On Tuesday I went to the nearby market town of Namalu. First stop, Juliano’s nursery. Juliano is a really nice Italian guy who grows flowers, trees, etc. in Namalu. Leah (another MA, who does health education and literacy work) and Erika really wanted a REAL tree for Christmas. They came home with a real tree, but it’s certainly not your traditional Christmas tree J It has a long stem and a few big, broad leaves at the top, which have now been thoroughly decorated with tinsel and popcorn strings. Unfortunately, just this morning the tree officially died... all the leaves fell off  :(

I bought some beads at the general store, which I need to string together in time for the Christmas edonga (dance), which we’ll hopefully be able to attend. We wandered around but didn’t do much shopping. We visited a man who sells vegetables, and he gave Kipsy and I free bananas, which was nice. He knows how to keep his customers. J He was selling matooke (aka plantains, or green bananas – you cook them in oil and they are sooo yummy, they taste like potatoes), yellow bananas, tomatoes, onions, kumquats, and little green eggplants. I didn’t buy anything from him this time, though. I was hoping to buy some blankets or fabric, but they didn’t really have any out, probably because it was drizzling. After wandering up and down the market street, we went to Pastor Emuron’s church for a Bible study with the pastor, his family, and a few members of his church. Attendance was low (probably 8 people?) but it was interesting to hear them talk about Christmas. Leah was asking them what the average Karamojong child or adult out in the villages knows about Christmas. The influence of the Catholic church is very strong here, because the first missionaries to Karamoja were Roman Catholic. Unfortunately this means that most people here know a lot about Mary, but she is so overemphasized that they worship her more than her Son. The Catholics taught, first and foremost, that Mary is the mother of God… and they didn’t really distinguish that she was not the mother of God the Father. So they seem to place her even above the Trinity. Leah is going to be visiting the villages and sharing the real story of Christmas, and its relation to the whole of the Gospel.

            When the Bible study was over, we all climbed back into Pastor Al’s SUV (Kipsy and I had sat on the floor in the trunk on the way over… Erika rode in the back on the way home). And we proceeded to get very, very stuck in the mud. It took us several minutes of violently rocking forward and back, forward and back, spraying mud everywhere, before we finally got out of the ruts.

Oh, rain. It’s still raining like crazy – no dry season in sight. Our laundry lady/language teacher Achio Rose said that the people in her village are coming to her asking “Are these the rains of Noah?” For us, the rains are mostly just a pain – we have to break out our boots, we can’t charge anything and we lose power every night because there’s not enough solar power coming in… but for the people in the villages, they have to walk around barefoot in the mud, wade through rivers to get to work, and sleep on the floor in flooded huts. Their crops are being destroyed by the rain.

It was raining all day yesterday, and by the time me, Erika, Heather, Leah and Ruffin went over to the Tricarico’s for dinner  everyone was freezing. We were all decked out in our hoodies, jeans, socks, with blankets wrapped around us. I asked Mrs. T what the temperature was.

It was 68 degrees.

I’m becoming such a wimp.

After dinner, while we were sipping tea and eating gingerbread cookies, we started hearing popping sounds. In all seriousness, I said, “Ooh, are those firecrackers?!” And everyone said, “Yeah, firecrackers.” I did not get the sarcasm. Laurie comes in from the other room and says “Gunfire.” There were a lot of rounds going off, and the six night guards on the mission compound blew their whistles to alert each other and make sure no guards were sleeping on the job. We just stayed inside. Later we found out that the shots were coming from Alamacar, which is quite a ways away from us, back in the hills, but the sound of the shots was echoing on the mountains so it sounded very close. We also found out that the local militia successfully stopped the raid. The militia is made up of government-appointed locals who are allowed to have firearms to prevent raids – the rest of the Karamojong are not supposed to have guns, the whole region has gone through a disarmament). When I walked back to my banda around 9:30, I quietly greeted the two guards on the Wright’s compound who were faithfully walking back and forth with their bows. It was good to see them taking it seriously… I feel very safe here.