Holiday!

Its officially school holiday here. Its funny how many of our words have changed. Kami and I are going to come back saying, "I'll take food now," and "should we play football this holiday after we have received our marks?" It was definitely an English province.
We're as happy as the kids that its holiday though. We spent the first week visiting Kunungu where the other home is. We went running through the mountains at dawn, worked and dug all morning, and laid around in the afternoon and read with the perpetual Ugandan breeze coming through the open house. Not a bad way to start the break.
We were invited by some friends to visit Fort Portal, and so from Kunungu we had a planes train s and automobiles day, taking an 8 hour trip north using a car, a bus, a special hire and a small taxi van to get there. But we made it and had a great friday night with our friends who run a home for children with AIDS in that area. On Sat we visited some missionaries from Oregon who Kami used to work with at Portland Urban Ministry Program. They just moved over to Uganda and to be in an actual house with friends from Oregon was unreal. We both just kept looking around wondering if we were still in Africa.
The trip home was a tough one though. Many of the taxi vans are in extremely poor conditions but their drives still speed around corners going 50 mph (or 65 k) and one the day we took the bus home there were many accidents. We had to stop at one point and directly out Kami's and my window was a distorted van, crushed to the point of being almost unrecognizable. There were bodies everywhere twisted and crushed from the crash. They were the first dead bodies Kami and I have ever seen and it was extremely sobering. Your brain immediately tries to believe its just like movies you've seen, but its so much different. There were several of these crashes all the way home, and the images stayed with us the entire ride.
For the last few days since we came home, we've been organizing break lessons for the kids, gardening everyday, and trying to take it easy. Some of our closest friends just left this week. They worked at an orphanage down the road and we already miss their company a lot.
Uganda's corruption continues to wear on us. We've come in contact with so much of it lately. This morning we gave a ride to one of the teachers into town. When we went to let her out, a taxi bus was on the side of the road so I pulled over as far as I could. The door handle wasn't working and it took a moment longer than it normally wood and we blocked a few cars for about 30 seconds. A police officer saw us and seeing we were right told us to pull over. (They are all on foot here and extremely corrupt, always looking for money and bribes.) He told me he was going to take me to the station and then to court for my traffic vialation while behind me vans without lights or blinkers carried 14 passengers sporadically pulling in and out of traffic to load and unload. I told him we wouldn't be going anywhere with him. He responded by getting into our car and told us to drive to the station. In the end I had to pay him 20,000 shillings to get out and leave us alone. I was so angry my hands were shaking. Anything they can do to rip you off here, they do. Sometimes, Kami and I get so fed up with the amount of corruption, brutality, molestation and child abandonment that goes on here, we don't want to deal with it anymore. But, its the exact reason we're here. From the government down (stealing money for roads and public safety) stretching to almost every family we've seen, Uganda is quite a broken country. Kids are ignored, often beat when parents aren't happy, many girls don't make it to 16 before experiencing molestation of some kind, and the list goes on and on. But, its why places like Dorcas Children's Home are so important. The kids are safe, fed and loved. It makes the greatest difference in their lives.
So thank-you to everyone who continues to support the work. Its vital here.
We love you all. Peace.