Heading to Gulu

We're headed to the airport in a few hours to head to Entebbe, where we'll meet a former IC roadie who will drive us to Kampala. Tomorrow, we take a long bus ride to Gulu. As a former IC employee myself, I'm pretty thrilled to be heading to Uganda, finally. It will be good to see it with my own eyes.

Kenya has been nothing short of lovely. We arrived about a week ago, after a red eye from Bamako, Mali we had some breakfast and got on a six hour bus ride to the Nyanza(?) province, where, incidentally, Obama's father hails from. I had the flu and wanted to die. Luckily it only lasted one day.

An aside: I want to send a quick thank you to the US of A for Obama's victory. My companions and I were huddled around a small radio listening to the BBC broadcast at about 4 am local time when we heard the news. Perfect. Hearing the reactions from Africans has been fun and inspiring. There is tremendous hope here. It's nice to be optimistic.

Anyways, Kenya is stunningly beautiful. The skies are storybooks and the sunsets are art classes. We stayed with week with a Bishop in the Church of God of Prophecy, a denomination I had never heard of either. He lives in rural Kenya and the house had no indoor plumbing and few amenities but his large family and many of his parishioners cared for us so completely--making our meals, cleaning our clothes, helping arrange things for the film, translating--it quickly felt like home. We are incredibly thankful to have become a part of that community, however briefly, and they insisted that we bring their greetings back to that states so I do. The people of Kenya say hi.

Before Kenya was Mali. A much different place. Both countries are poor by American standards, of course, but the poverty in Mali was unlike anything we have encountered in Kenya. In Mali even nature works against you. It is a dry, desolate, harsh landscape, and the city air was filled with dust and smoke. It rarely rains and little grows. Nothing is easy in Mali. Nonetheless, through the support of a local Pastor and his friends, our work went very smoothly. I'm proud of the work I've been doing so far, and I can't wait to share it with my family, my friends, and anyone Pray With Africa reaches.

I better upload this while the internet still works. Greetings from Nairobi. Quick Nairobi fact: if you order a chocolate milkshake here, you just get bad chocolate milk. The more you know.

Take care.