Tugenda (let's go)

Dad, this one's for you. I'm sure you're very proud.

Last week's Sunday afternoon was one of extreme contrast. I went from eating lunch at an expensive restaurant with a bunch of stuck up snobs to visiting a hospital in Jinja to pray for the sick and injured. Let me explain. Two of our friends (the ones we met on the Murchison Falls trip) had a going away lunch before leaving to return to the states. I have nothing against Abbyand Maranda (our friends), but it took about 30 seconds for a few of their coworkers from the baby's home to really get under my skin. Seriously, I couldn't have been more upset by the way they treated they the Ugandan waiters. They were incredibly disrespectful and condescending. I was so ashamed to be eating at the same table with them that I was thankful when Zach and I had to leave early to meet some others from Calvary Chapel at the Jinja public hospital. It boggles my mind how people who are supposed to be "serving" others in other cultures can be so derogatory and treat them with such an attitude of superiority. It's a good reminder for me to serve with Christlike humility. Sometimes, you need an external visual, like when Nathan gave David a little parable about the rich man who stole the poor man's lamb.

Our next destination, the Jinja hospital, was not quite as hospitable, but the experience was much more rewarding. We met Laurence and Walter before we began meandering through the injury ward, stopping and praying with the patients one by one. Seeing the conditions of many of the patients there was a traumatic experience all by itself. The vast majority of the injured patients were victims of boba-boda accidents. Some had amputations, others gruesome scars and seeping wounds. I usually have difficulty stomaching such ghastly injuries, but somehow I managed to hang on to my $8 lunch. They all seemed appreciative of our visit. As we prayed together, I was encouraged that God was going to use our prayers one way or another.

I was shocked to discover that one of the victims of a boda-boda accident had been in the hospital for two weeks, but none of her relatives seemed to have any knowledge of her whereabouts. After our visit, Laurence lead us on a quest to locate and inform the girl's family. We took a matatu to a village just down the road from Jinja, wandered around for a while asking people if they could help us find the family we were looking for. After several unproductive conversations, we finally gave up the chase and returned to Jinja disappointed. (As I found out today, Laurence was able to go back and he actually made connections with the right people. Praise the Lord!)

As we parted, I struggled with the appropriate response to what I saw. The needs in the hospital were great. I'm not sure how all the medical bills are payed. It's a public hospital, but obviously there are insufficient funds to address all the diseases and injuries. Patients are dependent on their friends or family to bring them food to compensate for the limited amount which is supplied to them by the hospital. It's just an overwhelmingly needy situation, and it's certainly not the only lacking hospital in Uganda, or the rest of the world for that matter.

From Monday morning till Saturday evening, I was out at the project site. There was a lot of activity. Monday and Tuesday, Herman (a Ugandan civil engineer doing some consulting for us for the roadwork) and I were busy pegging roads and building locations. Me and the Total Station had a much better relationship than the previous week, and things went relatively smoothly (relative to how smoothly things go in Uganda, of course).
Herman, Bagaga, and I in an (empty) matatu on our way to Bukaleba

Other activities of the week included pegging the water supply pipeline, supervising the clearing and excavation for the new building site, preparing a maize milling building for use for construction material storage, and repairing a bunch of wheel barrels. Since fixing things happens to be one of the most fulfilling activities for me, I had a blast taking 7 wheel barrels that weren't fit for the dunghill and making 5 usable ones out of them. The only tools I had to work with were a hammer, hacksaw, pliers, and adjustable wrench, and the only parts were those coming from the 7 scrap wheel barrels and a roll of fencing wire. Given these additional challenges, getting 5 going again brought me great satisfaction.

The termite queen, uncovered during the the site excavation. Queens are the size of the other ants, but have a giant baby-producing factory attached to their body (the white part above, which is about the thickness of my thumb and about twice as long. Fried, these creatures are a rare delicacy. I may get the opportunity to try one if they uncover any more.

Coming and Going

I figured y'all would like a break from reading my blog, so I went a head and gave one to you last week. You're most welcome. Back at it again though, so here we go...

The past two weeks have been frantic, between three trips to Kampala, three trips to Bukaleba, one weekend visitor, one funeral, and filling in the gaps at the office. Most of what took place at the office was boring, so I'll just skip that part.

I love Bukaleba. It's really refreshing. I've spent a total eight days and three nights out there so far, and I'm planning on spending all of the next three weeks (minus the weekends) out there too, but who knows, those plans could easily change. In case you forgot, Bukaleba is the site where practically all of our development plans are taking place. It's a large piece of property, which was granted to Arise Africa International a number of years ago. It’s about 50 km from Jinja and 15 km from the nearest power supply, but there are quite a few little nearby villages.

Sunrises are probably my favorite subjects of photography, in case you haven’t noticed yet.

Periodically, I encounter cultural differences that I just have to chuckle at. For example, I’ve been working with a Ugandan civil engineer, Herman, who’s been helping us plan the roads for Bukaleba. He stayed a couple of nights out there with John and me. As a guy from the West, I’ve got thoughts going through my mind like, “Great! This is gonna be awesome. I get to spend a few nights out in the bush, away from all the noise and busyness of civilization. Going back to my primitive roots…I can’t wait!” Meanwhile, Herman was evidently thinking something entirely different. When he busted out his portable radio which either wasn’t dialed in properly, had low batteries, or was badly lacking adequate signal strength, I wanted to shove it in his mouth. No, I wasn’t really that annoyed, but I did find it comical. For Ugandans, who most likely grew up in the village without modern conveniences, it seems they haven’t yet developed a need to escape from modernity.

My time out there has been pretty productive, I think. The bulk of it has been spend staking out the roads and the proposed building locations. It took the better part of a day for me to get acquainted with the Total Station. This is a fantastic piece of equipment which makes surveying and staking a whole lot more efficient; that is, when it’s working properly. However, this particular model has a few quirks and definitely an attitude problem. More than once, I had to resist the urge to lay into it with the hammer we were using to drive in stakes.

Not more than once did I make the terrible mistake of standing over the top of an army ant path. It took hardly any time at all for hundreds of them to make their way up my pant legs biting as they went. Youch! Those suckers are vicious. Incidentally, two of the AAI pastors were with me at the time, and they encouraged me to quickly remove my trousers, before the ants reached the contents of my underpants. I was in no mood to refuse their advise, so the whole experience served as means to get to know the pastors on a deeper, more personal level. There’s no longer any question in my mind about the origin of the expression, “ants in your pants.”

Kampala is always interesting, every time go there. The crowdedness never ceases to amaze me. I went along with John and Zach for my first of the three recent trips to the city. Each of us had independent business agendas to take care of while we were there. My second trip to the big K was last weekend to bid farewell to Christoph, who just returned to Germany. Together, he, Zach, and I made up the gangsta trio while we lived together in Kampala. My most recent trip to Kampala was a spontaneous run to retrieve a piece of equipment that we needed in order to do the survey work.

Taxi Park Kampala – truly a modern marvel. Let’s see you top that one, History Channel.

Dirty Jobs, Uganda – I’d like to see Mike Rowe stoop to this level.

I mentioned a funeral in the intro. I attended one for an AAI staff member on Tuesday, who passed away because of an illness after spending sometime in the hospital. The ceremony was interesting. Many people were in attendance, and I don’t think it was just because Joshua was an outstanding guy, which from what I hear, he was outstanding indeed. I gather burials are really important to attend here. It’s a way of honoring the family and the dead, probably to a far greater extent than back home. The service took place at Joshua’s home, in a village near Jinja. They simply propped up a tarp to shade the speaker, casket, and close relatives and friends (which I guess included me merely because of my flesh pigment, even though I had never met Joshua or his family while he was alive). So yeah, it was a bit uncomfortable to be in what felt like the center of attention, when there were literally hundreds of people who were so much closer to him than I. Hopefully, my presence, even though it was a bit awkward, was honoring to his family.

The service consisted of several speakers, songs, and prayers all mixed together. Folks were gathered all around, sitting in the grass, or standing under the shade of a tree. Many people (including us) trickled in after the ceremony had already begun. (Another one of those cultural differences – punctuality is not as important as presence.) After some time, we followed the casket into a freshly cut opening in a sugarcane field behind the house. More talking and prayers (both in Lusoga, so I didn’t really know what was going on) were followed by close friends and family each throwing a handful of soil on top of the casket, which was already in the ground.

Forewarned

The Jinja authorities decided to keep this pole in its present form to serve as a reminder of the perils of drunk driving.

As promised, I’ll brief you on my weekend retreat with the Heritage International School students. Zach and I had the role of councilors and outdoor activity designers. Saturday morning at a resort-type place near Jinja called Kingfisher, we met a group of 40ish students from grades 7-12 and some other adults who were also helping. Heritage is a pretty elite school, so most of the students are MKs, NGOKs, or wealthy Ugandan kids. Given that demographic, I probably didn’t have the best attitude going into the weekend. The fact that we had to send 14 of the senior high students home on Sunday morning because of an unacceptable incident Saturday night was not the attitude solution I was looking for. God wasn’t about to let me drift through the whole weekend without a purpose, though. The Holy Spirit really convicted me of my sin through a message from one of the other councilors at the retreat. He was talking about not allowing ourselves to get so caught up in the circumstances and our agendas that we miss God. That basically described the first day and a half of the retreat for me. I was either so blinded by the task of developing activities for the outdoor times, or frustrated by the unfortunate Saturday night episode that I completely missed God in it all. Turns out, he was there all along, but I just didn’t recognize him. As the rest of the weekend unfolded, my sight was restored and I was really encouraged by what I saw God doing, both through the mishap of some of the students and through me. The significance of what God taught me last weekend reached beyond the retreat.

As I thought about it more, I discovered that I’ve been missing God a lot over here. I can get so caught up in my work-related responsibilities or, ironically, my spiritual tasks that I completely overlook the work God is doing. Thus, an EMI EA day of prayer on Wednesday was very timely indeed. John, Zach, and I joined the others in Kampala for a concentrated day of prayer for the ministry, contemplation, and worship. It was a really powerful day. Again, I was reminded of the cost of discipleship, and again the message was loud and clear: the cost is great. About once a week I get prayer updates from VOM bringing news of the latest hardship suffered for the name of Jesus, which also serves as a sobering reminder of the volatility of being a follower of Jesus – it could cost you your life. In a message we listened to during our prayer day, we were exhorted that the place Jesus asks us to follow him, Calvary, was not a suburb of Jerusalem. Whoa. I have this spirit of zeal, passion, and enthusiasm that says, “Let’s do it! I’m ready to make the sacrifice. I want to abandon myself and serve God with everything.” At the same time, I have the spirit of fear, saying, “What? Are you crazy? Why not take the easy path, the smooth, comfortable, cushy, secure road?” It’s this voice that makes me want to recoil under a nearby rock, or jump on a boat headed for Tarshish. I know that voice is not coming from the Spirit of God because God did not give us a spirit of fear, but one of power, of love, and of self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).

The curious thing is that the threat is not imminent, or at least not as far as I can tell. Nobody is shoving any firearms in my face demanding that I renounce my faith in Jesus (although, we did have to pay off a rowdy band of hooligans to let us pass on our return trip from Lira Thursday night on a dark, deserted, sorry stretch of clay which they euphemistically call a road – more details below). It just makes me wonder what God might be preparing me for down the road (pun intended). All joking aside, that’s a scary thought.

So on Thursday, John, Zach, Geoffrey (Arise Africa’s director), and I left Jinja around 6:30am headed fro Lira (a “city” in northern Uganda) to take a look at a successful compressed earth block (CEB) project and talk to the guy who was behind it. Before heading out, we repaired a loose air filter with a piece of coax cable we found lying around. (It’s probably a bad omen if you’re rigging your vehicle before you actually start on a long, treacherous journey.) Nonetheless, we made it to Lira with no major setbacks and got a good look at what seemed like CEB done right, unlike several other poor examples we had already seen. We didn’t stay long, because our goal was to get back to Mbale (a town along the way) to stay the night there. After darkness set in, the bumps and potholes in the road were less obvious and more difficult to avoid (as if we were really able to avoid them even in the daylight). Somewhere in the bush in between Lira and Soroti (See the map to the right, and just follow the squiggly line going east then north from Jinja. The map makes it look like a highway, but trust me, it ain’t.), the road was blocked forcing us to stop the raging Land Rover. Thankfully, nothing really exciting happened; they didn’t seem to be looking to kill anyone, but it’s probably still a good idea to just give them what they want anyway and not prolong the conversation. We bounced into Mbale just before midnight, with the rattling noise under the hood reminding us of our second failed attempt to secure the air filter. I’m still surprised anything at all was still attached after the brutal beating it took that day.

This stretch was actually under construction, and thus in better shape that most of road to Lira. But seriously, can you say road-grad-er? I could have sworn there aren't any in Uganda, but I have actually seen a few.