Life in Africa

We are now here in Africa and I have to say that being ecstatic quickly went to exhaustion as it was a long trip and we had to get use to 8 hour time difference to get use to!!! The last entry was written solo but so much has happened in the first four days of being here Lawrence and I thought we would write this next entry together to share the first leg of our journey.

Firstly, we would like to inform everybody that since our orientation here, we have learned that we cannot post pictures from the baby home online, although we are free to share them with everybody on our return but due to privacy reasons of the children and their families, we are asked not to put them on the internet.  We can put pictures from our everyday life here, but even with this, we have to be careful as it is illegal to take pictures of military, police officials and government sites.  People in the village can be suspicious of Mzungu (their word for white people….and yes here Lawrence is considered as a white person) so we do need to be careful taking pictures in the village as we don’t want to be offensive. We look forward to sharing lots of pictures of our trip, but we are here to serve the community that is our first priority, so we don’t want to do anything that is not putting the people’s needs first. Uganda is getting ready to have elections in February so there are some safety concerns that go along with this (AHHH) well all that being said we are both absolutely loving being here!  The locals are very friendly, and there are also many other wonderful volunteers here that we are getting to know and are sharing the guest house to Lawrence’s delight with a group of girls (yes all girls) from Norway and Australia so at the current time, Lawrence is quite out numbered.  There are other men volunteers but they are quite few and far in between at the current time. At the present time, most of the volunteers our single lady’s we are hoping that we will see more couples during our stay here as there are always volunteers coming and going.

The baby home is absolutely wonderful!! The babies are amazing! They are so cute and to play with we are both having a great time with them. Our first day with them was a wonderful experience, we would hear a baby cry and soon as you went near the baby and let the baby know you were there, you were greeted with a huge smile! How can you not fall in love with that?? It was a wonderful way to start the day with them. The second day they were not quite as happy but they already had captured our heart! We got to take them for a walk to the mall now let me give you a picture of a ‘walk’ to the mall because it was so different from what you would see at home. A big group of us each took a baby and carried them on to a big bus with no car seats; the babies sat on our lap for the commute (we will share with you at a later point what a commute looks like here because the roads themselves are a story of their own!) Then when we got out of the bus all of us Mzungu’s with our babies started walking through the mall……which was quite a site you should have seen some of the looks we got. We took them to a playground that sits on top of the mall. Then when play time was done, we had to walk back to the baby home carrying the babies in our arms. This may sound like an easy task but it was exhausting!  Alison was almost tempted to quit half way as it did feel like your arms would break off at any time.  We did make it back and were reassured by the other volunteers that on most walks you get to use a carry strap so the babies are attached to you so you’re not just carrying them.

This has just been one of our many adventures so far we would love to share more stories but we do need to get ready to return back to the baby home for our first full day there. We have had such an experience it feels like we have already been here for so long and it hasn’t even been a week. We are already dreading the day we have to leave, but at the same time looking forward to being reunited with the luxuries of life back home. We will be back hopefully soon to share more adventures but as I’m sure you can understand internet is not as easily accessible as back home.  Please share with us any thoughts you have or if you have any questions or things you would like us to write about we would love to share so just let us know. 

With love Lawrence and Alison