Luweero

This weekend we ventured to Luweero, a town north of Kampala. We stayed at yet another diocese (I love how churches here have sites for visitors to stay).

Saturday we played with children at a Compassion International site. Suzan used to work with Compassion and told me how NGOs can be pretty corrupt about hoarding money and stuff, including this one, so I came in being fairly skeptical. I think all of the sponsors were local though and the workers seemed very legitimate, so the skepticism went away. The kids were eager to be with us and we led them in songs and games and planted a tree with them. I didn't want to get any pictures with the kids because every college kid that goes to Africa has thousands of pictures of them with kids and I never really get it. Yeah, the expected age of death is much lower in this continent, but that doesn't mean kids are the only reason westerners go to Africa. So my desire not to conform has spoken.

After the rain passed, we went back to the Diocese where a Catholic Priest spoke to us. He was awesome and brutally honest. He talked about his struggles with God's goodness and injustice and we asked him tons of questions.

After that, we were invited to the local Anglican bishop's home. I feel like he and I shared so much of the same theology (faith without works is dead, jesus can overcome religion, we must work together in love, etc). Then again, he did live in Pennsylvania for some time. He was very vocal about inter-religious matters and the idea of possessions, two things I will never grow bored of thinking about. He said any of us were welcome into his giant home at any time (but really, it's the church's property).

We woke up for a 6 AM breakfast today and then went to a three hour Catholic church service. It was all in Luganda, and the preacher spoke on the rich ruler. I thought it was awesome that he spoke on that topic in front of dozens of mzungus. Many churches here do this cool thing where they auction off fruit and vegetables. I liked that part.

I forgot to mention that Friday night I had horrible stomach problems that came out of nowhere. I was out in the toilet for half an hour, then I got in bed for five minutes and said to Sam, "Okay time for round two." So he took me out and waited another 45 minutes outside while I used the toilet. He said in exchange for taking me to the toilet I would have to help him look for Samantha, who is his future wife that he has yet to find.

We were in Kampala for a few hours for lunch today and now we are back on campus.