Waving or Drowning?

Alive and Kicking VI

Blogging from The Source cafe in Jinja, Uganda. Yesterday we hung out with the Invisible Children crew in Gulu, which was incredible. We toured an Internally Displaced People's Camp, which is home to 13,000 people living in squalor. Incredible. Then today, we rafted the Nile River. I'd throw up some images but the internet is too slow. Tomorrow night David and I start our 24 hour trip home, so hopefully I'll put up some stuff from some airport or another.

This has been an absolutely surreal experience. I love Africa.

Alive and Kicking V

Greetings from the relative civility of The American Club in Kampala... where they even have wireless. Actually, it all seems a little surreal after the past few days. Yesterday we spent 13 hours in the trucks, coming back to Kampala from Rwanda. I am in love with the country of Rwanda. The big adventure yesterday was the breakdown of one of the trucks about 3 km from the border. We ended up towing it across, and then the adventure of hiring a flatbed truck and taxi van began.

Later this morning we're off to Gulu to meet up with the guys from Invisible Children... should be incredible.

Alive and Kicking IV

I'm in Rwanda tonight. This country is beautiful... other than that I am speechless.

Alive and Kicking III

Back in Addis Ababa, after a 6 hour drive down to Awasa yesterday, then back this morning. We spent the time laughing, processing, swapping iPods and watching our driver bounce pack mules off the front fender. I felt like I was in the middle of a Bruce Cockburn video.

Tomorrow we fly to Entebbe and begin the Uganda leg of our trip.

In the words of the immortal Jodi Foster, "No words... should have sent a poet."

Alive and Kicking II

Just a quick one as I think the internet here is powered by a goat on a wheel out behind the hotel.

Today I said goodbye to my little friend Younis, a 3 foot-nuthin bundle of HIV positive energy who has some sweet moves with a soccer ball. Tomorrow, it's four more orphanages, including Mother Teresa's Home for the Destitute and Dying, where all 400 kids have AIDS.

Incredible.

Alive and Kicking in Addis Ababa

Yes, I'm here, and yes, there is an interent connection in our hotel, but it fantastically slow. So, I' don't think you'll be hearing from me very often.

So far though, this has been an incredible experience. We visited our first orphanage yesterday, and will be at another one today, following church (Ethiopian Orthodox).

We'll see you when we see you.

Plazes

Alright, I'm going to give this Plazes widget a try... at least while I'm gone. Even if nobody else cares my mother wants to know where I am! That's assuming of course that it will work for the places we'll be. If not, I'll delete it... and we never had this conversation. I've set the post to stay on top, so you won't have to search to find us.

I'm picking up David at 4:45 am tomorrow on the way to YVR... then it's 3 hours to Denver, 3 hours to DC, 9 hours to Rome and 5 hours to Addis! Gonna be a long one...

The Olympics & A Housing Legacy

I'm posting this here so I can point to it from the Streams of Justice blog, but some of you may be interested in taking a look at the following:

Housing Legacy of the 2010 Games: Report of the Inner City Inclusive Committee Housing Table (pdf)

Peaceful

I pulled some images off my camera today that I had forgotten about. I think these are from January... coming back from Linwood House on the Langdale - Horseshoe Bay run. I can't get over how peaceful the water was. More images here.

Travel Reading

Thursday I'm off to Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda.

David has got me thinking about the reading I want to do. Rather than just random stuff, he focuses his reading on the trip itself. In that light I'm bringing We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, and David is bringing me his copy of Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. I'm also going to do some selected reading from A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present.

For his part, I'm bring David my copy of The Prophetic Imagination, and he's also mentioned Walking With the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development.

We're both flying Vancouver - Denver - Washington, then meeting up with the rest of the team for the Washington - Addis Ababa leg, so there's be lots of time for reading.

UPDATE - David's just posted our itinerary here.