Hut living

Ok, after 2 whole hearted attempts and 10 minutes of waiting for "images to be uploaded to Blogger", I decided to abort that mission for now. I'll try and upload pictures when I get home.

We just got back to Torit- the town that is the home of Phil and Linda. The trip home was not nearly as exciting. We made it in 3 hrs and 20 minutes as opposed to 5 hours, and we didn't have to stop once! Granted, we were no longer hauling a trailer as it was broken so we made good travel time - and by "good" I mean 40 miles in 3 1/2 hours :)

Our time this weekend at Logotuk (a mountainous village in Sudan) was pretty cool. There are actually villages built onto the side of the mountain- mud huts with thatched roofs. There is a single lady (Patty) who is a missionary there and a single young man (Craig) who is also a missionary there whom we stayed with (I with Patty and Ryan with Craig). They live in mud huts but they have the luxury of metal roofs :)
The huts are actually quite nice- cement floors, lighting and electricity via the help of a solar powered battery (so I was able to have a fan blowing on me all night both nights we were there!). Patty cooked some delicious pot pie and bean tortillas (complete with fresh guacomole!) for me so food was not an issue. I didn't at all mind the primitive housing as I"m used to "roughing it" while camping and backpacking.

Yesterday was a nice relaxing day which was quite needed after the hectic day of traveling the day before. We got up in the morning, meandered down the mountain to attend church which was held under a huge tree. It was peaceful and relaxing with a nice breeze. I had a hard time following the sermon due to the thick accent of the preacher, but it was peaceful just to sit and soak everything in. The children sang a few songs in their language (complete with bongos and a homemade shaker thingy for percussion). I loved just listening to them!
After church, we headed back up the mountain to Patty's for a spagetti lunch and then just sat around and relaxed and chatted. The boys headed up to Craig's hut in the middle of the afternoon so I spent the rest of the evening talking and sharing with Patty, cooking beans, making them into refried beans, making the guacamole, sour cream (which you can apparently make from a can of plain cream by just adding vinegar!) and then the tortillas of course. It was delicious- although I did crunch on a stone mixed in with the beans. Not a surprise as they sort the beans on a tarp on the ground
Patty and I spent a little time with her next-door (or hut) neighbor who is a lovely lady with a few children- one of whom is an adorable 6 mth little boy. He let me hold him for about 3 minutes until he realized that although I was white, I was not Patty whom he was used to. :)
We ended up giving that family the rest of our beans and tortillas as we found out they had not eaten since the morning prior. Apparently lack of rain is affecting their peanut crop which is one of their main sources of food.

I'm not exactly sure what the boys did last night, but I think they went around visiting some of their neighbors as well. Craig is very fluent in the native language and apparently visits often with the neighbors.

After visiting with Patty's neighbor, I took my tub "shower" again, watched as Patty sent a few emails via a satellite contraption she has, then headed to bed encased in my mosquito netting.
I was extra thankful to have stayed at Patty's house and not Craig's when I learned this morning that last night, the boys killed two scorpions in his house! Yikes! Apparently they hurt like the devil when they sting and the intense pain lasts 24-36 hrs! UGH!

This morning we visited the two schools at which Patty and Craig teach, along with visiting the medical clinic. I was much more impressed with the clinic at Logotuk than I was at the one here in Torit. We even got to see a less-than-one-day-old baby who had been born in the clinic the day before. How incredibly adorable was he!

So here we are in Torit for a hopefully relaxing evening. Tomorrow mid-morning (there's no specific time for the flight-just sometime between 10 am and noon. We just have to listen for the plane and go out to the landing strip when we hear it! ) we fly back to Kampala and will hopefully do a little shopping at the craft market so I can bring ya'll back some African culture!

After that we head to a little resort town for a little R & R and hopefully some bungee jumping..if I don't die from a heart attack just thinking about it first!

As always, I don't know about computer access from here on out, so this may be the last blog from Africa. But who knows, somehow computer and internet access seems to crop up out of nowhere here in Africa!

Love you guys! Thanks for continuing to pray! I can definitely feel your prayers as God continues to give me strength and energy beyond what I should have by now!