pre-post: well I finally had my first "I hate this place" moment yesterday (all day), and it lasted a bit into today. I got back from an awesome trip to
uganda on
tuesday and set aside yesterday to get my bank account situated and to get my car. Well, the dealership/bank wanted a down-payment for the car, so i thought i would just easily go to the bank, transfer money from my US bank account into my SA bank account and boom, everything would be done in minutes. I was at the bank from 11AM-3:30PM! and they must have sent me to every single department they had twice, plus a couple places outside of the bank. Things did not get any better and they
werent offering any solutions (i mean, why would they, right??....), but fortunately, I have a God-send friend here that helped me out by transferring some of her money into my bank account, so i could write a check to the car company; and then it worked out. i owe her a lot. since i spent all day at the bank then the dealership, i thought
i'd do the bank thing today, only to get to the mall and find that electricity was completely out. everywhere. it's been a rough 2 days. anyway, the good news is i got to bring home my baby, plus a neat cap; check out some pics:
post: I love Uganda; the trip was a lot of fun. We were there for about 12 days and it was life changing. I got to see and do things i never thought
i'd do (like going into the villages and evangelizing, or almost drowning in the
nile), and also meet some of the nicest coolest people in the world. I also learnt that interestingly,
ugandans, unlike south
africans, adore
nigerians (
nigerian movies ("
nollywood") and
futbol stars are pretty much king). I'm not sure exactly how to summarize the trip and I'm sure i will not be able to
conver how amazing it was, so
i'll just do a quick day-by-day summary of what we did:
Friday, 28, Day 0: Arrived in
Ug; sat next to a
ugandan woman on the flight who had an interesting take on why other
africans (namely
uganda and
nigeria) seem to be less violent than south
africans, when it comes to personal crimes, at least. her theory is that because
uganda has lots of land, there is always something to fall back on if a man does not have a job or loses his job (i.e. subsistence through farming). there is not much land in south
africa, so people (particularly in the big cities) find it more profitable and seemingly
necessary to take what is not their own, at whatever cost. i am simplifying her position a bit, but it does have some credibility...after waiting for my
american counterparts to arrive, we finally leave the airport at ~10:30pm and drive to
Kamuli. I think we got to the hotel around 3:30am.
Day 1: We went to
Butaswa village, about 2 hours (probably 30min, if not for potholes) away from
Kamuli, to meet some of the local church leaders
Day 2:
sunday. we went to
butaswa village for church; lots of singing (people here love to sing)from the time we started picking up people in the van, until the last of them was dropped off later in the evening. most of the singing was in
lusoga, few in
swahili, and even fewer in really bad
english. the preacher was pretty passionate and afterward, there were a bunch of people who wanted to get baptised, so we drove and drove and drove, until maybe an hr later, we found some water.
Day 3: Spent the morning playing soccer and teaching kids baseball near the home of one of the local church leaders. there was more singing! then we took off and went to yet another village,
Gwase, to meet with a new christian and his community. he gathered people around and, unexpectedly, i was asked to speak; just a bit nerve-racking, but it looked like everyone was attentive and receptive. i shared something from
phillipians and sat down, thinking i had done my quota for speaking ("giving a word", as they called it) for the week...little did i know what was coming. afterward, we played more
futbol - a very well organized game during which
im pretty sure i looked like a fool, but it was lots of fun; we had loads of spectators. i think we won. my white friend,
wes, was the highlight tho - they enjoyed seeing a white guy ("
mzungu") try to school them in
futbol. after being fed for the 15
th time, we headed back to the hotel and were given our village assignments where we would be for the next 2 days by ourselves.
Day 4: I was assigned
Bugaya village with the local leader named
Busoga Patrick, or just
patrick. riding and singing our way through
uganda in the
evangecube, we began by dropping off
wes, whose village was the farthest away from the hotel (i.e. from civilization). I was the 2
nd closest to the hotel, so we
didn't get to my place until almost dark. met
patricks family; he's got a lot of children - i counted 6 that night, but he told me that there are "more"; there's also one yet to be born, which is interesting because he also has grandchildren (meaning some of his
grandkids would be older than his own children. interesting). did i mention we picked up some kids to ride the van with us and they sang all day?! that night, i milked a cow for the first time in my life...note to self: never stand behind the cow... 3 minutes later, drank some hot tea with the milk (more like hot milk with a hint of color).
patrick is well read. and likes to talk. i was glad there was no electricity so he couldn't see my eyes closing as he was talking to me about economics, politics, development, planning, the white man, etc...
Day 5: rough night. bed was hardly comfortable, but it was a bed in a brick hut, and i appreciated the effort they took to trying to make me comfortable.
patrick woke me up super early to go to
bugaya rock to watch the sunrise. it was beautiful; met the dog (
Blackie. he was black. get it??!), my new favorite dog; had some more fresh cow milk (delicious); took the cows out for grazing. the cows were not very obedient. actually got to see more of
patrick's place; its pretty big; he has a lot of land. later we rode
patrick's bike to meet up with other local christian leaders. we found them under a tree, just talking and sharing. that was a really neat sight - the ability and willingness to meet at anytime, anywhere just to encourage one another and relax, have fun, and goof off. i got to see Kristal and Nikki, who were staying at the village where we met. they asked me to "share a word" again.
i'm still not used to that, but i tried my best and i think they responded well to it (this time it was Isaiah). the theme of our village stay was def the amt of times we were fed (anywhere b/w 6-9 times a day). and of course to be polite, you take at least some of the food. well, on this day, i paid dearly for that politeness.
Day 6: pick-up day, but before then,
patrick wanted us to visit some homes and for me to "give a word" we ended up visiting about 4 or 5 homes, including that of a weak and distressed old woman, and also of a blind man. i think i was extremely nervous and
i'm not sure i even smiled the entire time,
cuz i was focused on what i would do next. they
must've thought i was a mean
american. we went back to
patricks afterward, had lunch, had some downtime, which of course i used to take a nap, then heard the
evangecube rolling in.
Day7: went white water rafting on the
nile. loads of fun; very scary. we did class 3-5 rapids and our guide was very funny (he had this interestingly high
jamaican type voice, though he was a buff looking
ugandan) and he kept saying "wicked sweet". at certain points i thought i was gonna die in the
nile, but i made it through. i cant say i was disappointed when we hit the last rapid, but the experience was lots of fun. afterward we went to an
american missionary's house for desert; desert was good. the missionaries....
i'm still undecided about.
daniel, the brother of the
ugandan missionary that took us around (grace), refused to go into their house (rather, mansion) and i later found out that it was because he did not like the way they went about their mission and i don't blame him. they had this
huggge house with nice
hugge cars. everything looked so
american and
grandiose in this mostly poor part of the world. it just
didnt fit. nor did it portray the right message, especially in
africa where impressions/perceptions are largely more important than words. I don't blame the missionaries entirely either for wanting to emulate a semblance of their
american lifestyle, particularly for their kids, but i think u have to understand the environment you're in and the perceptions u give off.
daniel says the perception is they "live as kings" and rarely with few exceptions spend much time in the villages among the poor. its almost like when people in the US call
christians "holier than thou" or "
insensitive". I don't think we as
christians are doing our jobs properly (and certainly not missionaries) if the perceptions we exude are keeping people from even
entering our homes or warming up to us.
on another note, i found out it was a particularly bad day for grace (the
ugandan missionary that took us around everywhere). his name was being slandered all over town and even on the radio by some ill-meaning politicians. this really angered me, as i was seeing
african corruption at its core. pretty much these guys were trying to rally the community against grace (at a funeral no less), because they were starting to realize that he receives US donations that support the many ministries and they want their hands on the money as well. it made me really sick. i
couldnt sleep that night. later on i heard that my man,
barack won
iowa, and i was made my day better.
Day 8-12: We pretty much just took it easy the next few days. we visited some more people; got to see the work that missionaries are doing at the Harding Academy ( a local high school), the source cafe (a church/restaurant/int cafe/shop), Christian Aids Network, etc. Went shopping in
Jinja; saw the source of the
nile (Lake Victoria); saw a bit of Kampala.
So
thats the summary of my trip. Spent lots of time eating, driving, swallowing dust from the unpaved roads, and "sharing a word" (or 2, 3, or 7). I met some amazing people and got to share a life changing experience with some cool and funny people. i def want to go back to
uganda some day, but i think one major move a yr is plenty...
i'll consider it again next year.
check out plenty of pics on my
picasa page (i have a video of people singing in the van, but am having problems uploading, so
i'll get that out later):
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/okunadef/Uganda_08
