ok so it's been a while...

Hey everyone!! Long time no talk. We realize this blog is approx. three weeks overdue. Good news is we’re established in our home, a village called Kisoga, for the remainder of this trip. Small recap:
Last time you heard we were able to spend some time working with CRO. Hands down, one of the neatest things we’ve ever been apart of. Lots of street kids yields lots of love and patience. Dorothy, the lady in charge of classes and such, was amazing at keeping things running as smoothly as possible. She had such a deep love for those kids and they in turn respected her. We played our guitars and sang for the kids, played with the kids, and broke up a couple fights…so all in all it was a blast. But it was unfortunately short lived.

The reason why is we got sick. It went like this. One night Marlee’s stomach started hurting really bad. It hurt for a couple days and then one night it got so bad she couldn’t sleep. The next day it felt better and so Camille suggested we get some antibiotics in town and it should be fine. Well we’re in town that evening and it gets bad again. We grab some meds and head back to Nakabango. We didn’t know if these prescription drugs were the best idea so I called Dr. Fleming, a doctor I know from the states, explained the situation and we started Mar on the drugs. At this point I had a headache for like two days and felt like I was running a fever. Not wanting to be dramatic I slipped out to the hall and took my temp…101.3. Great. So I shared the news and all of us felt like satan was attacking us. It was our last week and things were getting a little challenging anyways then two of us sick. So that night we went to war. We read our Bibles out loud, prayed, and declared the blood of Jesus over our room that night. As soon as possible we went to a clinic in Jinja and discovered Marlee either had: a stomach infection thing, appendicitis, or was pregnant, I had malaria for sure, and McKenzie was fine. Yay. The meds I was given made me more sick than I had been before so the next day while I stayed at home sick the other two went back to Jinja due to a change in Marlee’s condition. They came home with the news she needed to go to the hospital in Kampala that night. I insisted on going because if something was wrong I wanted to be there for Marlee so we loaded up in the truck and got delivered to the hospital. After some tests we discovered Marlee was going to make it and headed to a guest house (Christian hotel place) for the night. It was quite the adventure. What made the whole thing cooler was the fact that as soon as me and Mar started feeling better Mckenzie came down with malaria too. Haha. Good news is her medicine actually worked so by the next day she was feeling way better.

So at about this point, we had worked things out with the McKenzie’s and it was time to head to leave what had become home and head to Kampala. We rented a taxi, yes the whole huge ghetto van type of taxi, and after dropping off Tom, Michael and Linus, we got dropped with all our stuff at Garden City, the mall in Kampala. Shortly there after Jamie Mckenzie and her daughter Kaci (also 18) arrived and we loaded up and went to their home. Their house is wonderful. It was so peaceful and inviting. Kaci gave up her room so we had a place to sleep and dump all our stuff. We ate VERY well for that week between the really cook restaurants available in Kampala and Mrs. Mckenzie being such an incredible cook. We had had our reservations about the son, Jesse, but he ended up being really cool and we hung out with him some. (He’s 16.) Also we were reunited once again with the oldest girl, Makinzi, and her one year old son Weston. We had met both of them in Austin before we left. Mr. Mckenzie was still taking care of some stuff back in the states so we haven’t met him yet but the rest of the family was awesome. We loved our week of peace and relaxation and good food and movies and such. But then it was time to move once more…

Friday the 30th of January we were picked up by another taxi along with Jamie and Makinzi and went shopping for our new house. There’s a store called Game in Kampala that is like a Wal-mart only everything here is cheaper. It was awesome. So we bought stuff there and some other stores and off we went to our village, Kisoga. It was about an hour and a half drive from Kampala and pretty much in the middle of nowhere feeling. It was classic. Our “house” is like a store in the front and it has three rooms behind the front store room. There is electricity but no running water. That means to use the restroom we have to go out the back door and pass some other people’s doors and go around the corner to a little pit latrine/squatty-potty. Luckily we have a place inside we can use for bucket showers and a little tiny space in the back we can use for washing clothes and leaving our shoes. There is a lady named Lydia who will be teaching with us and also helping do our laundry, clean the floors, and some cooking. She needs the money and we sure don’t mind the help. So from now on we will be much busier than we’ve been before. We will be teaching from like 8 am till 4 pm. We will come home with Lydia and while she finishes our laundry we’ll figure out dinner. She’ll help us with stuff like rice and beans but everything else will be up to us. At school we will get some maize porridge and then for lunch we get some posho. Posho and porridge is not so good tasting and usually we get posho with beans but it’s ok because we’ll make up for it with dinner. Every other Saturday we’re going to meet together with some ladies from church and maybe from just around and have like a bible study/health/family meeting. Basically they’ll get to ask us questions about stuff and we’ll do what we can to help them out. I’m hoping this won’t give them the idea that we know a lot about this kind of thing because you never know if that’s going to mean some woman about to give birth is going to show up at our door thinking we know how to deliver babies. That could be really exciting. We’ll also be helping with the youth and speaking at the church every other Sunday. Not sure what that will entail. I know next Sunday we’re supposed to give a 20 min sermon. Oh gosh. So anyways, we’ll be really busy. The nearest internet place is a 20 min taxi drive away and with the work schedule who knows how often we’ll make it. On the every other weekends we don’t do our Saturday thing we will go to Kampala to see the Mckenzies, probably at least once go to Jinja to see our friends there and at some point go rafting maybe. All this goes on till the end of April, so three months. In May our rent will be up and they have that month off at school so we will probably split up the time between Teen Missions and the Mckenzies just finishing off our time in Africa for our last 18 days. Wow. So that’s about it. We’ll try to keep you people up to date with what’s going on and the people we’re meeting but if we don’t, just know we’re really really busy and probably need your prayers for patience, love, safety, and good teaching/understanding.
Thanks so much.
Sorry this is so overdue.
Peace.
Tamara Joy (and the other two)


ps. every night this person near our house decides to play their radio incredibly loud. it's horrible. what is worse is they repeat this at 5 am. i mean loud like you can't possibly sleep and can hardly hear some one else if they're talking to you in our house. you could pray these peoples radio dies....heh heh. kidding.