Archive for November, 2007
Life in general
November 21st, 2007. Published under Life in Uganda, TIA. No Comments.
A picture of snow in Tahoe popped up on my computer screen just now and I really started to miss home. There is something about Christmas time and the snow that just makes your heart warm. But God has me somewhere other than home this Christmas. I am actually in the process of planning a Christmas trip with two friends. Our top two choices are Zanzibar or the Middle East, like Egypt and Israel or Israel and Jordan. We’ve been looking for cheap flights and researching the areas with the little internet access we have, but I’m pumped. Zanzibar is absolutely gorgeous and is a beach lover’s heaven. But Israel is up there in one of my dream destinations… So we’ll see what happens. I’m excited though, traveling and seeing something new will be fun.
CHOGM starts this week here in Kampala. CHOGM is the commonwealth heads of government meeting. Basically the heads of all the governments in the commonwealth are coming here, including the queen of England and the royal family. Ever since I’ve been here Kampala has been getting a major facelift. Some roads actually have lines painted on them and are paved without potholes. Buildings and hotels have been completely remodeled. The construction is definitely not done, but a ton has been done. The unfortunate thing is that the city has been beautified and remodeled, but only the areas where CHOGM will be held or where the delegates will stay. The roads that the queen plans to travel on have been completely smoothed and look normal actually. Its sad because this thing is kind of an evaluation of Uganda, and on the surface it will look very developed and smooth. But that’s definitely not the case. Most people’s fear here is that once CHOGM is over, all the construction will stop and everything will deteriorate again. Lets hope not.
Most of the major roads are going to be closed and Thursday and Friday are national holidays due to CHOGM. Basically no one wants to be in Kampala during this, and here I am. I had to move our office into a friend’s garage by today, when our lease runs up here in Kampala. We still don’t have a for sure place in Gulu, so I’m storing everything here for a week or two until we move it all up to Gulu. Kind of a bummer. I hate moving and trying to hound and get a hold of officials while trying to move just makes it more fun. But oh well, Lord teach me something through this.
Today is Thanksgiving here and because of CHOGM it is also a holiday. I’m moved out of our office here in Kampala and staying with a family that lives just down the street. They are actually gone for the week so it is me, the guards and the cook. The Kreutters, the founders of Cornerstone, are having a big Turkey dinner today so there are like 10 of us Americans going over there for that. Tim and Kathy Kreutter are like the replacement parents for all the young Americans they know in Uganda. There is a catch though to our dinner, we have to cook. They provide most of the food and we cook most of the food. So it should be interesting.. I’m pretty sure the turkey is not in our hands but we’ll see. I’m just thankful God has given me His family to spend the holiday with.
On a completely different note, I am in love with the kids at the youth corps home. The last week or two have been amazing. I’m actually sad to be spending so much time in Kampala, Gulu feels like home now and I miss it and the kids. Whenever I get home they’ve got smiles on their faces and come up to greet John and me. I’ve had little down time because whenever I’m at the home I’ve hung out with the kids or the other guys who live there. I’m slowly learning Acholi too and can get by in a casual conversation if spoken to slowly. Unfortunately no one speaks slowly except when they are teaching me. Haha, give me a few more months and I’ll be ok to get by. Each night after dinner they have fellowship, which is singing, praying and a lesson from one of the aunties or uncles. I participated one night last week and just sat there and listened. I couldn’t understand most of the songs, due to their strong accents or because of it being sung in Acholi, but it was awesome to hear them praising God together. Then after singing for a while they break out into prayer, like passionate prayer. Everyone prays at the same time and its loud murmur of voices praying to God, for a good 5 minutes. These are 11-17 year olds and I envy their passion for the Lord. God has truly blessed me though and answered my prayers. My fear in moving to Gulu was that I would not have a solid community of friends but that is definitely not the case. God’s given me a perfect balance between Americans and Ugandans. I have American friends with IC that I eat with and can talk through things my Ugandan friends wouldn’t really understand and then I’ve got the kids and all the uncles and aunties at the YC house. I’m learning from both equally.
At the home it’s been a little sad too… These kids have been through so much and most of them aren’t shy around me anymore, but I can see in all of their eyes at times the weight of their pain or depression. Most of the time they are full of smiles, but almost every day I’ll see one of them sitting by themselves or being just gloomy. Trying to cheer them up usually doesn’t work and I know their problem probably isn’t that someone called them a bad name. Many of these kids still have one or both of their parents, but they either weren’t being properly taken care of or their parents couldn’t provide. So many of them miss their families. I know at least one of the girls is a total orphan; her mom died a few days before I got here in September. Two of the boys are former child soldiers. I only know one of their backgrounds and its absolutely horrible. The brief rundown is that at the age of 9 the LRA attacked his school abducted him. His dad was also abducted that day. His dad carried him while they were marching but he got tired and had to put him down. When his dad was too tired the LRA forced him to kill his father. Right there on the spot, kill or be killed. So from the age of 9 till about 14 he was a soldier and he either escaped or was rescued in 2005, I’m not sure which. He went through a child soldier rehab center here in Gulu and then his only living relative willing to take him in was his grandpa. I’m not sure what happened from there but he has ended up at the Y.C. home. My heart just goes out to him and I just praise God that he’s out of those circumstances and pray that he will be fully healed and know the love and joy that God has for him. If you think of it pray for all the kids here at Youth Corps.
Random Thoughts
November 10th, 2007. Published under Life in Uganda, religion, thoughts and questions. 1 Comment.
The other day I took a boda ride out to our land (about 20 minutes) and talked with the driver the whole time. He is a 20-year-old kid whose dad died when he was 16. He dropped out of school and began working to help his mother, who was getting sick. She died the next year so he was left to take care of his siblings. He has worked full time for 3 years so that his younger brothers and sisters can stay in school and learn. To him, it is better that they have a bright future than himself. He truly has put others above himself, something most of us, myself included, very rarely do. I see Jesus more often in the eyes of the children and people I encounter than in my own eyes. Why is it that I take so many things for granted and my entire life have thought mostly of myself over others? Would I have done what this guy did? Why do I encounter many unbelievers, Muslims and Buddhists whose lives follow Jesus’ more closely than mine, and yet I call myself a follower of Jesus?! These things only make me strive and desire to dive into the words of Jesus and actually follow them! How many times have I read the words of Jesus and tried to interpret it in a sugarcoated, pat on the back kind of way that makes me feel like I’m being a good Christian??
I’m reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, which is an amazing book. In it he goes through Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats and it really convicted me. I don’t know of any strangers I’ve invited in or prisoners I have visited in prison. He says that what we do for what the world calls the least of human beings, the poor, homeless, murders etc. we do to Him. And what we do not do for them we do not do for Him. By serving them we serve Jesus. Jesus was all these things, he was born a refugee, in the lowest of human circumstances. He was born into what people thought a scandal, an unwed mother?! He goes on to say why don’t we, the Church, look more like the church Jesus describes? Why does the Church so faintly resemble Him? His answer is that he can’t answer, because he, and myself, are part of the problem, why do we so poorly resemble Him? I want to make it my goal to treat each and every person I encounter as a child of God. C.S. Lewis talks about how everyone will one day be either an amazing heavenly creature or a horrible thing of hell and all day long we are helping people to one or the other. He writes:
It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day by a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of these destinations.
An interesting conversation took place recently with my friend James from IC. We were discussing our faiths and how they played a part in our coming to Uganda. He has been here for like two years and is on his way back to the States in December. We both talked about what led us to come and how experiencing the poverty yet pure joy of a third world country changed us. He talked a lot on how little he sees Christ in so many Christians. Largely, our religion has become Americanized and many churches stray from the true message of Jesus. One of the examples is tithing. Tithing was originally set up to be given to the poor. Tithes were 90% for the poor and the Levites could take 10% to care for the church and provide for the priests. I’ve read a stat that an average of 1% of church income goes directly to the needs of the poor. How is this? Jesus lived his life among the poor and outcasts. The way things are now is how we’ve always known them, but is it right? Is it what Jesus described His church as? I daily neglect the needs of the poor, both here and at home. Mostly because people you give money to will most likely buy booze with it. But what if we took the time to find the needs of these people? Maybe a new coat, maybe a friend? I don’t believe all of this outright, just random thoughts that come to mind but it is good to question things you know?
We also talked a little about how life here has changed or shaped our faith. James had a good quote, something like how the struggle in Christianity in the Western world is between doctrine and who’s beliefs are right or wrong. Then you live in a place like Gulu where a majority of the people claim to be Christian and the struggle is between life and death. People aren’t worried here whether or not you speak in tongues, you are Catholic, or if you drink wine. If you follow Christ then you follow Christ, and your worries are on survival. I don’t know which is right or wrong, but the difference is there. I’m sure there are denominations and such here that differ from others, but going to an IDP camp where there might be one church nearby, doctrine doesn’t matter. Everyone is loved by Jesus and has the chance to follow Him. Whether they make it through the night is up to Him but they trust Him regardless.
Running in Circles
November 10th, 2007. Published under Life in Uganda, TIA. 1 Comment.
The main hindrance for the past year almost has been that there is no land board in the district that our land is in. The board was created and trained near the end of September and ever since then we have met many promises followed by several excuses as to why nothing happened with the promises. Its almost humorous how many times I’ve heard the excuse that the man behind the man who needs to sign a document is traveling today, so come back tomorrow. So tomorrow comes and there we are only to be told the same thing and to come back the next day. Then, in the end, after three days of showing up in a guy’s office, he claims he can’t help us anyway until we get some other document from a different office. We’ve also gone around the troublesome people and had their bosses or very powerful people politically tell them to help us, only to have them chew us out for having their bosses tell them to do their jobs! I can’t even begin to describe how frustrating this has been, but I constantly have to keep in mind that God is in control of this whole thing, which is much easier said than done.
So now, today actually, a new land committee is supposed to be appointed and we are to go to them and have them look at our land and sign off on it. The “legal” process for this is that they have to give a two weeks notice to the community that they are going to come on a certain day and anyone with claims to the land must show up. We’ve already done this and had a document signed by 37 members of the community verifying the land is actually owned by the people we are trying to lease it from. But, the guys who signed our document weren’t “officially” the land committee yet so we have to do it again. So now we have to get the land committee to sign off on the land and then we go back to the land board to have them sign and we take the forms to Kampala to get the title. Sounds easy enough right?!
I’m also trying to get to know the kids I interact with better. Because I’ve been traveling so much, a few days in Gulu then a few days in Kampala, I haven’t spent as much time as I would like with the students and with the kids at the Youth Corps homes. The last two weeks I have tried to talk with them more and more though and it has been such a blessing. The girls at the home are so joyful and slowly opening up and talking more with me. For my birthday my mom gave me $100 for the purpose of buying something for someone else, probably the coolest idea I’ve heard of. I decided to buy all the girls at the home shoes, since probably 90% of them don’t have them. They walk around in flip-flops or barefoot all the time. It really is more blessed to give rather than receive. Last night I sat with them and tried to learn Lwo, the Acholi language. It was cool. Spending time with them has been so fun.
It’s awesome how cheap some things are. $99 bought 17 pairs of shoes! I have figured out how to shop in the market now too. John the driver will go in to wherever I need something and negotiate prices, then he comes back to me and tells me the price and I go in and pick out the goods. Some people don’t like it and get mad because they would have given us the mzungu price, which would be at least 50% higher. He’s actually out looking for a dresser for me now.
We’re also planning for next year’s school year. The Ugandan system ends in early December and begins in early February. Restore started in the middle of the year this year and we did not charge school fees. So next year we are going to charge school fees (but get sponsors because these kids live in IDP camps and don’t have any money). We’re also moving sites, just next to our current site but its much bigger and we can accept more kids for next year. It’s been a cool process. Mzee Paul has been a huge help in the planning process and he is working on getting a prayer team together to meet routinely and pray for the school. He is the wisest, godliest old man. He oversees all of the Cornerstone schools, I think there are 5, and he wants to include Restore and Peter in all of his meetings, retreats etc. So that’s really cool, Cornerstone is what we are modeling our school after and there is no one better than him to help us shape the school.
Mzee actually went to San Diego last spring with Invisible Children (He oversees all the Cornerstone schools, oversees all the IC mentors and now helps oversee Restore Academy). One of my friends asked him what his impressions of America were. He definitely commended the infrastructure and how good the roads are, shopping, buildings etc. Our technology is definitely advanced. He said something though that really struck us. He said everyone he saw seemed to be about their own business. Everyone walked around worrying about their own troubles and seemed too busy to talk to anyone, walking in a hurry. A striking difference from here. Some people are in a hurry but no one is ever too busy to talk and everyone usually does stop to talk. If I’ve learned anything from my time in Africa its how important relationships and conversations really are.