WEDNESDAY JUNE 6: DAVID ARRIVES

WEDNESDAY JUNE 6: DAVID ARRIVES

It’s actually Sunday. I’m still so far behind! I’m sitting on the balcony at our hotel. It is dusk. The smells of Indian Summer are drifting up, and I keep drifting off. But there is MUCH to tell!

They picked us up at 9:00 and we immediately went to work seeing children. Bright Futures was one of our first stops. We have known this school since the beginning. It began in the old Ntinda church where the project began. Visiting Bright Futures, then, opens old wounds and brings back old memories.

When we pulled up at the church, we found Monique’s van. Monique was our former project director, who was fired for financial improprieties. Moses, who had been her assistant, was standing on the road watching us park. I went to him and greeted him. He was neither hot nor cold, but he smiled as though he were happy to see Lisa. We told him we would see him when we finished with the children.

When we started into the church, Joseph stopped us. The school had moved next door. We found the school in a tiny office area which Monique owned. The office for the school was immediately to the right of the main classroom. Harriet, the headmaster of the school, greeted us, then sent an assistant in to get our sponsored children. When we had visited with each of our kids, we asked if we could tour the school. Harriet showed us her largest classroom which was directly across from the office. It housed the pre-kindergarten group. Access to the kindergarten classroom came by moving the pre-k blackboard. There was a tiny first grade classroom behind this with a door to the outside which emptied into an alley almost too narrow to walk in. In all, there were 90 students in this maze of rooms.

When we came back to the office, Harriet called to me, “Elder Jim, I have something you must see.” She led Lisa and me back through the pre-k class to the smallest classroom yet, the classroom for second grade. At the back of this room, much smaller than an American bedroom was a tiny storage closet. Cleaning supplies and junk stood against one wall of the closet. A rolled up sleeping mat stood against another wall. “One of my teachers lost her husband recently,” explained Harriet. “She had no place to go, so I let her sleep here. She has a small daughter who attends this school. They both sleep in this place. Can you help her?” I told her I had no funds for rent for anyone, but we would talk about it and see if there was anything we could do.

Moses was gone when we started up to our van, and Monique had slipped away in her van while we were in the school. We boarded the van and pulled away. I asked Joseph about the woman Harriet had described. He said the story would have to be carefully checked, and he would do this and let me know what was going on.

We continued winding through the streets of Kampala’s slums all morning, stopping every few minutes to see children. We lost nearly an hour at a 3,000 student high school on a hill above Kampala. We parked in a lot at the top of the hill, then Ron and I walked with Joseph and Vincent to the office at the bottom of the hill. The school was modern and very well kept. We waited outside the office of the Assistant Head Master while Michael went inside. We could hear a woman yelling at him from inside the office. He came out and said she would not allow us to enter. “Where is the Head Master?” I asked.

His office was right across the breezeway from the Assistant. Vincent knocked on the door and went inside a moment later. He called for us, and we entered a large modern office with matching office furniture and four nice guest chairs. The Head Master welcomed us and immediately sent an assistant to get our students. After a few minutes of talking, he came around the desk and grabbed my hand. “I must leave, so you are the acting head master for the next hour.”

Although I wanted to use my new power to fire my assistant, Michael and Joseph insisted I shouldn’t do this while Vincent simply laughed.

It took a very long time for them to find Julius, Ron and Judi’s boy. Julius is in Secondary 6, his final year of high school. He wants to be a doctor and his distinguished educational career continues into his final year. He is a Prefect, in charge of the library and he plans to enter medical school in the fall of 2008. He is a very articulate boy, though very shy, and he is incredibly impressive.

The other two students in the school couldn’t be found. There was a fee problem with one of the boys involving a wrong name on a fee receipt and the other was out sick. Vincent promised we would see both children.

I asked Vincent for more traditional Ugandan food for lunch and he stopped at a tiny restaurant on a main road. There was one occupied table. We pulled two of the remaining three tables together to create room for all of us. We ordered Ugandan fast food, mostly fried chicken. They were out of fish, so I ordered kabob. Ray decided to be brave and ordered chops.

My kabob was excellent, though totally unlike any kabob I’d ever seen. It was long and thin, a section of rolled up meat chopped with seasoning herbs. But the outer surface had brown fried strands that almost looked like fried hair! I’m sure it was some seasoning, but the first bite was a bit disconcerting!

Ray’s chops were not pork chops. “Chop” meant chopped meat. Ray asked what kind and we let it go as mystery meat. He received two thin patties of chopped meat which had been deep fried. He loved them!

In the afternoon, we continued our visits. One of the schools was Najeera High School, which is in a very poor rural area where Kampala ends and the jungle begins. We have visited this school many times. There is construction project underway, three brick walls of a building with no roof. In the years we have been visiting Najeera (five now), not one bit of discernable work has been done on the project!

We met Peter, who we have known as a teacher. He is now the head master of the school. He is a very bright young man with a lot of potential, and I had once hoped he would work for us in the project. But he is now a minister in Monique’s church and his career has taken him in different directions.

We met the BPC Youth child, Steven, at the school. Steven recently lost both parents. The project moved him from his school to Najeera because this was the only boarding opportunity they could find for this boy, who has no where else to go. Steven was terribly upset. He was alone with no friends here, and he had made no new ones. We all talked with him for quite some time, and I asked Peter to watch the boy. But he is very homesick for a home that is no longer there!

We made one last stop on the way back to the hotel. Vincent said he had found a place that had pants that would fit even me! It was a new shop with groceries on the first floor and a few cloths in the basement. The clothes were from Europe and they were of decent quality and price. And he was right: they had pants that would fit me. I had worn this pair since I put them on Saturday morning in Chattanooga, so I really needed them! I ended up buying two pairs in case we had to wait until Monday for our bags, and Lisa bought a skirt and blouse. Ray bought a shirt.

We went back to the hotel and rested for a few minutes, then climbed back in the van for the ride to Entebbe. Our first order of business was to fight through the terrible traffic. Once out of the city, we started thinking about food. We stopped at the same ole place, the Windsor Lake Victoria Hotel. This is such a charming place to eat at night under a tent by the pool. We were too late for the buffet, so we ordered from the menu once again. Everyone seemed to enjoy their food.

Bill and Ron were not with us when we got to the van, but they came a few minutes later. They were laughing. Ron had gone into the bathroom and when he started to lock the door, the handle had fallen off. Luckily Bill heard the metal handle clang on the floor and he retrieved it. They finally reattached the handle and saved Ron from a night in a Uganda toilet!

David’s flight was due in at 10:15. It arrived on time, and David came out with his luggage around 10:45. There was much less traffic on the ride back into town, and we soon had David settled in his room with Bill.