Wednesday December 20: Alone in Uganda

My first order of business was to shake off the nightmares. It really stormed hard last night, and that along with the howling dogs and heat, made for very interesting dreams about floods and our team bringing all the kids from the project to sleep in my room because the guesthouse is on a hill and I’m on the second floor, so they were pretty sure no one would wash away.

The second thing was to decide if I could afford to move to a better place for my final ten days. Expenses have, as always here, exceeded expectations and as I ran the numbers, I found that I was running seriously short of funds. I would like to have a place where the electricity doesn’t go off every night and where the security system is a little more friendly than a pack of wild dogs. But even though there are good rates during Christmas here, my shortfall means I would have to significantly cut back on expenses in order to fund the move. Unless I can find a GREAT deal, that won’t be possible. So I guess it’s soggy sheets and dog wars for another nine days!

I had asked for an extra hour this morning to work on an application for our graduating students who want to continue their education. My goal was to create an application that would require them to think and give potential sponsors a good look at these great kids! I wanted to give them a chance to think and show off their English without making things too burdensome. And I decided to do all this in a Word form template, something I didn’t know existed until I started reading HELP this morning.

I was almost finished when Joseph arrived at 10:00. I saved everything to my flash drive and he, Vincent, Grace, and I rode to Garden City to the Internet Café. I had no trouble getting the document printed, but found that the café charges about 30 cents per page for printing!

I spent about an hour working on the application, then posting this blog and checking my email. Then, I found Grace and we walked down to the van. The graduates were waiting for me at the church. They had a lot of questions about the application and seemed a bit surprised that I was asking for so much information. But I left them hard at work, discussing the questions and how they should approach them.

A great example of God’s sense of humor. The sign for the church is badly faded, so Joseph had a banner printed with the name of the church, it’s phone number, and meeting times. Trouble is he misspelled church (left out the second c). I had been mildly troubled by this every time I looked up and saw the new banner all in black, with a little red C penciled in. So I work forever on my application and it’s finally done. I’ve made disks for all the graduates and they are looking over a hard copy to see if they have any questions. And one of them points out that I, a college dean, have misspelled EDUCATION (left out the U)!!

The two girls from across the lake along with a friend were waiting for me when I finished talking with the graduates. We had asked Esther to get a letter to us for her sponsor explaining why she was having problems at school. She had agreed to get it to us by the week after Christmas, but she was so concerned that she would lose her sponsor that she had brought the letter all the way across the water then from Entebbe to Kampala more than a week early. I told her we would work things out so she shouldn’t worry. She was as excited as the day she first found out she was sponsored! Scovia came along for moral support, along with a third girl who lives near them and is in the program. Esther’s English is the best of this group, but she lacks confidence, so I had a great time talking and kidding with them for a bit.

There were several more children to visit in the area near the church. These were kids that we had missed earlier, so we were hoping to catch them before they went to their villages at Christmas. The rain had made even the normal terrible roads almost impassable. The really bad roads WERE impassable, so we had to park and walk to our first house. We parked beside the homes of one of the kids. His mother is hilarious. She always shouts and screams when she sees us. Today, she was busy and so more subdued. She simply ran across the yard and grabbed me in a bear hug!

I had to walk carefully down the steep mud slick path. A whole crew of little kids gathered and followed closely behind me. Every one of them was shouting at me. In the past, it was always Mazungu, white man, or Basungu when there was more than one of us. But this was a different word, and I had no idea what they were saying.

Only one of the three girls we were seeking was there, but I quickly photographed her and talked with her a bit as my chorus grew louder and more boisterous. Grace, Vincent, and I walked back up the hill. I was last because it was so very slick. We finally were back in the van. As we pulled away, I asked what the kids were saying. Vincent and Grace just laughed at first, but I insisted. Finally, Vincent said, “They were saying you are such an old man!”

So without Jon’s youth and Jim’s kidding with the crowd, I have managed, in a single day to move from “white man” to “old man!”

We tried to find another boy, but he wasn’t there. When Grace asked a neighbor, she learned that the boy’s father had just died and his mother had moved away to another part of Kampala. This had just happened in the last week, so Grace and Vincent will have to begin searching for the boy.

There has been a lot of death this trip, yet the rate of new infections from AIDS is supposed to be down sharply. I’m afraid that we are seeing the fate of those who are infected, however. The fact that the rate of new infection is down is wonderful news, but there are still so very many people living with the disease and for most of the poor, a diagnosis of AIDS remains a death sentence. Since I know these kids now, I can see the impact of these deaths and as we rejoice that few are falling ill, it appears that our work with the orphans and others impacted by the disease will not be over for a very long time.

We had no better luck at our last stop, so we headed back to the center of the city. Joseph had called to say that he Michael had bought the rest of our shoes. They were at the same store we had used earlier, so we started the long, slow, dangerous process of crossing into the shopping district of Kampala.

When we were in this area last week, I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but there were at least 1/3 more people, more bikes, more boda bodas, and more cars than last time. At intersections, cars from every direction would converge in the center. The drivers would gesture and complain as they sat there until finally, through some magic process I cannot figure out, things would start to move again. The pedestrians were the worst. They acted as though they had the right of way, when in fact, it appear the law favors running over them in order to keep their numbers down. They would simply walk in front of you! With cars crawling along at a snail’s pace, people would suddenly dart between two moving vehicles as though daring drivers to mash them!

When we finally reached the enclosed area where they were buying the shoes, Vincent pulled up and talked to the guard who was manning a pole which blocked entry. He told us we couldn’t go in. Vincent explained about the shoes, and the man said he didn’t care we couldn’t go in. Vincent kept talking to him, and he finally motioned for Vincent to wait, but he also raised the bar. Before we could drive into this street, two cars were forced to back out of their “parking spaces” in the dead center of the street. A third car was coming towards us, which was supposedly the wrong way.

Once they were out of the way, we pulled three car lengths into the area and were totally frozen once again. Finally, a tiny crack in the flow appeared, and Vincent wedged part of a bumper in between the cars. He gradually worked his way into a side alley, then around until we were magically beside Joseph and Michael. Joseph wanted me to come and see the shoes. There was a huge mound of cardboard boxes each filled with shoes. There were also two gigantic bales of socks. Four men began loading them into the van while Grace and I guarded the remaining pairs from the very interested passers by who wanted to stand incredibly close to our boxes of shoes!

They opened the side and rear doors of the van and loaded both simultaneously. The result was a loaded read compartment and shoes stacked from floor to ceiling in the seats we had been riding in. And there was nothing in the middle section of the van! It as clear, but inaccessible from either the back or side doors. With two men working inside the van and a third pushing and pulling through the rear door, they finally shifted things until the van was filled from floor to ceiling in all but one of the rows. It was room enough for everyone to squeeze in, however, so Vincent started the long, slow process of getting out of town!

It was after 3:00 so we decided to eat. We went to Bon Appetit, one of several restaurants in this local chain. Some of these stores are okay, simple but clean with food that is edible. This particular model, however, seemed to fail on each point. It was filthy, crowded, and a bit smelly and when we ordered, we learned that they had only one thing remaining on the menu. I wasn’t at all curious about what was available, so we left.

We walked a few doors down to another restaurant. “Jim, are you sure you want to eat African?” Joseph asked. I assured him with much more confidence than I felt that everything would be fine.

This restaurant was much more open, though its cleanliness quotient would have been little better than its neighbor. We pulled two tables together and sat down. A very large woman came over and started taking orders. Everyone seemed to know what she had except me. When I asked, she reluctantly made a list. I ordered sweet potatoes, rice, and pumpkin. The woman frowned at me. “You don’t want soup?” She meant the terrible, thin gravy-like substance that Ugandans pour on everything.

“No,” I whispered.

“No soup? You must have soup.”

So I ordered beans.

I got a huge plate of rice, a large slice of bright orange pumpkin, and three huge pieces of African sweet potato (not like ours at all). None of this was the slightest bit warm, but the pinto-like beans were piping hot and quite good! The would have been much better over corn bread than rice, but I managed to eat a good bit of it all. I also had a very small portion of the spinach-like green that I like so well, and when the lady heard that I like this, she brought me a huge plate!

I can’t say this was my favorite meal, but it was filling. Had everything been warm, I would probably be suggesting another visit to this place, but for now, I’ll just be praying that “cold” didn’t mean room temperature since last Thursday!

While we were eating, a terrible storm blew in. The rain was a nearly solid downpour. The wind blew savagely and a bit of water came all the way into the restaurant. We sat at our table and watched until it slacked up a bit, then ran across to the van.

I thought we were going to look at a hotel, but they took me straight back to the guesthouse. It probably had something to do with the rain, which had started up again. Vincent has no defroster, so driving in the 80 degree heat in a pouring rainstorm means the windows instantly fog, so he spent his time driving with one hand and wiping the windshield with the other. I asked and they said there was already some flooding in the lower parts of the town. They sounded a bit concerned.

I was back at the guesthouse by 5:30. There have been two tremendous storms tonight, one with very high winds. I’ve never looked at weather records here, so I don’t know how unusual this is.

I took a nap and played a bit of solitaire. We ate lunch so late that some trail mix and beef jerky should hold me until morning. Anyway, I didn’t really want to get out in that storm!

So how is it different being here alone? There’s no one to wonder with when our team suddenly goes into fits of Luganda with no attempt to translate. And they do that a lot more now. There’s no hint of trying to entertain or explain. That’s both good and bad. It’s good that they see me as part of the team, but sometimes I have no idea what’s happening. The strangest thing is our groups have often commented about how few white faces we see. But there has always been the team, all white, all speaking English, all acquaintances already and rapidly becoming friends. Now, I go to the mirror if I want to see a white face.

So these days will be strange ones! But there’s so much to do! We have 530 pairs of shoes plus socks to give away. We will be traveling to Kassanda for a day. I plan to do computer training tomorrow as well as a bit on saving. And they want me to preach on Sunday as well as next Wednesday.

And somewhere in there, we’ll have Christmas. I’m not sure how this will be. I’ve told them to spend the day with their families, and they have agreed to do that. Right now, there is only one other group here in the guesthouse, so there’s actually a chance that come Saturday, I’ll be the only guest here - IF I’m still at this place, that is.

So stay tuned!!