Music for Life mission trip, day 1

It is 9am and Greg, Allison, and I are sitting on the side of the Entebbe Highway in Uganda underneath the Nkumba University turn off sign. We are trying to meet up with the rest of our Music for Life mission team, 4 others from Canada and about 7 others from here. We found some plastic lawn chairs so we helped ourselves, set them up and are now sitting and waiting. We have received many strange looks and lots of staring but little do these people know how used to it we are. So we continue to sit and wait, hoping someone who knows something will find is here!

We have been here for 5 weeks now and have seen and experienced a ton. Today is the first day of our mission trip; we are excited to get going. But, as we have learned in so many other situations, things in Africa operate on their own schedule. People don't wear watches and finding a clock is a difficult task. I have found some clocks here and there, but only about half of them have been operational.

Africa has a certain style of communication as well. Actually, in North America we would simply call it a lack of communication. For example, at one point on our tour, our driver left the group at a museum then disappeared with our bus for an hour and a half and didn't tell us what he was doing or where he was going. I am sure he had something important to do and his intentions were good enough, but we had no idea what was going on.

It is a similar situation now with our mission trip. We have asked many questions about what we will be doing, what we are responsible for, and what we need to have prepared. Most of our questions have yet to be answered, and the information we do have has already changed multiple times. So we have tried to prepare for anything and our plans involve a lot of flying by the seat of our pants. I am confident that Music for Life is a trustworthy organization and that together we are going to do something great. I just don't know what that will be quite yet!

So, we sit and wait (under the shade of s jackfruit tree in a torrential downpour) not knowing when we'll get picked up and not really knowing what we're waiting to do. But, as all the Mzungus (local dialect for "white man") here put it: TIA or This is Africa!