We Are Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto!

I think I should preface this writing journey of mine by saying that these are my experiences and perceptions. There were 16 teens and 7 adults on this mission trip. Each of us experienced many of the same events and yet each of us may have had very different perceptions and reactions to them. It's important to keep this in mind. I speak for no one but myself. I encourage those of you who are interested to speak with others who went as well and listen to their stories too.


Foreign travel is always interesting and fraught with frustrations. Add to this a group of 23 people traveling to a third world country together over the span of 2 days with 7 hours of lost time and now you have a real formula for disaster. Which surprisingly, never came until the plane landed in Kampala. Till then it was smooth sailing. As we disembarked in the cool (yes, COOL) African morning air on Friday morning, we were all pretty much beat from 36 hours of travel time to Uganda. We headed into the airport to begin clearing customs. In line head of us were a couple of other mission teams, one of which was wearing neon orange T-Shirts announcing themselves as "Mission Crew". Nothing like a bunch of white folks announcing their arrival to help fix this broken down country! We, on the other hand, were dressed modestly in long skirts as required for females by village custom and our guys wore long pants and collared shirts which the Ugandan men wear. No shorts in this culture, folks.

As we were standing in line, one of the youth looked at me and announced that she felt sick and was going to throw up. She didn't, but she did pass out cold. I caught her and then our group leader came over and lowered her to the floor. Less than a minute later she woke up. Still feeling weak and strange but once more conscious. We had to park her on the floor nearby while we went thru customs as she couldn't stand for a long time without feeling sick.


Next glitch was the failure of our checked baggage to arrive. Not one of the 9 duffles had made it. Big problem. These bags contained all of our supplies, sleeping bags, and tents. Where would we sleep without these things? We filled out the necessary paperwork (time consuming!) and then headed out to the curb where our SLAM leaders were waiting with a bus to take us to Bombo. It was then that we learned our head SLAM leader, Greg, and the rest of his band had been the victim of a hit and run accident the night before leaving him in the hospital seriously injured. He had to have abdominal surgery and also had a blown out ACL in one of his knees. The rest of the guys were \pretty beaten up but otherwise ok. Greg would miss our entire trip as a result of this careless accident. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Lots of unexpected glitches..... as one of our adult leaders would later say "TIA, baby". Which is short for "This is Africa, baby". It would become our team motto. Translation: "Sh#t happens". Especially in Africa!  Lots of it, as it turns out!

The bus ride thru Kampala was next. Picture those scenes from the movie Slum Dog Millionaire where the Indian people are all over the streets and the metro line. Thousands upon thousands of them, if not more. As we sat in our bus with windows open (no AC obviously!) we were struggling not to choke on the auto exhaust fumes all around us. We crawled thru the worst traffic I have ever seen in my life, all of it seemingly unregulated. In a car, bus, or motorcycle, it's each man for himself. People drive accordingly! There were so many people on the streets I was just incredulous.  Where were all these people going?  It was early afternoon on Friday by now.  Why were all the streets so crowded with people?  I later learned from some of our Ugandan friends that these are people out on the streets looking for work.  The unemployment rate in Uganda is 80%.  Yes, you read that correctly.  80%.  What's ours in the US right now?  Ten percent.  Ten percent and the sky is literally falling if you believe our news media.  This is practically all we talk about in America these days.  The HUGE unemployment problem we have here.  When I shared this with our Ugandan friends they just shook their heads and said they couldn't imagine their country with 90% of their people employed.  To them that would be heaven on earth.  As we continued our pain staking trek thru Kampala, all I could think over and over in my head was the title of Tom Friedan's book  "Hot, Flat, and Crowded".  Kampala gives new meaning to this phrase......

We drove thru many of the worst slums I have ever seen.  As the journey progressed away from Kampala and out into the outskirts of the city over dirt roads, we had no idea how much longer our trip would be or where that bus would finally just pull up and stop announcing our arrival.  As we crawled thru slum after slum, I often had the thought "Oh, please, God, not here.  Please don't let this be the place we have to live for the next 10 days!".  Fortunately we continued on and ended up back on some actual paved roads and moved further and further away from the city and its slum "suburbs"

We finally arrived in Bombo Town sometime between 1 and 3 pm.  Who knows?  Time has little meaning in Africa.  The bus drove thru the city and down a rather deserted, bumpy dirt road (is there any other kind in Uganda?) and finally pulled up in the middle of a clearing surrounded by maize fields.  There were several large primitive brick buildings on the site, and after all that we had seen, this place looked like heaven to me.  It was green.  The country side was rolling and lush.  No immediate crowded slums pressing in on all sides.  It was with a sense of relief that we disembarked from the bus only, to be overwhelmed by dozens of African people and the rest of our SLAM leaders who had come to greet us and make us welcome.  There were so many people present!  Men, women, children, teens!  They were dressed in western clothing, albeit a bit more tattered and worn than what we see in the states, but they didn't look so different from people we see every day at home.  After endless introductions and the mental exhaustion of trying to keep every one's names straight, we were lead into a large room with grass mats on the floor where we were seated while the final preparations for dinner were being made.  There was no electricity in this place.  Food was cooked in large pots over a wood fire.  Dishes for 70 people every night were washed by hand from water hauled in large jerry cans.  There were no trash cans, no running water, no flushing toilets.  This was home for the next 10 days.....

Dinner was delicious, which was a pleasant surprise.  We were served rice, fresh pineapple, nuts, and some kind of stew made from potatoes and carrots.  We also had chai tea every night.  The food we ate the entire time was non processed, fresh from the field, and pretty much the complete opposite of what we eat at home.  After dish clean up, we gathered in the brick building once more for evening worship and Bible study.  By now it was getting late.  It was completely dark.  Without electricity we had only lanterns to see by in this space.  We were all completely exhausted and struggling to stay awake seated on the floor in the dark. One of the SLAM leaders began what was an hour long sermon on the injustice of the prison system and the biblical perspective on prisons and how we are to serve the least of these- the prisoner.  I wasn't sure where that was leading, but we later learned.  Our plans for the next day, Saturday, were to take a large group of us to a Ugandan prison to do some ministry work there.  Once the lecture ended, we learned that because we had no tents or sleeping bags that we were to board the bus again and head down the dirt road into town where we would be spending the next 2 nights at the "first class accommodations" of the Diplomat Hotel until our bags arrived.

The Diplomat.  I understand that it was by far the best choice of all the "hotels" we could have stayed at in Bombo Town.  Which, believe me, isn't saying much!  There was one bed per room which we shared with a roommate.  There was spotty electricity and infrequent running water.  My room never had a working light bulb.  There was a "shower" of sorts that rarely worked.  It was a spigot with cold water only and a bucket to bathe in.  In the corner was a pail that guests were instructed to place their used condoms in.  A sign printed in English announced a special penalty awaiting anyone who dared to wet the bed.  The floors were covered in red dust.  On the upside, the bed did have a mosquito net to cover us during the night.  Then there was......The Cho.

Let me explain the Cho.  I don't know if I am spelling that correctly or not, but it is pronounced like the "cho" in the word "chosen".  Only one would never in a million years choose a Cho if you could help it!  This is the African equivalent of a toilet.  I want you to really get a picture of this.  Picture the worst port a potty you have ever seen at the State Fair.  Picture it made out of concrete with a wood door and no light bulb so that when you close the door you are in total darkness.  Now picture a 6 inch by 12 inch hole in the floor that you have to squat and aim at.  Picture dozens of people using this per day and having lousy aim.  Imagine a stench that defies description. It is so bad that you literally feel like you will vomit unless you hold your breath the entire time, which I learned to do. Now add to this at night, the sound of cock roaches scurrying every where.  If you were smart enough to bring a flash light, don't point it downwards unless you are not freaked out by roaches.  There is no toilet paper unless you brought it with you, and typically no hand washing facilities near by, though the first class Diplomat did have 2 sinks in the courtyard by that sometimes worked.  Welcome to Africa!

Fear of the Cho, I am convinced, is what made our entire group pretty much universally suffer from constipation the entire time we were in Uganda.  What I was expecting and prepared to deal with, was traveler's diarrhea which is all you hear about when you visit a third world country.  Nope.  That was not our problem.  Instead, I had kids that couldn't "go" for days on end.  Checking to see if kids had pooped became as much my job as seeing that that had all taken their Malarone daily to prevent Malaria.  Pooping was the hot topic every day. Who had, who hadn't, how many days it had been for everyone since they had last "gone".  I never want to discuss this again as long as I live.  I am "pooped" when it comes to this topic!

So needless to say, none of us was thrilled with the Diplomat.  We would have preferred the open field with our tents and did, in fact, prefer it when we were able to move out and onto our campsite 2 days later when our bags arrived.  Think about that.  A hotel so gross that you prefer a tent in a field.  That's saying something, I think.....

Thus ends our first day in Africa.  From our arrival in Kampala at 0745 am, to a hotel at midnight in Bombo Town, it seems like a lifetime has passed.  Exhausted, dirty, jet lagged, anxious, we crawl into our beds that hopefully no one will wet, and await our 6 am wake up call.  Day Two:  A visit to a Ugandan prison.....