Sometimes, People are Just People

A couple of weeks ago I visited my friend Mabel at her home. I’d mentioned a few weeks before that I’d like to visit her, but we never firmed up details and I didn’t have her phone number. But regardless of the lack of plans, I hopped on my beat-up bicycle with the chain that kept slipping off and rode the two miles to her neighborhood. I knew vaguely where she lived, but not exactly, so I asked people sitting outside if they could direct me to her house, and eventually I found her.

I thought about the differences between visiting a friend in America and visiting a friend here in Uganda. In the US, I would never dream of dropping in on a friend unannounced. Especially now that I don’t live in a college dorm. But here, a visitor is always a welcome interruption.

Mabel is a tall, friendly young lady of about 19 years old. She goes to school Monday through Friday, works on Saturday mornings, and sings in the choir at church on Sundays. She is always smiling. And when I arrived at her house that afternoon, she rushed to send a neighbor to the store to get me a soda and some matoke—plantains, which is the food for special occasions and special visitors.

Her mom, wearing a bright red and purple dress, a white head covering, and a brown apron, stepped away from her outdoor charcoal stove to shake my hand vigorously and tell me how welcome I was to her home. Neighborhood children, some relatives of Mabel’s, some just curious bystanders, came by to see if it was true that a mzungu woman was sitting on Mabel’s couch.

Once the stream of relatives and curious children had died down, our conversation turned to deeper matters. She told me about how her family had struggled to find money for school fees since her father had died the year before. We talked about the comfort the knowledge of God’s love brings during troubled times. I told her about my favorite Scripture, Matthew 6:33: “But seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Then I asked her what things keep Ugandans from seeking God first, and her answer surprised me: Greed.

“Everywhere you go,” she said, “Africans just want money. They will lie and cheat and steal because they just want more and more money. And even if they get money, they still want more.”

Does that sound familiar?

Substitute the word “Americans” for “Africans.” It fits, doesn’t it?

What an interesting commentary on human nature. Wherever you go, in cultures as widely different as American and Ugandan, sometimes, people are just people.