Uganda, part 1

I have been in Uganda now for 9 days, and what a challenging adventure it has been! I arrived the night of the 23rd after 3 flights and 22 hours of travel and David picked me up at the Entebbe airport and took me straight to a campsite in Kampala to stay for the night before leaving early the next morning for Murchison Falls National Park where we were to go on a photographic safari. We camped in a tent just up the road from the Nile River, and were warned not to pet the resident wart hogs and if we had to go to the bathroom at night to leave a distance between yourself and the hippos that graze on the campground at night. You see, the hippos hang out in the Nile during the day and then travel up to 10 kilometers grazing at night, and the grass around our tents at Red Chilli campground must be tasty and in their path. It took most of that first day to drive the bumpy roads between Kampala and Murchison Falls, but the powerful falls and the many animals we saw were worth it. We saw giraffes, water buffalo, water buck, 4female lions, elephants and many more. In the afternoon, we took a river tour on a boat up the Nile to the bottom of the falls and saw amazing birds and crocodile and elephants and many many hippos along the banks. We spent another night and then set off to a rhino sanctuary, where we were to see the only 7 rhinos in Uganda, brought there by other countries and donated by zoos because all of Uganda's natural rhino population has been poached out of existence. These rhinos are guarded 24/7 by rangers, so they always know where they are. We rode out to where 5 of the rhinos were hanging out and then, to my surprise, we got out of the car and walked to about 50 feet of the napping rhinos. The rangers wanted the rhinos to stand for us so we could see them above the tall grass. Well, they did stand, and then one of them got annoyed, decided to take it out on the others, and began chasing the rest of the herd. The rhinos were running around and most of our group of 20 went one way and I went up a tree, along with two other guys in the tree next to me. Remember, this is just my second full day in Africa! It was an adrenaline packed beginning for sure! Look for a video of the insanity later, on David's blog probably.
So thus was just the beginning of my trip as I said, so look for more stories from Uganda later! It is hard to post from here due to slow internet, and I'm actually writing this on an iPod, so this is all for now. I will add pics, links, other cool stuff later!

Safaris...Riots....9/11...Same Kind of Different

I will be leaving Tuesday, September 22nd to visit David in Uganda! I will leave around 2pm from Memphis and I fly to Boston, Amsterdam, and then I arrive in Uganda Wednesday night. David and others from eMi will be dropping someone off at the airport that night and picking me up. We will go from there to stay at a campground and then go on a safari the next day!

Here is the link to where I will be staying for the safari me and David and his eMi friends will be going on:

http://www.redchillihideaway.com/

So one of David's prayer requests has to do with riots that are going on in Kampala, Uganda, the city that he is in right now. It's all complicated political stuff, but if you want to read about it, here is a brief story on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/world/africa/12uganda.html?hpw

So I am very excited about my trip to Uganda. I just can't wait to see David and see this place he is spending time in. I will miss one of each of my grad classes, so that won't be too bad, and I will miss a week of work, which they knew I'd be missing when they hired me, so that's fine. Grad school is not hard really, but what IS hard about it is getting back into school mode and making myself sit and read lots of pages in textbooks and sit and write papers! So I am struggling through that. I really do like how all our classes are discussion based, and honestly I do like that we write papers instead of take tests. I will have a midterm in one of my classes, but the rest of the classes are presentations or papers instead.

This morning Mom and I went to the 9/11 memorial service on the Square in Oxford. It was simple, just a few speeches. A boy from Lafayette High sang the national anthem and there was a gun salute and a flower wreath and the older man that's in the Ole Miss band played Taps. It is still shocking to me how horrible that day was when I really stop to think about it. It's amazing that there is that kind of evil in the world. So it was nice to stop and honor those that lost their lives that day, the innocent victims and the service men that worked to save many.

If anyone is looking for a quality read, Same Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore and Ron Hall is an excellent choice! I'm not even finished with it yet, but it makes me cry every time I pick it up, and I don't cry at just any story. Its a very genuine story about two mens' lives crossing in a design only God could put together. It teaches some amazing lessons about God, without being preachy at all. In other words, READ IT!!!

http://www.samekindofdifferentasme.com/

Well, I'd much rather keep blogging, but its really just a way to procrastinate cleaning my room and writing a paper or two, so I must go :(