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Monday, April 18, 2011

To the Highlands of Scotland... or Kabale

Kabale looks like home.

No, not the menotenous flat lands of the mid west of America... but the Highlands of my people's home.  Scotland.

I went to Kabale for 8 days, for 2 reasons.  First, I was invited to be a speaker on a 4 day conference, not unlike New Dawn... though much smaller.  There were between1,500-4,000 people at any given time.

I was invited by a friend of mine name Deo who is from Kabale and has been working with the conference organizers.  The team was myself, Deo and Fr. John Bashabora, who is known all over the world for his profound healing ministry.  The conference was good.  A lot of singing, talks, and time for prayer.   I really enjoyed the experience and chance I had to get to know Fr. Bashabora, who I had only briefly met on different occasions.

We had a good number of amusing adventures, especially Father and I.  On Friday night, we left the conference ground at 11:40.  Tired and ready for bed, we had 4 people to drop off in different places before we could go to our accommodations.  We drove all over Kabale, dropping two at a convent and two at the local University.  When we dropped the university students we got a bit turned around.  Sitting in the car we debated which was to go.  We went both directions and then finally determined which was correct.  It brought about a lot of laughing.  By the time we got back to where we were staying it was12:30.  We went to our place but found no where to park.  We then drove to the administration block, where thankfully there was a gate man still up.  He let us park, though we had to park people in.  He walked with us to our accommodation.. but we got lost on the way.  Laughing still, trekking through some serious mud and fog we finally reached our destination around 12:50... falling in bed to prep for the next day.

The next night was even later, but with less adventures.  We had a beautiful candle lighting ceremony that evening.

And it was Friday night, that I became Mukiga (said Mu-chi-ga).  Mukiga is the predominant tribe in Southwest Uganda.  They speak Rukiga, which is exactly like Runyankore, except they use accents on their letters in a different way.  They have a very distinct cultural dance, which I had been dying to learn.  Basically they say that when someone dances the Mukiga, they break the floor.

So I gave a talk on Friday night, about forgiveness and needed to find a way to engage with the audience and bring out how powerful forgivness is.  So I used an analogy which then lead me to dance the Mukiga... with a bunch of old ladies and a crowd of 3,000 people laughing and rejoicing that the "muzungu" was doing the mukiga!  From then on people would come up to me and call me "mukiga"... it was good. 


Next adventures to write about are the 5 days in the villages of Kabale... an amazing experience!!

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