Ok Massive Blog update coming right up. And I wont feel offended if you don’t read it all. Just pick the heading you like and have a read. Its quite detailed this time as I am using it for journal use also. The other Journal the girls gave me I am using more for scrapbooking and hence will lack the small details of day to day activities.

BUSHIKORI
So firstly I should update you all on my work at Bushikori and the events that take place in a normal day for Maz.
Ok so I wake up around 6 and have some quiet time with God in prayer and bible reading. I’ve successfully worked my way backwards through the books of the Bible. I decided to go backwards as every time I read it from Gen-Rev I always get stuck at Numbers of Judges and don’t make it much further.
Then I “take tea”. Which means having a cup of tea with some food of some sort. Most commonly its plain bread, or some left over Irish (which mean potatoes as in Irish potatoes), sometimes there is nothing at all so then you just drink tea. (Ugandan tea consists of loose tea leaves with a large amount of sugar (which is odd because sugar is very expensive here) and no milk as they don’t have fridges and milk is also very expensive. (It costs 1000 shillings for 1L which is about $1 Aus. But considering most people in the villages might make about 2500 shillings a day its very expensive)
Then after I take tea I go and bathe. I fill a round basin with cold water then carry it to the bathing cubicle. I have a bar of soap in one hand and splash water on myself with the other hand.
Next I pack my things and walk out onto the path that passes through a line of huts with maybe 5 families in them. I have a little fan club that is made up of 8-10 kids ranging from 1-5yrs with a majority being around the 2year stage. They are soooooo cute! They consistently run over to me to shake my hand (kneeling if they are girls) and then they greet me. Even though I I have done this every morning for the last 3wks they have only failed once to come running giggling and screaming to greet me. Today they saw me coming from 50m back and they started jumping up and down and singing “muzungu, muzungu something something something muzungu”. (the something = a Lugisu word I don’t know).
I then wait on the side of the road and wait for the Bushikori School bus to “pick me”(for some reason they just don’t bother to say “up” on the end). While I wait for 5-20mins (differs from day to day) I get many “Muzungu how are you?”. I also get to see many Karamojan girls that have walked the 10kms from town with a huge sack of coal on their heads. The Karamojans are the most primitive people in Uganda and will get a blog write up all of their own. It’s a very very interesting tribe of people here in Uganda. But anyway they are very poor people and have to work very hard to get very little money.
Once the bus has picked me (and sometimes Mama Flora (Mary) shes often running late), we get to BCC. We go to Morning Glory time. Then go back to our offices and work. I generally work on projects, type documents to help admin, or am running my Bible clubs or preparing for them. Then at 1pm we head over to the kitchen to eat posho and beans or rice and beans. (doesn’t really come in other variety). Then at 5pm we get in the bus with many many people (far too many than can possibly fit). Get home. See my lovely fan club again as I go. Then 5:30 church starts so we sing and praise God, pray and then the Bishop speaks for a while then we pray.
Most nights I help to cook supper which we don’t eat until 10pm or 11pm. So often I feel I cant eat much as I am about to go to bed but often im so hungry at that stage that I eat close to a normal meal size.
Then Patricia and I head to bed. We attempt to kill some malaria carrying mozzies. Then I crawl under my mozzie net that I think really attracts the mozzies. We turn off the light or blow out the candle and go nigh nighs.

Patricia and Bea in traditional outfits called Kitengi. Two daughters from the Congo missionary.

OFFERING
I just wanted to tell you all this story because it nearly made me cry when I saw it and it can be such an amazing example that as Westerners we could learn a lot from seeing more poverty more often. Ok so when I still lived with the Duffields I would go to the Church of Christ on Sundays. Most of the Americans in Mbale go to this church as they set it up but Ugandans are trained to lead and preach. So every week we have the offering where you walk to the front and put in your tithing and or offering (they separate the two.). So one week a man stood up, went outside, brought in a rooster with its legs tied together so it couldn’t run away, and put him in front of the table with the offering baskets. This man was an old man, dressed in very poor clothes (even very poor people wear nice suits to church, so he must have been very poor.) and had just given a chook to the church. They are so valuable to families and can fetch a nice price or are cooked for very special occasions and he had given it to God. I had tears in my eyes. I thought of the times when I have held back from giving my money because I thought I was poor. Me who had clothes enough to dress 20 other people, books, cd’s so many things that I could give away and so much more money than this man could even imagine and here was a poor man that gave what he had.