Pre-Departure Thoughts

I just wanted to get this started off before I take off because I am very much so hoping that I can stick with this. I have officially waited until a few hours before I take off to get this started and it's giving me a little bit of closure to get in my "going really far away" mindset. I know that a lot of people have expressed interest in knowing what I am up to on the other side of the world and I would really like to provide a first-person account of what is going on in Northern Uganda. It will be nice to put a face to the number of people that we have been in contact with and to get to work once we get down there. This past week I have really been enjoying everything that home has to offer and now I'm glad to move on for the summer. There's no doubt that I will miss my back deck, the pudding in my refrigerator, my gym, and I guess my family. Now moving forward it's difficult to imagine the scale of impact that we could have in this small area of Uganda provided we work diligently and keep our minds very open. A quote from the Proverbs reads "In labor there is profit, in mere talk there is poverty". I feel that as we have been preparing here in Oregon we have come closer to understanding the position these people are in without coming any closer to necessarily solving any issues. It is much easier to figure out that someone is stuck in a well than how to get them out. With yearly spending in the area averaging around $11 a year it's clear that a capital infusion is necessarily. At this amount a McDonald's meal in the States would be the relatively equivalent to a down-payment on a house. Even with comparisons like this it is very difficult to personify an issue that is 9,000 miles (a continent, ocean, and half a continent away). Maybe the issue of the suffering in Africa is that they are just too far for most people in the States to take equity of the problems in Africa and help for the good of humanity as a whole. Hopefully being on the ground we will have a better idea of what they can do to bring themselves above adverse poverty. Being there we will have a better idea of where Africa can go and where it wants to be (because life there can never be like life here). The issue is not growing up in a developed versus undeveloped economy but growing up in the land of opportunity versus place where opportunity is hard to come by. Through our research and loans we are hoping to give opportunity, something we have been blessed with, to a small amount of people in Northern Uganda. Whether this opportunity will be seized and can have a lasting, self-sustaining effect remains to be seen. I know that all three of us will take a lot from this opportunity; I'm just hoping we are successful in what we leave behind.

 

See you in Africa