From Tyler

Hi! Tyler here!

We just came back from a trip right at the Uganda/Congo/Rwanda border. We stayed at a lot of hotels (which were really mostly tents), and we drove on roads that were actually dirt with a ton of bumps.  I liked every part of it except for the very long driving.   

They measure distance in kilometers here.  10 miles is equal to about 16 kilometers (we looked that up!), but could take an hour to drive on these roads.  Before we left, I drew a map of Uganda and charted our journey.  But guess what? The driver ended up taking a different route, but I still learned a ton making the map.  

We saw   a ton of zebras, a few elephants, warthogs, hippos, water buffalo and baby crocodiles.  We stopped in a fishing village and gave out “sweeties” (they call all candy sweeties) and clothes.  We stopped at another village and gave out more clothes and toothbrushes.  The kids were all very excited and ones at the second place were very respectful and bowed when we gave them things.  It was the sweetest thing ever and made us feel good about helping them.

We are staying in a house in Kampala with clean water, but we only drink bottled water because our bodies aren’t used to the water here.  We even have to use bottled water to brush our teeth and rinse our toothbrushes!!!!!!!!!!!  One of the places we stayed over the weekend had no running water!(They filled big jugs with water from the lake for washing your hands and body (but we didn’t shower there!) and bring supplies back and forth on a canoe.  I twisted my ankle at this place, but it’s mostly better now.

I have made some friends here that are also in 3rd grade.  Their names are Wasswa (Auntie Rox’s Ugandan son) and David (his father is a leader in Southern Sudan and may be the first president there - pretty cool!).  We also play football (what we call soccer) almost every day in Auntie Rox’s front yard with the children from the community.  Most of these kids don’t own shoes and many don’t have parents.  One of the boys, Brian, lives with his 13-year old brother who works all day to make money to pay rent,buy them food and send Brian to school.  Brian has been on vacation from school, so he came and did home school with us one day last week.  He did pretty good with writing!!!!!!!!!!!!  Sometimes we have the neighborhood kids join us for lunch.  We think it is sometimes their only meal for the day.  One girl who comes over whenever we open the gate is Sarah.  She is Brayden’s age and shares one pair of shoes with her brother.  Once when she came over for lunch we had to teach her how to eat a sandwich!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

I miss everyone very much!-tyler