The Uganda mission team will be hosting a presentation event at Austin Christian Fellowship, on Sunday, September 27, at 6:30 PM. There will be stories, testimonies, and lots of photos from the trip. We will talk about Arise Africa and our plans to continue to support that ministry. This will be open to the public, so I hope you will join us.
Here is an announcement I made, using footage I shot on the trip with the new D90. We will be running this for the next few weeks, during the weekend services:
Before I left for Africa, I asked Greg Vestri about how sensitive he thought people were about having their picture taken. He said that it was not much different than most places, just use common sense, and go ahead and ask the subject for their permission first, if possible. Then he mentioned that recently, there has been criticism leveled at photojournalism that focused on poverty. The claim is that a typical photograph of a hungry African child is decontextualized, sentimental, and exploitative.
One week from today, we fly to Uganda, Africa. I’m not ready.
Well, in one sense, I am very ready. I have wanted to go to Africa since high school, when a geography teacher sparked my imagination with tales of her experiences in Kenya, specifically with the Maasai people. She had lived with the Maasai for some time and had become an honorary member of their tribe. She told us about drinking the mixture of cow’s blood and milk, which is a waning tradition. She told us about the tribe’s custom of stretching their earlobes. She said they liked to put things in them, especially 35 mm film canisters (something else which is disappearing), because they could carry things in them. She also taught us some basic Swahili (Kiswahili). Because of her expertise, she spent a lot of time making her experiences come alive for us and I really wanted to go and meet those people she talked about.
I have some good news regarding Rowdy’s diet. Kimberly and I finally found a diet system that works. We put the cats on a better quality food and then changed the way we were feeding them from a “fill (the bowl) and forget” method to feeding them a very specific amount of food twice a day. This didn’t work because the other cats would eat a little and then leave some for later, but Rowdy would eat his portion and theirs, too. Because the portions were smaller, it still wasn’t enough for him. Result: three cranky cats.
The solution was simple – we put Abra’s and Cat-Cat’s food up on a cupboard, where Rowdy can’t get to it. Once we did that, Rowdy started to see some results. Here is his weigh-in log:
So, after a year, Rowdy weighs just a little bit more than when we first looked at him and thought he was so fat that we should weigh him. That doesn’t seem so good, but he really is making progress. By Summer, he’ll be ready for the beach.
An unfortunate side effect of weighing Rowdy is weighing myself. Ugh. That middle number is supposed to be a seven, not a nine. I don’t think the eggnog is helping me.
