We flew from Cape Town, South Africa to Johannesburg & then on to Entebbe, Uganda. The trip was uneventful. South Africa (at least around Cape Town) is a bit like Europe with exotic animals. In a lot of ways it is not Europe & is very much Africa, but a lot of the infrastructure is good. South Africa is hosting the World Cup in 2010. You can’t host the second biggest global event in the jungle somewhere.
Anyway, the adventure began at the airport in Entebbe where we tried load ourselves & our luggage into the ‘combi’ that met us. A combi is a mini-bus, a taxi-bus, usually a Volkswagen van. There were 6 Americans on this trip including Sean & me. & there were I think 3 Ugandans with us. Let’s just say the Americans over packed. After much shoving & sweating to load the combi, we drove 3 hours Africa time (5-1/2 hours real time). The government just finished the highway from Entebbe to the western region of the country where we stayed in a town called Fort Portal.
Fort Portal is surrounded by jungle, kind of equidistant from the gorillas in the mist & the guerillas in Congo. It is beautiful & sometimes dangerous. HIV/AIDS is estimated to be 45%. Congolese rebels swoop in every now & again to rape, pillage & restock supplies.
Silas coordinated our time in Uganda. He is a local pastor who works with Horizon. He & his family give & give & never stop working for their community. Silas is the kind of guy that MB & I look for to help connect & resource.
We spent our days driving hours out into the jungle on dirt roads to villages & projects. At most we were 60 miles from Fort Portal. It was slow going in an overcrowded combi.
We visited a bunch of people & schools, shook a lot of hands, said a lot of words of greetings, shot a lot of video, felt very overwhelmed. & we let a lot of kids touch a white person for the first time. I was the first white person a lot of the kids had seen. Some thought I was a ghost.
Again, I was struck by how little American pastors have to teach Africans & how much we can learn from African pastors.
I’ve seen a lot of videos of Africans singing & running along side the Aid Agencies van as the van pulls into a village. But it has been 30 years since I experienced it. & I don’t remember much from last week let alone 30 years ago. It was like walking through the Monet room at the Chicago art institute. 10 minutes in there & your mind is blown. 5 masterpieces you can comprehend, but a room of 50 masterpieces crashes the processor.
Going into a village 2 miles from the Congo border & seeing a crowd of 500, half of them kids, waiting for you to come see them, talk with them, take their picture so Americans can help support them is a humbling experience. The kids & the people are beautiful. They are masterpieces. They are poor & a lot are sick. The adults farm, the kids go to school, they all scrape by, they all hope the Congolese rebels don’t come in the night & kill everyone like they did a couple years ago at a school 5 miles away.
Western Uganda is very fertile. People aren’t hungry. Their diet is healthier than mine. They are poor & there is little opportunity for education & employment. It’s probably like a lot of the world, but not places I go to very much. I go to urban places, the big, dirty, crowded cities around the world. Bangkok, Cairo, Nairobi, Katmandu. Few white people go to these villages. Urban poverty is different from rural poverty.
The people in the villages know they are poor, uneducated, in need of help. They have no concept of how rich America is. It is beyond their comprehension, just as their situation is beyond our understanding. They aren’t angry at America for not helping more. They are grateful for any & all help. They are praying for us & our disasters & country. Are we even aware that they exist? I was there…do I remember them when I pray?
Famine commercials on TV have asked me to help sponsor a child in need. I used to think the money only went to give the starving kid some rice. I almost immediately tuned out. I don’t like having my emotions toyed with by the media for financial purposes.
Horizon (& I’m sure Compassion & World Vision & others) use the monthly support to pay for food, medicine, tutoring & sports & arts programs, school fees, school uniforms & all kinds of other stuff I don’t know about.
Around Fort Portal there are about 10,000 orphans. Horizon supports about 60 I think. In some villages, people waited overnight in their best clothes in the hope that we would take their picture & find a sponsor for them in the USA. $35 a month supports an orphan.
10,000 orphans around one small town in one small African country. Obviously disaster is upon us. Obviously it is beyond comprehension. Obviously Africa will be changed forever. Entire communities will be gone in 10 years. But perhaps most surprising, there is hope. People like Silas were working in their communities before Horizon showed up & they will keep working after Horizon disappears or moves on. We met others like Silas. A man who works with Silas moved out of his house, made it a medical clinic, took out a loan & built & started a school for 120 kids.
The world seems very big. The poor & the villages of Africa & Asia seem very far away. They aren’t. Email & airplanes make us all global neighbors. Finding people like Silas is important. We are blessed to know people like Silas all over the world. If you would like to get to know someone like Silas & start investing in a new friend & a community, then please, please tell MB or me where in the world you are interested in getting involved.
I think Chief Seattle said we are all connected. It is true. The world is very small. Investing in one person can change a community. We can all make more of a difference than we think we can.
Jesus said come & see what he was about as he went around helping & healing people. Sean & I can’t wait to go back to Uganda & back to the villages of Africa & Asia & take our families & friends with us. Come with us on a trip & see what it’s all about. We want to find & know & work with more people like Silas, people who care for the children & their communities.
Here is a picture that Sean took while on the trip:
