Turn, turn, turn

It’s mid-November. The leaves on the trees have not turned red or orange or even brown. There’s no brisk bite to the air. No desire to walk a bit more quickly to get out of the chill. No need for blankets or scarves or wool sweaters. No looking up at the grey clouds and wondering if they might, just this once, contain snow.

I didn’t expect to miss seasons so much.

It’s not that Mbale doesn’t have seasons at all. We have the rainy season, and we have the dry season—perhaps more aptly called the slightly-less-rainy season. As December approaches, the rains are letting up a bit, and the sun seems to be burning a bit more brightly than it did last month. Sunscreen becomes a necessity instead of just a good idea.

It’s not that I miss the cold that much. No, I think what’s more troubling to me right now is that it’s mid-November, and I don’t know what happened to August, September, or October. Without the subtle transition of summer to fall, fall to winter, time seems to slip by unheeded. Or bound past in jack-rabbit leaps. I don’t know which—and that’s the problem. I didn’t realize how much I depended on crunchy leaves and hot chocolate and daffodils to divide life into orderly, manageable amounts of time.

The changing of seasons means not only the passage of a year, but the passage of a lifetime—the boundless energy of youthful spring, the summer and fall of adulthood, and finally the winter of old age, which then gives way for the next generation of spring chickens. But here, I feel ill at ease with this analogy. Things can’t age, can’t mature at their proper time, in the land of perpetual summer.

We Love Uganda Days

My housemate Jennifer and I have what we call “We Love Uganda” days. These are the days when the following sorts of things happen:

-The power has been on a maximum of 12 hours a day for the last three weeks, off altogether for 3 days, and then – just two days after it came back on – the electrical company comes by to try to disconnect you for not paying a bill that you never received.

-You make macaroni and cheese (from America!) … only to find out that the milk you made it with has gone sour.

-Your dog dies of some mysterious tropical doggie illness.

-You come home from a bike ride muddy, sweaty, and greasy … only to find that the water has been turned off and you can’t take a shower.

On days like this, Jennifer and I sit down and tell each other why we love Uganda, because otherwise we might forget. Our reasons include:

-Teaching the youth class at church

-Walking up the road in the late afternoon and seeing the sun reflecting off the waterfalls on Mt. Wanale

-When two women just passing by the church on a Sunday morning feel compelled to come in

-Days when your students have “ah-HA!” moments

-Matoke (cooking bananas) and beans

-Playing cards all afternoon when the power is out

-Living two hours from the Nile

-Watching people from every tribe and nation come to learn more about Jesus

-Bicycle taxis

-Frogs that sing lullabies in muddle puddles in the back yard

-Children who laugh with you while you’re out running

-Friends who drop by unannounced during school holidays

We’ve had a lot of “We Love Uganda” days lately … it’s a good thing we love it here so much.

Ugandalish quiz, pt. 2

(If you live or have ever lived in Uganda, please don't answer!)

Here are a few snippets of Ugandan English I've heard this week. See if you can guess what they mean:

1. I was trying to revise my daughter.
a. I was helping my daughter study.
b. I wanted to change my daughter's mind about something.
c. I was helping my daughter move out.

2. Will you give me a push?
a. May I borrow some money?
b. Will you help me start my car?
c. Will you walk partway with me?

3. I need a short call.
a. I need the bathroom.
b. I need to use the phone.
c. I need to talk to you briefly.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

(Aside: Now, the problem with the title of this entry is one that’s common to missionary types: where, exactly, do I mean when I say “home”? Fortunately the repetition of “home again,” in this instance, can be more than a mere euphonic device – it can allow me to reference two signifieds with a single signifier!)

Okay, enough nerdiness. First, apologies once again for the delay between entries. I’ve fallen out of the habit of blogging, but I hope to get back into it for at least a little while. It tends to go in cycles, I’ve found.

Anyway, I spent the summer at “home” in America, and now I’m “home” in Mbale. I thoroughly enjoyed three months of family, rest, milkshakes, 24-hour grocery stores, driving, air conditioning, and not being called "mzungu," but I'm happy to be back here as well.

I'm having some difficulty uploading photos right now, but hopefully I'll be able to do that soon.

At the beginning of last week, my roommate Jennifer, Shawn Tyler, and I drove up to Nimule, Sudan, where Messiah Theological Institute, based here in Mbale, has an extension school. There are three Kenyan men, David, Kennedy, and Martin, who work as missionaries in Nimule. David and Kennedy work on church planting and discipleship in Nimule and the surrounding areas. Martin is an eyeglass technician who organizes and runs outreach clinics in rural areas.

The purpose of the trip was primarily for Shawn to teach a Bible course at MTI-Sudan. Jennifer and I accompanied him to encourage the missionaries and so that we could see the work there and report back on it. When we left we honestly weren’t sure what we’d be doing.

After an eight-hour drive, we arrived at the Ugandan side of the border, where Kennedy met us to help with immigration. Kennedy greeted all of the officials by name—a huge plus in dealing with East African bureaucracy. We made it through the Ugandan border with no difficulties. Then we drove ten or fifteen minutes further before we reached South Sudan.

The area between the two borders is a political no-man’s land. When the fighting in South Sudan was at its worst, Uganda pulled back its borders to create a buffer zone from the turmoil. Now, years later, there’s still a stretch of land that neither side wants to claim.

That was the first sign we saw of the region’s lingering unease.

The second sign was desolation. Kennedy told us that only in the last two years have people begun moving back to the Nimule area. Before that, the town was nearly empty. To us, the town looked like it still was empty. A few shops, a few people on bicycles … but mostly, nothing was there.

The mission station is outside the town a few kilometers. As we drove through, we saw the typical East African village sites—little huts with thatched roofs, women carrying babies on their backs, goats munching on grass. But where were the maize fields? The vegetable gardens? The signs of people at work? Dennis explained that many of the people now living in Nimule have spent their whole adult lives in refugee camps. They don’t know how to farm or raise crops, because they’re accustomed to living on handouts. So even now that their homeland is peaceful again, they aren’t able to fend for themselves.


So for the most part, what we saw and did in Sudan is … not much. There’s not much to see, and not much to do. What we did was listen, learn, and ponder.

To fill our time, Jennifer and I played with the kids at the nursery school that meets on the church compound. We sang VBS songs like “Wrapped Up Tied Up Tangled Up”, taught them to sign “Jesus Loves Me”, attempted to play Duck Duck Goose, and of course took lots of pictures. (Jennifer is posting them on her blog at: http://www.xanga.com/jenruth_21)

We took pictures for ID cards for the MTI-Nimule students. I tried to help prepare dinner one afternoon, but my cabbage-cutting skills are distinctly under par. We sat and talked the women, but Swahili was the only language we had in common, and none of us spoke just a ton of that.

Please pray for South Sudan. The UN’s World Food Program and Refugee Councils still have a strong presence in the Nimule area. The Sudanese people are managing to survive right now because of emergency aid from those sorts of organization. But what the people of South Sudan need more than aid is practical education to help them get back on their feet. The work that people like David and Kennedy and Martin are doing is fantastic, but so much more is needed.

"God can make good use of all that happens."

“Other things, other blessings, other glories. But never that. Never in all the worlds, that. God can make good use of all that happens. But the loss is real.”

I’m currently reading Perelandra, one of the books in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. It’s a beautiful book, and if you haven’t read it I really think you should. But by way of synopsis, it’s about a man who visits a sinless, unfallen world with the task of assisting it in staying unfallen.

In the quote above, Ransom, the main character, ponders what would have happened if Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned—but realizes that he can never know. It’s a theme that runs through the book—that we can never know what would have been, but we know that whatever does happen, God uses for His glory. Because Adam and Eve sinned, Christ came in the form of man. Satan bit His heel, but Christ crushed Satan’s head.

Several years ago, a wise woman passed onto me something that her wise mother had once told her: “You can’t make a mistake so big that God can’t either fix it or use it.” God has proven the truth of that statement to me over and over. It’s become perhaps the cornerstone of my theology. And yet, the mistakes are real. The longing for restoration is real. The loss is real.

I feel like what I spend my life doing is trying, with all my might, to ease the pain of that very real loss. On my selfish days that consists of hiding in my room using jazz music to drown out the world. But on my better days, I hug, listen, encourage, bake, and teach, all with the goal of lessening the pain. What I can do isn’t enough. I know that. But if I can lead more people to the truth that God can and will redeem all that happens, I guess it’s worthwhile.