Off to Sipi

I still need to write about the Ugandan Introduction ceremony and wedding, and post pictures of all of us in our traditional Ugandan dress.  But that will have to wait because all of the interns are off tomorrow to Sipi Falls for a 3-day "Intern Weekend."  Sipi Falls is in eastern Uganda, very near Kapchorwa where I spent most of February.  It's supposed to be very beautiful and have amazing waterfalls.  I'm also looking forward to the fact that it should be very cool, maybe even COLD!  It's actually been pretty cold here in Kampala the last couple of days (which is WONDERFUL) because we're in the middle of rainy season.

On an unrelated note, last night we ordered pizza delivery!  It's great that you can still get that here.  It's a little pricey for us, but nice for an occasional treat.  Tonight we had "Panera night."  We made potato soup from scratch and fresh bread in our bread maker.  Yummm.

Easter

The Thursday before Easter is called Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, as that is the day that Jesus had “The Last Supper” with his disciples.  Having participated in a Seder Dinner once with my church in Boston, I decided I wanted to host one for my coworkers here.  The Seder Dinner is the main dinner event of the Jewish Passover and is designed to remind the Jewish people of their history and God’s faithfulness, specifically recalling the Exodus from Egypt.  Many Christian churches have started holding their own Seder ceremonies based on the Jewish tradition and order of service (Seder means “order” because there is a set order and script for the evening) but also incorporating some Christian themes of how Jesus is the Messiah that the Jews were waiting for.  This ceremony helps remind us of the history of God’s faithfulness to the Jews back in history and to us today. 

I had a lot of fun preparing it even though it turned out to be a lot more work than I expected.  I spent several evenings working on the “script,” which I adapted from a church’s version that I found online.  I then went to a few stores around town looking for "unusual" things like parsley, horseradish, matzah, grape juice, apples, and walnuts.  In the end I used grape koolaid (left with us by a volunteer who visited), fresh ginger instead of horseradish (representing the bitterness of suffering), paid a boatload for walnuts, and I made my own matzah from scratch!  The ceremony was both fun and meaningful.  We had the youngest interns play “the children’s” role and some older staff play some of the leader roles.   

We later had a ton of matzah, peanut butter, and banana (or apple or jelly) sandwiches for dinner (the homemade matzah turned out thick, kind of like unsweetened shortbread).  And just a few days ago I used the leftover fresh ginger to make some really good soft ginger cookies!

On Good Friday, Rachel and I went up to a nearby hotel in the afternoon just to relax.  We ordered soup and naan (it was an Indian restaurant) and just sat outside under the trees overlooking part of Kampala.  It was nice and refreshing.  I’m realizing that these times of refreshment and comfort are necessary to keep you going here.  We’re definitely encouraged and motivated whenever we let ourselves go out for a treat or make some good food or something.

Easter morning, we were planning on having our own sunrise service on top of a nearby quarry (i.e., big cliff with a great view), but it was raining all morning so we ended up not going.  The girls were up at 4:30am, though, and were singing and dancing to gospel praise music for a couple hours waiting to see if the guys were going to come join us.  (We had planned to sing some songs together.)  It kept raining, though, so we watched the sunrise (at about 6:30am) from our covered porch, then eventually the boys came up and we sang some songs around 8:30am. 

We went to church and then afterwards went to a potluck at a staff member’s house.  She served goat that we had actually watched being slaughtered on Saturday!  They brought the live goat to our compound and then slaughtered, gutted, skinned it, etc, while we (or whoever could stand it) watched.  After I saw the cute helpless goat come in, I just wanted to pet it and not to kill it, so I couldn’t watch.  It was a rather gruesome reminder of where all our meat comes from.  But it was also a pretty real illustration of “the lamb to the slaughter” – the complete innocence of the goat that was about to be killed brought to mind the complete innocence of Jesus as he went to the cross.