Retreats part 1

On Sunday, one week after New Dawn the community went into retreat.  There were 2 parts of the retreat, 1st part spiritual, the 2nd part planning.

The 1st part was given by a priest from Italy.  He had worked in Kenya for several years.  He is a large man, who could be very scary and intimidating... but he's a lover, someone who truly loves.  It was beautiful to see someone who had such a passion and love just for people, anyone and everyone.  I want to be like that.  :)  It was tangible. 

The retreat was good for the most part.  The material was a bit "heavy".  I didn't attend all of the sessions because I was feeling really sick while simultaneously writing a 5 day retreat myself.   I felt terrible, I often would sleep for 2 hours in the afternoon in a haze of totally exhaustion.  But then I had to push myself to work late into the night to get the retreat completed.  It was a bit rough at moments.

My beautiful and wonderful housemate left part way through the retreat.  It was really sad for me.  Thankfully we got to spend the whole evening just sitting and chatting...telling stories, the night before she left to go home to Kenya.  I miss her.  She is a great friend with a lot of energy I feed off of.

Once she left I somehow managed to spread myself over 3 large rooms.  My stuff was everywhere!  I am a rather unorganized planner... need things set out so I can visualize.  I was grateful I had the space. 

Elections and Crafts

Tomorrow is election day.  I am nervous... just praying for peace!

Please consider following the current state of Africa!  BBC Africa is good.

Today was a very busy, but somewhat exciting day!  We had our first craft group!  We, a random group of people...whoever wants to learn crafts, will be gathering once a week to make various crafts which we hope to sell to visitors and take with us when we go out of Africa.

Today we started with rosaries... the easiest thing we could start with.  Hopefully the beads we have will allow us to make earrings and other jewelry as well. 

Next week we are starting corn husk angels and millet baskets ... I promise no more Sauron.  :)

It's a small, but beautifully exciting step towards self sustainability!

New Dawn Photos, from Fr. Stan F!!

 I asked Fr. Stan to take a few photos of me during the saturday night events.  I need them for newsletters and such.  He takes amazing photos... I long for a camera after look at his pictures!  I can't wait... but for now, these will do!  I did a bit of editing.  Candles always provide awesome photo ops!

The Week after

I am sorry for my delays in posting.  As much as I would love life to stop so I can update you on the past... it quickly continues.  But tonight I am not feeling like sleeping, so posting the next adventure sounds just about right.

The week after new dawn is a bit of a blur.  I moved again.  My room was occupied by the English couple, who were staying until the end of January, so I moved to yet another round house.  (I moved 4 times in 6 weeks... I'm getting good at it.)  My (wonderful) roommate Paula took a bit longer to move into the house with me so I was solo for a few days, which was actually ok. 

The DTS was still needing to be finished.  So the Tuesday thru Thursday of the week right after New Dawn we were in DTS class.  It wasn't as "intense" as usual, but it was still busy.  The staff wrapped up student evaluations and we finished the DTS with a really good Indian film and a nice dinner (meaning there was meat).

The next day (Friday) some of the students left.  It was very strange to say goodbye to them!  The place is a lot quieter without all of them.  11 of them stayed, which was great!  It's wonderful to have people I traveled through the last 4 months with still serving along side of me. 

That week was really busy, I don't remember much of what happened.  Just goodbyes, cleaning up the place, trying to get settled in a new house and start to prep the community planning retreat.

It was hardest to say goodbye to my "daughters"... the girls I took care of.  Them and Joel, who is a great guy who is from Zambia... so it's not like I'll see him very often.  I actually already got to see one of my daughters, Lydia, again when I stopped in Masaka last week! 

Next Post... photos from New Dawn!

Sauron the corn husk angel

Today I tried to make a corn husk angel for the first time as an example for our soon to exist craft group.  The people who work around here (in the fields etc) thought I was crazy as I went into the bannana plantation and collected the husks for the harvested corn.  But they worked perfectly!


Due to a lack of the needed materials, my 1st angel looked more like some freakish dark angel.. or Sauron from Lord of the Rings.  I think that if Sauron was a husk angel he'd look exactly like this

I managed to make Sauron the corn husk angel look a little less terrifying by trimming and re attaching the broken wing.  The next one I do I will make sure to have the proper hair and length of husks.  But Sauron stand by it?self! 

Visitors from a far!

New Dawn brought an incredible and crazy group of white people together. There were 9 Italians, including the 3 who had been staying for 2 months at the community. There was a team of 6 from all over Europe who ran the children’s program. Then there was a couple for England, Fr. Stan Fortuna from the United States, Antony, Sr. Linda, and me. I think that was all of us. The dinner table of a crazy mix of languages, gestures, attempts to understand, laughter, sharing and new found friends.

I became good friends with the team from all over Europe. The 4 girls on the team were about my age, and a lot of fun. I took them under my wing a bit because I was technically on “hospitality” for my department. This meant just helping them here and there and also hanging out with them some. The Tuesday before New Dawn we went to the market, which was enjoyable for sure.  It was nice to make random new friends. I will probably visit one of them in Vienna this summer.

Fr. Stan Fortuna is a friar with the Cappician Friars of the Renewal. This is the group whom I worked with in Sudan. Fr. Stan lives in the Bronx and is a rapping (white) priest. He’s pretty cool. He also is a very good photographer and one evening after new dawn was over we had a great slide show of his photos.

The 9 Italians were all there for different reasons. Some were doing video/photography and helped set up the radio a few days after new dawn, another was the superior for an Italian congregation who recently came to work in Uganda. Then there were 2 couples, one who didn’t stay long. The 2nd couple was Maria and Mario who stayed with use for 8 weeks. They were a lot of fun, though they spoke no English. Then there was Franko, he’s a fix it all man who lived at the community for 3 months like Luegi and Dominico before him.

The English couple had met Fr. Emmanuel many years earlier when he took a sabbatical in England. After new dawn the man taught English pronunciation at the school and the woman visited with the children they sponsor.

This mix of people made for many interesting situations and a lot of crazy communication! Some of them got sick in various ways so I became muzungu nurse Noelle. It was a good challenge, though it was at times strange to go back and forth from relating to white people and then Africans.

Helping the girls get a fair price on fabric (kitenge)

Me and Zara... she is super fun.  We laughed a lot. 

New Dawn Part 2

So… where to start. I think the rest of New Dawn will work.

Friday I spent the morning resting because I was not feeling very well. I think I attended a session later on in the afternoon. The evening was a prayer session. I think that, for some reason, I slept late that night. Perhaps I was chatting with Paula (my roommate).

During mass on Thursday and Friday I sat in the crowd. The Ugandans loved that. I would just find a spot among the vast throngs of people and go through the celebration with them. They would stare in shock and excitement at me as I danced and sang right alongside of them. It was fun! I love barrling through cultural norms.

Saturday was crazy. My main memory of the Saturday of new dawn is running… literally running all over the place! I was in charge of the candle lighting procession that evening. I worked with a large team of youth to try to pull it off. At some point during the day all of the flags, which we’d taken a long time to make, disappeared (were stolen). I frantically went to Maria (a visiting Italian) and got her to help me recreate a few flags. I was a bit stressed and got sort of annoyed with Fr. Emmanuel when he tried to tell me how to do the evening, which he had given me as my responsibility. I apologized later. A wonderful study of working under pressure. There was so much to do, I felt like a chicken with my head cut off. But I got through it all, and even got to eat dinner, complete with Chapati.

The evening began with a lighting of candles to represent all of the countries present. I think we had 20 countries! It was cool! I got to light the big candle and carry it to the stage. Sr. Linda read quotes about the development of people and the need for fraternal love as each person lit their candle. It was a good moment.

Then the youth team and I took over, taking the light and spreading it to all the people present. I have some good pictures cutousy of Fr. Stan Fortuna. There was one point when my candle extinquished, and I went up to a woman in the crowd who was holding a small child. The baby girl had a candle in her hand and lit mine. It was a beautiful time… we receive from one another, not just white to black… but sharing, loving, no matter who, no matter where.

There was suppose to be a youth process, but it didn’t really work the way that I had carefully planned it. Later, when considering the beautiful disaster which was the evening, I realized that if it was a conference of 1-5,000 people, I could have pulled off what I had planned. But by Saturday night I believe the number of people in attendance was about 50-55,000. Totally uncontrollable, especially when people think that they know how things should go.

So the procession happened, but not at all in the way that I expected or, in my mind, perfectly planned. Oh well… it happened. And it was good. A nice time of celebration and prayer.


Pictures will come at some point, I don't have my external drive with me here in Kampala.

Weeks of head spinning...

For the last few days I have found myself in a state of mental shut down.  I can’t think very well, nor do anything productive.  I’ve been sleeping, visiting people, and watching movies.  My brain and body is fried.

But it’s a good fried.  Though, I think I may have pushed a bit too hard.  If it takes me more than a day to recover from something, I probably over did it.  Yet it was a fascinating study of what I am capable of!  I totally out did myself I have to say.   There was some non noelleish strength involved for sure!

My goal is to write about each event which has taken place over the last 6 weeks.  I am sorry if the time line is a bit confused.  It has been so incredibly packed!

I believe I wrote about Christmas and New Years and a bit about New Dawn, though there is always more to say about that.  

So things to be covered over the next 5-10 blog posts…

-          Finish New Dawn and post photos

-          End of the DTS

-          Something about all the visitors we had

-          Retreats and the joys of moving

-          New opportunities and new phase of work

I hope to randomly put up whatever photos I managed to get from the various people who had cameras around the place!  I took some photos of life while coming home from Kampala in December, I’ll add a few of those. 

Hopefully it will give you some sort of an idea of what I’ve been doing and will be doing.  J

Happy Reading! 

We picked up some fish on the way home from Kampala

Jackfruit... watch out, they would knock you out if it falls on your hear!  They are heavy and HUGE (and yummy)