Saturday June 9: Saturday School

We started at 9:00 as always and the van was right on time. It is about 7 miles from our hotel to the church, but it is a hard 7 miles. The traffic cutting across the edge of downtown can be murderous, but we were early enough to avoid the worst of the traffic and were at the church by 9:30. There were already more than 100 kids there and the number was growing rapidly. By the time their program began at 10:00, the number had doubled. There were two kids to a chair except for the younger kids who sat three per chair. Even with that, there were many kids standing or sitting on the dirt floor.

The program lasted about 2 hours. It consisted of songs by various groups, Bible verse recitation by the same two boys who always do this (but the other one won this time), speeches by everybody, and a play. I can say without hesitation that the music was incredible, outstanding harmonies, unusual African dances, and a mix of Lugandan and English lyrics. The groups ranged in age from kindergarten to high school and it wasn’t a case where older was necessarily better. And there was one tiny girl in a huge hat that felt she should dance with whatever group got up there!

After everyone who had ever thought about being involved with the program had spoken, I had to deliver the “heavy” message: that sponsors expect children to do well in school. That if a sponsored child wasn’t planning to study he or she should get out of the way of children who did want to study. That if a child continues to do poorly, I will remove them from the program. It got pretty quite when I said that! Afterwards, an 8th grade girl came quietly up to me and said, “Elder Jim, I will try to do better in Math. Please tell my sponsor that I will try harder.”

The last part of the program was the drama. John Bosco led the group. He apparently had written and starred in this creation about two guys that go around as friends. One claims to drop dead and the other asks people for money to bury him. Then they change parts of town and do it again. Somehow, a preacher gets involved and convicts them of their sins. They are saved and stop dying.

Then it was time for the mosquito nets.

For the last five years, I have been trying to figure out a way to buy mosquito nets for our kids. The best we were able to do was to by wool blankets one year and tell the kids to roll up in them at night. The nets were always much too expensive, but Joseph kept working to find a source. He let me know a few days before we left America that he had found them for only $6 each! We raised very little of the money needed to offset the cost of the nets, but we went ahead and bought them anyway.

About half way through the program, Tenywa came on stage to translate. Kathy was on stage working on the sound system, so I took the opportunity to step up and tell both in front of everyone that we had found sponsors for their university fees next year. Kathy’s sponsor continued her fees as before. Tenywa’s fees will be paid by a professor in Chattanooga. Tenywa was so excited he couldn’t translate and Kathy simply put her hands over her face and stood there. She didn’t speak or cry or scream. She just stood there!

For nearly an hour, Grace read the names of kids. The ones who were there (the vast majority of them) came forward and I gave them a net as well as pencils, crayons, and pens donated by BPC and tooth brushes and tooth paste from a generous dentist from Chattanooga. You would have thought the kids had received a million bucks!

When we finished, we had everyone hold up their nets. It was amazing to see 200+ kids with mosquito nets waving them in the air!

The program ended and Lisa and I made pictures of kids we’d missed at school last week. There were about 40 of them! Then it was time to deliver news to some of the kids. Francis, one of our kids, had never done very well in school. Reading was a major challenge for him. He asked us a few months ago about moving into a course at the technical school. We had approved this, but he hadn’t gotten the word, so we told him!

The other one was difficult. Daniel has also struggled with school in recent years. He decided to join his friend, Francis, at technical school. But Daniel’s sponsor didn’t agree. The cost of the course was very high, but also, she felt that Daniel could succeed in the classroom if he tried harder (his report cards carried notes saying he wasn’t trying). So she had turned Daniel back over to the waiting list unless he went back to his class. Daniel was devastated, and so was his mother. They said they would talk about it and then talk to me before I left.

The kids were great. They seemed so excited to see us, even before they knew there were gifts coming. They had worked so hard on their performances and for the most part, they did very well.

During the program, the fact that there were far too few chairs was very clear. A church in North Carolina had sent me with $500 and told me to use it to meet a need I found in Uganda. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the chairs were that need! The problem was the cost of the chairs was more than $800. So I asked our team, and Ron and Bill each contributed. Then David made up the rest of the money from a similar “as needed” fund from his church.

Joseph was ecstatic when he heard this! He said he knew exactly where to go and he would try to get them delivered Saturday night!!

David attracted a crowd by showing slides of his family on his computer to a large group of kids and adults. One of the adults looked at a family portrait and said, “Pastor David, your oldest daughter is almost as tall as you are!” The man was pointing at David’s wife, Chris!

Everyone boarded the van and we drove to Garden City. First, we exchanged money for the chair purchase. Then, everyone went to the Food Court for lunch. The Ugandans went for fried chicken or pizza. We went for everything else. Lisa ate a chicken and mint dish from a Persian restaurant (disgustingly sweet) and David and I ate kabobs from the same place (outstanding). Ron got chicken. I’m not sure about Ray.

After lunch, the van took David, Joseph, Michael and me back to the church for a meeting with the youth. Everyone else went shopping.

I had the easy part of the youth meeting. I was to speak to them about managing money. We’d done this with the adults during my Christmas visit, but everyone felt it would be good if we could get kids thinking about savings and managing their money. The SIFE team at Chattanooga State worked on a lecture outline for the kids, and I presented it.

David had to do a talk about sex. He did a masterful job building on messages we had been told the kids had heard before.

Then it was time for question and answer. I got most of them at first, then the attention turned to David. He had fielded the standard sex questions and was doing just fine until a boy stood up and went into a long, detailed, story about a young woman who had become lesbian to avoid AIDS, then decided that too was dangerous and was making very creative use of fruits. David nearly croaked when he heard it, but he kept his act more or less together and provided a reasonable answer. The boy wasn’t satisfied, so he retold the whole thing again. David repeated his answer, and asked for the next question!

The van came back just as we were finishing with tales of shopping success and a visit to Namerembe Cathedral while it was still decorated for a wedding. We all got in the van and returned to the hotel. Our hotel owner had promised us he would get involved with our lost bag. He said he would find the driver who had taken our bag away and see to it that it was returned on Saturday. When we got back, there was no bag and the wrong one that the driver had left was still at the front desk.

We went outside to Indian Summer for a small dinner. We ordered a couple of entrees and an appetizer to share, then snacked along for a while and chatted about the day. Everyone was amazed by the kids!

Our EASY day lasted only 10 hours!

A FEW WORDS ABOUT OUR HOTEL
Ugandan hotel standards at the high end of things are no different from anywhere else in the world. Uganda’s best would be very good anywhere.

But the mid-range hotel is a different animal in Uganda. Mid-range places should be clean and the staff pleasant. But construction standards and range of services might be a bit different than one might expect. Of course prices will be considerably less in Uganda than elsewhere, but in many instances, you get what you pay for!

Our hotel is fine. It is a five story, modern building. The first four floors are occupied. The top has a simple metal roof and is unfinished because eventually, the building will go higher. No two stairs in the hotel is the same. Some are much deeper than others. Some are as high as two stairs others smaller than ½ a stair. One stairway is curved so that the stairs at the wall are very, very wide and very narrow at the other end. EVERYONE falls on these stares!

Of our three rooms, two have bath tubs, and one has a small square structure where one must squat to shower. One of the rooms tends to have both hot and cold water in the bath. We’ve yet to see the first drop of hot water in our bath, but we have plenty of cold water. The room with the defective tub often has neither hot nor cold water.

There are no screens at all, so I am presently writing to you from my room. We have only flashlights because the overhead lights draw in mosquitoes in droves. There is no way to keep them out: there is a two inch gap around our balcony door and a grating above the door that isn’t screened at all. It also makes our room rather noisy. The bathroom is no better. There is a vent at the ceiling and it is not screened. So we have to use a flashlight at night in there, too.

We have a fan that works well. David’s broke last night. Lisa and I have a standard double bed. The guys have a double and a cot-like thing. They are like futons, but they are quite comfortable especially after a 14 hour day!

The staff is unbelievably friendly and they try their very best to be helpful. The restaurant is outstanding. The Internet café has nine computers. There is no pay phone, so they get $1.50 a minute for international calls.

So this is a place I would use again. It is very good by Ugandan standards. It requires patience and an understanding that when you get off the plane at Entebbe, you aren’t in Kansas anymore!