Wednesday, January 2: It’s STILL Uganda!

We’ve seen so many new things on this trip, so much change in only six months. It’s almost unbelievable that any place can change this much this quickly. It’s amazing what 7% economic growth and tons of money used for the CHOGM show will do. BUT

IT’S STILL UGANDA!

We stayed up most of the night catching up the blog and getting packed. Then we didn’t sleep much. It’s always a bit nerve-racking when it’s time to go. Most of it is knowing how much you’ll miss these folks and this place (even with all its foibles). Part of it is wanting to make sure everything is finished. And part is knowing you have a bill to settle and an airport to face.

We asked them to wait until 10:00 to come for us. That would give us time to eat, finish any last minute packing, and pay our bill. We got up at 7:00 as usual, even though I’d been awake for a while. We started our 3 hours of Internet time at 7:00 and I had the blog posted before breakfast. We had a half-buffet – fruit and juice on the buffet, and everything else by order. Everything was as it should be!

We went to the room and finished packing (yes, Jerry, we were finished before they got there). It’s a bit easier when you have 100 lbs of stuff and 4 bags to fit it in!

I went down to pay the bill. The desk clerk printed it out, and it was off by about 30%! I swallowed hard and started through the bill. The problem was simple. When we checked in, I signed a rate of 115.00 USH. Now, USH stands for Uganda shillings and they use a . where we use a , in numbers. So I saw 115,000 Uganda shillings per night. That’s $70 per night where we try to always keep it at $50. Lisa and I would pay the difference. I pointed the problem out to the clerk and she said I was wrong. Finally, she said, “Sir, we know we have a problem with our system.”

“But it’s your problem,” I snapped. “And I don’t have to pay for it!”

I took the bill and went upstairs to look at all the other charges. As I passed the coffee shop, Adrian came out and handed me a package. “It is from us,” she said.

I went up to the room and showed Lisa. She couldn’t believe it either. We decided to wait until Vincent came so that he could say that $115 had never been part of the negotiations. I called the desk and demanded a meeting with the manager that had bought us dinner a few nights earlier.

While we were waiting for Vincent, Lisa opened the gift from Adrian. It turned out there were 2, two medium sized wood carvings of Ugandan people. There was a note saying that they came from Adrian and the lady that cleaned the tables. We’d given both small cash gifts for Christmas. These carvings cost more than we’d given them!

When Vincent came, he said they had talked about $85 a night, which Vincent had never told me or we would have stayed elsewhere. He had said there was a great Christmas package at this hotel, and I thought the 115,000 per night was it. That is in line with what I have paid at Hotel Africana during Christmas, so I didn’t think anything about it being low.

So we went down to the manager’s office. He blamed everything on Vincent, but said he would make it right. He reduced the charge to $85 per night. I later realized that he had halved his loss from what it should have been. It would have been very hard to get the other half from him that day, even though the bill itself showed that the system was using USH to mean both shillings and dollars!

So we loaded the van and left. I doubt if we’ll ever go back there again.

Our first stop was Garden City. Vincent parked in the parking garage. When I stepped down, I noticed that my pants were wet at the left pocket. I thought the hand sanitizer I was carrying had gotten opened, but the rancid smell quickly convinced me that this wasn’t the case. The Internet connection at the hotel had quit at 2 hours 25 minutes, so we still had a couple of things we needed from email. Vincent told me Brussels Air, who we would be flying that night, had an office at Garden City. I wanted to make sure the flight wasn’t going to Nairobi (the newspaper headline said there were more than 300 dead, the borders were closed, and there was general unrest everywhere). And finally, I wanted to exchange some money.

Grace went with Lisa to the Internet café while the rest of us went to the airline office. It turns out this wasn’t an office at all, just a sign advertising the airline in a travel agency window. I went into the office anyway and the kind woman told me if she didn’t sell the ticket, she wouldn’t get involved in this. I asked if she would at least check to see if the flight was scheduled to land in Nairobi. She confirmed that it was.

I went upstairs and told Lisa. We decided we would call our agent in Chattanooga and ask her to look for a different flight. I left Lisa at the café and went downstairs to exchange money. We had decided to get a bit extra because we always have this terrible feeling that we will get to the airport and find currency exchange closed. This has happened only once, but since the van normally arrives at the airport running on fumes, it is always a concern. So I ordered $200 extra. This place always gives 50,000 shilling notes and that only. They are hard to break, but if you want some other denomination, you can go elsewhere. So today when I needed the 50’s, I get all 20’s, meaning I have 5 bills to each $100 instead of 2!

When I got back to Lisa, the Internet had crashed after only 11 of her 30 minutes!

We returned to the van. My first need was to figure out how my pocket had gotten filled with the questionable liquid. The mystery was easily solved. Vincent had taken the van to be washed and the arm rest was full of water. Vans are washed in a stream in downtown Kampala. The stream is used for everything and none of those things are very pleasant to think about. We always try to be so very careful about getting wild water on us in Uganda. I had just filled a pocket, then stuck my hand in it!

I asked to go shopping at the place we always go. We had promised a couple of purchases to people, so I promised them we would be finished in less than an hour. Vincent, however, chose a different market. This one is much larger, and it sits on the side of a 25 degree slope! So my cane and I had to climb up and down this dirt slope as we shopped. We did find what we were looking for, and we found everything quickly, so we drove to church.

Mabel was there to tell us goodbye. We spent a little time with her, then handled another project issue or two. I also called and left a message for our travel agent in Chattanooga asking if there was any way to change us to another flight. We also had another minor problem – the itinerary she printed for us didn’t have any hotel information on it. So if we couldn’t change flights, we were flying to Brussels and we didn’t know where we were staying! (Actually, I knew the hotel name, but not the address or the confirmation number).

Joseph said several people wanted us to visit them before we left, so we drove to his house. John, a young man who is training to become an officer in the church, lives a few doors down from Joseph. The street where Joseph lives is the perfect microcosm of Kampala today. The two buildings on the corner are both commercial – wooden stalls that aren’t far from falling down. The 1 ½ lane dirt road slopes steeply downward and is eroding quickly. The house Joseph rents stands inside an eight foot brick wall with a metal gate. Inside the gate is a tiny yard, barely, and I do mean barely (every time we started in, we were afraid we couldn’t get back out) large enough for the van. The yard is mostly dirt. The house is made of the same Ugandan brick. It has a small front porch made of concrete. The floor inside is concrete. There is a tiny living room, a dining room which also serves as a place for food preparation. There are two bedrooms and there is a kitchen, but it is rude in Uganda to ask about it. I’m not sure whether there is running water or if Lydia has to go to a pipe at the corner of the street. There is electricity which is working most of the time now.

Across from Joseph’s house stands a mud structure about twice as wide as his house. The structure has four cuts in it covered by cloth curtains. These are the front doors of four living units. Their floors are dirt. There is no electricity and certainly no running water. There is always laundry hanging here because one of the women has at least six kids living there. The oldest looks to be about eight. Some of these kids are probably nieces and nephews.

John lives two doors down. The house between is like Joseph’s but it doesn’t have a fence. We drove past it and parked beside the road in front of a brick house that is much larger than Joseph’s. It had a large porch and a bit more yard, but almost all of it dirt. I knew that John and his wife both worked, so I was pleased to see that he was doing very well. But when Joseph hopped down from the van, he didn’t go into the house. He walked around it. We got out and followed him. I thought he was going in a back door. But behind the big house was a structure like the one across from Joseph’s house – a flat, box with four narrow doors. This one was nicer than the one across from Joseph – the box was made of concrete and there were metal doors. We stepped inside into a living room that would hardly hold seven people. There were only five seats, the other two adults and the kids had to sit on the floor. The floor was dirt. There was electricity and John had a tiny television with terrible reception. He also had something very rare – a college dorm sized refrigerator. We didn’t see the rest of the house. I expect there was one bedroom and some form of kitchen with no running water.

And so Kampala’s boom. There are many more nicer houses and these are being built by leveling some of the old slum. But the builders of these houses are building terrible little structures for poor people to rent crammed into every square inch of yard space. So a step forward with the new homes and two backwards because the revenue producing shacks are no better than what the poor folks had before.

We stayed with John and visited for a while. He has a great sense of humor and his wife is very sweet. After a prayer, we left.

Our next stop was Pastor Elliot’s home. Again, we pulled into a yard in front of a nicer home. And again we walked past the home to a flat row of connected homes. This flat structure was made of mud and there was a strong smell inside. We sat on a busted couch in a room with only four seats. Elliot sat on a stool and his three kids sat on the floor. Elliot’s wife was at work. His oldest child was probably eight. They hadn’t missed a single chance to conceive. The children were sent to buy refreshments for their visitors. They returned with bottles of cold water, one short of the number of seated guest, and cookies. The savings that they had made on water instead of soda and buying one less drink than ordered, they had invested in cookies for themselves. This was a real treat for them. We sipped the cool water and talked for a while, then I prayed and Lisa photographed!

Beth has sponsored Nakaferro Rose since the program started. We knew that she had moved in with Joseph soon after the Project began, that she had lived there for about four years, and that he had put her in boarding school at that point because they were having behavior problems – the good ole Ugandan problem of “becoming stubborn.” We didn’t know anything at all about her home life, only that her family wanted her to go with Joseph. So I was surprised to find that we were visiting Rose’s home. We drove through the Najeera community into a rural area of banana fields and tiny huts. Vincent stopped the van in a cleared spot beside the road. We walked 100 yards through thick vegetation to a smooth dirt yard with a tiny mud hut in the middle of it. There were a couple of goats in the yard, along with Rose. She has grown into a teen ager now, a tall girl in that awkward stage. In all the times we’ve met her, she has never spoken without being asked a question. She wasn’t any more talkative this time, but she grinned from ear to ear, something else we’d never seen. She was very pleased that we had come to visit her.

Her father came out of the house and he was even more pleased! He welcomed us into his home. The living room was tiny but we all squeezed in. Vincent didn’t come in, so we sat three on a couch and me in a chair. Both were simply foam cushions covered by torn fabric. The wall behind the couch had been covered with paper – an old Newsweek magazine. They had begun covering the side wall with a large picture of Ashton Krucher and a pharmaceutical advertising poster of AIDS drugs. The other walls were dark flaking mud. I could see into the single bedroom. The narrow cot was covered with a wool blanket. I’m not sure what was under the blanket, but there was no mattress.

We talked with the man for a few minutes, then I prayed. He couldn’t stop smiling! And when we went outside and Lisa took pictures of his family (Rose and two other children. I don’t know what had happened to his wife), he was so proud I thought he might explode!

It was nearly 2:00 so we stopped at Taste Budz, a brand new fast food place. Joseph and Vincent were so excited. They had spotted this place which is next to a tiny hospital as soon as it opened and they had been planning a visit when we arrived. It was a brightly lit place with several tables inside and two out. The tile floor was new. There was ice cream at one end of the counter and a cooking area at the other. A waitress took our orders from a printed menu. Grace and Joseph ordered burgers (Joseph’s was chicken) and Vincent ordered liver. Michael found something brand new – chicken fingers (he was a little worried about finding claws in his lunch). Lisa and I had a great pizza – feta cheese, fresh tomato, and black olives. When we were finished, I asked the waitress to bring me change so that I could leave a tip. She brought the change, then leaned over and whispered to Grace. She told her that the Indian man who ran the place wouldn’t allow her to keep tips so Grace would have to meet her outside to take it. I gave Grace 1,500 shillings – less than a dollar. The waitress went out to serve someone sitting on the patio and Grace slipped her the coins. She was very pleased. This was probably more than she made in two hours.

It was time to leave Kampala. We made one last pass through the edge of the city, through gleaming new intersections where the round-a-bouts once stood. There was almost no traffic due to the fuel shortage. There weren’t even many taxis and no boda bodas. Some of the stations had 0000 posted as the fuel price. The stations with fuel had long lines waiting to buy it. The paper reported that the price of gas had risen 400% overnight.

Even though I tried, I was napping in no time. Vincent took us out Entebbe Road. I woke up when he turned onto a four lane dirt road that was well scraped. We followed it for a few minutes, then turned onto a narrow and less well maintained dirt road, then onto an even narrower one until we ended on the road to Joseph and Vincent’s mother’s house. There were simply two tire tracks running up and down over steep hills. The grass in the middle of the track brushed the bottom of the van. We had to close our windows because vegetation was hitting us on both sides. The track was in terrible condition. Several times, we drug the bottom of the van when we fell into pot holes.

Finally, we saw the three room brick home where their mother lives. This was my third trip to see this woman, but Lisa had never been. The mother lives with Joseph’s sister and her two small boys in this place. It stands on a hill above the track. There is an incredible view of a wide valley and a line of hills on the other side of it. There were houses stretching along the base of the hills. Last Christmas, the valley was completely untouched.

She wasn’t there when we arrived. Joseph and Vincent went into the house and brought out the couch and chair, the only furniture in the living room. Their sister brought out mats for everyone else to kneel on. Michael hurried up to the van as Lisa and I were getting out. “Hurry, you must come!” he said. “She is running, she is running!”

I hopped down from the van and followed him. He was right. This 68 year old grandmother was trotting through the banana plants. She was wearing a orange African dress, which means there were not buttons or zippers, just fabric folded in all sorts of ways (not very conducive to running). And she wore flip flops.

When asked about her jog, she said she had won a race in the village not that many years ago. She outrun Joseph, who, she said, drank too much water. We sat in the shade of the house and watched a family enjoy itself. We couldn’t follow much of the conversation, but there seemed to be a lot of kidding, a lot of laughing, a lot of love, and at least a gig of digital pictures!

Joseph asked me to come with him. We walked behind the house up the steep hill and passed the huge pig who was napping in the shade of a banana plant. A builder had started a house within 200 yards of their property, which was a little more than 3 acres. Joseph wants his mother to sell off part of the land and give the money to him and Vincent so that they can have a down payment on a house in the city. He said the rest of the family hadn’t approved this yet!

We walked down the hill, and it was time to go. Everyone climbed in and we dropped the family at various points along the way. We continued back to Entebbe Road, then on to Entebbe itself. We turned off the main road onto a familiar road now freshly paved. We followed it to the botanical garden. It was nearly 4:30, so I expected that the garden would be closing, but the man at the gate said they were open until 10:00. His gate, however, wasn’t opened. He routed us to another one. Apparently, this was the total of his job for the day; to sit in a small hut and tell people this gate was closed.

There were no monkeys playing around the entrance. This was my fourth visit here. There had always been a ton of monkeys! It only cost 2,000 per person to enter (just over a dollar), but we had to pay the same per camera. Video cameras cost more than people, so we kept ours in the van!

The garden sits on a long sloping hill that ends in Lake Victoria. We drove slowly down past huge trees and coffee and tea bushes. There was a large field of medicinal plants. Everything was newly labeled. The shore of the lake doesn’t seem to be part of the park. We drove beside the swampy shore line. A few people were walking here. There were also fisherman in small row boats near the shore and a couple of boys cutting reeds. We stopped after a few minutes and got out. And I knew where the monkeys were. A DJ whose microphone must have been a foot down his throat was screaming something in Luganda as very, very, very loud music shook the garden. They have opened a party place in the garden where you can go and eat fresh fish and dance while your ear drums burst! No self-respecting monkey would be caught dead here!

We turned up the hill away from the noise. The narrow road led through the park’s densest jungle. I left the group and started walking toward the call of some brave bird hoping a monkey might be hiding nearby. I didn’t see a single monkey, but I was able to enjoy a couple of minutes of the jungle before the others caught up. We turned off the road onto a narrow path. It was covered in large chunks of rock, a challenge for my cane, but one that it easily met. We walked through incredibly dense undergrowth. It was easy to see why one of the national parks in Uganda might be called the Impenetrable Forrest!

We came out of the “forest” and turned away from the van. Joseph was sure this was the way back, so I went with him. Instead, we came to the party place. A number of young Ugandans were spread across the shore of the lake. There were two wooden structures where the fish was being cooked. Apparently, the infernal sound was coming from one of these. Kids were dancing to the beat. The monkeys, the rightful owners of this peaceful place, had fled to parts unknown.

We followed a road away from this place, and ended up in a huge field running up the hill. There were tress, bushes, and flowers spread across the field. I found another jungle area and walked up a trail to a bench where I sat and listened for a few minutes. Even though the music was still the most prominent sound, there were birds and animals calling out to the setting sun. I sat beneath a huge banyon tree and Michael soon found me. He climbed up into the roots of the tree and Lisa made his picture.

Joseph called Vincent on his cell phone and he moved the van up to the road near us. We all walked down from my hiding place and climbed in the van. We had time for dinner, then we had to go to the airport.

The Imperial Botanical Resort actually adjoins the park at one end. We pulled into the parking lot and walked inside. We had eaten here three times during our summer visit. The place was totally changed. There was a new reception desk in a room that had been closed during the summer (which means there are now two reception areas!). We walked through reception to the restaurant by the pool. It was still there, but it was only a third its former size. The huge lawn had been filled up with a pool expansion (in the form of a separate pool) and a two story restaurant. We were directed to the second floor, where we were shown to a patio overlooking the garden and pool. I ordered Indian food for all but Michael and Grace who ordered on their own. The food was okay, but very bland.

We talked quietly about budgeting and being good stewards of what God has given us. Vincent, Joseph, and Michael already have plans about how they can better manage their money and we talked about them a bit. Their plans for a simple budget were very good. Joseph talked about trying to train his children by challenging them to take care of their soap each month. He is giving them a bar each and telling them they must keep up with it rather than coming back to the cabinet for more soap every time they want to. It’s a start!

I went to the bathroom while Lisa went out to get our traveling clothes. I had noticed an attractive young woman come into the bar near us earlier. When I went into the bathroom, she almost went in with me. I closed the door quickly. When I came out, she also came out of the ladies room and stood there in my way for a second batting her eyes at me. She took a seat by the bar and stared at me as I walked by. I had read in the papers that there were a lot more “sex workers” since CHOGM. I think I had just met one!

I changed into a long-sleeve shirt. I also replaced my boots with slip on shoes. Lisa did the same. Despite three calls, I still hadn’t heard a word from our travel agent (using this one is another travel mistake I won’t make again!!). I called Candy at church and asked her to find out about the hotel. It was now too late to change flights.

It was time to go.

We made pictures again, then climbed into the van for the final two mile ride. The guards at the airport seemed bored. They didn’t search us or look under the van at all. Even though the immigration area is completely new, they’ve done nothing to improve departures. We had to go through a security check at the door, then stand in line to wait for the baggage scanner. The guys had loaded everything onto a single luggage cart (free in Uganda, by the way). It was easy to unload everything onto the belt, but it was a real pain trying to load it back onto the cart. We had to get the bags from the security area to the gate, and we made it eventually. We had to clear another passport check (our third) and the nice lady there gave us an immigration form as well as a letter. The letter explained that the troubles in Kenya had resulted in shutting down the transport of jet fuel from Kenya to Uganda. As a result of this, our airplane could not refuel in Uganda. Therefore, we would be flying into Nairobi to get fuel there.

Okay, so here’s what this means. We will be boarding a plane that was fueled in Brussels for a flight to Entebbe. It has received no fuel since, which means it will be taking off again and flying about an hour on a tank that was intended to get it only to Entebbe. Then, we’ll land in Nairobi where the fighting is so bad that all fuel shipments have been cut off – they can’t ship fuel out, so we’ll fly 300 people on a jet into the war zone to get the fuel they can’t ship!

We were at the counter in a few minutes. We struggled, but we transferred all four bags to be weighed. I told them I wouldn’t need a wheel chair because this airport was small, but to please confirm the chair in Brussels. The woman first checked our bags through to Atlanta, then had to change them to Brussels, but it didn’t take long.

We had three hours until the flight left. I looked in a bookstore and Lisa made a few last minute purchases at a shop. We sat at the snack bar and snacked a bit on potato chips and a candy bar, but my chips were a bit buggy, so I didn’t eat very many. I called Candy and got all the information. Vincent called and asked us to call him from Nairobi. Then it was time to wait!

Our flight was scheduled out at 11:59. The incoming plane hadn’t arrived by then. We were finally called for yet another security check a few minutes after midnight. I wished I had the chair!

They’ve really changed this part of the departure area. There is still the security set up, which clears you into another room. And there is another room behind that where you actually wait. This room is much bigger than before, and there are at least three more back there that aren’t used. This huge waiting room is a bit of a mess. It isn’t clear how you get out of it, and the chairs are more or less randomly arrayed. So we took chairs in a corner out of the way of the crowd. When about 2/3 of the people were through security, there was a sudden rush toward the same door we’d come in. There was no announcement, but the flight was boarding.

There are new jet ways at the airport, but we didn’t use one. Instead, we had to go down stairs, cross the tarmac, and climb up stairs to the door. The flight wasn’t very full, so it boarded quickly. We were nervous about Nairobi, but also exhausted and we both napped along the way.

We landed in Nairobi without incident. They said we couldn’t get off and to unfasten our seatbelts! It took nearly an hour to refuel. A lot of people got on the plane in Nairobi, all Mzungus. There was a lot of activity at the airport, a lot of vehicles driving around on a perimeter road. We thought all was well, but then the cabin staff got nervous. There were people going up and down the aisles. They kept making people show passports and answer questions. Finally, there was an announcement – although there was concern that there might be an unticketed passenger on board, it was now resolved and we could take off.

And we did!

I'm writing from Brussels. We should be home tomorrow (Saturday) night. Jonathon is coming to pick us up in Atlanta, and we hope to be at church on Sunday!

Thanks for your prayers. This last bit wasn't a bit of fun!!