by emma | Jul 31, 2008 | Travel
If there’s one main thing I’ve been thinking about a lot while I’ve been in Uganda, it’d be the concept of “home”. For the first time in my life really (maybe second, I felt it marginally after my trip to the US in Feb/Mar), I feel pretty homesick… without even knowing what home means. I’ve been chatting with a few friends about it too.
Is there a people or a place to belong to? What does it mean to be grounded in a community?
Erwin McManus writes, “Home is ultimately not about a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home.”
I’ve always been so independent and unattached, and in many respects I still am, though I am now in this strange place of wanting to feel at home somewhere, wanting to feel that I belong somewhere. There is this shift happening in my heart… where will it lead? Is it possible to have roots that go deep, without being resident in one place for sustained periods of time?
“… people write their addresses in pencil…”
Your shout: What does home mean to you?
by emma | Jul 29, 2008 | Africa, Photography, Travel
In my first week here, I spent some time at a primary school out in Jandira, called Source of Light Pri School, with the first Emmanuel church team. Had a lot of fun taking photographs of the kids and the team members interacting, playing with bubbles, generally just loving each other! I’m really chauffed with how these came out…
[PS: all my images so far are entirely unedited, due to some mishap about reinstalling my software blah blah blah… so edited images will be coming after I return to the UK… I hope!]
by emma | Jul 28, 2008 | Africa, Travel
A week in bullet points:
- Spent Monday exploring Kampala city centre w/ Jacob
- Enjoyed a lazy day on Tuesday, celebrating my actual birthday, with some pizza, cake, coffee & pink lemonade out in Mukono with some friends
- Had coffee with my friend Inger on Wed, then traveled to Kamuli district to visit her home for a few days
- Went to Grace & Joel’s wedding on Saturday
- KPC Central for church on Sunday morning
- A trip to the beach at Entebbe on Sunday afternoon/evening: swimming in Lake Victoria!
by emma | Jul 25, 2008 | Africa, Photography, Travel
I wanted to share a couple of snaps from my first week here that I love – sorry the rest are so slow in coming, but enjoy these for now…
by emma | Jul 22, 2008 | Travel
On Saturday the Aberdeen team, Jacob, and myself piled into a van at an unearthly hour of the morning (6:45am) for the 2 hour drive up to Jinga, for a spot of white water rafting! We tackled up to grade 5 rapids as we rafted down the River Nile for a few hours, stopping for lunch on an island before the drive back to Kampala. Most of you know that I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie anyway, as well as loving being in, near or on the water in any capacity, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself!!
As if that wasn’t enough for one day, I was taken completely by surprise in the evening when the Aberdeen team took me out for dinner to celebrate my birthday! They had all these lovely hand-made items sitting on my bed when I got out of the shower, informing me that I was being taken to Cafe Roma’s for a spot of birthday banter. I was so surprised, and taken aback to be honest… really wasn’t expecting it and was just blown away by how they were thinking about me and wanting to treat me. Dinner was lovely, as were the very touching toasts that everyone made. I am continually amazed at how close you can grow to a group of people in such a short space of time, and saying goodbye to the girls on Sunday night was hard. It’s pretty incredible how God takes you to the other side of the world to develop friendships with people who live 3 hours away from you!
The staff at Shalom brought out a big cake after we got back from dinner, as the girls sang happy birthday… the cake is slowly disappearing!
Seriously, a massive thank you to all you folks who have made my birthday so special: to the Aberdeen girls, to Jacob, to my Aussie mates who left me a lovely card and a great song on my camcorder!
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