The Abayudaya Jews of Uganda

We recently learned about a small Jewish community in Uganda, of all places, and we have decided to visit them for the Yom Kippur holiday. There are lots of links if you do a Google search but here is one if you are interested: The Abayudaya Jews of Uganda

We are leaving with our friends Craig and Elin and their kids to drive to Mbale, Uganda on Thursday and coming back Sunday. It ought to be interesting. We have also just heard that the funeral for Pamella's son is Friday. We are going to be out of town obviously. So we went to Pamella's house to today. She lives in the slums of Nyalinda, a large slum area and difficult to get a car in and out of. We met Pamella's daughter who is finishing high school, cute and smart as a whip. She wants to go to law school. We have been paying her high school fees and it would please us no end if we could afford to send her to college. We'll see, if she does well enough on her exit exams she may qualify for scholarship and of course we have no idea what it costs to go to college here either.

The other thing we learned was that her son was married. For only less than one year. We met his wife and , guess what, she's pregnant. sigh. Apparently this is quite a problem now as it's Pamellah's family that is suppose to support her and the child, I think. There are a lot of rituals to the Luo tribe that are not so clear and are not easily explained to us Mazungu's (foreigners).