This boda driver just paid 3300000 schillings  for this brand new bike.  He was pretty proud.  Yes the dirt is that red

This entry is in honor of Wade's birthday,  July 26th.  Bet he's glad he doesn't live in Uganda.  If he did he might do this every Sat. morning.  Bikes wouldn't be a hobby but a means of survival.  Happy Birthday Wade

The boda drivers wait at corners for perspective customers.  The word boda is short for boda boda which means "border to border".   Some cyclists  travel from one border of the country to the other but most travel in town.  Our friends the Wests use them for their transportation.  They both ride together for about 2000 schillings and that takes them about anywhere in the Jinja area.  As missionaries we aren't to use them.  The single missionaries can hire a biker to take them places but not a motor cycle.  The couple missionaries all have vehicles of their own.

This is a luxury bike.  Haven't seen many of them and probably the only women we've seen on a bike too.

Mornings the milk man is out delivering fresh milk on his bike

Dad's are often seen walking their children to school.

This is an example of the crazy loads we've seen being moved by a biker.  Several loads were so wide they took up the same amount of space as a car.  Like the day a man was driving down the road with 8 foot 2X4's.

July 22, a Sunday visit to Mpumedde Branch.  The truck is parked just off the road.  No one drives except the missionaries in this ward.  The church is composed of three houses next to each other.  It is very crowded for Sacrament Meeting.

This is the front view of the church compound.  The big red mound will some day be gone.  It is a bit tricky coming into the compound from the main road.  The path to the right is probably what the members use if they live on the same side as the church.  Otherwise members across the street have to negotiate their way over the hump like we did.

Standing by the front gate looking out these children wanted their pictures taken

The first section is the chapel.  It is kind of an L shaped room with an overflow.  The middle section is the primary rooms and the end section is the Relief Society room and the Branch President's office

Thur June 19th we finally were able to get with Safari at the set up of the Agricultue show. He is in the Jinja branch and a representative of a seed company that has an exhibit garden that he is preparing for the opening next week.  His cabbage heads were the biggest I had ever seen.

We took the Wests with us as they had some things they wanted to show us too.  Safari gave us each some cukes.  There were a lot of really nice gardens.  It will be very competitive and the prize isn't try much.

This is the back yard of a vacation home the Wests found above the Nile.  For some reason the pictures over the cliff beyond didn't turn out.  It was a very beautiful sight.

The Wests have a favorite bean and rice restaurant.  When we got there we found the "Brown Restaurant" was next door.

You can get a big bowl of beans and rice for about eighty cents.  Here we are with our food. Rand has a small bowl of chard that they call spinach.  It is usually too salty unless you have something to put it on that dilutes the salt.  The Wests will be leaving soon and we will be picking up a couple of their English classes.

The huge lizard on the termite mound can get up to 4 feet long.  When it is in the grass near the Nile River it turns green.  This one was just down the road from us in a vacant lot next to the service station.

This is a statue outside the mall in Kampala.  Our assistant, Ann took the picture as we went to find hanging files for our office.   They didn't have them here so we had to go down town.  Going down town was a traveling nightmare and makes the following movies of our travel to town seem boring.

Here we are on our way to Kampala June 18th 2012.  We're about 30 minutes from our office in the Stake Center.  Traffic is beginning to pick up after passing through the  rain forest.

 The market on the left is typical of what we pass several times on the 80 kilometer trip.

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This is our first batch of cookies we made in the oven of our gas stove.  I love cooking on this stove and it is so easy to keep clean.  When not in use it has a cover that you can see the cookie pan is sitting on.  We were given some chocolate chips today by the Andrus' who are going to be the over the S. Sudan area of our mission.  They are afraid the chips will melt up there so she gave the Ballstaedts, Crayks and us her last three bags.  These cookies are the Mrs Fields cookies with currents.  We shared some with all our friends including the Wests down stairs and one set of missionaries.

Rand wanted to show some of the paper money.  Some of it isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Today our walk took us past the WW11 cemetery.  The Ugandans fought with the British

As you can see there was an African rifle brigade in WW11 that fought from Uganda

Andrea had six women come to learn to make a cake.  I went down to help her for part of the time.  She had to teach them how to measure like they were first year 4H students.  They were so pleased to learn a new skill & recipe

These two women are twins and do catering.  I think they are dump cooks like me.

Caught Andrea licking her finger covered with cake batter.  She is so good with these people and loves teaching.  Besides cooking and English she also teaches keyboard.  Her husband Aaron teaches  a simple business course as well.  Andrea  has learned to speak simply and slowly so they can understand.  I'm trying to do the same.  

These are some of our favorite meanderings around town photos.  We go shopping at a market and driving on unfamiliar roads but mostly we take pictures in the morning when we are walking for exercise.

These birds are 3 feet tall.  The building they are on is three stories tall so you don't really get the perspective of how huge they are.  They hang out on the hotels along the Nile

This women and her little boy are always out in the morning cooking chapati. Chapati is a bread similar to a thick tortea.  It is just flour and water and is rolled out & cooked over a briquet fire.  Sometimes the stove is a tire rim on legs.
Chipati is used much like we do in a breakfast burrito.  The Chipati would have a mixture such as gravy, vegetables and liver in the center.    She didn't want me to take her picture.

Another roadside market along our walking route.  Circle K maybe?

Most are friendly and will talk to you.

Rand and I have a ritual.  We walk out to the truck to get in then trade places.   We're not very fast learners and still think we should be driving on the other side of the vehicle.  The bag Deirdre made me goes everywhere.  I keep it on the floor so it won't tempt anyone to steel it.  South Africa is especially bad that way.  They will break your window and grab what you have before you know what happened.

Downtown Jinja, these men can always be found playing mancula.  I made something similar one year for Christmas.  I never dreamed at the time that I would go to Africa and see them playing the game.

This is a big bumpy fruit that we haven't tried yet.  The saleswoman or man will sit there and cut them up for you to buy a slice.  They also cut up pineapple similarly

Can you smell the dry tilapia?  Rand took this picture at the market in Jinja and it really smells fishy

Julie with her bag of goods.  Sister Ballstaedt hires someone to go to market for her.  I may get around to doing that.  It is especially messy when it is rainy.  The ground is very uneven and slippery

Sister Crayk showing us some pretty fancy woodwork.  They will do custom  pieces for you and we've seen some amazing things done by hand carving.

Rand is always trying to get a photo of the long horn cows.  Our first souvenir was a cow horn painted to look like a bird.  It has coasters for wings.  I need to send a picture to Uncle James.  He is the family bird specialist. 

There is a cow stall behind this studio.  Not sure what they do in the studio but it can't be too much.  The road is a cow trail leading up to it.  We chuckle every time we pass it.

I love the babies carried on their mother's backs.  Most of the babies are asleep in fabric wrapped to keep them there.  This one, odiously not.

This is one of two rented churches in Jinja District.  The other four branches have actual ward buildings.  Moses was our tour guide as the first counselor.  He lives on the other side of the rain forest which is maybe 30 miles away.  He is a school teacher.   The branch building consists of a chapel on the left, bishop office/branch library in the middle and class rooms on the far right where the primary out sings the teacher's lesson in Relief Society and probably YM/YW also.

Sunday July 8th, Rand explaining to this young music director how fast a hymn should be sung.  She lead Praise to the Man so slow he thought she needed help.  She was very gracious about his advise.

This young adult from yesterday's YSA party followed me everywhere during the block.  Between Sacrament meeting and RS she asked if we could take a picture of her and I.  Such a sweet girl.

Sat. July 7th The Browns and the Ballstaedts were the member support of a Young Adult activity for the district at Walukaba chapel.  There were about 150 youth who came to have fun for the afternoon.  Julie was in charge of teaching charades and they thought I was funny.  Some tried acting out a scripture word.  Rand took this picture of Sister Terri Ballstaedt and I

The line behind are picking up their refreshments which was made by one of the PEF students who is going to school in catering.  The Young adult leaders planned the food which consisted of chipata (bread like tortea) with a vegetable, gravy mixture that included liver for the meat.  Yum, what happened to root beer floats? Most are usually hungry and sugar is not something they consider a high priority.

This young adult asked if we could take our picture together.  I wish I could remember their names.  I'm slowly learning to distinguish features beyond the obvious.

Rand wanted me to send this picture of a monkey that we watched while eating at the Black Lantern.  Right below us flows the Nile and the monkey is usually joined by many more with red tails according to our friends the Harris who took us there.  We were happy to have at least one to watch.

We also went to the Weaver which is named after the weaver bird the Kilombera.  I will try sending a movie as this man makes original cloth.  See if you can see the shuttle shoot across.  It really goes fast.  The Harris' had custom place mats made for their children.  I bought a hot pad and glove for the stove.  Now maybe we'll quit burning ourselves.  Does any one want us to order them something?

The other day we found some vanilla ice cream that didn't look like it had meltedand frozen several times so we bought it and shared with a couple other missionary couples in Jinja.  Later when we got thinking about it we realized we had paid the equivalent of $8 for 1/2 gallon. It was worth it though.  

Today after two months I got enough ingredients together to make chicken enchiladas.  It is my favorite and so excited when Rand thought it tasted good.  The Chopped chillies were replaced with a green sauce we picked up from Kampala. The torteas were called Udad Papad and made of Udad flour, some ingredients we never heard of plus salt, black pepper & cumin.  They were paper thin but seemed to work.  Sour cream is pretty expensive if you can find it so I put 1 tsp vinegar in the home made cream of chicken.  That is what the sisters here said they do when recipes called for sour cream or butter milk.

I tried to get a picture of a bus with chickens tied on all across the top but the bus took off before I got the camera out.  The chicken's little heads were poking up in a mass of feathers.  Seemed cruel and unusual punishment for the dears.

We were able to talk to our land lord and he said we could have a garden in a planter around our building.  It's about a two by six foot size.  We got the weeds out and the rocks we carried out and dumped in the biggest pot hole leading to ourapartment. Now we'd like to find fertilizer and some more top soil before we plant seeds.

We haven't taken a p-day since getting here.  We decided since we didn't have an appointments this morning we'd go to the "Source of the Nile".  It's not far from
our house and we'd passed the entrance the other day looking for Universities to 
research. 
We want everyone to know how much we are loving serving a mission and encourage everyone to prepare to go on your own mission as soon as you can.  Some days we just pinch ourselves to see if this is a dream adventure or if we'll wake up and find ourselves at home.

Samuel, the guide at "Source of the Nile".  He is trying to earn money to get his education.  He grew up on an Island in Lake Victoria as a fisherman.  

The area across the river is Njeru peninsula.  We have a branch over there.  There is a spring that flows out of Lake Victoria and makes up 30% of the flow of the Nile at it's source.

Source of the Nile as it leaves Lake Victoria.  Julie holding palm nut.   It can not be opened. The natives squeeze this for food.  

It rained yesterday and these ingenious ants built walls along their path.  The path was quite lone and tunneled in places but we couldn't get a good picture of more than a small area.

The pink bush is a bougainvillea.  It is my favorite color.  Never seen this color in Phoenix.  The red blossoms above my head is a poinsettia bush.

This is Andrea and Aaron West.  They live right below us and Julie stayed up on the fourth of July to celebrate with them.  Aaron had bought these birthday candles as they were the closest thing to fire works
he could find and it made for a jolly time.
  Aaron served in the Uganda mission several years ago.  He and Andrea got married this past spring and came over for the summer to teach English.  We often hang out together on Sunday evenings.  It's kind of a lonely time and it's fun to share with them.  We'll miss them when they leave in a couple weeks.