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!