After our morning/afternoon worship experience we went further into the “downtown” area of Kampala and visited the Garden City mall. The mall is a fairly good size and has western style restaurants and shops. It is where most of the expatriates stationed in Kampala go to shop and hang out. Garden City had one of the best “ForEx” shops we found, so Mark and I would return there to exchange dollars for shillings whenever we were able.

Our hosts wanted to eat at the Indian restaurant at the mall so Mark and I treated them, their daughters Charis and Sophia, and Kelsey to an absolutely excellent Indian meal.

The waiter had no idea how to use a camera.

In addition to really fine food and outstanding service we had Cokes made with cane sugar from a glass bottle (Coke NEVER tasted so good) and ginger ale made with real ginger (that was different, but very good).  The meal for the seven of us cost about 110,000 shillings which is very, very expensive by Ugandan standards but much lower than average for US restaurants of the same quality (meal total was about $69).

After the meal (which took about 90 minutes or so) we traveled to Anthony and Misti’s home for a planning session.

Their home is a missions residence near the main International Mission Board offices in the Muyenga neighborhood (in Kampala) where we were also staying. It is a walled, gated and guarded (at night) compound and quite large. The girls have a wonderful tree house in the yard and the “garden” is well managed. Because of the disparity of incomes (between the missionary and the average Ugandan) and due to the amount of time required to get from one place to another, it is customary for missionaries to employ several Ugandans in different capacities to help them care for property, their children and even themselves. Our IMB mission workers do not earn a “living wage” by American standards, but they do all right in making a respectable life for themselves and their children in Uganda.

Muyenga neighborhood taken from a nearby hill

Anthony gave us a brief overview of our assignments for the week. We nodded approval although we had no idea of what we were doing. I was able to give the girls some gifts we brought from the States and to give Anthony supplies he had requested (HP Inkjet cartridges were especially appreciated).  One of my stateside friends had given us $600 to spend on our trip, so we arrived with plenty to share and ended up passing some of what we brought on to a team from Texas that joined us later on in the week.

We were allowed computer access and took about one hour to send 3 emails and 4 or 5 text messages to our family and workplaces.  I had forgotten how slow the internet used to be in its earliest days.  Ugandan internet is mostly dial-up on copper wires and the rest world is broadband on digital and optical lines.  The two don’t mesh well to say the least.

7:45pm in Uganda is very dark, and we were still at the Shelton’s home after 8pm.  Anthony was gracious enough to take us back to Emmaus House.  Both Mark and I were plenty tired and fell asleep before 10pm…bad move…at 4am Sunday we were tossing and turning trying to make it to 6:30am.  We survived, however, and made it to Day 3 ready for “real church” with our ever expanding Ugandan family.

Looking back am constantly amazed over how clueless we really were as to what was just around the corner.

Stay tuned!