July 5: The Zoo

July 5. The Zoo (Jeff’s First Full Day in Africa)

My body clock wasn’t too badly messed up by the trip. I slept great, and only woke up at 5:00! A full 5.5 hours!! We had planned to get up at 6:00 so I lay there for an hour waiting for the alarm. Lisa showered, but I had no towel so we went down to eat breakfast at 7:00. We had delicious scrambled eggs, pineapple, a banana, toast and orange marmalade, and terrible coffee – instant run through a coffee filter! The best coffee I’ve ever tasted grows here and we have filtered Nescafe.

There had been a tall man behind us on the flight from Chicago to Brussels. We had heard him say something about Uganda. He turned up at Kolping House this morning. His name is Dwight, and he is a dentist from Cookeville, Tennessee. He has a man with him from Franklin, near Nashville (where my brother lives). They are here doing some pastor training in the Pentecostal church. We had a great discussion about our work and his.

Jeff came down at 8:00 and Lisa got him started. He only wanted fruit and toast, so I went to the desk while he was settling in and asked for a towel. They had none.

“What about the laundry?” I asked.

“Yes, they have towels.”

“Can I have one?”

“They are not here,” said Sister Desk Clerk. “They are in the laundry.”

“Can I go get one or can you?”

“Yes.” And the woman stood there smiling at me.

“Would you please go and get me a towel.”

“What room?”

“107.”

“Okay, I will get.” And she hurried away.

Fifteen minutes later, I was still sitting with Jeff and Lisa waiting for the nun to return. I finally went back to the gate. The nun was standing there.

“So did you get my towel?”

“No,” she said.

“Are they out of towels?”

“No there are many, pause, pause, “the laundry man took it to your room.”

So I hurried up to the room to find the cleaning lady hard at work scrubbing our floor. I asked her to hurry, and I suppose she did. It must be hard to stop hand scrubbing a floor in the very middle of things!

I showered and Lisa and I walked into the waiting area as Joseph and Vincent arrived. Our first task was to exchange money. Vincent found a place exchanging at nearly 60 shillings more per dollar than the posted rate. Then it was time to buy a phone – and a battery charger for my Blackberry. The phone makes sense because it costs over $2 per minute to send or receive a call on my world phone. A local phone is free on incoming and only 67 cents per minute to call. And we need the Blackberry charger because I left mine at home (I hope). It was brand new because I lost my other one in New Orleans last week. So two chargers in one week!

We went to a Nokia store and bought a phone for about $50. “Is this phone turned on?” asked Joseph.

“No,” said the phone man.

“Can you do this thing?” asked Joseph.

“Yes,” said the phone man.

“Would you please?” Joseph asked.

The man asked another man at the back of the store and after a short discussion, he produced a small card. It cost 3,000 shillings. “And do you sell air time?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the phone man and he got a card. He even set it up. “You must charge the phone for 8 hours before using it.” So the phone road in its box all day!

But I still didn’t have a charger for the Blackberry! And this man, even though he was at the headquarters for the phone company, didn’t have one either. “We have a Business Solutions Center,” he explained. “I am sure you can get one there.”

Luckily, it was in a nearby building. There was one worker at a desk and one customer. After about 5 minutes, we sat down. After another 10, a woman came out of the back office where several people sat looking at us. She talked to the man at the desk for a minute, then he turned to us and asked if he could help. After going into the back for a while he came back and announced that he couldn’t! They didn’t stock parts, only full phones. “But I know one who keeps these things,” he said. “Cell Solutions which is next door to Nando’s. You can trust him.” Joseph seemed to know where this was, so we left.

The city was packed with cars, so it took some time to negotiate only a few blocks. Then we were on the wrong side of the road and couldn’t find a parking place, Finally, we parked right out front. Joseph and I went in.

Joseph explained to the young man behind the counter exactly what we needed. The man told us he was sorry but he didn’t have such a charger. He knew someone, however, who would have it if anyone in Uganda did. He came around the counter and led us back to the street. He pointed to a shop a few doors down. “Go there,” he said. We shook hands and Joseph and I walked on.

This was a much smaller shop with a long counter inside the door.

“I’m looking for a charger for my Blackberry,” I said to the young man sitting behind the counter.

The man looked at my phone, then bent over to look in a case. “Hello, I am somebody. I hope you are well,” he said. Then he straightened up and looked me squarely in the eyes. He was right, I had completely forgotten to greet him properly. I repeated the traditional greeting, apologizing profusely. He didn’t say anything or look at me, but he pulled out a box and removed a charger for a Blackberry. He plugged it in and plugged in my phone. It worked perfectly. He handed me the charger. The cost was about $11, much cheaper than the one Lisa bought me last week after I left mine in New Orleans. I thanked him again,

With all our purchases made, it was time to go to church. The place was packed with kids! Many we knew and some we didn’t. We took seats in the back and watched several groups sing and dance. But the big presentation would be next Saturday, so we were through in about an hour. I spoke briefly about the kids who were invited to the zoo. Grace introduced the 5 that would come with us today. I challenged all to work hard so that they could do this at Christmas.

We loaded the van with us and the five students. Grace came, too and Vincent, of course, was our driver. We hurried through traffic to Garden City, the huge shopping, hotel, and gambling complex built by South Africans. It also had a food court in the shopping area. These children all come from the lowest ghettos in Kampala. Only one of our group had ever been inside the mall. These were older children, from 16 down to about 13, but all would have been scared to go there alone. And none of them had ever heard of a food court.

We walked along the eating area in front of the food vendors. Hired hawkers came out with menus and tried to sell their products. Our kids were eating it up, but the number of choice confused them. In the end, the guys got pizzas or pork with fries. The girls got grilled chicken. I had a mixed grill from the Lebanese place (a delicious mixture of lamb and chicken kabobs). Lisa had falafel and Jeff had an Hawaiian pizza.

After lunch, we hurried to the zoo. Traffic was terrible, but we finally arrived. This was great for Jeff because it gave him a chance to see in the daylight what he had missed last night in coming from the airport. It is a beautiful drive. There are hills to the right and, for one stretch, Lake Victoria on the left.

The zoo looked completely different. Uganda had built a new entrance to the zoo when the Queen visited last October. Instead of parking next to the gate, we had to park across the street and walk across. There are now ticket booths and places for orderly lines to form. Our first “discrimination.” The cost for foreign adults was 15,000. The cost for citizens was only 3,000!

The kids had a blast. Only one had visited the zoo before and that had been more than 5 years ago. They walked from animal to animal, discussing what they saw. About half way through, I noticed that our two young ladies and one of the gentlemen were missing. “They are ahead,” said Grace. But as we went ahead, they weren’t there.

I spent about 5 minutes searching fairly frantically for the girls. We found them swinging in swings in the children’s section, and on of the guys was pushing them. When we got eback to the van, I asked Vincent about buying water. He said that would be fine, but when he checked his watch, he changed his mind. We were scheduled to be at church by 5:00 and it was already past 4:30. So we bounced and wove our way through the traffic. We dropped off a couple of children as we went, and ended up at the church by 5:15. They weren’t ready for us so we sat outside in the shade for a while. Finally, Joseph came for us.

The purpose of this tea was for the folks at Kiwatule to get to know us. Joseph explained this and we had one song and one prayer. Then we ate. There was a huge stalk of bananas, white bread, and tea. When I sat down, I found that I was really quite hungry. I ate my bread and banana and sipped my tea as one or two people came by. I tried to walk around, but no one invited me to join them. Elder Dan had Jeff cornered, and they talked throughout the time. About 6:15, Joseph said he was ready to dismiss us. Two ladies came in with a huge bouquet of flowers for Lisa. When they had given them to her, Joseph dismissed us. Then everyone wanted to talk! Lisa was covered up with ladies wanting to greet her.

Olivia came to see me. She was so excited! She had started medical school on borrowed money. At Christmas, we told her we would pay off her debts, but we couldn’t sponsor her so she would need to make other arrangements. She started the second term and about three weeks into it, I received a frantic email from Joseph. He said they were about to send Olivia home, that this would end her medical career before it began. I carefully explained that we didn’t have the money to help her and that I would only be able to help if I received money clearly marked for emergencies only.

That night at dinner, Lisa opened a letter from a lady in Texas. A check for $5,000 fell out, along with a note telling us to use the money to take care of our next emergency!

So Olivia was beside herself. That much money would cover the rest of this year and all of next!!

I finally shook Lisa free and we climbed into the van. Vincent negotiated the traffic back to the guesthouse and we took our leave. Jeff said he didn’t feel like eating, so Lisa and I went to the guesthouse restaurant without him. We were the only ones there at 8:30. I ordered Beef Ragout and Lisa ordered vegetable curry. Both were quite good!

We were exhausted when we finally reached our room. Just as the desk clerk had promised, our bed had been transformed into the big bed! It was huge, larger than a king-sized bed at home. And it wasn’t just two cots pulled together. It had a solid mattress with no break in the middle. But there were still the two cot-sized mosquito nets. It took a while, be we finally figured out a way to drape and stretch the nets so that there were no gaps except one at the top. Lisa used an office clip to hold that together. We crawled through the two holes we’d left then finished tucking in the net. I fell back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. We still had the two individual nets attached by two separate frames to the ceiling. So the nets stretched around, but the two triangular ceiling mounts remained. It was a lot like sleeping inside a very large bra!

As we were getting ready for bed, the power went off. It came on and went off several times in the next two hours, but it was never on long enough to clear out the heat in the room. Around 1:00, it went out for good. So I slept almost none all night, tossing and turning, marinating in the warm night.