Hospitals and Haircuts

The following is a compilation of a couple of letters. I wanted to make sure we got all the details. No in-country pictures yet. Elder and Sister Bean -- Send pictures!
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You must come to Africa. It is so interesting and so different. Each day is an adventure. Especially traveling the roads. We are in a fairly nice compound and love our neighbors, who are Elder & Sister Moore from Bountiful, Utah. Today, two new young elders moved into the apartment above the garage. They are from Phoenix, Arizona and North Ogden, Utah. So we are a compound of muzungu's (white people) from the United States. We definitely are in the minority here. Very few white people. When we drive around we never see anyone else of our kind, only at the larger malls and restaurants will you see maybe two or three.

This morning we went to check on a project at the Maluka hospital. We have a women we met named Angela, She is in a wheelchair and wants the church to contribute 120 blankets, sheet sets and pillows to the spinal injury ward at the hospital. We met her at the hospital today and toured the spinal injiury ward. It was so awful, you can not believe it. Of course this is the part of the hospital where they put the people who cannot pay. I just sort of looked straight ahead as we walked through this dirty, smelly place with all kinds of people with all kinds of things wrong with them in a bed. Anyway, we are going to help them with blankets, sheets, etc. How could you not?

On Wednesdays people come to our office to present their humanitarian projects and hope that we will partner with them and help them. The office is always crowded and we stay way past the time we are supposed to, just listening to needs and very sad stories. A lot of them are looking for ways to get clean water, and we & the church want to do a bunch of wells and help protect & maintain wells already in existence. So many needs, we wish we could help all of them. A lot of them are woman groups, wanting to go in together and raise poultry, pigs, pineapple, cattle and want the church to set them up. There are alot of single African women raising big families and no man in sight. It definitely is a man's world here, especially in the villages, where they still do things like caning (you know with a big cane or stick) The little kids are so cute and very shy. I love to smile at them and then they will smile back. I also love to see a woman walking along the road with a big basket of bananas on her head and a baby in a sling on her back. Driving to our office or to church, this is a very common sight. We go out to the villages to look at projects and to take mosquito nets, blankets, etc. and words cannot describe what you see.

You must come visit. There are wonderful sights to see. The source of the Nile is in a city called Jinja, which we have and will visit often to get to some of the villages. If you want to read a good book that talks about searching for the source of the Niles and all the explorers that explored this area in the 1800's read: The White Nile. Very Very interesting. It is quite acceptable for us to have visitors. The couples that are here now all have had their families come and visit and stay with them. President Call and Sister Call, who are the acting mission president until the end of the month when the new mission president,arrives, went with their daughter and son-in-law to Ethopia to adopt two little sisters, ages 2 & 4 from an orphange and took them back to Wyoming. There is so much to tell you, but this is turning into a book. So hope you are having a wonderful time. Let us hear about your adventures too. We are going with President and Sister Call tomorrow to get haircuts. I hope she is as good as Csaba. I am also (for the time being) letting my hair go gray, don't know if I can last though.

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Yesterday we spent the day with President and sister Call. We all had our hair cut, that was pretty interesting. We all have a little different look today, but it just cost us 20,000 shillings a piece, which is around $10.00, not quite a Csaba cut, but not bad. We then drove out to an African Market and walked around and Ron bought some sandals and an African ball to throw around. It was made out of dried material like reeds, grass, not sure.