Wednesday December 13: Seventy Six Pairs of Shoes!

Another relatively early morning: 8:30 so that we could be at Kafuma by 10:00 for the rest of presbytery. It was raining steadily as we walked down to the dining room. Once again, we were the only guests. We ate jelly and bread, then hurried back to our rooms. Not only did I have to sort laundry, I also dug through 150 pounds of school supplies to find 5 Bibles, many boxes of crayons, and many pencils and pens for the kids at Kafuma in the 15 minutes before the van came!

The rain let up near the edge of Kampala, but I still suggested that Vincent try to find another route into the church. When we reached Mpigi, he bypassed the town and turned onto another very narrow, very steep road. It hadn’t rained much here, however, so other than a bumping good time, the road wasn’t particularly remarkable.

We were a few minutes late, but everything was ready, so they quickly had breakfast. Although we weren’t hungry, I was drawn to a plate with long thin strips of something that looked like potato on it. Half the strips were white and half were white but with some sort of red residue on them. I learned that it was cassava and it had been fried. The red ones had been rolled in cassava flour that had been died red for Christmas! They tasted exactly the same, and both were quite good! After a brief time of singing and prayer, the meeting began. It was a somewhat contentious meeting involving a new fund that the churches were establishing to cover micro financing for projects in the various churches. Pastor Jimmy wanted his money that day, even though he had not produced a project proposal at all! So there was a very long discussion about how the project funding would work and who would get money and when. In the end, they appointed a committee from elders not in attendance (some things in presbytery are universal, I guess!) to report at their next meeting.

There were several other topics, but they passed quickly. Jon then spoke about the qualifications of a Christian leader. Again, he did an excellent job! It poured rain as he spoke, but thanks to an ingenuous trench system, the church remained perfectly dry!

Lunch was similar to yesterday: matoki, rice (though today with a hint of Christmas red), wonderful avocado, sweet potato, and the outstanding spinach. There was one addition, however: a very strange green we’d had before that was mostly green but with flecks of very dark red. This is probably my favorite food in Uganda except for the pineapples and bananas!

Jon found Jim in the church yard after lunch sharing his Ipod with Richard. “What are you two listening to?” asked Jon.

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” said Jim. So after all these years, the Beatles have finally invaded Uganda!

I found them talking near the cooking shed. Jim came over and asked about sponsoring his new friend, Richard. He had learned that Richard is in Senior 3 and he is an orphan. The woman who keeps him is a teacher, and she struggles to pay his fees. Richard wasn’t on our list because so far, his step mother had made her payments, but Pastor Jimmy confirmed that his situation was growing serious. So Jim had the chance to tell the boy that we would add him to the program as his sponsored child!

Children had begun to gather to get their shoes, but it was still 45 minutes until we were scheduled to begin. So we loaded up the van and drove very far back into the jungle on one of the narrow roads. Michael had once explained to me that many in Uganda thought that they would be blessed if one of the white missionaries came to their homes, so that was why Jimmy wanted us to visit with his congregation. We drove on through small groups of children moving to the church to get their shoes. They looked into the van in panic because they thought we were leaving. They actually had to stop and tell the kids we would be right back! We drove on in a van filled with our team and a laughing group from Kafuma. They seemed giddy to be riding in the van! They waved and shouted like children when we passed the homes of their friends.

We finally came to one of the elder’s houses. It sat on a hill above the road. It appeared to be four rooms made of mud brick. The floor, however was concrete and the house was elevated such that it required several steps (including the first one which was an 18 incher!) to reach the door. We went inside a tiny sitting room with a short couch and two chairs. It was dark and close and the walls were unpainted. We were so close that knees almost touched all the way around! Jimmy asked Pastor Jonnie to bless the house and those who lived in it.

As we started out, the elder came to me and said, “Pastor Jonnie would like to see my very large pig.” We went behind the house and he kicked at a huge black pig until it stood up. The man was so proud of his house and his pig!

We climbed back into the van and retraced our steps. We stopped beside a very small mud house. We walked across the barren yard to a closet-sized room with no furniture at all, only straw mats on the floor. This was the home of Barbara, one of the church members. She had three kids and she had been abandoned by her husband. They scraped out an existence in this tiny hovel, but she was so proud to have us there. They asked me to bless the house and I did my best.

Our last stop was at the home of another elder. This house was made of brick. There were three finished rooms and three more rooms that were partly framed. The man led us into the very dark house. There was the smell of something soured or rotten in the dark room. We walked through the front room into a back room with the same couch and two chairs. Jon blessed this house, too, and the man took us outside to tell us about his big expansion plans.

When we got back to the church, there were kids everywhere! Most were small – kindergarten through third grade. As we started into the church, the two male elders introduced us to their wives and told them that we had visited their houses. Both women seemed ecstatic.

The children led us into the church. They sat together on one side of the church, with the exception of a few children who sat alone on the other side. One of these was an older boy we’d met last year. He was very frightened of us and wouldn’t come inside at first, but in the end, he had gotten shoes. As we watched him try to figure out the laces, we realized these were the first shoes he’d ever owned. He smiled when he saw me, but he didn’t say anything at all.

After two songs by the youth choir, Pastor Jimmy got out a list. He called the kids five at a time to come forward for their shoes. The kids were wiggling in their seats, but they were calm and quite and very well behaved as they waited their turn. I walked among the kids talking to them and making pictures. Several of the kids wrapped their shoes in plastic bags so they wouldn’t get dirty. One small girl kept walking from the front to the back of the church, then back again showing off her shoes. Several wore them on their hands. A couple had on the one shoe they’d tried on and walked with the other foot bare.

As I moved through the group, I noticed that the boy from last year still sat alone. He looked at me with hope pouring from his eyes and I asked one of the elders why he didn’t have shoes yet. “His feet are too big,” he said. I checked further and found that, in fact, they had nothing that would fit him. They said he attended church every week now in the shoes we bought him. I asked Michael to make sure the boy got shoes, and he said he would.

While I was talking to Michael, the seventy-fifth pair of shoes was given out, and Jimmy broke out the bag of supplies. He and his elders broke open the crayon boxes and gave each kid five crayons. Each also received a pen and several pencils. I realized as I watched that we had forgotten sharpeners, which brought back a scene from three years ago when I found a kindergartner trying to sharpen his new pencil with a machete!

The kids went back to their seats. They thanked us as a group, then many came by and thanked us individually. Pastor Jimmy came by several times as did each of the elders. Slowly, I began making my way to the van. Jim was a few yards ahead of me and I noticed that he was barefoot. Michael was walking near me, so I asked him why Jim didn’t have any shoes. “He told us he only wears them on Sunday to church,” laughed Michael.

I stepped forward as Jim climbed in the van and asked him if he’d forgotten his shoes. “No,” he said. “I didn’t forget them. I gave them away. That big ole boy had big feet like me and there wasn’t anything to fit him. Then, when he went down to get crayons and such there weren’t any left. I wasn’t going to let him leave here with nothing, so I gave him my shoes and socks.”

So we passed out seventy six pairs of shoes at Mpigi Kafuma Evangelical Presbyterian Church today. And the seventy sixth pair is the one none of us will ever forget.

We went back to the main road the same way we’d come in. We had no trouble with the road, and it was actually much nicer because the rain had calmed the dust. We decided to take a detour to the equator, so Vincent turned south on the blacktop instead of north toward Kampala. The road to the equator was really frightening. There were many speeding trucks and buses as well as taxis, boda bodas, and pedestrians. There was no sidewalk, of course, and the road wasn’t marked, so all sorts of vehicles passed at dizzying speeds whenever they wanted to.

When we finally reached the equator, we were the only tourists there. One of the elders from Kassanda had ridden with us, and he leaped from the van as soon as we had stopped and ran to the side of the road waving. A car stopped, and he went to the driver’s window. After a few words, he turned to us and said, “This is my ride. My family lives near here.” He jumped in the car and rode away.

This is the only purely tourist site I’ve seen in Uganda. Two huge concrete circles stand on either side of the road. A white line on the roadway connects them. Each of the circles has a sign declaring that the equator passes through it and the northern and southern hemisphere sides are shown. There are several souvenir shops, but the workers seem to tired to say anything to potential customers. There is also a soft drink stand.

We went to one of the circles and took turns getting pictures made as we straddled the equator. After a group picture, Jon asked Jim to show us his feet. He lay down on his back inside the circle and stuck both feet in the air toward the camera.

Next we walked across the street for the water show. For about $6, a young man with three funnels showed all of us as well as a couple of just-arrived Brits that water turned clockwise as it drained north of the equator, counterclockwise south of the equator, and didn’t turn at all right on the equator. I’m not sure if this is scientifically feasible, but it is a good show.

The ride back to Kampala was fine, but it was growing dark as we reached the city and we experienced the very height of the rush hour. The number of cars, bikes, boda bodas, taxis, and pedestrian is simply beyond explanation, but Jim’s description comes as close as any I could give you. “Imagine 30 minutes before game time on the road outside Neyland Stadium when UT is playing with all 100,000 fans either in their cars or on foot on that narrow road. Now add 100,000 bikes and 100,000 boda bodas darting in and out of the people and the cars and imagine it is dark with no street lights and you’ll almost have Kampala during the evening rush!”

In any event, it took us well over an hour to reach the guesthouse once we were in the city! On the road outside the guesthouse, we came to an absolute stop for several minutes. During that time, Jim decided he wanted to go back to the guesthouse rather than come with us to dinner. He decided to get out of the van and walk all the way up the gravel drive barefooted. So he jumped out of the van and started walking along the road toward the guesthouse. The traffic suddenly opened up, and Vincent pulled into the guesthouse driveway in front of Jim and opened the door. “Why are stopping?” he asked.

“I was worried about your feet on those stones,” said Vincent. So he drove Jim up the drive to the reception building.

We went to Fang Fang Restaurant in downtown Kampala. It is a spectacularly well appointed Chinese restaurant and the food was spectacular and spectacularly over priced. With our team plus the pastor of Kassanda EPC we ended up blowing the dining budget for the whole trip. But it really tasted good!!!

A small surprise awaited at the guesthouse. Jim had gone down to the desk when his laundry was returned to his room. The desk clerk told him it wasn’t ready. Jim said he’d been told that laundry in by 9:00 would be back by evening any day. “Oh, yes, this is true, sir,” said the clerk, “but not on Wednesday. Your laundry will come back to your room tomorrow.”