A Twisted Crown of Thorns ®

Well I will be travelling to Uganda soon! It was apparently the best bird watching destination for twitchers in 2012 according to Lonely Planet. Uganda’s scenery and wildlife is amazing and draws in many visitors. The country is home to more than 1,000 bird species, which make up over half of the birds in Africa – so says one birding website! Not to mention this natural haven was once described by Sir Winston Churchill as “the Pearl of Africa”. Okay, enough of the plug…typing such long sentences in my pseudo feverish current condition makes me want to here and scream -“Ouuuch!” You see, I have just had a couple of vaccination jabs and my raw deltoids are a mixture of muscle fibre and punture wounds from yellow fever attenuated viral loads and typhoid antibodies.

The preparation process for travel to Uganda is almost going according to military precision as I haven’t been to Africa in a while. I have recently had nightmares of old foes called “Malaria terror squads” flying in the bellies of helicopter-like mosquito drones and they keep singing and buzzing “Welcome back! Welcome back!” My misery comes to an end as I awake in cold sweat in March. Looking outside it’s all snowed up outside in the English countryside and if it’s any consolation I am just happy that it wont be snowing in Uganda!

A couple of things I plan to be doing – I have a photography challenge that I managed to modify and adapt from an on line source that any one can download here. It is riddled with tasks and challenges of different photographs to take like 10 portraits of strangers, a shot of a dinner plate and a close up shot with detail and composure e.t.c While for the kids I have designed a Uganda Kids Challenge -this contains investigative activities that you can download and adapt for any travel trips.

It just keeps kids on your toes so that they can discover as much as possible and chronicle even the minutest of exciting events. This Kids Challenge will then go in their scrap book together with any photos taken during the trip.

I also hope to on the other hand do some bird watching and count a few rare species and I will feature them here (on my photography blog or flickr site). Last but not least I plan to visit one of my favorite missionaries who has travelled all the way from America to live in rural Uganda. He set up an orphanage and is church planting in Arua (in the North Western part of Uganda). I hope to come back with loads of Missionary stories to blog about! Some of his stories have been featured on this blog before (see here) Another “Ouuuch!” -my shoulder jabs are churning up into a revolutionary spectacle…only 6 more weeks to go!

Almost there and I will be in Kampala -the capital city of Uganda! However one of my biggest challenges will be to find a good conservative church to join for Sunday fellowship when I am in Kampala before I travel to Arua. I am not looking for the common “bells and whistles” mega church with games and pastors falling out of helicopters – No, just need good old sound expository preaching. (Speaking of which are there any Reformed Churches in Kampala?) Some food for thought as my shoulders go numb and one more time …..”Ouuuch!”

Related articles

• Boda Towing and Bicycles (smalltownnebraska.wordpress.com)
• Twitter and Boda Boda Stories (smalltownnebraska.wordpress.com)
• Uganda comes 5th at ITB in Berlin | Gorilla trekking (ugandasafaris.typepad.com)
• Kampala Uganda (kidscanada.wordpress.com)
• Chimps in Uganda: Meet the Gents (blogs.scientificamerican.com)