Getting back in touch, we hope!

We've let this blog go for a few years, due to encroaching geezerhood and general overbusy-ness.  We hope to be in touch with you more often and not let our friendships disappear somewhere across the Atlantic.

Please check our Facebook pages if you have time.  And our home church has some pages for us, too, at www.faithopchurch.org.


Here are a couple of pictures to remind you of who we are.

Bob did some drilling the other day near our place.  Our Bobby & James Tricarico were working with him.  Martha stopped to talk to a little child watching the drilling who might need to be referred to our clinic.  The girls were delighted to meet Anna at Entebbe airport when she arrived back from boarding school in July.  We had a beautiful vacation in western Uganda with wonderful friends from Kampala, the Hodges.

A week in Kampala

Mar, the kids, our two teachers and I have spent the past week in Kampala while Mar taught at the African Bible University and I worked on installing solar panels. It has been a good week. We were joined by our nephew Justin and our Kiwi friend Andrew in Mbale. We have been also working with our friend from Mbale, Juma who is the director of maintenance at CCURE pediatric hospital. It has been a good week, welding up frames, installing panels, raising them to the roof and bolting them on, then running wiring to the charge controller and batteries. It is fun to help people with their energy problems. On top of the solar project, the school here had a lightning strike last week which knocked out 6 inverters we had previously installed.

This is the second time we have been here at ABU when we got news from home that someone in our family was seriously sick. My sister wrote yesterday and told us our grandmother, Dorothy Kraft had passed away. Being 10,000 miles from home is difficult when things like this happen. We are thankful our family lives close by and that everyone can be together.

Hopefully tomorrow we will start getting organized and get the shopping done and head back up country. I am very glad Justin is here and can see this amazing place we live and work in. There is a lot of work to do and he will be a great help. We hope to get him out to a game park while he is here- perhaps to Kidepo on the Karamoja-Sudan border. It will be an interesting ride up country.

Music in Kampala

I'm afraid we have a family of mostly hams when it comes to performing. One or two may act like they're too afraid to get up in front of a crowd, but once they've heard a couple of rounds of applause...
Our friends Kris & Craig Eldeen told us about Music Night at the ARA, which this month coincided with a trip down to take a visitor to the airport. We threw an assortment of instruments into the back of the van, including Kipsy's little harp, which she hasn't been as enthusiastic about since we left the US & her wonderful teacher. Kids got to perform first, & of course some were not exactly virtuosos, but we got a complete kick out of seeing our own kids struggle through the anxious moments waiting their turn, then up in front of the mikes themselves! Bob & I are pretty seriously out of practice, but we can still make it through some of our favorites party pieces, especially the one the kids call "The Dead Bird Song" (An Buinnean Buidhe, by the 18th century Irish poet Cathal Buidhe MacGiolla Dhonnadh). There were quite a few of us over-40 - and well-over 40! - types with our guitars and old favorites, and some of the teenagers joined in as well. It's hard to imagine my own daughter playing songs I listened to in high school. It was a great chance for us to get in touch with many of the expat & missionary community down country, to talk about guest houses in cool places, mother-tongue education, planting jatropha, solar & wind power, the usual Uganda chat. But the highlight of the evening for our entire family was hearing Bob actually sing in public! And play some of his favorite country blues. Next thing you know, he'll be Dancing. Now the kids are all enthusiastic about practicing more and putting together a whole set of numbers for next time. Wall of Guitars from Karamoja!

Party all night

Is what our neighbors here in Nakaale enjoy doing when truckloads of corn, beans, and even cooking oil have been distributed by an aid organization, just down the road from us. Our eldest daughter, Rachel, & one of our teachers, Eden, were walking back along the main road and heard and saw the massive crowds who had come for a handout. Some local people were too frightened of the Ugandan soldiers - sent to keep men from attacking old women to steal their bags of maize - to come and pick up their portion. What we can't figure out is why the free food - eriliif, in Karimojong - arrived just now. Last week when we went to town, sorghum had dropped from 2000 a can to about half that, and even maize and other food is less expensive. We are harvesting sorghum every day from the fields around us. But what we hear is that people are fearing akoro, hunger, too much this year.

So here we are.

I have been thinking about writing some news and have not gotten around to it until now. I would really prefer for Martha to write as I find her much more interesting and perhaps eventually she can write. I at least wanted to get something written- besides this is something I can do in a malarious stupor.
We have arrived back in Uganda with a lot of visitors from all over the US- Wisconsin, California, and Maryland to name a few places. We were able to get a lot of construction work done in a short time with all of the capable hands and also had a VBS program at several of the local public schools which was very well received. I have gone to Kampala to work on immigration stuff and deliver/pick up people at the airport so we have been pretty busy.
We have begun our harvest which is bringing in a fair crop. Craig put the crop in and the rains stopped- so he replanted and we are seeing a fair return. I threshed 14 bags yesterday afternoon with the guys and we have more than triple that on the ground drying right now. My guess is we should see over 200 bags- maybe more than double that. It is hard to tell until you get it in- and there is a lot of theft in the fields right now.
Pastor Dave is faithfully bringing the Gospel of peace to the people here, and I am happy to report the disarmament campaign has born fruit. We have not seen any guns or heard any gunfire since we came back. There seems to be a fair bit of vehicle traffic on the road which is a good sign of security. We are hopeful this will last and that peace can come to this place.
We are all well, some in various stages of illness but on the most part everyone is okay. We enjoy our new house and I have gotten my office and a classroom finished so we are getting a bit organized. One thing at a time.