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!