May30, 2012

May 30, 2012 Hi everyone, I have a unique blog today with a special request.  First of all, after school today we got the treat of going in town to a resort hotel and swimming, which was a great escape for a couple hours.  We laid out for a little while and then swam in the rain until the sun came back.  It was a great day to just enjoy the company of any, Amanda, Sarah, and our African friends David, Tim, and Diana.      Before I start this next part I need to give you a little bit of general information.  The most popular form of transportation here is by a piki piki, which is a motorcycle taxi.  They speed all over the roads with people hanging on for their lives.  More often than not the drivers don't have driving permits or taxi permits.  Sadly, it isn't uncommon for them to get in accidents and when they do, they generally jump off and flee the scene.  Here are the reasons they leave quickly: 1. Obviously because they don't have a permit, 2. So they don't get taken to jail, and 3. So they don't get flogged by the crowd especially if the accident is fatal and clearly their fault.  Now I'm sure a lot of you may guess this or just assume, but I'm gonna go ahead and state the obvious, their government and laws are a lot different and less enforced than ours.  For example, cars and buses and all other forms of transportation are allowed to freely pass each other and they don't exactly have speed limits.  Scary? Absolutely.  So anyways back to the story.  Some were driving back home from the pool and ahead on the road we see bushels of leaves scattered across the road and a mob of people surrounding a specific area.  We slowed down to try and figure out what was going on and to our displeasur we saw a woman sprawled across the road covered halfway by a shirt.  There was a huge cut across her leg and the bone was clearly sticking out.  Everybody was standing around staring at her.  At the time, we didn't know if she was dead or what was going on but there were 2 abandoned piki pikis nearby, so we assumed there was a motorcycle accident.  We were all speechless.  There was some sort of policeman at the scene, so we continued driving. As soon as we passed the scene, a huge (and I mean almost double decker size) bus flies screaming by us, not paying the least but if attention to the crowd or slowing down at all.  If you have a sensitive stomach please stop reading here.  We were all shocked by how fast the bus was moving that we kept our eyes on it to see if it would slow down, but it didn't.  Next thing we knew the bus was literally running over the woman's body as well as the piki pikis and people were literally running for their lives.  We don't know what happened next.  We all sat there in the car speechless the rest of the way home.  Nobody could really grasp what had just happened, we could only hope that the driver of the bus was apprehended and arrested.  Now I'm not just telling you this story for your jaw to drop.  If you're offended by it or don't like it I do apologize.  I just thought it would be an opportunity to ask for your prayers for Uganda as a country and it's people and government.  Apparently stuff like that isn't unheard of and they don't always capture people because they will flee.  Now understand that this is a touchy subject and people are sometimes hesitant to talk about it, but the government here isn't exactly like ours in terms of looking out for the people in the country it's more of a selfish type of ruling system.  Finally, please continue to pray for my time here and the people here and that the lords work is done in the crusade this week and during the rest of our trip as well.      The team arrives tomorrow and then start their work bright and early Friday morning.  I will be a part of what they do during the weekend and after school, but I think it'll be nice to have my own time at school.  There are 9 people in the team and they'll be here until the 9 of June.  Please also keep praying for my work a the school because I'm getting frustrated and definitely need patience with the children because they're struggling a great deal.  If nothing else I just wanna be able to love on them in that time and hopefully help them out at least a little in their school work.  I miss and love you all so much and again appreciate your prayers and encouragement and support so so much.