Pearl of Africa

After the close of first term at Sonrise, our team decided to do a little traveling in the neighboring country of Uganda for some much needed rest and relaxation. This was my second time to Uganda, a country by which Winston Churchill referred to as the "Pearl of Africa" (although I am strongly partial to Rwanda and consider it the true gem). Although it is somewhat close, it is not necessarily an easy, breezy trip to get there. We boarded a rather large bus at 5 a.m. one morning and started out on the hot, bumpy, crowded 10 hour journey to our first destination….Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. On the bus we met a new friend and travel partner, Simon from Switzerland, who was living in southern Uganda and also yearning for a little adventure. Simon ended up being our 7th roommate for the rest of the trip, accompanying us wherever we went. That is the great thing about traveling in Africa, you are automatically best friends with your fellow muzungus due to the simple fact that you clearly stand out in a crowd and tend to gravitate towards each other. We also met up with some Ugandan friends that we know from Rwanda who guided us around the crazy city of Kampala.

Here is a picture of downtown Kampala in the middle of the day. I cannot even begin to describe to you the chaos in this city! There are literally cars, buses, mototaxis, and people lined up as far as your eyes can see and going in every direction possible with no regulations. When you get on a motorcycle taxi in the middle of Kampala city, you just close your eyes and say a little prayer!

Our next destination: somewhere with water and any resemblance of a beach. We headed to Lake Victoria, also known as the largest freshwater lake in Africa and the second largest in the world. On our ferry ride over to Ssese Islands in the middle of Lake Victoria, we met two very interesting people. One was the charismatic, well-traveled, and fascinating Captain Lawrence who was officially in charge of our ferry. Captain Lawrence took us up to the Captain’s quarters and even let me drive the ferry (which was a very serious job with lots of intricate details to pay attention to….needless to say, my reign as captain didn’t last very long). The second was the marketing manager of a resort on the island, who took a liking to us and gave us a killer deal on what ended up being the nicest resort on the island.

Captain Lawrence

My short stint as ferry captain....

The next couple days were spent at a beautiful resort…. in the middle of an island…. in the middle of Lake Victoria… in the middle of Africa. Kind of surreal. Captain Lawrence and his assistant joined us for dinner one night, entertaining us for hours with outlandish, unbelievable stories from his years of being a fisherman and Captain of various aquatic vessels all over Africa. Our beach experience was quite interesting, as we had to share our space with several others…including 6 monkeys, a parrot, a few pigs and goats, and an ostrich. The monkeys were quite feisty, trying to steal our food whenever we weren't looking and sneaking into my bag to play with my iPod. Life is definitely never boring in Africa.

Just hanging with the monkeys.

And the ostrich....

The best part of our stay on the island was after the sun went down and all was pitch black dark, when the lake literally turned into a city of fishing boats blending into the African sky hosting thousands of brilliant stars. Hundreds of fishing boats with single bright lights lined up on Lake Victoria for their nightly duties, literally forming the illusional outline of a "city" of lights. There were more visible stars than I had ever seen, even more than on a mid-summer night looking up from a cotton field in the Arkansas Delta:)
And sitting there under that sky I was struck with an overwhelming sense of wonder in the simplicity of the moment. The words I had read in my book that day kept running through my mind…"I asked for wonder...and He gave it to me." Brennan Manning quotes this prayer in his book Ragamuffin Gospel:

"Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe....each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all."

Grant me wonder, Lord...