing and I just wish I could explain in words that you could even get just a sliver of what goes on here. All the way from ironing cloths to just getting around if your handicapped.
As much as they are suffering, they a more piratical and in-expensive way of life than what we live in the states. How much does it cost to get a shirt Tailor made in the states $40-$70 or even $170? I don't know because I have never had a shirt made for myself before. What about shoes what do you do when you get a hole on the bottom of your sole, or a whole in the top of your shoe? You go buy a new pair they are old and spoiled right? What if your washing machine broke what do you do? You go take you clothes to the laundry mat get them done for you right? What if your dryer broke too you would also take them to the cleaners. How many of you have a clothes line in your back yard? Your vacuum cleaner what if it breaks? If that happened in my house back in SA we would just get the one from down stairs because we conveniently have 2. I am not saying that yall do or have done all these things but I know that I would because that was all that I knew before I came here.
I went to a fabric store the other day and picked out some fabric and a guy took my measurements and in three days he made a full button down collar shirt with 2 pockets and custom made to my body for $15.38. When I was younger and I had any sign of wear and tear in any of my shoes I would get so excited knowing that I was going to get a new pair. There aren't many shoes here in Uganda you go to a shoe store what you see is what you get, if they don't have your size in that particular shoe you can't get that shoe. what they sell are millions of soles.
Everybody re-soles there shoes here. the people here ask me "Why in the world would you go buy a new pair of shoes if you can just get them re-soled?" And if you got some holes the same guys that re-soled you shoes will sow it up like it wasn't even there. Looking back Dad and I went to go get some hiking boots before we went to go hike big bend like 3 years ago and I wore them all last year every day for work doing construction. I brought them to Africa wishing that I would have got a new pair before I left for Africa because the had a hole on the left toe and the right sole was half way off but I still used them. And so for 4 months now I see these guys sowing and cleaning shoes on the side of the roads. I thought that I should go to a guy on the side of the road and see if he can get them fixed. So I came back in 3 hours and not only did he fix everything to the point where can't even notice there were any problems but he polished and cleaned them as well!! and so I asked him "cente mayka" (how much) and he said 2000 shillings which is $1.09. I nearly cried right there, I would have payed $10 for the work that he did maybe even $20. How much would you pay in the states to get something like that fixed? I had a lump in my throat that day.
Everything is washed by hand here and it is all done by women. They have a little basin that they put on the grass outside they hike the there bottom straight in the air and bend over to wash all the clothes. I have been staying at this "so called" hotel for $10 a night and the cleaning lady came to clean my room and so I wasn't feeling good so I asked her to just clean while I layed in bed. So she got down on her hand and knees and started sweeping the heavy textured carpet with a hand brush and a dust pan, the whole room. So I started telling her that back in the states we don't get down on our hands and knees to clean like you do we have machines that do that work. She asked what if that machine broke? (i was hesitant to tell her that in my house we have 2 vacuum cleaners) So I said we would probably call for a made to come clean it up for us. She didn't understand one bit why we would do that. Then I started telling her that we don't even hand wash our clothes and said that if it broke also that we probably would not hand wash them because we wouldn't want to go through the effort. Explaining the dryer was pretty hard as well. She gets payed 100,000 shillings a month which is $54.94. And I have all ready told yall how they Iron clothes here when the power goes out.
Now if you are handicapped you have a bad leg or legs it is tuff luck here in Africa but you don't give up. There are no excuses here. I have seen people here walking on the roofs of their feet because of some disease that I can't pronounce. I have seen lots people that have a missing leg and all they have is a stick that they put both hands on and put there support on it. I have seen people that have two missing legs and they walk on their hands with a pair of flip-flops underneath them. I have even seen people latterly crawl across the street to the point where I would be the only one staring because stuff like this is normal here and you deal with the hard ships and live on. In some ways every thing that I have just wrote about is suffering. But they're way of life is praticle way of living to me. They get stuff done when if our luxuries weren't there.

thanks for listening,


H