African holiday season

Hi again!


I hope everyone has had a good christmas- and new year celebration. As most of my experiences down here, my celebration was very different than the one I am used to. Here is a short update on the past few weeks of my life...

In Uganda, they don't celebrate Christmas Eve. Normally. The only exception comes when some random norwegians decide to celebrate Christmas in Uganda. Funny coincidence, that actually happened this Christmas... Håkon (who has proved to be a surprisingly skilled cook) made a veeery satisfying Christmas lunch, consisting of rice porridge, brownies and chocolate mousse. Maria (who works for FOCUS in Kampala and had decided to celebrate Christmas with her friend in Lira) was a content guest (of honor).

Christmas Day was spent at the home of my host mother's family. They live in a village just outside of Lira. The day can be summarized with: a lot of food and nice company. But I prefer the Norwegian Christmas.

On Boxing Day Maria, Malin, Håkon and I turned our noses west toward Kenya, or more specifically Nakuru (no, that's wrong... On Boxing day we travelled south to Kampala, then on the 27th we travelled west. Sorry for the mix-up, it won't happen again...). In Nakuru the stage was set for Commission, an interesting, intense and inspiring new year's conference organized by FOCUS Kenya. There were almost 3000 participants from 10-15 countries in Africa. We were also as many as 10 Norwegians, all of us Hald-students, attending the conference. In the video below you can see me make a fool of myself in front of 3000 africans...

After Commission, the journey went on to Nairobi, where we had our infield. We have now reached the halfway-stage of our practice, and it was now time to gather all the Hald-students that are stationed in Africa, for 5 days of teaching, councelling and a little tourism. We were a big group of 26 students, two teachers, one principal and one Idunn, and it was very nice to see them all again. The first three days consisted of some teaching and some chilling at the Norwegian mission station in Karen, Nairobi. On the friday we visited the Mathare-slum. This was a very special experience for me, and I mostly walked around alone in my own thoughts. The next day we went on a safari, which honestly was nothing to brag about. Lions really are pretty boring animals on most hours of the day :P


Now, I am back in the Lira-heat, and I am ready for what the next three months have to offer. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures in this blog post, but my personal photographer (Håkon) is currently somewhere else, which means: no pictures... See yah!