June 25

Good morning Friends! Well, it is certainly morning here in Uganda and I suspect that by the time you open this blog post it will be morning over there as well ! I’m met once again by the usual cornucopia of sound – right now it’s a long distance barking duel between about 4 or 5 dogs.

So, when I put up the post last evening, I tried to tantalize everyone with today’s. Primarily it revolves around one very disquieting episode which I’ll get to in a little bit. The schedule for the day was that we were working with Omega Healing Center but it turned out that by partnering they had arranged 3 different school assemblies for us to do – one of which a couple of their people joined us at, the other two it was just us & our faithful band of KIU students.

My first impression of the day was the drive back over to Omega. If you remember my post from Sunday’s trip over there, I came down pretty heavily on the squalor. Well, you know what? Compared to Texas City, this area now looks almost middle class. I guess we’re all getting extreme lessons in relative poverty. We keep hearing that the IDP camps up around Gulu are the worst, and we’ve still got a couple of days to go before we get there.

We arrived at Omega and found out - I don’t remember if it was before or after we arrived – that rather than doing community outreach in the morning and then school assemblies in the afternoon (which had kind of become our routine) we were doing an extra assembly in the morning. This one would be at a primary school roughly 15 miles towards Entebbe. In addition to our merry band of mzungus and KIU students, we packed in a couple of extra bodies in the form of people from Omega. It was quite cozy in the bus!

As we leave the highway, to drive back into the school, the area appears similar to the area around Omega – outrageously poor by our standards but nowhere near the worst. About 100 yards in we notice that we’ve picked up an escort. A rather strange looking little man started out running in front of the bus but soon faded to running beside us and is now following us, diligently trotting along (you don’t make much speed with a bus on severely rutted dirt roads). As we stop the bus, the little man is waiting to greet us as we come off the bus.

He stands well under 5 feet tall with a somewhat crooked body. His face is dark and has normal African features – a broad nose, wide mouth and high cheekbones - and yet it somehow has an almost Polynesian expression on it. It’d kind of hard to describe. His clothes are absolutely filthy with an old buttoned shirt and trousers that have rips running in varying lengths up and down the legs. There are no shoes, and his feet have numerous cakes of mud. On his head he seems to have some kind of black scarf or something. Later when he took it off and put it back on again, it actually looked like a small black lace tablecloth or something. I don’t think he can speak – at least I never heard him do so the entire time we were there. He moved in a manner that reminds one of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The girls – both our girls and the KIU girls – were understandably a little frightened. Okay, let’s be honest – I think all of us were a little bit frightened. As we unloaded the bus, he was trying very hard to grab boxes and stuff. He wanted to shake everyone’s hand. Most would pat his shoulder or just kind of twist around him as they got off the bus. Being Mr. Compassionate, I bent over and quickly shook his hand. I was rewarded with a transference of some of the dirt. I then moved over to join a few others in an impromptu barrier between him and the girls. We get all of the gear off and loaded onto shoulders and start walking down a dirt path towards the school. Our strange little escort is out front – showing us the way. We would later learn that his name is Katto.

This primary school is situated on the side of the hill, with several dilapidated buildings on a relatively large piece of property, surrounded by a large fence. I thought it probable that once we entered the property one of the teachers or somebody would shoo our escort away, but he continued on into the compound, followed by the majority of us. The first building you came to was a long hall – stone walls with stone windows and some rudimentary desks, probably about 60-70 feet long, about 15-20 feet wide. There were no doors in the doorways – everything just open to the air. As we passed that there was a large open area that I would guess serves as the playground.

My first impression was that this is rather strange – the children are very shy of us and are not flocking to the mzungus. Katto is trying to intermingle with all of us and everyone keeps trying to move away from him. Everyone. Katto then moves off kind of out of our group. We soon notice that the children are kind of gathering around him and getting louder – they’re taunting him. Soon groups of them start running at him, only to turn away quickly, shouting and screaming as they run away from the strange creature. We end up standing around out in this playground area for quite a while so this continues on and off. Katto also keeps trying to re-join our group and intermingle with us. The kids also slowly start warming up to us and little knots of them will bravely come up to shake our hands. At one point, I’m squatting down shaking hands with some of them and notice Katto standing off to my left front about 5 feet away. A group of 3 boys comes running up behind him and slug him in the back and then take off running. He happens to be holding some type of bowl in his hand and swings it at the children. I look up and notice a man who we would later find out was the Headmaster watching from about 20 feet away. I’m thinking that he’s likely going to reprimand the children, but he just continues to watch.

I stand back up and Sam and Kayla are standing beside me with mortified looks on their faces. A couple of young men from our combined group are laughing. I’m with Sam & Kayla - I am feeling pretty low. Katto is indeed not a “normal” man, but he is a human nonetheless. He’s done nothing to deserve this kind of treatment. But what do I do? So I just continue to stand and watch.

A couple of minutes later I’m chatting with Patrick and Sam, and we hear Ken call to us from behind that he wants to take a picture of the three of us so we turn around and pose. Katto immediately comes over and stands in front of us. Somebody from the side starts trying to shoo him away, but Ken tells them no, it’s all right. He snaps the picture, and as the three of us start to turn away, I notice Ken walking over to Katto. He squats down and puts his arm around Katto’s shoulders and shows him the picture on the back of his camera. He stays down at Katto’s level for a couple of minutes trying to communicate with him.

A couple of minutes later we finally get the signal to move up to the hall and start setting up. I estimated about 500 kids there. Katto follows and is trying desperately to help in any way he can. He tries to help set up one of the speaker stands. He tries to help Branden open his guitar case. The assembly ends up being pretty tough – primary students have just started to learn English and there isn’t much that we say that they understand. But Katto remains up front with us every step of the way. He claps on rhythm when we’re singing. He doesn’t understand the “tossing the imaginary basketball” game we play, but he’s trying to interact with it nonetheless. Antony, for his part, allows Katto to stand beside him as he introduces us and closes the assembly, and makes a couple of different comments about our friend Katto, trying to communicate that he is a human, that he deserves to be treated with dignity. I don’t think the kids understood the words, but I do believe that Antony standing there with his hand on Katto’s shoulder, showing him kindness, communicated something to them.

So we pack up to leave, haul the stuff back up the hill and Katto is with us every step of the way, trying to help carry stuff, to do anything he can to help. As we drive away, he takes off out front of us this time, trotting along, escorting us back out to the highway. As we drive through the slum area, numerous people shove and push Katto, but he continues on his singular mission to be our escort.

As we’re driving back to Omega, I sit and stare out the window. Frankly I’m glad I had my nice dark sunglasses on to help hide my tears. Oh God! Why was I afraid of him? Why did I give in to my fears? My sense of shame was quite deep. Why is it considered normal for children to harass and abuse those who are different? For that matter, why is it so normal for adults to do the same thing? Katto is another of your creatures, Lord. I realize that he is so much more worthy of Your love than I am. You told us that if we fail to minister to the lowest, the weakest, the poorest, we have failed to minister to You.

Ever since that moment I’ve been trying to figure out how I was going to communicate how deeply this particular episode has cut me. This morning I find myself unable to adequately do so. Update at 11:46 am. Samantha is sick today so I’ve stayed behind at the guest house with her. We were just talking about it, and she told me how she was feeling at the point the children were taunting and hitting Katto. She said that she felt she was watching Jesus as he was whipped, as he was taunted walking through the streets carrying his cross. Exactly.

I also realize now that the entire visit to this school was about Katto. I don’t think the children understood much of anything we said, but somebody showed him some compassion. The children didn’t warm up to him afterwards, but they were no longer taunting him.

Okay, on to the rest of the day. We went back to The Palace for lunch. Quite frankly, the spoiled mzungus are getting a little burned on the food. It’s rather sobering to think that in America we start whining if we eat the same food two days in a row, while over here they eat chapata and rice or any of their other staple foods at every single meal on every single day. Ken commented yesterday that he is definitely riced out. I know that I would be able to go a long, long time without eating chapata again. So for the past two days we’ve been doing lunch at The Palace – peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, bananas, cookies (they’ve got some orange cream sandwich cookies that are to die for!), and various snacks that the mzungus have brought with them. It has actually been quite fun. Pastor Ronald couldn’t get over the fact that we eat breakfast (peanut butter & jelly) for lunch. We brought some packs of trail mix and nuts from Costco. Many of the students don’t even understand what grapes are, never mind the concept of raisins. One of them was trying to figure out how they were supposed to eat almonds. Sam brought along some packets of beef jerky yesterday. That didn’t go over so good with some of them! Antony made an interesting observation – everything is either too sweet or too salty.

We then went to another high school for an assembly. This was by far the “richest” school we’ve been to – by Kampala standards it was in a very nice neighborhood and the school itself had such amenities as windows, doors, a clean paved driveway and recently painted buildings. The group that we did the assembly for, however, was about the smallest we’ve done so far – I counted roughly 30 students. At least from the perspective of Lance, Ken & I, it was probably about the least responsive group we’ve encountered so far. The students didn’t seem too interested in interacting with any of us afterwards. The fun part of it, however, was that both Kayla and Nick got up in front of them and told their stories for the first time. And both of them did a fabulous job. I know that Kayla was terrified beforehand, and Nick said that it was a first speaking engagement for him as well, but you never would have known.

We did a third assembly in the early evening at another school that Kennedy told me is owned by a Muslim. I missed that one – was off updating the blog – but the impressions that I got from the team are interesting. Lance felt like it was one of the best interactive groups that we’ve encountered – he had a cool prayer session with a small group of them and a couple of good discussions as well. On the flip side, the girls were commenting that many of the students were pretty aggressive in asking for their email addresses (we have told the kids pretty emphatically to not give those out). Ken encountered another art student who was looking for someone who would sell his wares in the US.

Finally, to end the day we got a special treat. Lance took us all to dinner at Fang Fang – a Chinese restaurant in Kampala. And they had actual Asian people working there! Lance had relayed John’s impression that it was supposedly the best Chinese restaurant he’s ever eaten in. It was definitely good, but… John – if you’re reading this, we need to talk. Your Chinese restaurant repertoire needs to be expanded!

And on a not too happy note, it looks like I’m hanging at the guest house with Sam today. She has become the second victim of stomach issues. If it isn’t better by the time I get to post this tonight, I’ll definitely ask for prayers. As a matter of fact, I’ll go ahead and ask for prayers for the health of all of us anyway.

And since I’m hanging with my daughter all day, we’ve been sharing our experiences with each other. Some of her observations.
• “When we were at the orphanage, the children sang a couple of songs to us. While they were singing the second one, thanking us and God for what we had brought, you could see these children – probably 4, 5, 6 years old, crying and worshipping God in a way I’ve never seen anyone – ANYONE! – worship before.”
• I asked her how she thinks this trip will affect her long term. “I hope that I’ll be able to continue seeing the beauty in God’s creation. Yes, Kampala is dirty, dusty, smoggy. There’s lots of garbage and run down dwellings, but the people are so beautiful, the trees and hills and flowers are incredible. You can see the hand of God in everything around. I hope to be able to hold on to that.”
• “I don’t think Alex realizes how much he is impacting the rest of us on this trip. His story about his friend’s death and the belief that good can come from bad things has really struck home with me. Earlier today I was feeling sorry for myself because I got sick. It has given me a chance, however, to reflect on what has happened, what I’ve seen, what I’ve felt. It has been a blessing in disguise. “
• “I was really disappointed from not making the cut in the Soul’d Out (a capella singing group) auditions the last week of school. Discouraged. I come over here, however, and I’ve been told that I have a beautiful voice. I get up and goof around with the KIU students in the dance” lessons”, and all of them start telling me that I’m a really good dancer. These are people whose opinion I REALLY value. It has given me a remarkable boost in confidence.”
• “At home, ‘beauty’ is defined by your looks, your dress, what you eat, how popular you are. Over here they judge your beauty by your love of the Lord, your heart.” We talked further about the incredible beauty we’ve found in these people – particularly the ones that we’ve been growing close to – Patrick, Brian, Sophie, Kennedy, Antony, Aaron, Vivian, Lillian, Grace – all of them. And their beauty matches both American and African standards.

Today’s KIU student profile is Sophie and written by Sam. Sophie is a very tall (just not quite as tall as me) lady. When I first met her I thought she was my twin. Well, maybe not in skin color. And maybe not in hair since I’ve got lots and she keeps her head almost shaved, but still my twin. She has a passion for dance that you can see just by how she moves. She also has a great sense of humor and a smile that can light up a room. She is always open to trying new things. I think she, Brian & Patrick were the only ones that did like the beef jerky that I brought! She is from Kenya and absolutely loves her home. She’s already tried to convince me (and several others) to come visit Kenya. Her gift may not be in evangelism, but when she dances, EVERYONE stops to watch. Sophie is very fun, very social, and has a difficult time NOT talking. I will miss her dearly when we go back to the US. She is DEFINITELY going to be one of my new friends on Facebook! She is studying law – she wants to become a lawyer. I really hope she can come to the US some day so I can introduce her to all of my friends!

One final note, as of 5 pm Sam is feeling much better. My daughter and I have had a remarkable bonding session today – getting to share our thoughts, feelings, impressions. I also realize that counting travel days – which are pretty grueling – this is somewhere around the 8th or 9th day in a row of pretty high level activity for this team. Once again – John, if you’re reading this, the Lord had a very good reason for creating a day of rest on the seventh day. Everyone looked totally exhausted when we got back from Fang Fang last night. We skipped our normal debrief session and everyone just went to bed and collapsed. And then it was up and at ‘em again this morning. Sam and I feel quite blessed to have had a day to rest and reflect, even if she was getting sick.