Saturday was the last of the hibiscus. We’ve been harvesting every day since mid-September and while the end has been coming for a few weeks now, the fields are finally stripped of most of the useful calyx. I’ve been thrown into managing the harvest this
life in karamoja
Christmas in Karamoja. That phrase, as I look out the window at the heat of the day, the dryness of the bush that surrounds our compound, and smell the burning grass and see the smoke wafting across the horizon, presents itself almost paradoxically. We are
In learning any new language, your tongue twists and dances in ways it has never done so before. At first, the strange new consonants or accents sound odd and foreign. Slowly your tongue gets into shape and, although it still sounds stilted, you can at
After our brief vacation last weekend, I came home to a difficult week and quickly remembered that life isn’t all about drinking pineapple concentrate and eating Indian pizza and watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. As fabulous as all of those things are, we
We are finally down in Mbale for the weekend and are able to move some serious internet bytes, so it’s been decided that the best use of this newfound ability is to get up some video of the road between Mbale town and Karamoja for
One of the most interesting things about crossing cultures, and living in Karamoja in particular, is the deep ways that the routines of your life become unsettled. It’s been said to death that everything you take for granted is turned back on you when you
The nights in Karamoja are simultaneously the quietest and loudest nights I’ve experienced. There is no freeway two blocks away, only anomalous cars driving along the main dirt road, no neighbors twenty feet to either side of the house and no airplanes flying over head.
Today is the one month anniversary of our plane arriving in Entebbe. Thus, in keeping with our goal of determining what our long term plans with relation to this mission might be, it seemed like a good idea to do a cost-benefit analysis of the
Some time back, you may have heard via the Okkens about some reported cases of witchcraft in Karamoja (if you didn’t, you can read about them here and here). The particular case of Luomo Gabriel has been on the hearts and minds of the congregation and the