Welcome to the Flock

When we arrived in Entebbe on January 2, Joe, our inimitable tour guide, met us at the airport and since then has guided us steadily, skillfully, and carefully westward to Fort Portal and back east to his home in Jinga. We have been in Uganda for twelve days now; that's long enough to overcome jet lag and begin to settle into the red dust and August heat of the dry season.

For the many who wonder how Joe is doing after living in Uganda for the past 18 months, he is fantastic. Joe is a hearty soul with a big golden heart, giant doe-like eyes, deep patience, sharp wits, and a gentle, strong spirit. We are lucky to have him as our brother and our guide.

He haggles with taxi drivers, navigates through the chaotic streets of Kampala, delivers us to the right coaster (mid-sized bus) from within a pit of hundreds of identical coasters, and. . . he washes out the red dust from white tee-shirts by hand. At right is a picture of an empty street by Kampala standards.

Joe hooked us up with other hearty souls as well, including Our Lady of the Highway, Sister Lillian. Sister Lillian took us on a safari to Queen Elizabeth National Park, which required not only driving stealthily through rugged dirt roads within the park, but getting us to the park itself. We drove four hours west from Fort Portal in Sister Lillian's 4WD Pajero, through village after village with mighty speed bumps in lieu of police officers. Sister Lillian threaded us through the roads shared by multi-passenger bicyclists, pedestrians carrying jerry cans of water on their heads, trucks overloaded with people and produce, motorcycles carrying small families, and markets spilling into the roads. Once inside the park, Sister Lillian took us to the elephants, hippos, kobs, buffalo, and many birds, fearlessly leaving the road, as necessary.


We finished the short first leg of our journey at a place called Saka, reading in the shade, rowing a small row boat around a crater lake, talking about Uganda and the rest of the world, washing our clothes by hand, discussing washing our clothes by hand, lauding Obama, watching vervet monkeys, pink backed pelicans, knob-billed ducks, cows, turkeys, goats, and banana leaves wave in the wind.

Until next time,

C & G