An Afternoon in Kajansi

Monday was Mercy Home of Children day. A generous friend from back home, and former resident at Mercy Home, had sent us with $ in order to purchase a goat (a.k.a.--a meal) for the children of Mercy Home. We have never gone goat shopping. Nor have we ever purchased a live goat--or transported a live goat.

Our dear friend/right-hand-man Ivan was unavailable for the day, so we took with us our friend Geoffrey, and our day-guard, Charles. Upon arriving in Kajansi, we stopped at the nearest butcher and learned that he did not have any goat meat to sell us, and also did not have a live goat to sell us. Geoffrey, however, found a man who did have goats to sell. So we stayed behind while our two men travelled apparently quite a long distance on foot (they were gone FOREVER) in order to find our goat. We had quite a few interesting conversations with various locals while waiting. We chatted with the MTN (cell phone service) workers, handed out dumdums (suckers), stared down a crazy man, and chatted up a storm with an elderly congolese man, who upon learning he would only receive ONE dumdum, and not two, got up in a furry of rage, and hobbled off on his cane.

Geoffrey finally returned on a boda-boda with a very alive young goat straddled across his lap. Quite a sight! We then grabbed our 20 kilos of rice which had been purchased earlier in the day, and all hopped on boda-bodas to head towards Mercy Home. The journey was quick and we arrived safely, but when the goat got off the boda, he decided to become quite stubborn and hid himself in a bush, which Geoffrey had to very forcefully coerce and pull and yank him out of. The goat finally budged, and we were able to enter the premises and deliver dinner. The residents and staff of Mercy Home were all very thankful and also glad to see us. We plan to return soon in order to visit with them and also to partake of the goat feast!

The ride back to Entebbe on the taxi-van was probably the most entertaining taxi-ride we have had to date. Any sort of 'sweetie,' or candy, is popular and craved by ALL Ugandans--adults included. And we just happen to have many dumdum leftovers with us on the taxi. Stacie was able to have a nice conversation with a very friendly Ugandan woman after we passed out dumdums to the entire taxi crew. Geoffrey and Charles were also quite entertaining, as they decided to strike up a conversation in Lugandan with the conductor and several passengers, which we are assuming had something to do with us, and was probably not something we really wanted to know about--as they errupted in laughter every few seconds but refused to tell us what was being said by either party.

This is why we want to learn Lugandan :)

In other news, our Kapchorwa trip was postponed, but will hopefully take place within the next week some time. We were also finally able to meet up with the warden of the Children's Remand Home (children's prison) and set up a bi-weekly schedule to come and visit with and minister to the kids. The warden was very pleased to meet us and excited to learn that we are interested in sharing Jesus with the kids.