Tuesday December 19: They Leave

A rough night! The power came and went a few times, them stopped for good about 1:00. This was perfect timing because that is exactly when the hounds from hell captured something and, at least from the sounds of things, ripped it limb from limb. The folks here say that all the noise is from stray dogs in heat passing through, that it is the mating season and that is why the dogs are so noisy. If that was mating, I wish I had recorded the sounds because it would be, without a doubt, the most effective birth control ever discovered for any species. Just play a few seconds of that and females would gladly hide under a moving vehicle just to avoid the possibility of such an experience.

Jim and Jon were scheduled to leave on an 11:00 p.m. flight to Amsterdam. According to the material they had received, they needed to be at the airport by 8:00 p.m. We had a day to play!

We were out at 9:00, tired and a bit out of sorts. Vincent, Joseph, and Grace picked us up with Michael to join us later. He had gotten hung up in traffic and was running late. Our first stop was a craft market near the Uganda Theater in the heart of downtown. It is a collection of stalls filled mostly with the same things, but with enough variety to keep you looking. I’m not sure how many stalls there are, but 37 was the highest number I saw. Stall 37 came right between 17 and 18!

I needed to buy time for my phone, so Vincent and I walked down the street to a phone store. The system here is really amazing. It is a pay-as-you-go system. You go to a store and buy time. It used to be that you got a scratch off card with a number under it, but if you go to a phone store, they have a printer that gives you exactly the number of minutes you want. You dial a code then enter the PIN number they give you and press call. The minutes are added to your account!

It took a little longer than we had expected because we tried several places before we found anyone with minutes to sell, so I was afraid the others were waiting on me. Jim wasn’t very excited about shopping in the first place, and Jon said he had only two or three purchases, so he would only be a minute. When I got back, Jim was following Jon who had only made it to four stalls. I looked in a couple of places, and actually bought a nativity set for Lisa carved from a reddish wood in western Uganda. I took my purchase to the van and found Jim sitting there anxiously awaiting our return. I found Jon and learned that he had only a few a stalls and although he hadn’t bought anything yet, he felt sure he knew which stalls he would use.

I went back and talked to Jim for a bit. He decided he would like to buy a nativity set, too. He selected a very unique design made from straw, then returned to the van. Jon by then had made one purchase. Eventually, he made another, then went back to the first stall and I was afraid he was starting over, but he it didn’t take much longer.

Michael joined us about halfway through the shopping experience and we all loaded into the van. Joseph had another piece of property to show us. This one was well located near the current property and in a busy area, but the asking price was nearly $100,000 for ½ acre!

Jon had seen Namerembe Cathedral in one of my videos and wanted to visit it so we drove across town and up Namerembe Hill. It seemed strange not to be staying at the guest house there, but I can’t say I really missed anything but the view! There were several cars at the cathedral, so we parked and hurried to the door. But as we walked by, we saw one of the stranger things I’ve seen in Uganda. There are huge storks here, dinosaur-looking creatures that are gigantic. Michael calls them Charles, so that’s the only name I know. They have a six foot plus wing span, a pelican’s bill, and a head like a vulture, and they fly overhead all the time, a truly frightening proposition since, given their size, were a human unlucky enough to be underneath when Charles answered a nature call, he could easily be drowned!

These things nest in the tops of trees, and a pair had nested in a tree about three quarters of the way up Namerembe Hill. That means the top of their tree and their nest was at eye level for us. There were two chicks the size of small dogs and parents feeding and cleaning them. We took lots of pictures!

The cathedral was open and we went inside. The open door led to a small chapel at the back of the main cathedral, but we found an open door that led into a hallway, then another that led into the choir, and we were in! There were some people cleaning and two small children lying on a pew, but otherwise, we had the place to ourselves. This is my favorite man-made place in Uganda. It was completed around 1915. The ceiling is a mass of exposed wooden beams. There is a bit of stained glass and all of it is beautifully colored. The wooden pews are made from a local wood and the walls are Ugandan brick. It is showing its age a bit – the red carpet in the aisles and in the choir is threadbare in several places, but the huge pipe organ promises great things for those who are lucky enough to attend. There is a Christmas music program on Christmas Eve, and I hope to be there!

We walked around the hill looking at all of Kampala spread out below us. From here, a huge new mosque dominates one area of the downtown skyline. It is a gift from Libya, it will be opening soon.

It was time to leave Kampala. We drove out Entebbe Road toward the airport. It was already nearly 2:00 so we stopped to eat at a small restaurant behind a service station. There was a buffet, but also a menu. We ordered samosas, but were told they didn’t have any! We returned to the van and kept driving. We stopped at one of the luxury hotels near the airport, but there were about half dozen heavily armed military men standing in the lot. We decided to keep looking.

We ended up at an older hotel on Lake Victoria. The restaurant was in a small but very pleasant little garden dominated by a huge bush of bright pink flowers which was filled with bright yellow birds! We rested in the cool shade until our meals came. Jim returned to his spaghetti. Taking his lead, I tried a cheese pizza, which was rather interesting. It had very little tomato sauce on it and the cheese resembled mozzarella, except that it was almost as sharp as cheddar! But so far, no ill effects!!

After lunch we drove to the zoo. It isn’t a very large one, as far as the number of animals is concerned, but the enclosures are huge and the animals are in their natural habitats, so it is interesting to see them on their turf! And today, it was especially interesting. There was a group of nearly 100 elementary school kids at the zoo, and they having a blast! They were well behaved, but really having fun.

We also quickly learned that the zoo was in the midst of major renovations. The part of the job underway today was using major earth moving equipment to smooth out every single inch of walkway through the heart of the zoo. It has been raining a lot lately, so this gigantic, very noisy yellow machine spent our entire zoo time groaning back and forth as it pushed red mud and muddy water all over the one and only path through the middle of the zoo. The driver felt no compassion for the pedestrian. His pay seemed to be based on the number of times he could go back and forth over the area where the most people were trying to walk and on the number of times he could make his machine belch diesel fumes in the face of those brave enough to dart through the mud in front of him. I can’t imagine another facility in the world that would remain open during such a mess, or any other construction company that would undertake the entire road all at the same time!

A monkey was sitting on the rail outside a large cage filled with gray parrots. He was looking up at the top of the cage, and he finally climbed on up. There was a gray parrot on the outside of the cage. I couldn’t tell if he had escaped, or if it was a wild parrot that happened to be in the neighborhood and dropped by for a visit. Whatever the case, the monkey was concerned about him. He climbed up near the bird and sat with him as though he were trying to comfort him.

The rest of his family was running through an area beside the playground. A woman ran up with a long stick and a sweater tied to the end of it. She whacked one of the monkeys, making it drop something, but then it charged her as did its friend. She dropped her stick and sweater and spent the next several minutes running toward, then away from several very angry green monkeys! Apparently, they had taken something from the woman’s child. She got whatever they’d stolen, but it was several minutes before the monkeys would consider letting her have her sweater!

The family had several tiny babies. Moms were carrying the nursing infants, who would drop to the ground a scurry about from time to time. The monkeys seemed harmless to all who didn’t decide to whack them with sweater coated sticks, and we spent a long while watching them play.

The rest of the zoo was interesting but uneventful. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is what ISN’T there. There are no tigers, though there is a male lion. There are no elephants, no giraffes. But the animals that are there seemed healthy and happy.

Jim wanted a cup of coffee, so we stopped at a building clearly labeled “COFFEE SHOP.” They had the water and sodas the rest of us wanted, but they had no coffee prepared. They didn’t even have hot water. So while the water warmed, Jim asked why they called themselves a coffee shop if all they had was water and soda (they also had some rather old, very large, long ago fried tilapia in a glass case). He told them he thought he would move to Uganda and set up a real coffee shop next door and bankrupt them.

Jon and I decided to go to an area of the zoo that we had somehow missed. The area requires an interesting walk along the shore of Lake Victoria along a trail through the very dense underbrush. Although I was thoroughly deeted, I didn’t see any mosquitoes, only some sort of fly that was horribly obnoxious but non-biting. There was one concern: Michael showed us a spring that was running rather briskly down the shore and into the lake. The problem was the “spring” was near the public toilets! Hopefully, their proximity is a mere coincidence!

The zebra exhibit is a huge, fenced in, very dense meadow with grass that is four feet high in some places. There used to be an ostrich exhibit on this side of the zoo, too, but to save space, they have consolidated the two exhibits. So we found two zebras standing together at one end of the enclosure and six ostriches walking near them. This was where the unusualness of this zoo made itself know. The people at the San Diego Zoo once told us that ostriches were more dangerous to zoo workers than lions. So I was amazed that these ostriches were walking up and sticking their huge beaks through the fence at us. The gaps in the fence were so large that one of the birds kept sticking her head through then opening her beak so that we could look down her throat. It would have been very easy for one of the ostriches to nail an unsuspecting guest because they worked in pairs: one would keep your attention while another stuck its head through. These things were more than a foot taller than me and very active, and they were right there, only separated from us by a chain link fence!

After visiting an ancient tree and an aquarium for the Nile that was too dirty to see much in, we went back to the coffee shop. Jim had finished his coffee and was ready to go, so we hurried to the van. Another group of monkeys was in the parking lot. They climbed on our wind shield and tried to get in the van as we prepared to leave.

Our next stop was at the home of Vincent and Joseph’s mother. We drove several kilometers back toward Kampala, then turned out the road we had taken to the lake last week when Michael went across the lake to find two of our students. Instead of turning toward the lake, however, we turned left on a much narrower road. We stopped along the way and picked up Joseph and Vincent’s sister who was carrying a new-born baby. She was on her way up to her mother’s so we gave her and the baby a ride.

The drive up the ridge to their mother’s house was the most exciting four-wheeling of the trip. The road was terribly rutted, very steep, and solid mud! We slipped and fishtailed precariously near the trees as Vincent crawled up the path towards his mother’s house. Finally, he stopped and we all got out. The mud was incredibly slick, and I almost fell flat just trying to walk on it!

The house was two very small rooms. It was made from mud bricks. Their were no screens over the window, which was covered by a wooden shutter. She was sitting inside when we pulled up taking care of a small boy. She had no idea that company was coming, much less that the company would include three Bazungu! But she was very glad to see us and welcomed us into her house. The small boy, however, screeched in terror when he saw us. He didn’t stop crying during our entire visit!

We sat on a terribly worn out sofa. She tried to sit on the floor, but Jim gave her his chair. She glowed with pride over her two boys and her newest grandbaby. The small boy blubbered hopelessly outside as his aunt tried to comfort him. After Jon prayed for the family, we slipped our way back to the van. This time, the sister, mother, infant, and bellowing boy, who had calmed to a steady blubber, all climbed in the van with us. The ride down the ridge in the much heavier van was even more exciting! I was sure Vincent would turn us over at one point when the right front wheel slid into an unexpected rut, but Vincent was as good as ever!

We dropped everyone off at a church a few miles away. Jon gave the boy a car, and he calmed down almost completely. He would still have no part of shaking hands, but he finally got to the point that he could look at us without hysteria. They left us at a building that serves as an orphanage and a school for the area. Last year, Austin and I gave out toys to the kids, and I saw one of the girls wearing a bracelet we had given her. I also saw a young boy once again who uses crutches because he has one normal leg, and one that ends at the knee in a kind of foot that he uses to steady his crutch. He was standing in a field next to a hut exactly as I remember him last year.

It was just after 6:00 when we dropped off everyone. Our shoes were a mess and we knew that Jon and Jim would be taking them off for security in airports all day. So we stopped at their brother’s house and Joseph cleaned up all our shoes. We played with the kids there for a while, then climbed back in the van.

It was too early to go directly to the airport, so we stopped at my favorite hotel in Uganda, the Royal Imperial Beach Resort (or something like that). On my first visit, the resort hadn’t yet opened, but now it is booming and a huge wing has even been added. The exterior is a shiny blue marble-like material. Inside, there is a large open atrium with elevators at each end. We started to go into the restaurant, but the guys decided they’d rather be outside since they would be cooped up in the plane forever.

So we walked across a lawn to the Mango Bar which sat in a lush garden. Tables dotted the garden, then ran across a sandy beach. There were even two tables in the edge of the lake. We sat under the rising stars waiting for nearly an hour for our samosas and sodas, but they finally came and we had time to swallow them whole before we had to leave.

We actually pulled into the airport at exactly 8:00. Instead of the confusing dash to the gates that usually occurs the second the flight is announced, we found no one at all in line at security. The guys said quick goodbyes, then hurried into the airport. Security no longer allows non-ticketed people inside the airport, so we waved and they turned to face the security screen.

This was a very strange moment for me! I’ve always been one of the group in there with the Ugandans outside waving at us. Now, the Americans were inside and I was outside looking in with my Ugandan friends. The check in process all occurs in front of floor to ceiling windows, so it is possible to watch the process from security screen to baggage check to boarding pass issue to filling out the immigration forms. I had never realized that they all stood pressed to the glass through the entire process until the Americans have turned the corner going into Immigration. They were very excited to have an experienced traveler there with them, and they asked an uninterrupted string of questions about every aspect of the process of getting on an airplane.

Then, Jon and Jim turned the corner. We all waved, even though they were paying no attention. The team talked about going up on top of the terminal to watch the airplane, but it was still more than 2 hours until take off, so we walked slowly back to the van and drove away.

And it hit me: I was all alone in Uganda!

The traffic was actually lighter than usual going back, though we did hit a snag in the block before the guesthouse. The team said Jim would have been outside already walking in front of the van. They sang Jim’s silly songs and laughed about all the fun they’d had during the visit. They asked me if I thought the visit had been a success, and I told them I didn’t see how it could have gone much better. You know, when I heard poor Jon in the bathroom sicker than a human should ever be that Saturday only a few hours after arrival, I would have never believed it. But I don’t think their visit could have gone any better, at least not from my perspective. We saw nearly 200 children. We held presbytery. We gave away 75 pairs of shoes and made preparations for 525 more pairs.

And I absolutely had a blast forging two friendships that I hope continue long after our return. Both Jon and Jim said they want to come back, and both want to bring their wives, so I hope they enjoyed it, too!