Shopping and Such

We finally had that easy day!

It started with breakfast. The buffet was back! And there was another table of people eating! Things were as they’d been. The potato on bread thing was particularly good.

Vincent picked us up at 9:00. We went to the church where a van full of kids were waiting on shoes. I talked with several of the kids. Viola (Bob Cr’s child) was there. She is doing so well! Her smile is only growing more winning as she grows older. The scars on her neck and face from when she was raped before age 10 look so much better now. Winnie (David and Chris’ child) is almost as tall as I am (David, I think she has you beat now), and she’s gorgeous. But my conversation of the morning was with Iasa (Bob’s Ca’s child). “Elder Jim I am trying to decide between becoming a doctor, an accountant, or an engineer. Which do you recommend?”

I talked to him about each choice, the good and the bad, how school would work, what subjects were important. “But Elder Jim, which would you recommend?”

“That depends on which one you like,” I said.

“But I want to know which one you think is best in Uganda.”

“Okay,” I said. “There are many, many children who want to be doctors. There are also a lot that want to be accountants. I hear of few that want to be engineers. I would think that with all the work that needs to be done here and all the building that is coming, becoming an engineer would be a very good thing.”

“But Elder Jim, I have studied about the health needs of the country. Isn’t a doctor best?”

“Doctors are very important, but so are engineers,” I said. “Do you have the math skills that it takes to be an engineer?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I am very very good at mathematics.”

“Well, then, you have my advice.”

“But Elder Jim, I understand that some men train to be engineers then cannot get jobs because they are not of the right tribe to work in the big companies. Do you think that should make me be a doctor?”

My patience ended. “Look, you asked me for my advice and I gave it. You can take it or not take it, but I don’t want to argue about it.” I shook his hand and walked away.

“But Elder Jim, Elder Jim . . .” I kept on walking.
The Saturday program was also going on for the kids. Mabel asked me to come in and tell them goodbye. There was a good crowd, though certainly not as many as the week before. I spoke briefly, then we got in the van with all the kids and rode to Joseph’s house to get shoes.

We had a chance to talk with the kids a little more while they sorted shoes. Tenwya (Jack’s university student) came for shoes. He looks great and he said he was really enjoying the studies.

Everyone climbed back into the van and we drove back toward the church. We let everyone out at a spot below the church, then headed downtown. Joseph had found a wonderful coffee shop for us, and I ordered a lot of coffee! The place was full of customers. I asked if I could sample the coffee and the woman waiting on us brought me a couple of beans to chew. It tasted like excellent coffee, though we never did succeed in tasting any that was brewed! We had to wait for a clerk to scoop up 14 bags of coffee, then weigh each bag on an old fashioned scale.

We drove on to Garden City and I went wild in the bookstore. I needed a new book, and I found several African memoirs that I don’t think are available outside Africa. I’d made the mistake a few years ago of passing on a book and thinking I could get it when I got home. I couldn’t, so I got a whole library of memoirs!

We shopped for a computer bag for the guys, and Vincent wanted to buy the first one he saw. I wouldn’t buy it, so we kept looking. The whole gang, except Dan, met at the Food Court. I love this place, even though I did get rotten chicken here once. The food stands are unique: Persian, Lebanese, Southern Indian, Tandoor, Cuban, and Chinese. The dishes are good, the prices under $8 per person, and it is a lot of fun to watch the Ugandans trying new food. I ordered fish with dill sauce from the Persian folks and Lisa ordered a Cuban sandwich. I looked at her menu and found Serviche. The guys had been asking about sushi, so I got them an order of Serviche and they loved it! Of course I didn’t tell them what it was until they had sampled it!

All the food was good and everyone really enjoyed themselves.

We went to Uchumi, the department store, and bought a variety of American style foods for Jody. And we found a good computer bag for the guys. I had to exchange money when it was all done, but we are almost finished buying!

The guys had it in their heads that the Chaplain of the Church of Uganda would see me on Saturday, but we couldn’t even get him on the phone. So I asked if we could take Lisa to the shrines of the Uganda martyrs. We started from town out Jinja Road. There was commotion up ahead, a lot of people, a truck off the road, and suddenly, there was an explosion in a ditch to our left. People came running away from the flash and Vincent tried to get as far from it as he could. There was a power pole down, and we finally understood that it was the transformer that exploded, not some terrorist action.
As we came forward, we saw that a huge truck was in the ditch. There was a group of people working over a bloody lady at the side of the road. I saw metal flash in a pile of garbage beside us. It was a boda boda smashed absolutely flat, and what was left of the driver was smeared beside it. Apparently the woman was the passenger. She had been thrown clear of the truck, but it wasn’t clear how badly she was hurt.

We were badly shaken by the body in the street and no one said much all the way out to the shrine. We went to the Catholic shrine first, a 1,000 seat round cathedral built on the site where a king of Buganda (Uganda’s largest tribe) had killed 12 Catholic priests and worshippers in the 1880’s. I went to this site last year, and we had the same guide. He showed us around the church, then sent us down to a lake which is the center of the commemoration of the massacre each June. I could hardly believe this was the same place I had seen a year ago! There were reeds growing out into the water and the flowers around the floating altar were all dead. The place was decorated for a wedding to occur later that day or else I am afraid I would have been really disappointed!

We drove down the dirt road to the Anglican shrine. Here, 13 Anglicans were massacred on the same day. There is no huge cathedral here, just a simple church which was being painted inside during our visit so we didn’t get to see much. There is a large park on the side of a modest hill dedicated to the martyrs. There is a round building at the base of the hill. It has brick sides up waste high and a thatched roof. Inside is a statue showing how all 13 Anglicans had been stacked and burned! It is very disconcerting to realize that the thing you are looking at and trying to figure out is, in fact, a human torso!

Up the hill is the tree where the martyrs were first tortured. And a replica of the executioner’s house, a moderate woven thatch structure with an incredibly low entrance hall, stands at the top of the hill. We looked for a moment, then went back to the van.

Vincent dropped everyone off at the church. He drove Lisa and me to the hotel where we rested for a minute. Then it was back to church. The women had asked Lisa to speak and the men asked me. We were to talk about money and budgeting. We decided to start in gender segregated groups, then to combine for the budget stuff. The session lasted more than 3 hours, all of it with me talking. At the end, Joseph asked if everyone would come back on Monday. That means I did the Christmas message 4 times, this one once, one tomorrow morning, and two on Monday!

I was exhausted when we finished! Vincent drove us back to the hotel. He said it was too late to eat, so we went to our room and snacked on junk food!

Random Thoughts

One day this week, there was an article about a group coming to downtown for the two year dance. Apparently, it gets its name because they start the party in 2007 and finish in 2008. There is a major reggae group coming. The paper said it this way, “Usually, Uganda only invites foreign music artists who are well passed their sell by dates!”

For Your Dining Pleasure
Last week, we were eating in the main restaurant. We ordered a soda each, and when the waitress brought Lisa’s, she became very flustered. Finally, she grabbed a spoon off Lisa’s placemat and stuck it in the soda she had just poured. She fished out a small black bug and dumped it on the floor. “Sorry, Madam,” was all she ever said! And Lisa drank it!!

Our First Quiet Day (NOT!!)

We were all but finished with shoes. There were no messages to deliver. There were no photos to take. It was shaping up to be an easier day!

Well, think again!

We started with French toast, coffee, and fruit. I haven’t mentioned the coffee, so I’ll take this opportunity. We get our coffee in individual French press brewing pots. I noticed from the start that the coffee still tasted like Nescafe Instant. So I checked, and there no grounds in the pot. It is serving simply as a carafe for instant coffee! The fruit was fine and so was my French toast – mildly sweet, firm but not crisp, soft bread inside. Lisa passed her plate with one half piece of French toast remaining. She didn’t say a word about it. When I took a big forkful, it tasted as if it had been rolled in salt!

We started down by 9:10, but the elevator wasn’t working so we had to take the stairs. We are on the second floor, which means we were up four flights of stairs, but I handled it fine with the cane.

Joseph had big news. On Thursday, Dan had come upstairs to our room because he wanted to ask me about his anniversary gift. I told him I would talk to him and his wife together about this, but not to him alone. He left, not very happily.

He left our room and got on the elevator. A few minutes later, he called Joseph to tell him that the elevator was stuck! Joseph had to go to the front desk and they had to call for help to get the door open and get him out!!

Our program for the day called for a time of talking about budgeting and the Children’s Project. Wayne had asked us to talk with his young boy because the boy had said he wanted to quit school. So when we got in the van, we found Charles waiting there for us. I told him we would talk when we got to the church.

While there was a bit more traffic, it still wasn’t as bad as pre-Christmas. We were at the church in no time. Lisa and I walked into the office with Charles. I took down chairs and we began to talk.

“So Charles, do you want to quit school?” I asked as gently as I could.

“No,” he whispered. His eyes darted downward.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Did you tell the people here that you wanted to quit school?

“No.”

“They sent me a letter saying you had said you wanted to quit school. So what’s going on?”

He looked at his hands for a minute. “I want to change schools, not quit.”

Now young Charles has incredible English. He is obviously a very bright boy. He has never caused any trouble to anyone and he has been in the program, so I didn’t understand this at all. Our team is normally very good about getting things right!

“So you have told Vincent or Joseph that you want to change schools?”

Again, he stared at his hands for a while. “No,” he whispered.

“Your English is very good. The school must be teaching you well.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you want to change?”

He launched into an animated story about missing school because he was sick. When he tried to go back to school, they told him he had to have a letter from his parents or guardians telling the school why he had been away. They sent him home. His grand parents (his parents are dead) didn’t come home that night, so there was no one to sign for him. He went back to school the next day and he was beaten for not having the letter. And they sent him home. Eventually, he got back in. When he fell sick again later, he was beaten when he came back. And there was a teacher who was also beating him. So he wanted to change schools.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m glad we talked to you! I’ll talk with Vincent and Joseph, then we’ll decide what to do.”

They had set up a table for us in the church, so I went inside and took a seat. I explained what the boy had told me as all our team sat very quietly listening to me. When I had finished, I asked, “Is this what you have heard.”

Vincent waited a minute, then said, “No… We went to school to check on this boy as the term started. He wasn’t there. We went to his grandparents’ home and found no one there. We found his uncle, who told us the boy was in big trouble at school because he had taken a job and was working instead of going to school. He went back when the uncle insisted, then started to work again. The school through him out.”

“Let’s talk to this boy,” I said.

We called him in and he took a seat. “Have you been working instead of going to school?”

His eyes went everywhere and he fumbled with his hands. Finally, he looked at me. “Yes.”

“And have you been thrown from school because of this?”

He was even slower to meet my eye. “Yes.”

“So were you telling us the truth about being sick and being beaten?”

“I was beaten, but I was never sick.” Tears were welling up in the corners of his eyes and he was beginning to shake just a bit.

“You were beaten because you were working instead of coming to school?”

“Yes.”

“And you lied to us?”

“Yes.”

We talked a bit about whether he could go back to the same school. Vincent knew the head master there, and he assured us that Charles’ return would not be a good idea because this man would be watching him. So they will find him a different school.

We sent Charles on his way. He never did cry, but I don’t think he will lie again soon!

We then talked for about three hours. We talked mostly about budgeting. I had challenged them to keep track of their spending for thirty days. The next thing I asked them to do was categorize their spending, then to start thinking about how they might conserve. We’ll talk more about this later. We also talked about the Project and the church. They are doing such a good job. They have set up an accounting system that is better than many in America!

We finished around 2:00. We were to be at a church to distribute our last shoes at 3:00 and we were to meet Jon’s sister, Jody, at 5:00. We stopped at a service station and bought somosas for Lisa and me. Joseph chose a huge cream filled creation for his lunch (we are teaching him bad habits). From there, we drove on to the church at Gyoza. It was in a part of town that we have rarely visited, approximately northeast of downtown. The area was very much slum, but not as run down and desolate as some. We drove on a dirt track through a maze of small brick homes. Children began to appear and to run in front of us. We turned around a corner and found a wood plank structure painted bright blue. There were two inch gaps between the boards in many places.

The sound hit us when we opened the van doors. We walked in to a room filled with 400 kids. We had 75 pairs of shoes remaining and the pastor knew this, but it was as it had been before: if we bring more kids, maybe more shoes will appear! There were no more shoes, so we decided to buy bread for all the other kids. Joseph and Vincent went out to buy it while the choirs sang. The pastor told me that the church was more than 90% youth and younger. They were simply everywhere in the long, narrow, barnlike church. And they were very very loud!

The kids sang and danced. They were delightful!

Finally, Joseph returned. He told the pastor to select ten kids and send them over to the van which was parked about half a block from the church. Then, when this ten had their shoes, to send 10 more until the shoes were gone. Then he should send 10 for bread until all were served.

The first ten arrived and Grace began fitting them. As soon as he saw the ten kids stop at the van, the man placed in charge of the door released ten more. When they were about half way to the van, he let the next ten go. All the kids were yelling, and this attracted kids from all over the neighborhood. They all started running toward the van. And mothers from the community started running. And more kids from the church.

The pastor was sitting quietly in church listening to kids singing. I went to the window. “Get out here now,” I shouted above the singing. “Joseph needs you.”

I followed the pastor out to the van. It was ugly. There were kids pushing and screaming, mothers yelling at the top of their voices. And there were Vincent and Grace with about 20 pairs of shoes left and easily 250 screaming kids. And everyone was trying to get up front for the last few pairs! Joseph told me to get in the van. Grace followed a minute later and Vincent started the van. The kids and mothers were screaming at us, but Vincent slowly backed the van down the narrow drive. Lisa and Joseph weren’t able to get to us when the van started so they had to follow the van down the drive until Vincent had room to stop. Both jumped in quickly! The riot was of the pastor’s making, but we had little choice other than to leave the remaining shoes and all the bread with him. Joseph said it was his problem!

This was a terrible way to end our distribution. There are so so many children here and they need help. We can only do what we can do, but it would have been nice to end with a group of happy kids instead of a screaming mob!

Jody lived on another road that we have rarely used. It was near the Katsubi Tombs which I visited last year and not too far from Narimbe Guesthouse where we have stayed several times before. We drove through a crowded market and stopped at a taxi stand. I called Jody to confirm that we were in the right place. She said she would walk to us. Joseph and I got out to find her. After a few minutes, I heard her call me. She hurried up and hugged me. We walked back to the van and introduced her to everyone, and we all met her friend, Aaron. They climbed into the van and we drove up a very steep hill to a concrete wall with a gate in it. Vincent blew and Ronnie, their yard person and guard, opened the gate for us. We walked around to the back of the brand new brick house and went inside. The floors were brand new tile. The walls were brightly painted and covered with pieces of paper with Bible verses on them. We met Patrick, a two year old that Jody rescued after his mother abandoned him. We sat in the living room and talked for a while. Jody is in Uganda with an orphanage. She and Aaron work there during the days. They work with the kids as they need working with. Their house had been only a few doors down from the orphanage until recently when they relocated the orphanage to a large house about 25 minutes away.

After a while, we toured the two bedroom flat then went back to the van. We wanted to see the house!

I napped as we drove through the countryside to the orphanage. The sun was beginning to set as we arrived. There were only about 15 of the 85 kids that normally occupied the place. The others were all gone to their families for Christmas. The kids gathered around the van as soon as we cleared the gate.

They came in all sizes from about 6 to late teens. A large boy drove a bicycle around the small front yard. We learned it was a Christmas gift to the whole group. We went inside to look around. We climbed a flight of very Ugandan stairs – no two were the same height or depth! And the stairway was dark! But I made it!!

The girl’s dorm was at the top of the stairs. An older teen girl was lying on one of the beds. She seemed to be sick. We watched the kids play from above. We also watched as the sun started to fall toward the horizon. It was a beautifully serine setting, a perfect place for these children.

We started back downstairs and I experienced fear for the first time since I’d been in Uganda. I had no idea where the steps were. Joseph walked at my side and Lisa in front of me. There was no hand rail, so I had to use the cane to feel for each step. It took a while, but we all made it down successfully.

Jody had told us she felt badly when we picked her up. She said she was recovering from e coli, but she had thought she was over it. She started feeling worse when we were upstairs and she had to go outside quickly. As we were walking into the front yard to join her, my phone rang. It was my mother. I talked with her for a moment, then she called my father to the phone. He was enjoying the sound of the kids playing. The large boy was riding the bicycle. He was standing on the bar and weaving wildly to the delight of the smaller ones. My father listened for a minute then asked if he could talk to one of the kids. Jody called a young girl to the phone. She was an early teenager and her English was excellent. She is HIV positive. She laughed with my father for a few minutes, then handed the phone back to me.

Suddenly, Patrick screamed. The boy on the bicycle had hit him. He was only scared, no hurt at all, but this seemed to be a good time to leave. I told my father we needed to go, and we all returned to the van.

Jody still wasn’t feeling well, so we took her and Aaron home. We agreed to meet later for dinner once she was feeling better. I also promised to try to do some shopping for her. She was having severe processed food withdrawal!

We left her and Aaron about half way up the hill to their house. We turned the van around and entered the Uganda I had not seen in a while! It was weekend night in a night market. There were people everywhere. And there were taxis trying to navigate through the people. Everyone was moving, shopping at the stalls all lit by single, unshaded bulbs. There were cooking smells, food smells, unidentifiable smells. There were the colors of all the fresh fruits and vegetables and all the people dressed in their street shopping best. We passed bars that were already becoming crowded and cars rushing to get into the bars. It was an absolute riot of color and sound!

On the way back, Vincent told me he and Joseph were late for a meeting at church. We hurried back to the hotel and Lisa and I went in alone. At the desk, the manager came by to apologize for the trouble we’ve had with the Internet. He also wanted to invite us to a food sampling in honor of the grand opening of the Thai restaurant. He said we could come on Monday or Tuesday next week and sample foods from the kitchen!

We went to the room for water, then back down for Thai food. We had soup again, and it was definitely mislabeled, though quite good. Lisa ordered chicken fried rice and I ordered a ginger chicken dish. Both were reasonably good.

We finally got to the room for good a little before 10:00. The day was neither short nor easy. With a similar day lined up for Saturday, we wondered what we had in store for us!

Kassanda

An early start. Our wake-up call came at 6:30 as it was supposed to. We made it to breakfast at 7:00. There was no one there, no waitresses or staff, only us on sitting by the garden. We watched the birds hunt among the rocks while we waited for someone to arrive.

Adrian came before too long a wait. We asked her about the buffet, but she said there would be none today. She said there were only 8 occupied rooms in the entire hotel! She brought me scrambled eggs again. Lisa asked for a plain omelet and one piece of French toast. To make sure, she said no peppers. Her French toast was simply a piece of dry toast straight from the toaster. And when her omelet came, it had no hot peppers, only red bell peppers and so many onions there was hardly room for the eggs! She ate a few bites and gave up.

We were almost ready when they arrived and we were on our way by 8:40. Our first stop was Garden City to exchange money. The Barclays branch there wouldn’t deal with us. They told us we had to wait for the Foreign Exchange Office next door. They didn’t open until 9:00. I was their first customer. Rates are still way down!

Joseph and I returned to the van and we drove to Hot Loaf to buy samosas for lunch. Joseph said that Pastor Fatuma would cook for them at Kassana, so we only bought four.

Then we were off. No worm holes today. The drive took forever! We began as yesterday except we didn’t take the short cut. We went to the same round-a-bout, but instead of heading south to Masaka or the equator or Mpigi, we went due west. This is the most beautiful drive we’ve seen in Uganda. The road follows a ridge line so there are good views of luscious green valleys. The jungle isn’t heavy and there are lots of banana fields. Although they are visible from the road, there must also be many vegetable gardens because there are roadside stands everywhere. The stands mostly carry tomatoes and potatoes along with all sorts of bananas. The tomatoes and potatoes are very carefully stacked into pyramids. There are also a lot of charcoal sellers along the road. Most of the stands appear to be unkept unless you stop. Then someone appears to take your money.

We passed through several little towns following a road that has been under construction for our entire time coming here. I guess it is finished now, but there are still stretches where the road on both sides has decayed to the point that two cars can barely pass. There are also new sections that are okay, but much of the road needs help.

After a little over an hour at 110 kph, we turned onto the dirt highway that leads to Kassanda. This must be the roughest road in all of southern Uganda! It feels like someone dumped dust onto a huge washboard, and there many of the slats missing from the board! There was almost constant vibration as we rattled over the road and the dust poured in every cracked window. Every few minutes, Vincent would hit a hole that rattled the windows!

This is another desperately poor area. The houses are mostly mud and usually no more than two rooms. But there were at least four kids in every one of them!

We rattled on for nearly an hour before coming to the village of Kassanda. It isn’t much. There is a market area of stalls selling all that a third world rural village would need. There’s a dirt round-a-bout, and we took the northern option. The church is located near the police station down a short a sloping road. It sits across from the bakery where bread is baked in wood fire ovens. The church is fairly large with a metal roof and papyrus walls. You can see sky through the many holes in the metal.

The church was packed! There were both kids and adults, mostly women. There are few men here. AIDS has taken a terrible toll. Pastor Fatuma came running to meet us. She took us into the church and up onto the stage. We listened to her wonderful teen choir sing. They have a song that someone there has written welcoming visitors to Kassanda EPC!

After the choir, I gave my same Christmas message. Then Joseph explained about he and Pastor Fatuma and me would be serving bread and tea to everyone. Then it was shoe time!

Pastor Fatuma had dutifully recorded the names of the children to get shoes, but they were gone in no time. Earlier in the week, Joseph had added shoes to the number he had planned at a couple of the sites. Now with two sites to go, he had few shoes left. We gave out 75 pairs here, but we could have easily given out 200 pairs. We did have plenty of tea and bread for everyone, however. This satisfied some of the kids but there was a tiny old gentleman there who was livid because he didn’t get new shoes!

We also gave a Bible to Juliet who was finishing P7 and moving on to S1. She has had a rough time of it. She is at least four years behind in school and last year, she took time out to have a baby. She is trying to keep her life together now. I hope it will work out for her.

The kids were as funny as always, showing off their shoes. A favorite thing is to carry the socks in one’s mouth! I guess that really draws attention to the fact that you have new shoes. The kids that didn’t get shoes were gracious about it, though disappointed.

When all the shoes were out, we drove to Kassanda’s new property. This property was purchased two years ago with money from Grace Presbyterian Church. During the elections, Kassanda EPC had major problems. Their landlord was running for Parliament and he is Muslim. Much of Kassanda is Muslim, so he began harassing the church. He told them he would burn them out if they didn’t move at once. He even let a Muslim school start using the papyrus shack!

So Grace gave the money to buy more land, and the transaction was completed. The city counsel then told them they couldn’t move onto the land until they had a new toilet. This wasn’t just an outhouse. The counsel specified that there had to be men’s and ladies’ and the size of the pit made the facility adequate for most of the village. The church dug the necessary pit, but they haven’t been able to afford the brick and concrete structure that the counsel is demanding.

I was there to tell them that Grace would provide the funds to complete the toilet. They were absolutely ecstatic when they heard the news.

Incidentally, the land lord won election to Parliament. They haven’t heard from him since. He hasn’t threatened them or mentioned moving at all.

Now there is a new challenge. The man who sold them the land is the headmaster of a school which sits adjacent to the property. This has been his corn field, and he continues to plant it. He has indicated that he intends to continue doing this, which makes no sense at all. Why would anyone pay for land that only he can farm? There is currently a crop ready to harvest. The plan is to start the toilet very soon so that he can’t plant more corn!

I slept all the way home! Pastor Fatuma did not prepare a meal for any of us, so none of the team got lunch. Lisa wasn’t feeling great after her omelet, so she and I didn’t eat either. When we returned to Kampala, Vincent drove us straight the Turkish restaurant I discovered last Christmas. It sits in a garden which was once a swamp beside Hotel Africana. I ordered an appetizer tray for all of us. It was humus and babba ganoush and assorted other spreads served with Turkish bread straight from the oven. I ordered a mixed grill for four for our team. Lisa ordered a beef kabob, which was simply chunks of wonderful beef, and a ground meat kabob, which was a spicy mix of beef and lamb. I had a beef stew, which really wasn’t that at all. It was actually beef in a very hot iron pan with a lot of spice and cheese on top. Everything was excellent!

While we were there, Grace began telling the guys a long story in Luganda. Joseph finally told us that Grace was remembering her first trip to a restaurant. She was 25 years old and her sister took her to eat chaps (a fried beef kabob of a thing) and chips (French fries). She thought it was the best food ever. She was encouraging the guys to make sure there was money to take each of their children to a restaurant from time to time so that they wouldn’t be scared to go when they were grown!

We were back at the hotel by 6:30. Everyone was tired so they left us without much encouragement. I called Jody, a young woman from Illinois who has come to Uganda to work in an orphanage. She is the sister of our pastor and she considered coming with us last summer. Instead, she is in Uganda for an extended time now. She sounded very glad to hear a somewhat familiar voice! We agreed to go and see her in the next day or two. We plan to pick her up where she is staying, then to ride to the orphanage and to take her to dinner when we are finished sight- seeing!

Lisa and I watched an episode of “Lost,” then it was blog time!

RANDOM UGANDA TALES

Lisa and I were talking this morning and remembered a couple of stories from prior days that you might enjoy. Rather than going back and revising previous posts, we decided to give them to you here!

Eating Dust
As we started out to Mpigi yesterday, we passed a cream colored Lexus sitting in a service station. This was a VERY expensive two seater. As we were looking at it, the driver flipped a switch and the convertible top started to roll back. Our guys are very sensitive to the few really nice cars around this place, so we were curious to see how they would react to this car that would easily cost as much as two of them will earn in a typical lifetime. They immediately started chatting among themselves in Luganda.

When they noticed we were listening carefully, Joseph said in a loud voice, “Look at that man. He will eat SO MUCH DUST.”

The practical, for once, overcame style!

Room Cleaning
So many things are changing here, but we were really shocked when we happened to come back from breakfast one morning to find the maid in our room. It appeared she had only just begun to clean, but we told her to go ahead. I worked on the blog and Lisa worked on sorting pictures while the young woman worked.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet in the shower. She had a large bucket which she let fill then overflow while she worked. She took out a large work towel and dipped it in the bucket. She squeezed it out a bit, then came into our room. She took a spray cleaner in one hand and the towel in the other, then bent at the waste and started to work (Ugandans never squat, kneel, or sit while they work like this. They always bend at the wasted with straight knees using muscles and joints that the rest of us don’t have!).

She “mopped” our entire room bent at the waist, spraying her cleaner and wiping with her towel. Every little bit, she would go back to the bathroom to rewet her towel. She “mopped” under the desk, under the TV stand, and around all the chairs. It took her a long time, and I’m sure she had to do it again when we left because my boots were dirty and they did a real number on the wet floor!

When she had finished, she went in to clean the bathroom. Her technique was the same until she came to the sink. I had used the single glass on the back of the sink to drink a bit of mango juice the night before, so she rinsed out the glass, then used the same towel she was using on the floor to swab it out! Needless to say, we won’t be using any more glassware here!

The lady mopping the hall had a mop, so I’m not sure why this girl was having to bend and use a towel. It’s that way here though. There are things that shouldn’t be that still are and other things you would never expect that have become common place!

Mpigi

There was no buffet again this morning. There are no more than four occupied rooms right now, so I guess it doesn’t work out to leave food sitting out. We both ordered French Toast. I lived through green eggs once, but two in a row would be pushing my luck!

We were on the road by 9:30. Both they and we were a bit late. Although Michael joined us, Dan did not. He had told me he would be with us and Michael was expecting him, but he didn’t show up.
Everyone was very impressed that we had walked both to Garden City and back in the middle of the hot sun. “Jim, you are truly ready for a forest walk!” said Vincent.

We drove straight to a bakery downtown. Lisa and I bought samosas for our lunch and 10 coconut cookies, enough for all of us. There was no one in Kampala! The streets that were completely grid locked two days earlier were completely open. And this gave us an opportunity to look around at just how much the world has changed in Kampala since the summer! CHOGM, the Commonwealth group composed of the countries once part of the British Empire, met in Kampala in November. Uganda is in some trouble with the IMF now for wasteful spending in preparation for the CHOGM meeting, and with good reason! With very few exceptions, every round-a-bout is gone. They have been replaced with huge, modern intersections with traffic lights (which are actually functional). There are even turn arrows. And in one of the busiest ones downtown, there was a traffic camera!
Traffic moves more smoothly. There are traffic cops standing around each intersection to deal with the inevitable accidents that occur when Ugandans try to use the new system. The sidewalks are cleaner and there are more of them. People are more upbeat.
And there are brand new hotels everywhere! Huge, ultramodern things that would look right at home in any city in the world. They are well designed and look to be well constructed. They were packed during CHOGM, and now they are empty with little hope of customers.
It’s a different place, and with all the Christmas merchandise either sold or put away (our guys find ridiculous the concept of an after Christmas sale to move unsold merchandise) which clears the sidewalks, with 2/3 of the traffic gone to the villages, and with few people going to work, the differences were almost overwhelming!
Vincent used the low traffic volume to take a short cut he has used only once before. It involves going over one of the major hills in Kampala and past the huge Catholic Cathedral on its top. I again mentioned wanting to see the cathedral, but that is about as likely to happen as my request to visit the Hindu Temple downtown!
There is a strange thing that happens in Uganda sometimes. It seems that worm holes open up and swallow people. We’ve seen it when we are looking for children during the summer trip. We will put Grace out of the van to find a child while we drive for 30 minutes. We’ll stop to talk to a different child, and there will be Grace waiting for us! The other day when we were following the shoe truck there was an accident ahead of us. We cut through a service station in order to pass the accident, then swerved back into the empty street. Both Lisa and I looked back and saw the truck caught in the completely stalled traffic, yet it passed us at the very next intersection!
Going to Mpigi this morning took 1/3 the usual time. The light traffic, of course, made a huge difference, but the distance also seemed much shorter. I guess Vincent’s short cut was worthwhile!
We turned off the main road and onto a wide dirt one that needed grading. This is a very poor area, and many many of the houses are only a room or two and made of mud with thatched roofs. You see very few shoes on the kids in their packed earth yards and clothes are often badly worn. You would think that shoes would be very important in a community like this, but we have never had much luck in getting kids to come in to get them. They don’t believe we are actually going to give them shoes, so the Kafume village kids are afraid to come inside the church.
The last three or four miles are truly amazing. There is a turn off the wide dirt road into the narrowest road we ever see on these trips. It runs through heavy jungle and it is only two tire tracks in deep grass. We usually have to raise the windows because vegetation rubs the van on both sides. If the windows are down, chunks of tree limb come inside and who knows what they might bring with them? It isn’t a flat, straight road either. It runs through a swamp then through banana plantations and finally up a steep ridge to Kafume.
There weren’t very many people outside Kafumi Presbyterian Church, our EPC church in Mpigi, when we arrived, but the kids who were there were very excited to see us. They were afraid of us, something we’ve never succeeded in overcoming even with the church kids, but they wanted to see us. Five young kids stood in a small group on the steep slope down from the church. They actually were trying to hide behind one another as the van pulled up. When we got out, they wanted us to make their pictures!
The climb up from where the van can park by the road to the church itself is always a challenge and much more so today (thank you, Hannah, for the obstacle courses. I’ve encountered every situation you set out today alone!). It is steep, the dirt is very, very loose, and there isn’t much in the way of a trail. Almost every time we’ve come here, someone (usually me) has fallen! But not today. With the help of the cane and Lisa, I climbed into the church without a stumble!
Pastor Jimmy was obviously disappointed that few had shown up. He sent people out to the homes nearby to remind the children about the shoes. In an area where I’ve never seen a clock or more than a watch or two, I guess it’s hard to get places on time. While waiting for people, he had his children’s choir and his youth choirs to sing. There was no accompanying electrical sound track!
After the singing, I was asked to give my Christmas message again. It seemed to go well, but I have no idea whether they understood much of it or not. And I simply gave out in the heat – I delivered my message sitting down, something they didn’t seem to be familiar with!
When I’d finished, we awarded two children Bibles. They were brother and sister (the sister was a bit older than the brother), but children of Pastor Jimmy. Both were finishing P7 and entering high school. Larry and Libby have sponsored Sarah in the program since the very beginning. She was a tiny girl with huge eyes and an infectious smile when we started with her nearly 7 years ago. Now, she is a lovely young lady with the same smile. And her eyes are as large as ever. Peter (sponsored by Ruth) has also been with us from the start. His English is excellent and he is growing into a fine young man.
This was a huge accomplishment for these kids. Many of the children at Kafume do not go to school. It requires a very long walk along that same narrow path that we’d just driven every single morning and night. These kids did it, and now they were moving to high school. Some day, I hope we can add a large number of kids from this area to the Project. There are only a few right now, and a few on the waiting list, but there are SO many with needs that it is hard to concentrate on one area.
Joseph announced that he, Pastor Jimmy, and I would be serving tea and bread to everyone there. The congregation was shocked, and Pastor Jimmy most of all. But he jumped right to serving tea while I served bread and Joseph directed traffic. We took the ladies first, which is another unique idea in Ugandan culture! The kids even got close to me. It’s amazing how brave a child becomes when hungry and bread is before them! These kids really wanted their bread and tea!
Finally, it was shoe time. Pastor Jimmy had carefully listed the names of every child there. He called the names and the kids came up quietly and in a very orderly way. Grace and Michael passed out shoes and socks. The distribution went on without a hitch!
While the kids were getting shoes, I sat down on one of the low slat benches to rest. Sarah came up to me with her new Bible. She handed me her Bible. “Please, what does this word mean?” I had already taken off my glasses (no contacts in Uganda!) so it took me a minute to focus on the small print. She was reading Luke 2, one of the passages I had used in my message. She didn’t have the Bible when I was up there, so it means the girl had written down or memorized the scripture reference. The word she was having trouble with was “treasured” where Mary treasured the things she heard from the shepherds in her heart.

The kids were very well behaved, quiet and still. They worked hard to get their shoes laced. It was different here than in the city. In the city, the kids were quick to let Lisa help them lace their shoes. Out here in the village, the older kids grabbed the shoes of the younger kids and immediately started helping them. Every young child had an older helper. Some of the helpers were male and some female. The helpers laced, pulled on socks, checked fitting, everything that Lisa had done, but without anyone saying a word to them!

They were shy, and nothing we could do seemed to change that, but they were so pleased with their shoes. And to get both shoes and bread with tea must have made this a very special Boxing Day!

Joseph had brought shoes in the size distribution we had seen here the last two years. However only young kids showed up and we had a number of larger shoes. We had to get names and sizes for several kids to send shoes back later.
We got back in the van a little after 1:00. We were hungry, but the one huge communal tea bucket made from water from a nearby branch wasn’t very appealing, so we decided to wait on lunch for a bit. Vincent drove us back to Kampala. I was riding in the back of the van with Lisa. I nearly fell out of the seat a half-dozen times as I dozed on the way back.
We went directly to Joseph’s house to get more shoes. While they loaded the van, Lisa and I snacked on our samosas. Amazingly, they were still piping hot! Probably, because they had been resting on the floor of the van, over the radiator all day. We also ate our Coconut Cookies, which are bright red with raspberry jam and dusted with coconut. These cookies are three inches in diameter and they are a little dry, but absolutely delicious! Everyone, including Lydia and Joseph’s kids, got cookies. This was all our team had to eat all day.
We loaded up the van again. Baby Lisa, who still hasn’t said a word to or smiled at either of us, came with us. Lydia said she wanted to come. Lisa was totally noncommittal!

Our next stop was Entebbe, the airport town on Lake Victoria. Traffic had begun to build a bit, but still fell well short of normal levels. We hurried through town to Entebbe Road. It is 22 km to Entebbe. We turned onto a wide dirt road about 3 km from the town itself. This was one impressive dirt road! It was wide enough for three cars to pass and it was pretty well scraped flat. It even had some sort of concrete speed bumps in it!

The Full Gospel Church was a few km along this road. Vincent pulled over and let us all out. There was too much traffic for him to park on the shoulder, so he pulled away. There was a very steep bank beside the road, but between the cane and Lisa, I made it once again. The church was small. Like the others we’d seen recently, its walls were papyrus and its roof thatched. We walked in to a group of small kids singing. One of our S4 girls served as my interpreter as I explained why we were there to give them shoes.

These kids spoke very little English. They weren’t really afraid of us, just suspicious! Once they settled in, they were warm and friendly and very appreciative of their shoes. Like the kids at Mpigi, there was an unspoken rule here that the older kids care for the younger ones. They were so good at this that all the small kids had their shoes laced in not time!

Baby Lisa sat in the back while the distribution took place. She attracted the attention of a girl of about 6 who was simply mean! She kept aggravating Lisa and taking her penguin toy. Once she even took Lisa’s shoes! I kept saving her, but it did no good. She still wouldn’t speak to me!

Vincent had somehow driven the van up the nearly vertical bank to keep me from having to climb down to the street. When I got to the van, Joseph opened the front door. “The sun is down enough,” he said. “It won’t bother your sun burn now.” With earlier groups, riding in the front seat was a really big deal. It showed who was boss, and one of our former leaders would NEVER surrender his seat unless we really demanded it. It’s great to know that Joseph doesn’t care about such things!

Our first true vehicular problem of the trip! Vincent got the van up the bank, but when he started down, his fender stuck in the road. He couldn’t go forward or backward, and I was sure we would need a wrecker. But Joseph and Michael climbed on top of the van over the rear wheels and a man riding by on a boda boda joined them. With all three of them bouncing, the van finally gained traction and away we went!

I slept all the way back to the hotel. Joseph said Vincent needed to take the van for some minor repairs (one of the doors had quit working, for example) so he wondered if we could eat at the hotel. I told him we could, so they left us for the evening.

Lisa and I went to our room and drank a whole lot of water. We were absolutely filthy from all the dust and we washed up a bit before going downstairs. I could hardly wait for our Thai meal!

The same surly waitress awaited us. She said they didn’t have Thai food. I told her I knew better! She went in the back and returned a few minutes later. She said they did have it. She even went back and got Lisa a menu. We ordered soup, green curry chicken, and prawns with basil with mint tea. First, she came back to say there was no mint tea. I asked for jasmine, another item on the menu. They didn’t have that either. “Okay, I’ll have Krest,” I said. This is a bitter lemon soda that is wonderful after a day of eating dust.

“No, I have already put African tea into the computer,” she said. “Won’t you please take it?”

I reluctantly agreed. In a minute she returned. “We have no green curry. The chef will make sweet and sour chicken instead. And we have no prawns. So she will make fish with basil instead.”

We had no choice. It was already in the computer! With no way to get to another restaurant (it was already dark, so walking wasn’t a good idea) we decided to take our chances!

The soup was wonderful! It bore little resemblance to its name, a soup we’ve had many times in many places, but it was a soup I would gladly eat any time. Lisa was a little less enamored. The soup was very refreshing. It really cleansed the pallet, but it seemed to do this by removing layers of skin throughout one’s mouth!
We waited 20 minutes or more for our dishes. The manager came out and apologized. He also came out to oversee the serving (we were the only customers so what else did he have to do?). Both dishes were good. The sweet and sour was made not with a lot of sugar and vinegar as the Chinese often do, but with a brown sauce sweetened and soured by the vegetables included. My fish was in a black pepper sauce with Serrano peppers and a bit of basil. So it was worth the wait!

Back in the room by 8:00. I had the blog almost ready to post when I dozed off. The computer rebooted while I was out, and I couldn’t get the recovered file back. I finally figured out a way, but it has shortened my writing time a bit!

Shoes for Christmas

Saturday, December 22: Shoes Around Kampala

We almost overslept, so we ate quickly. We were ready when Vincent arrived a few minutes after nine. Our plan was to distribute many pairs of shoes, and we started at the church where several kids had gathered. These kids had missed the event the day before and all were sponsored children. We found their sizes in the boxes in the back of the van and quickly handed them out.

We left Kiwatule and began one of the most amazing days of my life. We were going into two areas we’d never visited. According to Joseph, both were terribly poor areas with many kids who desperately needed help.

So we headed across Kampala deeper and deeper in the ghetto. The roads grew steadily more rutted until they were almost impassable. In fact, it took four wheel drive to get us up the last little hill and into the Discipleship Worship Church where Jeffrey is pastor. The structure was larger than Kiwatule, but the walls and roof were made of papyrus and you could see through both the walls and the ceiling.

Pastor Jeffrey had organized more than 100 kids in his church. They were singing as we pulled up. A dance group awaited us as we arrived and their shaking back sides escorted us to our seats. Small kids beat drums as these young ladies moved in ways most humans would never dream of moving!

Then a couple of children’s groups sang. The accompaniment was drums but there were microphones which was a very strange and unpleasant blend of old and new. I spoke for a few minutes. Then chaos ensued!

These kids apparently weren’t used to organization, so there was pushing and shoving and it took a lot to maintain a semblance of order. Joseph and Vincent had a great plan, and it eventually worked. They split the kids by age so that they were only working out of one huge shoe box at a time. The others had to wait, but it took constant vigilance to keep the right group coming onto the stage to get shoes.

After about an hour, Pastor Jeffrey told the kids who had shoes to leave. They did, and apparently told everyone they knew we were really giving away shoes. And we learned a hard lesson. We have long read that the median age in Uganda is 14.9 years. We’ve thought we understood this when every family we met had a half-dozen kids. And we thought we had seen enough poverty to understand the depth of the need here.

But after Jeffrey sent the shoed kids out, we were inundated by more and more kids slipping in to get shoes. Jeffrey simply wouldn’t man the door to keep them out, until finally we had to insist that the doors be kept shut. Lisa moved outside to make pictures. She ended up squatting down with a drove of kids around her. She was having to show them how to lace and tie their new shoes.

We had allocated 100 pairs of shoes to this place and left it with the Pastor to control the crowd. Jeffrey hadn’t done this, and there were more than 150 left with no shoes when we ran out. And there were still kids trying to get in.

The number of desperately poor kids in Uganda is staggering. I had never realized how many or how bad until I stood in that church and watched the place fill with filthy, shoeless children. It was very hard to leave with kids without shoes, but we had no choice. We’ve talked about it a lot in the last few days. It would be impossible to fulfill all the needs here. So we two choices. We can look at the need, know we can’t meet it, and give up. Or we can make the best possible use of the resources God gives us to meet all the needs we can. We’ve elected the later!

I was asleep within 5 minutes of climbing in the van! I remember Lisa asking about lunch, then asking again. I don’t think I ever answered.

I woke up with the van in a lot behind a Shell station. We were beside a large block building and everyone was getting out. I climbed out too, and saw a huge sign announcing Fast Food Italian Restaurant. The front of the building was glass and we could see a number of plastic tables inside. There were two serving areas. One had gelato items listed above it. To the right was a cafeteria hot table behind a glass cover with a cash register at the end.

We walked in and I went to the cash register. Vincent told me we placed our orders on the other side where the ice cream menu hung overhead. We walked over and looked at a very promising menu with lasagna, catteloni, and many kinds of pizza. But as I looked, I noticed that of the three gelato machines, only one had anything in it and whether this one was functional wasn’t clear.

So when Lisa ordered baked pizza and they told her there was only meat pizza, I really wasn’t surprised. Nor was I surprised when they had all the African dishes (gizzards, fish and chips, vegetable curry). And by the time I got up there to order cateloni, I had already started looking at options before the clerk told me there was no pasta except something on the cafeteria table. I walked over and looked at an odd-shaped pasta with pieces of red on it. Nothing else on the menu looked the least bit interesting, so I took that. “You must take another,” said the clerk.

“Another what?” I asked.

“You must take another.”

A voice from behind me took up the refrain. “You must take another.”

“Another what?”

“You MUST take another,” but this time, the clerk pointed behind me.

I turned around a grinning man behind the counter said, “You must take another.” I walked to him. Lisa was already standing there. The two of them worked out that he meant another dish. There was a platter of green vegetables at the front of the counter. I love some of the African greens, so I chose that, then paid the bill.

Grace and Joseph wanted to eat outside, so I followed Grace across the front of the building to a grove of trees with picnic tables underneath. It was incredibly cool in this shade and there was a fresh breeze that felt wonderful. We found a table and sat down. There were two of the strangest colored cats I’ve ever seen stalking the picnic area. Both were gray with orange splotches and a few black stripes. “They are wild,” said Grace. I started to reach for one of the cats, but quick thoughts of rabbis and AIDS made me pull away.

Lisa and the others came out with the food a few minutes later. Joseph’s gizzards looked disgusting, dark brown chunks in red tomato sauce. The other dishes looked okay, and mine actually looked interesting. There wasn’t really any sauce on my pasta, only pieces of red that might have been dried tomato. It tasted okay, even if it wasn’t very warm. And it was heavily seasoned with what one of our helpers used to call Ugandan special spice – the dark red dust that coats everything. It was evident here in the jolting grit that punctuated most bites. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the green vegetable, which tasted a bit like spinach, but must have grown on a beach because there was only a little more green than sand! Still, believe it or not, lunch really hit the spot, and before I knew it, my dish was clean!

We all reboarded the van and drove to an area I had never seen. Luzira is an area south of Kampala on Lake Victoria. It is known for a very large prison which we passed as Joseph told us where we were. “I didn’t know there were this many bad people in Uganda,” I said as I looked at a huge building which soared at least six stories above the multiple layers of razor wire. But for all that Ugandan prison might bring to mind, the facility was reasonably new and quite well kept. The prison stood about two blocks from the road and backed up to Lake Victoria.

We turned away from the prison and the lake and climbed a hill on a dirt road that grew steadily worse. It quickly became a narrow, rutted track among hovels of mud and, occasionally, homemade bricks. As we drove past small vegetable stands with meager product offerings, children began noticing the Mazungu in the van (they couldn’t see Lisa, who was sitting in the middle of the middle row) and running away shouting our arrival. As we continued deeper into the slum, there were more and more and more kids, all running before the van, shouting “Mazungu, Mazungu, Mazungu,” at the top of their lungs. The throng charged through a narrow door in a large papyrus-walled shack, the Kiromba Evangelistic Church of the Lord.

“They are waiting for you,” whispered Michael.

We walked into a roomful of kids. They were terribly thin and dressed in dirty clothes. Most had on plastic flip flops from another shoe project. One small boy held his left elbow with his right hand as he moved through the crowd. We learned that the left arm had been broken and not set properly. Now he could hardly move it.

They were sitting reasonably quietly, but their numbers resulted in a disconcerting buzz. The pastor, a man we’d met on one of our early trips, moved about the mass trying to keep order. He seemed nervous. A small group of girls tried to get the kids to sing to their electric music choruses. Finally, the group sang a few songs on their own. I took a seat in the middle of the group. The kids tried to move as far from me as possible, but they gradually came back. These kids were touchers – in a few minutes, I had two tiny hands on each arm and one on each knee.

I found Joseph. “There is a problem,” he said nervously. “We have forgotten one box of shoes. I have called. John will bring them to us.”

We were across Kampala from Joseph’s house, so I wasn’t surprised that it took some time. When the music was over and the shoes hadn’t arrived, Joseph sent Vincent out in the van to look for John. The crowd continued to grow. I found the pastor and told him we needed to control the crowd size. He didn’t say a word. He walked away to try to settle down a group of overly active boys.

Finally, Joseph started organizing the group into younger and older kids. They wouldn’t cooperate. They wanted shoes. With the help of all the others, he finally got them broken up. He started calling a group forward. They charged the front of the church and it took several minutes to restore order.

John arrived a little while later with the remaining shoes, but it was obvious that there were far more children than shoes remaining. I tried again to get someone interested in stopping the kids from coming in, then finally went to the door myself. But I wasn’t very effective in communicating why the kids couldn’t come in. I finally gave up.

Lisa worked again at helping the kids lace their shoes, which put her in the middle of a group of younger kids. While she was working, a boy of fourteen came dancing buy. When she asked him what he was so happy about, he held up his socks. Although he had managed to attend school for eight years, he’d never had the socks the school wanted him to have. Now, he had them!

A group of mothers had gathered at the back of the building. They came forward as the numbers started to run down. They were loud and obnoxious, demanding shoes for their children. When the last shoe was gone, there were more than 300 kids still in the building waiting for shoes. We began moving toward the door as these kids and their moms yelled. The pastor tried to silence them, but they simply turned their anger toward him. We hurried out, and he followed us. He was most appreciative, but the crowd behind wasn’t. We pulled away, still to shouts from the kids, but these shouts weren’t happy ones!

As we drove back toward the prison, Joseph explained that these were kids that had escaped from the north. Many were actually part of the night children, the kids that were forced to go into Gulu, a city in the north, and to sleep in the open in order to be protected from kidnap by the police. “There are hundreds and hundreds of these children living in this area,” Joseph said. “We do what we can.”

The van was subdued as we came back to the main road. Joseph had Vincent to turn away from Kampala. We drove a short distance to the point where the road ended. We found a parking spot beside a line of shops and climbed out. We were at Kampala’s commercial port, complete with a rail siding for trains that hardly run and ferry docks for ferries that often don’t run. We walked into a huge open area where trucks could be loaded or unloaded from the ferries or the rail cars. Lake Victoria stretched before us. There was a wonderful breeze that smelled wonderfully fresh. We walked out to the edge of the water and watched small but sturdy and very deep canoe-like boats moving along the water. The open lake was blocked by a large island about 200 yards from shore and the boats seemed to be headed in the general direction of these islands. “We must go out there,” said John, the church member who had tried to bring us the shoes. “There are crocodiles and big snakes on that island.”

I, of course, was ready to go. Lisa had a fit, as did most of the others. I finally agreed that since we needed to hurry to church, we should forgo a trip to the islands, but I made them all promise that we would go out there before we left this time!

Vincent drove us back to the church where we found several people waiting. This was an important night for Joseph. He had set up a community Christmas service where I would talk about Christmas, then the church would host tea and bread for all the members. Members had been asked to bring friends, but there were very few people there as the service began. Joseph said that many of the congregation had already gone to the villages to be with families.

I spoke for a bit and the number grew steadily until we had about 25 adults and 20 kids there. I had come up with a bright idea: in the church in Africa, there is a major problem with pastors trying to set themselves up as kings. In one of my last emails before leaving the States, I had suggested to Joseph that we change things a bit – that he and his elders should serve tea and bread to the congregation.

On this night, Joseph was the only church officer present, so he announced that he and I would serve everyone. When the service was over, we took our places at a table at the back of the church where the ladies had set up tea and sandwiches of butter and jam. There were also bananas. We found in a hurry that I knew nothing about making Ugandan tea! I kept getting too much (as in a cup full) or too little (as in not a cup full) milk. Joseph quickly took over tea duty and I served the sandwiches and the bananas. His congregation absolutely loved being served by us. Several of the ladies came back more than once, and some of the kids got three sandwiches. It took me a while to realize that it was probably all that some of the kids had eaten that day. And it was dinner for the whole congregation.

We ran out of food about an hour after we started. Vincent took us back to the hotel. We were totally exhausted, but we were also hungry so we went down to the restaurant again. The bar tender came up to seat us and we asked to sit inside. He took us to a table and left us one menu, the Thai-Chinese-Indian menu. When the same waitress came out, she took the menu and told us there was none of this food. We ordered grilled meat – I got beef kabobs and Lisa ordered garlic steak made from the entire garlic supply of Uganda. The food was delicious after a very moving day.

Sunday, December 23: Church

Sundays are always the same for our teams in Uganda. We go to church, we eat fish, and we rest a bit. This Sunday was pretty much the same, but as badly as we needed the last piece, our hosts had other plans!

The day started breakfast. The buffet was up to its usual standard. We were ready when Vincent arrived at 10:00. On most trips, we had gone to both the 9:00 early service and the 10:30 later one. With church ending around 1:00, it made for a long day!

We haven’t been invited to the early service in the last two trips. The early service is their praise service, which means there is a lot of jumping and a lot of dancing. I pointed out that the moves the leaders were making on Sunday morning were no different from the moves being made at bars all over Kampala on Saturday nights. When I asked why it was different on Sunday morning, it was suggested that I didn’t need to come to early service any more. It isn’t anything I’ve missed.

So we arrived just after the 10:30 service began. We took seats in the second row. The choir sang two wonderful songs in Luganda then Dan spoke a bit. He thanked us for bringing shoes to these kids, saying we didn’t know how important it was for them. When they started to get their son up for church, they found that he had slept in his shoes!

He asked me to repeat my message from the night before because many had missed it. Knowing that the length of my comments would have no bearing on the length of Joseph’s sermon, I summarized rather aggressively, but still made the point that Christmas was a time to think about giving to Jesus rather than about what we might get.

Joseph then spoke for a while. He did a great job, and held it to about 40 minutes. After church, we visited with the members for a long while, then made our way to the van. Lydia stopped us along the way to say that she couldn’t come with us. She and Joseph celebrated their 10th anniversary on the previous Thursday and they had planned a reception at their house for the church. With the death of Michael’s father, they were unable to hold the event then, so they had rescheduled for Sunday night. She would have to stay home and get ready for the reception.

The rest of us climbed into the van and Vincent drove us through town to Gaba Beach, another port on Lake Victoria just south of the city. I was asleep within minutes of leaving the church, but I woke up when he turned off the paved road and into the narrow, winding alleyways of the market place at Gaba Beach. As always, cows and goats stood in the way and we had to wait for them to move.

Vincent pulled up to the gate outside the parking lot and a man came out. They spoke quietly for a minute, then they became a bit louder. Vincent pointed to the gate and said something rather loudly. The man backed away and went through a door in the gate. A few minutes later, he came out with another man, who immediately began arguing with Vincent, who, completely out of character for him, became steadily more animated. Finally, the man turned away and sulked away. The first man came back and Vincent handed him 1,500 shillings. The gate opened and we pulled in.

“He was telling me that we must pay per person for using the facilities. I told him we were coming to bring him business. We should pay for parking but not for the facilities because we were only eating.”

With that behind us, we found a parking spot and walked across a large yard to a table on an elevated platform near the edge of Lake Victoria. We sat in the cool breeze watching the fisherman and ferries go by. One of our previous trips had come just after a ferry had capsized and several people had drowned. On that trip, every single person riding the ferries had worn life preservers. We didn’t see a single preserver this time.

Our food came quickly. My missing gallbladder made the very thought of one of the huge, greasy fish impossible. I ate wonderful Ugandan French fries while everyone else ate gigantic fish. I did sample Lisa’s fish and I agreed with the consensus that it was much better than the fish we’d eaten the previous summer.

It was a great time to be with our friends. There was no talk of shoes or schools, nothing about the church. Just talk about America and Uganda. We had to give updates on every single team member that had ever visited Uganda with us. We laughed and joked and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon.

I went to sleep in the van once again and woke up at the hotel. It was about two hours before time to go to Joseph’s house for the reception, so Lisa and I went up to the room to rest. I was too tired to blog, but I didn’t want to sleep. Tanner and Hannah, two of my younger friends back home, sent me to Uganda with the DVD’s for the complete third season of “Lost,” a guilty pleasure Tanner introduced me to last year. Instead of blogging or napping, I got in two episodes before the van returned!

It didn’t take long to drive to Joseph’s house, not because traffic was light (it was amazingly heavy with people heading by taxi to the villages) but because Vincent knows every short cut in Kampala! The reception had shrunken from church-wide to officers and spouses only. Michael and Dan were already there. Mabel was with Michael, but Robinah, the mother of a six month old, had decided to go on home. Grace was there along with a few women from the church, but it wasn’t the 25-30 we had expected.

We watched a cooking show on Joseph’s tv while the final touches were put on dinner. It was a Ugandan show where an Indian chef was preparing a Chinese beef dish! There were no measurements given and not even all the ingredients. The guy would start shoveling something into the dish. The reporter would ask and he would seem angry as he snapped out some answer. The resulting dish was far from appetizing, but the attractive young reporter gushed on and on about how wonderful it was. It was one of those surreal Ugandan moments – Ugandan and American adults sitting in the dark with Joseph’s young sons glued to the set as an Indian cooked Chinese!

Before he could start his second dish, Michael turned off the television. “We are here to honor Joseph and Lydia,” he said. “We could enjoy the cooking show, but it is important that we celebrate them. Last year, I celebrated my tenth anniversary with Mabel and my father talked there about his marriage to my mother. It was very wonderful.” Michael almost broke down as he remembered. “I want us to start by telling about our own marriages, the things that were good and the things that have been challenging. Then Joseph and Lydia will tell us about their time together.”

I struggled, but I stayed awake for each piece! The comments were very interesting, and it was immediately evident to all that marriages have much in common no matter where they are located. Things work when committed people work at making it work!

After a while, Lydia and the ladies from church brought in plates of fried chicken, cole slaw, and fries. I won’t eat mayonnaise here, so certainly not in Uganda, but the chicken and chips were excellent!

Lydia made a few comments about being married to Joseph, then Joseph spoke for half an hour. Finally, he asked Lydia to bring out their cake. There was small white cake with purple ribbon details sitting on a table by the window. They sat the cake on the coffee table and Lydia attacked it with a butcher knife! When she’d finished there were no slices, just small chunks of cake and icing, often not connected. They passed the plate around and everyone dug out a bit and ate it. It was a brown spice cake, a bit dry, but not bad. And the icing was delicious, sweet and thick with a hint of a tropical fruit thrown in.

When the cake was gone, it was time to open gifts. In our time of dealing with Joseph, he has never asked us for anything, but when he and Vincent got into an argument about using the Project’s camera to make pictures at Baby Lisa’s third birthday party, he asked me to get him a camera. I found a great little Nikon on clearance at Circuit City. It was so good that I got Lisa one like it! They were incredibly gracious and as excited as kids about their new toy.

As we were talking about our marriages, Dan announced that he and Robinah had celebrated their tenth anniversary last month but that they hadn’t had a party. When he saw the camera, he came and stood near me. Finally, I said, “Dan, we didn’t know it was your anniversary. We can talk about it on Wednesday after Christmas is over.” He nodded and went away.

I’m not sure how to handle this one!

Monday, December 24: Learning to Organize

With our brief rest over, it was time to deliver more shoes!

We overslept by 20 minutes and hurried down to breakfast. There was no buffet! Adrian, our waitress, said that the kitchen had decided to provide a la carte breakfast that morning. We ordered scrambled eggs and bacon. Lisa added sausage, and we waited for half an hour for our food. It was delicious when it arrived (the sausage was a bit too much for me), but it set us very late. We dashed upstairs, and got ready as quickly as we could, but Vincent had to wait nearly 30 minutes for us).

We drove to Joseph’s house where we loaded shoes for our first stop: Michael’s house. Before we could start, Joseph had many questions about his camera, and Lisa patiently showed him how to take and save pictures with his new Nikon.

Michael lives on the eastern outskirts of Kampala, where the city stops and the jungle swamps begin. It is a very poor area where Muslims and Christians live in a sometimes uneasy peace. Michael’s house is at the end of a dirt track. He has an incredible view of the swampy area at the end of Kampala from his narrow porch.

We pulled down the track beside his house. There were more than 100 kids sitting in his back yard! Most of these kids were barefoot. One little girl had a terrible burn on her leg. Michael and Mabel had worked hard to make these kids understand what to expect. They had collected the names and sizes of the kids to get shoes. Joseph called out names and kids came forward. This was a slow process from the perspective of the kids and there was some pushing and shoving to get close to Joseph. I tried to keep them moved back so that Joseph had room to think!

I was worried that we would see a repeat of our visit to the prison area with a slew of late arrivals, but Michael had things under control! When the last pair of shoes had been given to the last child, we sat under the tree behind Michael’s house while he sent two of his kids for sodas for all of us. He used the time to visit a couple of nearby houses.

After a while, he invited us into his house. He told us about going through his community and inviting the parents of the poorest kids to send them to his home for new shoes. “This is truly showing God’s love,” he said.

Mabel told about going into the home of a witch doctor. “These people, they don’t talk to anyone. They just stay alone. Their kids don’t play with others, nothing. I was so scared to go in there this morning, but I prayed and I went in and I asked them. They didn’t say they would send the kids, but all three came. All three kids got new shoes.”

Michael said the kids were so happy because they had never seen anything like this. He said he had stopped in the house of a woman who lived nearby. He said he went to the door and found her sitting inside. All four of the kids had on their shoes and they were marching in front of her, so that she could see their new shoes!
Michael’s home is a very peaceful place. I always enjoy visiting with him and his family, but we had to move on. His mother’s house is only a block or so from his, so we barely got in the van when it was time to get back out. We went in and spent a few minutes with her. She said she was doing okay and she was glad that she had her children to help her through these times. Her English was perfect. She even corrected Michael’s English a couple of times.

Michael has a sister that can’t speak. She is in her late 20’s and is probably mentally retarded in some way. She wasn’t with us in her mother’s house, so I asked about her. He asked one of the children to get her, and a few minutes later, she came out carrying a baby. “She was raped,” Michael explained. “We have tried to figure out who did this, but we have not. The man that we thought was responsible says that he is not. Now, I don’t know what we will do. She will stay with my mother for now.”

Joseph had s surprise for us as we started across town. I had told him that I wanted Lisa to see Christmas shopping in Kampala because she didn’t think traffic could be any worse at Christmas than it was during the summer. Dan heard us talking and he asked if we wanted to see a market, but I didn’t catch the name of it. I said we would, so Joseph asked Vincent to stop at a Shell station. Dan jumped out. “He is going to buy meat,” Vincent said.

“For Christmas?” I asked.

“I guess,” said Vincent.

Joseph got out after a minute, then came back and told us to come with him. Lisa had picked up on the meat thing and said she didn’t want to go. I started off with Joseph and Michael, then went back to the van and insisted that Lisa come. I thought we were going to a Christmas market where they happened to have meat. Lisa had picked up that we were at the slaughter house!

The amazing thing is that there was no odor, which was a VERY good thing, but didn’t tip me off about where we were. My first clue was a stack of at least 30 gigantic horns, the kind Ugandan cows usually wear! They were laying in a pile and a man seemed to be trying to auction them. I had stopped to look when Joseph came back. “This is the retail area. The wholesale market is ahead, then the butchering area. Would you like to see them slaughter a cow?”

“I don’t think Lisa should see that,” I said a bit shakily.

As we walked past the wholesale section, where sides of beef and smaller pieces hung on hooks as bidders bid, I asked Lisa if she was sure she was okay. Lisa is deathly afraid of cows, and, without blinking, she said, “Yep, this is the way I like cows best: in pieces. They can’t get me that way!”

A huge open shed stood beyond the wholesale market. We squeezed between the building and the chest high fence of the shed. The scene inside the shed looked like something from a nightmare of hell. A recently butchered cow had just been gutted. A man in elbow high gloves wearing a rubber apron and waders was squatting beside the mass of entrails sorting them. He would stab into the white mass of washed intestines and pull out something which he’d toss aside. A man standing next to the fence had a stack of 50 or more feet and lower legs. All manner of meat lay on the concrete floor while men ripped and tore at it with cleavers and knives. There were a few heads still there and a man was working at removing the horns from a skull. He cut the skull in such a way that the horns remained connected. He waved at us, then grabbed the horns and held them up behind his head. He wanted me to make his picture!

There was blood everywhere, but the concrete was well cared for and it was remarkably clean. And there were far fewer flies here than at most restaurants in Uganda!

I looked over to make a comment to Michael and found a large man poking at his chest. He wasn’t shouting, but he was obviously angry. Michael turned toward us. “Are you ready?”

We turned and followed him out. He said that the man was angry that we were making pictures without being on an official tour, in others, that we were making pictures without paying anyone. He told Michael to take us to the office and get a guide. We got back in the van instead!

We went from the slaughterhouse to downtown! The city was a complete zoo! The newspaper had said a day or two earlier that the City Commission had approved allowing shops to display merchandise on the sidewalks during the days before Christmas. So stores, packed to the gills with merchandise, had spread out across the sidewalks and, in many cases, into the streets themselves. There were cars going in all directions and boda bodas and pedestrians trying to squeeze between vehicles trying to inch forward. There were people riding bicycles with loads three times larger than bike and rider. There were people with four foot stacks of merchandise on their heads.

The closer we got to the city center, the slower traffic moved and the crazier the scene became. Last Christmas, we went down into the very heart of the city and it was even more unbelievable. Vincent, however, turned off before he got into the worst of the traffic. Using parking lots and alleys, he rushed us out of town.

Later, I told him I knew what he’d done. He smiled. “It would have taken three hours to get out of there,” he said, and this was no exaggeration given the traffic we were seeing. “And I was hungry!”

We stopped at Bon Appetit for a late lunch, but there was a sign on the door saying they were closed until December 27. It was nearly 3:00 and we had another church to visit, so I told Vincent to stop someplace where we could get a snack to go. We stopped at Hot Loaf and got samosas for Lisa and me and meat pies for everyone else, then we drove back to Joseph’s house for shoes.

Everything was ready so it only took a minute to load. We drove back to the main road, then about a mile further. We turned onto a rural road that led through farms and banana fields. The newest church in the presbytery, Najeera Presbyterian Church, was about a mile further. We turned off the one lane dirt track onto a drive beside a home made brick house. There was a piece of Romex laying in the road and I could hear music blaring. The new church had already been afflicted by the curse of the African church: a sound system!

The church has no walls and only part of a roof, but the wooden benches were filled with a mix of kids and adults. Joseph cleared the kids to a building about 200 yards away while I spoke to the adults. He wanted me to use my same Christmas message, which I did. I’m not sure if the people got much of it, but the pastor said that they did.

When I was finished, the shoes started. This was an amazing process to watch! Pastor Elliot, the pastor of the church, and his wife and the elders kept the kids at the building across a field from the small courtyard where the shoes sat. They would release the kids 10 at a time. They were told not to run, and I wish I could have gotten a video of the kids trying their best not to run!

As I walked across the field to the place where the kids were waiting, a man approached me. He wanted me to sponsor him to come to America. I explained the process, but it did no good. He wanted a letter from me inviting him to come and stay with me. I told him I couldn’t do that. He wanted my phone number and email. I refused, and left him complaining in the field!

Joseph called me back to serve tea and bread. I started with bread and bananas, but Dan would have none of it. He soon took over the process, so I went back to play with the kids. A young man in a strange hat came up to me and wanted to know what was happening. He reeked of beer and his eyes were wild. He started yelling at me when I couldn’t understand his Luganda. I asked one of the elders to interpret. He told the man to leave, then screamed at him and pointed far away. The man left.

Once the shoes were handed out, the kids came up to get food. There were lots of kids, but we had enough food for them to have bread and butter.

It was nearly 6:00 by the time we finished. Since no one had eaten more than a bite or two, I asked where everyone wanted to eat. The consensus was Indian so although I was a bit reluctant, I told Vincent to head for Garden City.

The restaurant is on the top floor of the four level mall. Even though it was packed, Vincent was able to let me out near an entrance. He found a parking place very nearby, so we all walked about a block into the mall. Access between floors is by a sloping ramp which was absolutely awful on my knees (Hannah, you need to add a sloping surface to your physical therapy routine for the balance challenged!!). And after three levels of ramps, there are four steep mini-flights of stairs! I was ready to stay awhile when we got to the restaurant.

Najab Restaurant is one of my favorite places on earth. It is roofed but open on three sides. The view of the golf course area with its huge trees and lush fairways is spectacular. There is also a view of some of Kampala’s many hills and a beautiful white and gold mosque sits atop one of the hills. It’s cool and quiet, and it is outstanding food! I ordered for all nine of us. We had everything from Goan Vegetable Curry and Spinach Dumplings in Cream to Goat Stew! It was fabulous and reasonably priced until the waiter asked about ice cream. I asked if it was included in the price (which the owner has done for us more than once). He said it was, but he was wrong and the ice cream cost more than anything else we ate!

In the end, it was expensive, but well worth it to see our friends photographing one another eating various things with Joseph’s new camera. As we were finishing, Joseph said, “Jim, once we have eaten this food, we can’t go back to matoki.”

I didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, then we will begin letting you wait in the van.” There was an outbreak of Luganda as they tried to decide if I was kidding. After a moment of shock, they decided it was okay!

There was no doggy bag at all. We ate every bite!

I had to fight the stairs, but I found an elevator for the rest of the trip down. We stopped at Uchumi, a department-like store, on the way out. I had managed to get a bad sunburn on my arms and needed aloe vera. A dancing Santa wiggled by the door to various Christmas tunes. Each of our guys (and Grace, too) had to stop and dance beside Santa. I wish I could have taped it!

Joseph carried my backpack up to the room at the hotel. Everyone else came with him. They offered to come and get us Christmas night to go out to eat, but I told him we would be fine. The first Christmas I spent here, they took Dan and me to Christmas Day service then to visit in each home. Last year, when I was in Uganda alone, I told them they didn’t have to worry about me on Christmas if they had things to do at home. Vincent came to the hotel and got me, but I didn’t hear from any of the others. When I told them Lisa and I would be fine on Christmas Day, they looked relieved and told me they’d see us on Wednesday!


Christmas Day: A Time For Us

After watching a whole “LOST” DVD last night, we slept until 9:30! Before going down, we fixed Christmas cards for our waitress, Adrian, Martin, the doorman, and our maid. We put 5,000 shillings in Martin’s card and 10,000 in the other two for a total of about $15.

Again, there was no buffet, but Adrian took good care of us. We started with pineapple and coffee. Lisa had French toast, which was every bit as good as Fulmer’s favorite at Kolping House last year. I stuck with scrambled eggs (without sausage) and I learned something very valuable about myself: I will, I will eat green eggs and, if not ham, at least bacon! I will eat them in Uganda when there is nothing else to eat. I have no idea what made them green, but these eggs would have made Dr. Seuss proud.

Adrian told us that they had hired a Thai chef so we could have that menu any time. And there would be a buffet today to celebrate Christmas. She was very pleased when we gave her the card. It would have been enough without the money, I think. And we gave both our bus girl and desk clerk 5,000 each. For some of them, we’d given a week’s wage.

We went back to the room and read for a while, and I watched a little more “LOST.” We checked the newspaper and found that there were two movies on at Garden City that we would like to see, so we went downstairs. Adrian caught us and said the buffet was ready. They were only serving until 3:30, so we knew we would have to eat or miss it. So we went out onto the patio. The food was unbelievable! There were salads and a huge assortment of Indian and Thai foods. There were so many foods, that you had to be a bit careful about what you selected. Several bees had taken up residence in one of the salads and I learned that flies are particularly fond of chocolate mousse!

The food was excellent, but very spicy. In fact, I had to run back from the buffet when going for seconds to get my napkin to avoid a nasal disaster! Lisa said she’d never had her eyes sweat before! As we were finishing, Adrian came back to announce that they now had turkey. She really wanted us to try it, so we went back to the buffet. It was a beautiful bird, very plump and browned to perfection. It was as good as any turkey I’ve ever had, if a bit gamier than most.

After lunch, we returned to the room for water (to wash down a bit of the burn), then it was on to Garden City!

It is less than 10 blocks from the Hotel to Garden City, by far the longest I’ve walked on a cane! It started with a steep uphill slope, then down, then up, then down a bit, then up a lot. There was a sidewalk which only had a few holes more than three feet deep! The route follows the golf course. There weren’t very many others on the street at all. I guess we proved that at least two Tennesseans will join those mad dogs and Englishmen in the midday sun! It wasn’t so much that it was hot as it was the sun was hotter than the sun can be!

We finally reached the hotel that is somehow attached to the mall. We ducked in the lobby and cooled off a bit. This is a very nice hotel with a beautiful pool!

We cut through the parking deck to the mall. This time, we took the elevator! Almost everything was closed, but we’d checked the paper and had the show times for the movie. So even though it IS Uganda, we were both surprised when we saw a sign saying the movie theaters were closed for Christmas Day!

We picked up a few things from Uchumi then spent a while sitting in the mall people watching. Uganda is such an interesting place! There are a lot of Indians here, some in traditional clothes and some looking like Beverly Hills transplants. There are many different kinds of Middle Easterners, again wearing full Islamic attire to jeans and t-shirts. And there are Chinese, Thai, and even an occasional (though VERY rare Masungu). In fact, we saw one other white person in our whole excursion, a woman passing out religious tracks outside Uchumi.

When I was feeling a bit better from the heat, we started back. A man asked us if he could be our guide to see Kampala. I told him we didn’t need that. He said he needed money for Christmas dinner for his family, but he was wearing a uniform from a hotel or restaurant. We kept walking.

It was much cooler, but the last long hill was a tough one. Once we got back to the room, we stayed there. It was time to call home for Christmas, so we talked to everyone.

We spent the rest of the day working on blogs and reading, and enjoying a day to rest up from shoes!

Getting Started

Friday, December 21 – Shoes at Kiwatule

When we arrived on Thursday night, we realized we had forgotten our great alarm clock. So I called for a wake-up call. The woman at Reception kept asking me if I wanted a call at exactly 7:00 and I assured her I did. And we got it.

On Thursday night, I called again. This operator didn’t go through the exactly stuff, so our call on Friday came at 7:23!

Breakfast was about the same except that there were “crepes” – very thin chappati with strawberry jam spread on them. They were actually quite good. The French Toast was a different matter, however. Lisa had enjoyed it the day before, but this time it was a bit thicker. It was actually two pieces of yesterday’s toast squnched together with mashed potatoes and onions inside. There were also fish sticks, which were mostly mashed potatoes with a flake or two of fish per stick.

I decided to try an omelet. There were four choices: onions, red bell peppers, green bell peppers, and very hot little peppers. I opted for cheese from the buffet and, since I couldn’t make the lady understand no peppers, the red and green bell peppers. I got the peppers, but no cheese!

Vincent was almost an hour late, which always means the van has been to the car wash. They wash vans inside and out, so there is always a concern on wash days about how wet the seats will be. We’ve seen them from dry to sponge-full. Today wasn’t too bad – just squishy.

The children were due at the church at 9:00. Vincent picked us up at 9:50. This was to be the day for all sponsored children to come in, so we needed to get Bibles for our graduates. We have established a tradition of getting Bibles for our kids when they change levels in school. So we give Bibles when a child moves from Primary to Secondary or from the first level of Secondary to the second, or when they graduate from Secondary. This year, there are 44 kids changing levels, so we needed 44 Bibles. They are simply too heavy to carry in our bags, so Vincent took us to the Uganda Bible Society which we found to be closed for Christmas. The sign said they had closed on Thursday (Decebember 20) for Christmas and would reopen on Tuesday (Christmas Day!).

But one thing was sure, they were closed this day! Vincent talked to the armed guard sitting outside the building. He said he knew where the shopkeeper lived and could call her on Vincent’s phone. A few minutes later, the man announced that the clerk would come and open for us. On the second call ten minutes or so later, the clerk assured us she was in a taxi and on her way.

She arrived about 10:25 and let us in. Vincent found a nice, hard cover, Good News Bible and she quoted us a price of 11,000 shillings each (about $6.50). “That’s a bit high,” I said. “We are ordering 44 Bibles. Can’t you reduce the price?”

“Yes, we have a discount of 10% if your order is 20 Bibles. If it is more, the discount is bigger.”

“We will order 50 then. How much will the discount be?”

She thought for only a moment, grabbed her calculator, pounded in numbers, then turned it toward me. The price was 9,900.
“That’s 10%. You said if we ordered more than 20, the discount would be more.”

She smiled. “Yes, it is much larger. On 20 Bibles, you save only a little. On 50 Bibles, you save much more.”

I gave up!

The Bibles came in boxes of 20. She found three boxes under a table. Vincent dragged out three boxes. “Madam,” Vincent said as he bowed slightly. “You have no open boxes. You do not want to have a have full box sitting here. Can we take a full box as our discount.”

“Yes!,” said the woman without a second’s hesitation. So we ended up with 60 Bibles, needing only 44 for the day. It isn’t as though there is no need for Bibles. The outlying churches have only one or two in each congregation and the kids have only 5 for all the attendance at Saturday School. So they will be used!

Welcome to Uganda!

We could hear the kids singing as soon as we pulled off the road. It seemed a bit louder than usual, but we weren’t prepared for nearly 300 kids sitting inside the tiny church! We took seats at the front of the room and listened to a lot of talk then heard several songs then experienced a rather amazing Christmas play written by John Bosco. It was called “The Struggle” and it began when Mary heard from the angel. It was filled with scenes I had never seen before, like the one where Joseph hit on Mary, but she told him they had to wait. And the one where she tells him she’s pregnant and he goes after her with a machete.

They had carefully hung a series of blue and gold curtains at the front of the church. They had to be pulled and pushed by hand, so there was constant effort to try to let at least part of the audience see what was going on. The acting was amazing, too. The angel, who we recognized as an angel because she was dressed in white and flapped her arms a lot, was a young girl from the program. Apparently, they ran out of actors because she also played King Herod with a hair extender attached to her chin. The extender slipped, so Herod soon looked like a very attractive young woman with a VERY hairy chest!

With no TV, these kids love these plays! But sometime in the second hour, the heat started getting to me. I thought I was going to faint, and Michael almost joined me. I don’t think he realized white people could turn THAT white! “Jim, this has gone on long enough,” he said. “I will go and tell them that they must summarize the rest of it.” The Christmas story was over, so I’m not sure what they might summarize, but I certainly welcomed his efforts!

It ended without Michael’s interference. I hobbled outside and stood in the breeze for a bit. There were so many kids that there was no way to cook lunch, so they bought samosas and a drink for each child. They also bought cookies, compliments of a young lady in Chattanooga who has been saving part of her allowance each week since June so that these kids would have something special to eat at their Christmas lunch. The staff put all this in small paper bags and the kids devoured it all.

But not three of the kids. Lisa and I were too busy to eat, so we didn’t get anything. Three little folks came up to me with their bags and gave me part of their samosas. One even included part of her cookie. They noticed that I hadn’t eaten!

Vincent and Joseph worked very hard to organize everything, but they met with many challenges. First, they decided to have someone go from Kampala to pick up kids in Jinja and bring them to the church. So Grace rode the 100 miles to Jinja and got six kids. She also picked up other kids along the way, so in came the bunch. But no one realized that four of the Jinja kids had never ridden in a car, van, or any other vehicle. All four got car sick, and it spread to every single one of the kids in this van.

Joseph decided it would be good to get the name, age, and shoe size of every child that got shoes. So he developed a form and sat poor Grace at a table to corral the excited kids and get their information. Lisa ended up helping, as did Mark, Evelyn’s sponsored child. Mark is finishing high school this year. He is a boy who has given us much trouble over the years, but he has settled down into a very good young man.

Jacinta, our soon to be university graduate, played a major role in matching kids feet to shoes. And when I realized Lisa couldn’t work as videographer because she was needed at the table with Grace, Samuel, Amy and Mark’s child, manned the video camera. It was his first time to see a video camera, and we did our best to show him what to do. But he shot almost non-stop for all the afternoon and he didn’t run out of tape. When I looked at the camera, it was set on night mode and the focus had been changed. So we will see what we get! But it won’t really matter what’s there. The important thing was our sponsored kids were stepping up to the challenge of helping in the Project!

We saw so many of our kids! And they are really growing quickly! They are well-behaved kids and they are so very thankful for the help we are giving. And they loved the shoes.

So we gave away just under 300 pairs of shoes, 150 in the Project and 150 outside it. We will be struggling in the coming days to catch up with the rest of the sponsored kids, but we will find most of them!

The whole affair was pretty well organized, as organized as 300 very excited kids can be! At the end of it all, we gave out Bibles to the kids who are moving up a level in school. The Bibles were as popular as the shoes!

I was exhausted around 4:00 when the kids started to leave and I hadn’t done anything! The heat was overwhelming under the church’s metal roof, so I couldn’t imagine how those who’d worked all day might feel! We finally walked out to the van past boys grabbing our hands and girls kneeling in the dirt to thank us.

Lisa and I were starving! Joseph and Vincent were the only ones with us, so we decided to eat at Shanghai. Lisa says this is one of her favorite restaurants in the world, and I agree! The food is excellent, but the setting in an old hotel sooths the soul. There are wide porches, and it is often possible to eat on the porch, which we did on this night. The setting is on a hill above Kampala and there is always a breeze. So sitting on this porch in the cool sharing food our friends have never tasted is wonderful. The staff is very understanding and helpful. They seem to enjoy watching people enjoy the food as much as we do!

I ordered squid for Vincent even though it was a bit expensive. He loves eating it and enjoys bragging about having eaten it even more! Every dish was outstanding, and we sat in the growing twilight reliving the day and discussing how we might organize better next time.

Vincent drove us to the hotel around 6:30. We had more Internet trouble, but I finally kept it running long enough to finish three posts.