Christmas Break

Hello Everyone! We had an amazing Christmas break. It is now Sunday and we will be going back to work tomorrow. There is way too much to write now so I will just give the highlights which I imagine will be long enough.
We left Rwanda on Tuesday December 22 and took a bus to Burundi to visit Christi's sister Trina and husband Seth. It was really good to be with family for Christmas. The Broses, a family that works with World Relief, were also staying there and we celebrated with them as well. They are amazing people and we were blessed to be in their presence. Unfortunately Christi's sister got Typhoid the night we arrived and was really sick for the first few days. She is beginning to recover now but has had a rough time for the last few weeks. In Burundi we celebrated, went to the beach -they live on lake Tanganika- and I played a lot of beach volleyball with Seth and his friends. We went to a zoo and saw a lot of animals. We fed guinea pigs to a leopard and crocodiles. I got to grab the crocodile's tail. Mili got to hold a snake and shake hands with a chimpanzee. We did a white elephant gift exchange and ate turkey. We took a boat ride on the lake and saw hippos.

Then on the 30th we took the bus back to Kigali and spent the new year and celebrated our six wedding anniversary by going out to breakfast. We also shared some meals with my refugee friend. He is still waiting on the Rwandan imigration before the UN can do anything else. He has been approved by the UN already and just needs permission from Rwanda. I went with him to the office, but it didn't help. We gave him Christi's old cell phone and so he is now waiting for a call from immigration with an answer. In the meantime the UN is going to pay for his room at the Red Cross but no meals. Since he is just waiting I am trying to help him find a job here. He is able to work and is willing. It isn't sustainable for us to keep providing money for his food so we will see if we can help him find work.

We decided we wanted to make the most of our Africa adventure and use the rest of our break to go somewhere. Our original plan was to go to Tanzania, but we weren't able to get a car to drive over with Seth and Trina, and Trina was too sick to go anyway. The cost to fly and do activities there was too much money so we cancelled the trip. We got some sage advice from Dan Brose who is a professional budget traveler and were able to plan a trip to Uganda for way less then I would have ever thought possible.

We took a bus on Jan. 4 across the border to a town called Kabale. It is about 2 hours from Kigali. We then took a taxi for about 30 minutes to lake Bunyonyi. It is a beautiful lake with 26 islands. We took a canoe, which was a log that was carved into a canoe, to an island where we stayed 3 nights. The place we stayed is a nonprofit that gives away the profits and more to benefit and educate the community. They help provide education and healthcare to those who need it. They also had really cheap prices. The whole island is run on solar. We stayed in a quaint little cabin. While on the island we hiked the whole thing and a local kid gave us a tour and showed us how they catch crayfish. We hiked up in the mountains to a village with blacksmiths and saw how they make tools with scrap metal. We took a boat ride across the lake and hiked up to the Batwa Pygmie's village and met them. They also danced for us and sold us some handmade baskets. We gave them a small gift to help buy food and clothing for the village. We wanted to buy a goat to take them, but the market wasn't running when we arrived.

The island also is connected with a tour company and all the proceeds from the tour go to support the community development projects as well. The prices for the tours were way less than any I've seen. We were able to get transportation from the lake to Queen Elizabeth National Park and do some safariing. We did several game drives and one boat ride. We were able to see lions, antelope, buffalo, baboons, hippos, elephants, warthogs, tons of birds, and monkeys. They also drove us all the way back to Kigali. It was so good to just be together as a family and we had a really good time together. Mili did really well with all the driving. Now it's back to the grindstone. I'm looking forward to seeing my kids again tomorrow. Christi is going in early to get back to bookkeeping as well. I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year's too.