Ron and Sally Jo Blog

Often we have experiences which we wish we could share with others—but how?  No photos can capture the experience.  Words can’t capture everything—but we will try to describe several experiences this weekend which we wish we could share with you.

Waiting—Uganda-style.  We flew to a distant spot of the country to meet a partner.  We expected him to pick us up at the airstrip when we arrived about 11 in the morning.  However, he phoned saying he was still in his town 1 ½  hours away and would leave after 1:00.  He arranged for someone to pick us up.  O.K.  We were taken to our place of lodging, settled in, had some lunch, and sat down to wait.  We waited and waited and waited and waited.  We watched the birds; we waited; we talked about what we hoped to discuss with our partner; we waited; we thought about our plans for the weekend; we waited; we talked about several reports we were working on; we waited.; we talked and thought about nothing; and we waited.  He finally arrived about 6:30.  No problem!

Stars.  Our partner had arrived and said we needed to meet an official to talk about the agenda for the next day.  We will meet him at a Women’s Center just down the road.  We walk there.  Official arrives.  We will go to a place where we can sit and talk and drink sodas.  We go down the road to a friend’s house.  We sit around in an open yard, talking, drinking sodas, as it gets dark.  There are absolutely no lights.  The conversation was to be about the next day’s agenda, but it rambles and circles and many things are discussed.  Ron and I contemplated the sky—the most beautiful sky there can be—brilliant stars, a sliver of moon—and the peaceful environment of no lights and no sounds.

More waiting.  We are told that we would leave promptly at 8:00 the next morning to travel to the site of the celebration.  The program would start at 10 so that lunch can be served by 1 or 2. We must be eating lunch by 1 or 2 so that we can return and travel to our next destination before dark.  We are ready at 8 but leave at 9:00.  We arrive at the destination by 10:30 and only a handful of people are there.  We sit around and wait.  People start trickling in.  By the time we leave there are about 200 there.  Program begins at 1:00.  We sit and listen to many speeches until 5:00.  We finally eat “lunch” and leave.  We travel 3 hours to our final destination, half of the journey in the dark and all of it on very bumpy road.

Community discussion.  The event we are attending was to be a “discussion.”  However,  all people who are somewhat important must make a speech.  The same things are said over and over.  At one point a woman calls out “when do we get to speak?”  There is an uproar by others present—this is a woman! She should not be speaking!  Everyone calms down and the MC gives her time to talk.  The Education Dept representative talks.  There is an uproar—why is he speaking?  The money meant for this community has not come!  Eventually, there is calm.  As the afternoon drags on there are often outbursts or at least rumblings because something is said they don’t agree with or they are just tired, hungry and would like something important to be decided!

Travelling.  Imagine sitting in the back of a closed cargo truck, with two tiny windows for air, in the dark for 2 hours over rough roads.  This followed an already 1 ½ hr ride in a pick-up over the roughest roads you can imagine.  We don’t think you have been on such roads unless you have lived in Africa.

Heat.  On the afternoon of our third day we lay on our beds trying to rest.  It is 90 degrees in the room with no breeze.  But that is preferable to being outside where it is 105+!  On the other hand, early mornings and late evenings are gorgeous outside with temperatures in the 70s.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2012 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Uganda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.