Get Your Plane of the Tarmac Please! (Part 2)

So off I went on my first outside Uganda adventure. My flight to Kigali Monday night was uneventful and Seng was at the airport to pick me up. I spent the night at Seng/Jen’s house (along with their 2 roommates). It was really great to see Jen again as it had last seen her in Peru last May. Kigali is so much nicer than Kampala. It is clean and organized, with wide 2 lane roads and manicured boulevards down the middle. Side note about the cleanliness…the black plastic bags that are endemic to Africa have been banned in Rwanda, and in Kigali, the last Saturday of the month is cleaning day. All residents are expected to get out in their neighborhoods and clean. Buses/taxis are not allowed to work and unless you are headed to the hospital or the airport, the police will stop and question you and ask you to return home. Now that is taking the clean to the streets!

OK, back to the story. We went into the office in the morning after dropping Jen at the FH guesthouse. This was a bad mistake on our part. Seng had mentioned when he picked me up at the airport that President Bush was arriving in Kigali in the morning for a visit; there were extra police and military forces on the road in the morning as we drove to the office. We should have gone straight to the airport instead of to the office. This was around 8am and my flight was at 11am. But, neither one of us thought of it. Instead we went to the office, went to devotions, and then left for the office. Unfortunately, the police started closing all the roads and we couldn’t get to the office. Seng was driving, Becky from the Regional Office was with us and we had an FH Rwanda staff member with us. Well, the boys thought we could find another way to the airport. So off we went. Long story short, we ended up on the back side of the airport just in time to hear Airforce I land (and see the tail with the American Flag). We could also hear the drums beating at what I would assume was the welcoming party on the tarmac. As we were sitting at the military base on the backside of the airport, the Rwandan staff member kept repeating that he was sure the airport was closed because Airforce I was at the airport. I kept insisting that Rwandair wouldn’t have issued a ticket 4 days before the scheduled visit of President Bush if the airport was going to be closed. I thought it best that we call the airline and find out.

By this time it is about 30 minutes before my flight is supposed to leave and I am a little panicky. As some of you may know, I inherited my flying routine from my mother which entails always being at the airport before the mandated time. I am starting to get more and more frustrated at the defeatist attitude of the Rwandan staff member and a little ticked that we hadn’t just stayed at the main road and waited for the convoy to pass. So we start to make our way back to the main road, but since they have blocked the main road all the side streets are blocked with cars. We end up going down little dirt roads away from the airport trying to get to the main road. By this time Becky has confirmed that the flight to Bukavu is flying and had informed them that I am on my way. Finally we get stuck, park the car and walk with my suitcase (small rolling carryon) up to the main road. The road is still closed, but Bush has gone by. We hop the fence and start power walking towards the airport. Moments later, the road re-opens and we decide to put me in a taxi. But not before I got a great shot of what turned out to be Airforce I and II. I got to the airport 15 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off. Unfortunately, the plane left almost 2 hours late. But I got up close and personal with Airforce I & II. It was cool; like the movies. There were Secret Service stationed at the nose and tail of each plane and an SUV parked at each nose.

Arriving at Kamembe airport in Rwanda is surreal. It is the smallest airport I have ever been in. It is one small building. Half is arrivals and half is departures. You walk off the plane and into the building and fill in an arrivals card. Then you wait for your luggage to be brought to the door and carry it down a steep flight of stairs to the parking lot. A very nice young lady named Renee was there to pick me up. Renee is third generation American missionary to Bukavu. We took a cab down to the border, filled out the Rwandan departures card then jumped in Renee’s truck to cross into DRC. To get to the DRC border, you leave the parking lot, cross a rickety wooden bridge then drive 500 meters up hill to the DRC border. It is a bit surreal. There are people waking or pushing wheel barrows along the road carrying foodstuffs on their backs or heads. The border area is awash with people some in uniform, most without. We parked the car on the side of the road and went into the small building housing border patrol. Renee speaks Swahili like it is her mother tongue so I didn’t have to do much. It was funny watching her with the officials. They obviously new her very well; there was a lot of joking going on. This one guy cracked me up. He was asking me all sorts of questions through Renee, and as we were leaving said, “Watson, I want you.” It cracked me up. Then we had to go down to a smaller building that house the health lady (for lack of a better description). It is mandatory to have your yellow fever vaccination to enter DRC. The health lady went through all my vaccinations and got stuck on the Oral Dukoral. You may or may not know that Dukoral is marketed as a vaccine to get to prevent traveler’s diarrhea. You know the kind you get in Mexico if you have ice cubes in your glass or eat the salads. It isn’t a mandatory vaccine. The problem is that it is also a vaccine against cholera. Or at least that is what the stamp says. And it only lasts 5 months. So health lady, in Swahili, started going on about it being out of date. This went on and on for a while. Finally I told Renee it is an optional vaccine and is used to prevent diarrhea. Repeating saying the word diarrhea had her handing me back the booklet and letting us go. You see in DRC, they are just looking for a way to make a little money on the side. No vaccine…just slip her a few dollars and she will stamp your booklet.

We got back in the truck and had the back door opened by random guy who wanted to see inside my bags. I only had the small suitcase and my backpack that contained my laptop. I opened them, he looked then he closed the door. We drove a few feet to the where a guard lifts up and down the gate (actually just a pole). While Renee was chatting with the guard, who knows her dad, another random guy opens the door and wants to see my bags. Renee isn’t really paying attention and I am trying to tell him they have been looked at. Finally Renee turns around and starts telling him that they have already been checked. When he leaves I asked Renee what was up. These random guys are border patrol and again, they are trying to make a buck. Trying to find something they can intimidate you into paying a bribe. The problem with these random guys…not one of them is wearing any kind of uniform and with the crush of humanity hanging around the border; it is hard to tell who is official and who isn’t.

We left the border and drove the ten minutes to the Country Directors house where I will be staying. I met Kostas’ wife Katie and their two sons Daniel (2 1/2) and Jonathon (7 months). I had a great time with Katie and the boys, had an awesome lunch cooked by their cook/house keeper and learned a lot about living in Bukavu. Kostas came home early from work and we spent a lot of time talking about possibilities and options. That evening I went with Katie to the Orchid, a Yaletown type restaurant right on the lake. A bunch of ladies were starting a women’s bible study group and were meeting to decide what to study. We all had ice cream at $5 – $7 USD a pop. Expensive…but very nice! The next day I went to the office to interview/be interviewed by each department head. It was a chance for me to find out where they needed help the most. At the end of the day, I sat down with Kostas and told him what I thought was needed. His response, “I wish I had a tape recorder. You just wrote your own job description.”

The next day I started my trek back home. Again in the crazy DRC border office, across the rickety bridge, Rwandan border office where people don’t understand what a line is or personal space, then the airport. It was a little weird, no scanners so had to open the bag for the lady to go through. Everything is manual. On the plane I talked with this guy I had first seen on the flight from Kigali. He was a Congolese guy producing records in Rwanda and engaged to a girl from England. We had a great chat and when we got to the Kigali airport offered a ride to wherever I needed to go. I assumed Seng would be there to pick me up. We had talked about lunch with his wife and one of the other girls I had met in Peru during FH training. But when I got to the main lobby…no Seng. The problem was, my cell was not working and I didn’t know Seng’s number or the number to FH Rwanda. Nor did I have any Rwandan Franc. So I went out, found my new friend and asked if I could still get a ride. I blindly assumed that the taxi driver would now where the FH office was. He didn’t. No one did. And none of us could get the number to FH Rwanda even though I was texting my friends Julia and Kenny back in Kampala. I did have US dollars so they took me to town to exchange for francs. As we were driving we passed Café Bourbon (the best latte I have had outside Starbucks). This was where Seng and the gang were taking me for lunch. After exchanging money I had them drop me off at Bourbon. Seng had called by this time and was on his way with Jen and Cheryl to meet me at Bourbon. All was well. I was pretty proud of myself for not freaking out during all this time!

Had a great lunch with the gang, went back to the office with them then to their house for dinner. Jen and Seng brought their baseball gloves, so Jen and I threw the ball around for a bit before they took me to the airport. I was so glad to touch down in Entebbe. Being back in Uganda felt like coming home. Which is why I was so surprised that it felt like I had to make the move to FH/DRC. As much as I loved Uganda and Kampala, I really felt like joining the team in Bukavu was what I was supposed to do.

I told Kostas before I left that I was 99% sure I was going to take the job. But I wanted to talk with Paddy (my pastor in Canada) before I made my final decision. I had been worried about how Cap would react to me leaving Uganda/Bufukhula and wanted to be sensitive to that. Although I told Sang Hoon Friday that I was going to make the move to FH/DRC, talking with Paddy the next day solidified my decision.

So there you have it: the entire journey from start to finish. It was a battle; one that tested my faith, had me questioning what God requires of us and generally turned me into a basket case for a month. I don’t regret a single moment of the struggle. I feel like I am a stronger person because of it. Stronger in faith, stronger in my relationship with God and sure that God has a plan for me that is much bigger than anything I could ever have wanted for myself. And most of all, I finally trust Him with my life. That is something I haven’t been able to do. For this I am grateful.

The Phone Call That Changed My Life (Part 1)

It was a Thursday morning in the middle of January when I got the call. Actually is started with a Skype chat. My friend Seng, who is also the Regional Finance Manager (Region = Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi & DRC), Skyped me to see if I was free and able to leave the office so he could call me. I was; so I went outside, took his call and began walking laps around the FH compound. Now I was expecting Seng to ask if I would be interested in doing some regional training. We had Skyped about the option a few months back, so that was what I was expecting. Instead Seng shocked me into silence (something that doesn’t happen too often!) with a request to consider the position of Finance Director in FH/DRC. I was stunned to say the least. We talked for quite a while about the situation in the DRC, how they hadn’t had a Finance Director for over a year, how hard the transition was to the new Sun Systems, how deadlines would come and go without the necessary work being completed. I spoke of my love of Uganda, the connection that I have here, the life that I had created for myself, the roots that were starting to settle.

The reason Seng asked if I would consider a move to FH/DRC was because he was aware of how under utilized I have been in the FH Uganda office. When I first arrived I spent time training the field coordinators and accountants in the use of Excel and the new financial system. This, coupled with a big learning curve kept me fairly busy. However, now that we have settled into the new financial system, my main role has been adding the receipts sent in by the field and ensuring they match the journals they have sent in. It is important work, but not very challenging and not the best use of the education and experience I bring with me from Canada. My life in Kampala is wonderful, but something was missing at work. I knew God brought me to Uganda, but I just wasn’t sure if this is what I was supposed to be doing. I figured I would wait it out; see where things would go. Have patience that God had a plan for my time in Uganda that He would reveal when it was time.

So back to the conversation with Seng…I was obviously not going to be able to give him an answer then and there, not did he expect one. He asked me to give it some thought, and that if I had any further questions, Dwight Jackson, the Regional Director, would be at my office the next day. So I went back to work, completely stunned and unable to talk to anybody about it. Well, actually, I went directly to my friend Julia (who works with the Go-Ed Students). I had to tell somebody! Then it was back to work. It is fairly hard to concentrate when someone has just asked you to consider a life changing decision. But somehow I managed. As soon as I got home and my parents came on line, I Skyped them to tell them the news and run things by dad. We talked and I cried for two hours. Dad and I went round and round and round. He kept asking me questions, trying to help me make a decision. Just to give you an idea of what was going through me head during this time: I have taken two accounting classes and spent five months working in NGO work…what were they thinking? There was no way I could do the job they were asking. Then there was the thought of leaving Kampala, my house, my friends, my church, the youth group and BUFUKULA. There was just no way I wanted to leave all that to go to a country I had never been too, where they speak French, and to a job that was bigger than my schooling and experience.

By the end of the conversation with my dad I had decided that what I really love best is training and Uganda and that being in the Director of Finance position in the DRC would not allow me to do that. I was completely prepared to tell Dwight Jackson, thank you but no thank you. I met with Dwight that morning and started by asking him for some more information about the situation in FH/DRC and for information about the DRC. I wanted to make sure they new they were asking someone with little finance experience and no schooling and almost no NGO work. Dwight was wonderful to chat with. He told me God works with our weakness and turns them into strengths; that there are things that can be taught, but that my leadership and management qualities were something they needed desperately in the DRC office. Some other things he told me. FH/DRC is the largest field in all of FH, size and money wise. It has an approx. $11 million budget in USAID grants with the potential for another $33 million over the next 5 years. As Dwight said, “It’s like we have a six inch pipe and are trying to shove a ten inch pipe inside it.” By the end of our conversation I was convinced I could do the job. He also told me that there was no way I could make a bad decision; if I stayed it was a good decision if I went to the DRC it was a good decision. So…instead of telling Dwight I was not interested in the job I told him I needed more time to think it through.

To give you an idea of the time frame, the day I spoke with Dwight was Friday January 18^th. For the next two and a half weeks I went back and forth and back and forth. I spoke with several of my ex-pat FH friends and with friends from church. I wanted to say no, yet couldn’t. A few things stood out for me during this time. First, I spoke with Gary Zander who is a Canadian on the board of FH International (actually with the name change FH Association). He pointed out to me that what I was experiencing was grief: the grief of leaving Uganda and all the ties that I had made. Understanding what I was feeling was a big step forward. Once I understood what I was feeling I was able to begin working through the grief and explore the possibility of leaving. Second, in one of my many conversations with my friend Julia she asked me if I wanted the job. I had never asked myself that question. I was focusing on could I do the job and did I want to leave Uganda. Third, Julia told me to stop stressing about the decision.

So I did. I stopped stressing and I stopped praying about it. I completely stopped giving the decision any attention. And that is when the work started. I would be in morning devotions and would be banging my head on the table as we sang Trust and Obey. We were working through the book, On Earth As It Is In Heaven by Darrow Miller and Bob Moffitt, during our devotions. Little things would have me shaking my head. It was as if the words or phrases were directed right at me. Finally Seng came to Kampala and we sat and chatted. I told him all my reasons for wanting to say NO, but that I couldn’t and had to see what that meant. I still wasn’t saying YES, but I was ready to move to the next step. That step was letting Kostas, the Country Director in FH/DRC, know that they had approached me for the position of Finance Director. I should note two things here: first, at this point the only people who officially new about the offer were me, Seng and Dwight and second, there was another offer on the table. That other offer was the option to be a regional trainer. It was something we had talked about in our original phone conversation and that I had talked about with Dwight. But their first priority was finding a Finance Director and this was the answer I had to give them.

The next day Seng asked me to send my resume on to Kostas and about three days later Kostas called. We chatted for a while and it became clear that the role of Finance Director was not suited for me (something I kinds knew already) but that there were many other ways they could use me in their finance department. In his own words, “We’re drowning here!” I got off the phone excited about the options and ready to take a trip to Bukavu (where the office is located) to visit and flesh out some of the options. But now the cat had to be let out of the bag. Elaine had to be informed and more importantly (sorry Elaine!) Sang Hoon, my country director had to be told. This is where things hit a snag. I talked to Elaine that very night. She was wonderful although it was a little faux pas on my part not to have told her sooner. And I Syped with Seng, told him I was ready for a visit to Bukavu but that Sang Hoon had to be told. He asked me to email Dwight, as it should really come from the Regional Director that they wanted to move an SIS from one field to another. The problem was that Dwight was in the US interviewing for the new Country Director position in Uganda. So I waited and I waited and didn’t hear anything from Dwight. Seng was in the dark and Kostas kept sending me photos of Bukavu to show me how beautiful it was there.

During the next two weeks, as I waited to hear from someone, we continued with the Bob Moffit/Darrow Miller study in devotions. There had been little pieces here or there that seemed to be speaking right to me, but then we came to the chapter on servant hood and we read from Philippians Chapter 2:

¹Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. ⁵In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had: ⁶Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

This verse and the phrase a servant is some who voluntarily and sacrificially serves changed the whole course of my decision making. I began to see that perhaps it was God calling me to the Congo and as such, I had no option but to obey. I was felt that my answer had to be YES. But…I still wanted to visit Bukavu, meet Kostas and his team in FH/DRC and discover what role they had for me to fill.

Almost two weeks later, I received an email from Kostas telling me that Dwight had contacted him and that I was to go ahead and tell Sang Hoon what was up. This was not cool with me! Kostas volunteered to be the one to tell Sang Hoon although in hindsight I should have been the one to do it. Actually, it should have been Dwight, but that is a whole ‘nother story. I was on Skype with Seng when an email from Kostas went through to Sang Hoon (it was Seng who told me he had received it). About 10 minutes later Sang Hoon called me into his office. I was a little worried; this came out of left field for him. But he was so gracious. He had first served in the Congo over 10 years ago and the country has a special place in his heart. He also recognized that when looking at the region as whole, the Congo is where there is the need for the most financial help. Lastly, as an SIS himself, he recognizes that as SIS we follow the call from God; if that is where I felt God was leading me, he couldn’t stand in the way.

Everything went very quickly after that. This was early Friday afternoon. By 5pm my tickets were booked for me to fly to Kigali the following Monday evening, then on to Kamembe/Cyangugu Tuesday morning (to get to Bukavu, you fly first to Kigali then to Kamembe/Cyangugu which is a small airport/town on the Rwandan side of the Rwanda/DRC border)

THE STORM

I was awoken at 1 am last night to the deafening sound of wind tunneling through my house, the slamming of doors, the claps of thunder and the flash of lightening. Oh and the fan beside my bed going off. There was a very powerful storm going on outside my windows. The curtains were blowing and from experience I knew there was a puddle accumulating on the floor below the windows. I think it was after the door slammed shut that I got out of bed to see what was going on outside. I have to say again, the sound of the wind was incredibly loud. From what I could see out the window, the trees were a moving. I got up, closed the windows so as not to have a flood in my room in the morning, propped open the door that slammed so it would do it again, then got back into bed clutching tightly to my flashlight. I have to say, this was the scariest storm I have experienced ever...and we had some good ones in October/November.

All was calm when I got up in the morning. There wasn't any noticeable branches down when I looked out the window so I thought all was OK. The first thing I noticed when I walked out the door to go to work was that the small plastic bin that sits on the porch wasn't there...well the lid was but not the bin. As I walked down the stairs and over to the driveway...that's when I saw it. One of the garage doors was lying on the ground. The wind had, not torn it from the hinges (the piece of wood with the hinges is still attached), it had broken the wooden door completely. All I could do was laugh. I thought I heard a loud bang as one point. Oh and my shoes that were on the porch were scattered across the lawn as were a multitude of large pine needles, small branches and one large palm leaf.

We are in the hot season right now, so it is common to have storms in the evenings. Here's hoping tonight is a little less eventful.

FH Congo Website

I just finished browsing through the FH Congo website. It is by far the best Food for the Hungry website I have seen...and I have looked at many. Please click on the link on the left of my blog and learn about the work FH is doing in the Congo; read the stories. Let God weave the people of the Congo into your heart they way he is doing in mine.

Congo Journey - John le Carré

The Nation article | posted September 14, 2006 (October 2, 2006 issue)

It was the strangest journey of my life and it always will be. I was looking for fictional characters I had invented, in a country I had never visited. The distant town of my imagination was Bukavu in Eastern Congo, known formerly as Costermansville and built in the early twentieth century by Belgian colonialists. It stands at the southern end of Lake Kivu, at 4,800 feet the highest and coolest of all Africa's Great Lakes. I had written my novel in a period when for personal reasons I had felt unable to leave England. Now, too late if my previous books were anything to go by, I was about to check its people and places against the reality.

But the novel isn't really set in Congo at all--or so I had almost persuaded myself by the time I began my journey. It's a romantic satire, for heaven's sake, written with both feet firmly off the ground. It's about Tony Blair's England, and good old-fashioned colonial exploitation, and political hypocrisy and shameless public lies, and other scores I had to settle. It's about the quest for identity in our multiethnic society, and New Labour's assault on our civil liberties, and a bunch of other similarly lofty themes. Congo is just backcloth, an abstraction, a symbol of perpetual colonial exploitation, slaughter, famine and disorder. To meet it face to face would only violate the delicate illusion!--or so I had tried to believe.

The only problem was that, well before I had added the last full stop to the first draft, Congo had become the elephant in my drawing room, and no amount of literary sophistry was going to make it disappear. My central character was the son of an erring Irish missionary and a Congolese headman's daughter. He had been dragged up in a bleak English boarding school, and he and I could get along fine. I had no quarrel with him. But when it came to my three Congolese warlords, each one some sort of standard-bearer of the militia or social faction that had spawned him, I had doubts. Neither my researches, nor my furtive lunches with Congolese expatriates, had reassured me that these characters could survive in the real world. If my visit to Bukavu did not deliver their likely counterparts--by which I mean, verify their attitudes and beliefs--I might be forced to look for other ways to tell the story, such as writing it again from scratch.

In Belgian colonial memory, as in my novelist's fantasy, Bukavu was a lost paradise, a misted Shangri-La of wide, bougainvillea-laden streets and lakeside villas with lush gardens sloping to the shore. The province of South Kivu was to Central Africa what biblical Palestine was to Arabia. The volcanic soil of the surrounding hillsides was so fertile, the climate so benign, that there was scarcely a fruit, flower or vegetable that didn't thrive there. But Eastern Congo has like every paradise a fatal flaw: It is a natural treasure chest of gold, diamonds, cassiterite and now coltan and uranium, which for centuries has lured every known species of human predator to its misted hills and jungles, from freebooting Rwandan militias to suited corporate carpetbaggers with nice manners and fat checkbooks and shiny offices in London, Houston, St. Petersburg and Beijing.

Ever since the late 1960s, Bukavu has suffered catastrophe after disaster. In the wake of the Rwandan genocide that hand-killed almost a million people in a hundred days, the town found itself in the front line of the refugee crisis. Hutu insurgents who had fled across the border from Rwanda used Bukavu as one of their two main bases from which to attack the Tutsi-dominated revolutionary government that had ousted them and seized power in Kigali. Goma, at the northern tip of the lake, was the second. The Tutsis retaliated in what became known as the First Congo War, and Bukavu took the brunt. The town barely had time to draw breath before the Second Congo War struck. And in June 2004, Bukavu fell into the hands of one General Nkunda, who invited his men to do with it what they pleased for three days. The town was sacked, and scores of women were raped.

I had also read that the Roman Catholic cathedral that dominates the town is called Our Lady of Peace.

There were three of us in the car by the time our Rwandan driver took the winding hill road from Kigali and headed toward the Congolese border four hours' drive away. The Foreign Office had advised us not to go, but for my two traveling companions such warnings had about as much impact as a footnote in a backpackers' guide. Michela Wrong had spent twelve years reporting on the African continent. She had covered post-genocide Rwanda for Reuters and the BBC and had written a seminal book, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, about Congo's recent history. Jason Stearns, at 29 a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, had served three years in Bukavu as a political adviser to the United Nations. He spoke immaculate French, Swahili and an unknown number of the more obscure African languages and was widely held to be one of the West's leading authorities on Congo.

Both had plowed through an early draft of my novel, forgiven my trespasses and offered advice. Both knew the kind of players I needed to meet, and the locations I needed to see. Both had their professional agendas but agreed to coincide their trips with mine. It was April. On July 30--but the date remained uncertain--the Democratic Republic of Congo was proposing to hold its first multiparty election in forty years at a cost of nearly $500 million, $400 million of them from the West. There was gathering nervousness about the outcome. For my companions this made it the perfect time to go, as it did for me, since my novel was set in the run-up to the same elections. My only problem was: Had I left it too late for my warlords?

Well before we reached the Congolese border, my imagined world had been changing before my eyes. The Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali, alias the Hotel Rwanda, where we had stayed the night, had an air of oppressive normality. I looked in vain for a commemorative photograph of the actor Don Cheadle, or his alter ego Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who in 1994 had turned the Mille Collines into a secret refuge for Tutsis in terror of the panga and the gun. But that story, in the mind of the revolutionary party still in power, is no longer operative. The genocide, according to the prevailing political correctness, produced bigger and better heroes who were not darlings of the Western media. Ten minutes into Rwanda with your eyes open, you know that the Tutsi-led government runs a very tight ship indeed.

From the windows of our car as we wove toward Bukavu, we glimpsed Rwandan justice at work. In tailored meadows that would not have been out of place in a Swiss valley, villagers crouched in rings like summer schoolchildren. At their center, in place of teachers, men in prison pink gesticulated or hung their heads. To break the backlog of suspected génocidaires awaiting trial, Kigali has reinstated traditional village courts. Anyone may accuse, anyone may defend. Only judges are appointed by the government.

An hour short of the Congolese border we turned off the road and climbed a hill in order to take a look at a few of the génocidaires' victims. A former secondary school looked down on lovingly tended valleys. The curator, himself an improbable survivor, led us from one classroom to another. The dead--hundreds, of them, whole families, tricked into assembling for their own protection--had been laid out in fours and sixes on wooden pallets and coated with what looked like congealed flour and water. A lady with a face mask and bucket was giving them an extra coat. Many of the dead were children. In a country where farmers do their own slaughtering, the technique had come naturally: First cut the tendons, then take your time. Hands, arms and feet were stored separately in baskets. Torn clothing, brown with blood and mostly children's sizes, hung from the eaves of a cavernous assembly hall.

How had so many normally peaceable people been dragooned into becoming assassins at the drop of a hat? Answer: by a few bad men seizing the moment. By faking the evidence. By exploiting traditional resentments. By lies repeated over the radio. By persuading the Hutus that they themselves were about to be slaughtered by their Tutsi neighbors. Hermann Göring at his Nuremberg trial had the recipe off pat:

''Naturally, the common people don't want war...but after all it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along.... All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.... It works the same in every country.'' And we know it still does.

Would I, as a Westerner, have felt easier if the murderers had used Zyklon B to do their work? Or dropped 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter" bombs from two miles up?

''So when will you bury them?'' we asked.

''When they have done their work,'' was the reply.

These dead have no one to name them, no one to mourn or bury them. The mourners too are dead. So the bodies will be left on show for a while, to silence the doubters and deniers.

Rwandan troops in green, US-style uniforms have appeared along the roadside. The Congolese frontier post is a dilapidated shed on the other side of an iron bridge across an outlet of the Ruzizi River. A cluster of female officials frown over our passports and vaccination certificates, shake their heads and confer. The more chaotic a country, the more intractable its bureaucracy. But we have Jason. An interior door bangs open, joyous cries are exchanged, Jason disappears. To peals of congratulatory laughter, our documents are returned to us. We bid farewell to the perfect tarmac of Rwanda and for five minutes lurch over giant potholes of red Kivu mud to our hotel.

In every trouble spot I have cautiously visited, there has always been one watering hole where, as if by secret rite, hacks, spies, aid workers and carpetbaggers converge. In Saigon, it was the Continental; in Phnom Penh, the Pnom; in Vientiane, the Constellation; in Beirut, the Commodore; and here in Bukavu it's the Orchid, a gated, low-built lakeside colonial villa surrounded by discreet cabins. The owner is a worldly wise colon who would have bled to death in one of Kivu's wars had not his late brother smuggled him to safety. In a corner of the dining room sits a German lady of a certain age who talks wistfully to strangers of the days when Bukavu was all white, and she could drive her Alfa Romeo at sixty miles an hour down the boulevard.

Next morning we retrace her route, but not at her speed. The boulevard is still wide and straight but, like every street in Bukavu, pitted by red rainwater gushing off the surrounding mountains. The houses are fallen gems of Art Nouveau metro-land, with rounded corners, long windows and porches like cinema organs. Where there are new buildings, the same style is replicated today. The town itself is built on five peninsulas, ''a green hand dipped in the lake," as it is locally described. The largest and once the most fashionable is La Botte, where Mobutu kept one of his many residences. According to the soldiers who barred our entry, the same villa was being refurbished for the new president, Joseph Kabila, Kivu-born son of the Maoist revolutionary and wheeler-dealer who in 1997 drove Mobutu from power and four years later was murdered by his own bodyguard. A steamy haze hangs over the lake for most of the day. The border with Rwanda splits it longways. The toe of La Botte tips provocatively eastward. The fish are very small. The lake's monster is called mamba mutu, half-woman and half-crocodile. What she likes best is eating human brains.

We enter a Roman Catholic seminary. Its windowless brick walls are unlike anything around them in the street. Behind them lies a world of tranquil gardens, television dishes, guest rooms, conference rooms, computers, libraries and mute servants. In the canteen an old white priest in jeans shuffles to the coffee urn, gives us a long, unearthly stare and goes his way. He suffered greatly but survived, our host explains, and laments how his fellow African priests are at risk from penitents who confess their ethnic hatreds too eloquently. Once inflamed, they are capable of becoming the worst extremists of them all. Thus in Rwanda, priests were known to summon all the Tutsis in their parish to the church, which was then torched or bulldozed with the priests' connivance.

My first warlord, Thomas, is about as far removed from my expectation as he could decently be. He is tall and elegantly dressed, and receives us with diplomatic grace. His house, guarded by sentries with semiautomatic rifles, is spacious and representational. A plasma television screen plays silent football while we talk. He speaks for the Banyamulenge, and his people have been fighting wars in Congo pretty well nonstop since 1966, but his own war was spent in South Africa, lobbying for their cause. The Banyamulenge, I had read, are pastoralists originally from Rwanda who over the last couple of hundred years have settled the high plateaus of the Mulenge mountains of South Kivu. Feared for their battle skills and reclusiveness, and hated for their supposed affinity with Rwanda, they are the first to be pilloried in times of discontent. Would the upcoming elections make things any better for them? we asked. His reply was not encouraging. The losers will say the vote was rigged, and they'll be right. The winner will take all, because why else win? Candidates are vying to demonstrate their pro-Congolese, anti-Rwandan credentials, so it will be open season on the Banyamulenge.

Thomas was similarly unimpressed by Kinshasa's efforts to incorporate Congo's many armed groups into one national army: ''We have many men who have joined and then defected to the mountains. In the army they kill us and insult us, although we have fought many battles for them.''

There was a chink of hope, he conceded. The Mai Mai, who regard themselves as the keepers of a Congo free of all ''invaders'' and ''foreigners''--including the Banyamulenge--are also learning the high price that must be paid to become a soldier of Kinshasa. ''Maybe as the Mai Mai learn to mistrust Kinshasa, they will draw closer to us.''

Afterward, I ask Jason whether Thomas was right to be gloomy about the forthcoming elections. By and large, thought Jason, he was. Elections were only one trapping of a democratic system. Without a Parliament, courts or an administration, they merely decided who got to rip off the country next. Thirty percent of Congolese lived on one meal a day. Eighty percent earned less than a dollar a day. The losers had guns, and would very probably use them to contest the outcome. And yes, another Congolese war could follow. Next day we met a colonel of Mai Mai, the largest and most notorious of Congo's many armed militias.

Like Thomas, the colonel is immaculately turned out. His Kinshasa-issue khaki drills are ironed and pressed, his badges of rank glisten in the midday sun.

We are sitting in an open-air cafe. From a sandbagged emplacement across the road, blue-helmeted Pakistani UN troops watch us over their gun barrels. The colonel fidgets a lot, perhaps in embarrassment. Two cellphones lie before him. His heavy French is rich in extraneous additives. Sometimes his language and beliefs seem a bit of a puzzle to him, as if he wants a different role in life but has been landed with this one. Like their forebears the Simba, the Mai Mai possess magical powers--dawa--which enable them to turn flying bullets into water.

''The Mai Mai are a force created by our ancestors. There are races in my country that do not deserve to be here. We fight them because we fear they will claim our sacred Congolese land. No government in Kinshasa can be trusted to do this; therefore, we do it ourselves. When Mobutu's power failed, we stood in the breach with our pangas, bows and arrows. Our dawa is our shield. When you are face to face with an AK-47 that is firing straight at you and nothing happens, you know our dawa is authentic.''

In that case, we ask, how do the Mai Mai explain their dead and wounded?

''If one of our warriors is struck down, it is because he is a thief or a rapist or has disobeyed our rituals or was harboring bad thoughts about a comrade when he went into battle. Our dead are our sinners. We let our witch doctors bury them without ceremony.'' And the Banyamulenge? we ask. ''They can remain in Congo if they accept Congolese law. If they don't, we shall kill them.''

Venting his anger against Kinshasa, however, the colonel comes significantly close to sharing the sentiments expressed by Thomas the night before: ''The Mai Mai have been neglected and marginalized. Kinshasa forgets too soon that we fought for them and saved their arses. When Mai Mai fighters join Kinshasa's army we become kings without kingdoms. They don't pay us and don't listen to us. As soldiers we are not allowed to vote. Better we return to the bush and look after ourselves.'' And as a parting question of us: ''How much does a computer cost?''

In my novel, I have sketched in an armed attack on Bukavu airport. We are about to set off to inspect the reality when we learn that the center of town is blocked by demonstrators and burning tires. It seems that a man mortgaged his house for $400 in order to buy his wife a medical operation. When Kinshasa's unpaid soldiers heard about it, they raided his house, killed him and stole the money. Angry neighbors seized the soldiers, but their comrades sent reinforcements to get them back. A 15-year-old girl was shot dead and the crowd rioted. In our five nights in Bukavu, there were two riots.

After a tortuous drive through uneven back streets we reach the Goma road and drive northward along Lake Kivu's western shore. The airport is under the joint UN protection of Indian and Uruguayan troops. Not long ago, the Rwandans took the place over and remained there for several months without anybody interfering. The Uruguayan soldiers, who are not allowed into town, give us an excellent lunch and urge us to come back for a real party soon. ''What would you do,'' I ask an officer, ''if the airport came under surprise attack?'' His right fist clenches and shoots forward as his left hand closes over his forearm. ''Vamos,'' he replies.

The discothèque is my last and most affecting memory of Bukavu. In my novel, it is owned by the French-educated heir to an East Congolese trading fortune. He is a warlord of a sort, but his real power base is Bukavu's young intellectuals and businessmen. And here they are. There is a curfew and the town is quiet. A bit of rain is falling. I recall no winking signs or bulky men checking us at the entrance, just a gray row of little Art Deco buildings disappearing into the dark, and a rope bannister descending a dimly lit stone staircase. We grope our way down. Music and strobe lights engulf us. Yells of ''Jason!'' as he vanishes under a sea of welcoming black arms.

The Congolese, I had been told, know better than anybody how to have fun, and here at last they are having it. Away from the dance floor, a game of pool is running so I join the lookers-on. Round the table, deathly silence attends every shot. The last ball goes down. To hoots of joy, the victor is swept off his feet and carted in triumph round the room. At the bar, beautiful girls chatter and laugh. At our table, while I listen to somebody's views on Voltaire--or was it Proust?--Michela is politely discouraging a drunk. Jason has joined the men on the dance floor. I will leave him with the last word: ''For all Congo's troubles, you meet fewer depressed guys on the streets of Bukavu than you do in New York.''

Would I have written the same novel if I'd gone to Congo earlier? I wonder whether I would have written a novel at all. The reality of the place is so overwhelming that stories about it seem almost an irrelevance. But then I wasn't really writing about Congo, was I? It was all those other things. Congo was just backcloth.

An Introduction to the Democratic Republic of Congo

A vast country with immense economic resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) has been at the centre of what could be termed Africa's world war. This has left it in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.

The five-year conflict pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional government in 2003, the threat of civil war remains. The war claimed an estimated three million lives, either as a direct result of fighting or because of disease and malnutrition. It has been called possibly the worst emergency to unfold in Africa in recent decades. The war had an economic as well as a political side. Fighting was fuelled by the country's vast mineral wealth, with all sides taking advantage of the anarchy to plunder natural resources.

The history of DR Congo has been one of civil war and corruption. After independence in 1960, the country immediately faced an army mutiny and an attempt at secession by its mineral-rich province of Katanga. A year later, its prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was seized and killed by troops loyal to army chief Joseph Mobutu.

In 1965 Mobutu seized power, later renaming the country Zaire and himself Mobutu Sese Seko. He turned Zaire into a springboard for operations against Soviet-backed Angola and thereby ensured US backing. But he also made Zaire synonymous with corruption. After the Cold War, Zaire ceased to be of interest to the US. Thus, when in 1997 neighbouring Rwanda invaded it to flush out extremist Hutu militias, it gave a boost to the anti-Mobutu rebels, who quickly captured the capital, Kinshasa, installed Laurent Kabila as president and renamed the country DR Congo.

Nonetheless, DR Congo's troubles continued. A rift between Mr Kabila and his former allies sparked a new rebellion, backed by Rwanda and Uganda. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe took Kabila's side, turning the country into a vast battleground. Despite coup attempts and sporadic violence a fragile peace has held since the formal end of the war. But the Kinshasa government has no control over large parts of the country and tension remains high in the east.

Moreover, the lot of DR Congo's citizens is little improved. The Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said in 2005 that 1,000 people were dying every day from war-related causes, including disease, hunger and violence.

Present Day

Joseph Kabila became Congo's president when his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001. He gained a mandate through the ballot box to rule the vast country as its elected leader in an election in 2006. The historic presidential election was intended to bring a new era of stability after years of war, dictatorship and chaos. The vote was generally praised by international monitors.

Mr Kabila has enjoyed the clear support of western governments such as the US and France, regional allies such as South Africa and Angola and businessmen and mining magnates who have signed multi-million dollar deals under his rule. He is a former guerrilla fighter who participated in nearly a decade of war that ravaged the country. He fought alongside his father in a military campaign from the east that toppled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 after more than 20 years as the despotic, whimsical and corrupt leader of the nation he had renamed Zaire.

But when Laurent Kabila was killed by a bodyguard in 2001, his soft-spoken, publicity-shy son, who received military training in China, was thrust into the political limelight and installed as the world's youngest head of state. He swapped his military fatigues for elegant business suits, but - in contrast to his chubby, jovial and temperamental father - remained a reserved figure. Mr Kabila has promised to rule by consensus to try to heal the still raw scars of Congo's many conflicts. Though revered in the Swahili-speaking east, where he is widely credited with helping to end Congo's 1998-2003 war, he is less liked in the west.

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way

• If you’ve never been to Africa then it is truly hard to understand the hilarity that is a boda boda. Well sometimes hilarity sometime sheer terror. A boda boda is a motorcycle taxi or a in the more rural areas a bicycle taxi. Boda’s as we call them are used for marrying anything that can sit or be tied down. This includes people, as many as can fit, chickens, crates of pop, 15-20 mattresses a car hood or a guy sitting on the back holding a wooden dresser with a mirror. I am not exaggerating in the least. I have witnessed all this and more! The terror is that they have no care for their lives or those of their passengers. They drive on whichever side of the road will get them to their destination faster, they pass on whichever side of a car they are able and are generally a nuisance on the road.
  

• Not having a car means I do a lot of walking. It’s also a great form of exercise as anywhere I want to walk involves waling up and down hills. Several things occur when I am out walking. First, I get stared at like I am the first and only white person in the entire country. This of course is not the case, especially in Kampala, so I can’t figure out why the need to stare and shout Muzungu at me all the time. It is really funny when boda drivers or guys in cars turn to stare; I keep waiting for them to crash into something ahead while their heads are “Linda Blair’ed” behind them! The children shouting Muzungu is not as bad unless it is accompanied by, “Give me money,” which is upsetting but luckily doesn’t happen that often. What’s funny is that with adults, mostly men but sometimes women, it is, “Muzungu, how are you?” or with children it is, “Muzungu, bye” as you walk past them. Some of my favorites are, “Muzungu, I love You” or ,”Muzungu, will you marry me?” Once when a guy told me he loved me as I walked by, I turned around and jokingly said, “But you don’t even know me!” No response from him, but it sure made me feel good! The attention and inappropriate comments or noises can be difficult and I often want to yell and chastise them, but for the most part I find it extremely hilarious. The good thing is it in never done maliciously, but one does have to be careful how you respond. I choose humor instead of anger.

• The fun thing about walking all the time is you have time to look around and notice things. One of my favorite activities is to sign watch, to look at the names of the businesses, restaurants and schools that I pass. One of my absolute favorites is the 24 hour restaurant called I Feel Like Chicken Tonight (There was a commercial several years ago with the same jingle). Then there is the Disney Daycare and Psalm 23 Beauty Salon. Remind me again…what does Psalm 23 say about beauty? Recently I came across the Homely Café; I’m sure they meant Homey Café. It’s the use and combination of English words that make for some very interesting and downright funny signage around the country.

• When you walk you also see funny random things…like 20 or so cows – cows with very big horns – being walked down the road. But even funnier is the random cow walking unattended. You would think they would walk a little faster having gained their freedom.

Sometime You Have to Pass it Along

I got this email from my friend Myron today and I just felt like I needed to pass it on.

Thanks Myron!

The Crosswalk

Awesome!! We complain about the cross we bear but don't realize it is preparing us for the dip in the road that God can see and we cannot.

Whatever your cross, whatever your pain, there will always be sunshine, after the rain....

Perhaps you may stumble, perhaps even fall;

But God's always ready, to answer your call....

He knows every heartache, sees every tear, a word from His lips, can calm every fear...

Your sorrows may linger, throughout the night, but suddenly vanish, by dawn's early light...

The Savior is waiting, somewhere above, to give you His grace, and send you His love.

May God fill your day with blessings!!

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle!

Lesson's Learned

I know it is almost the end of January, but I think I am ready to share the horror story of my new years eve day and night. As with any horror story, it starts out all nice and happy. A group of us (Myself, Luke from FH/US, Yoshi from FH/Japan Jiin from FH/Korea and Jiin’s Korean friend) has made plans to go to Jinja for the day. Luke picked us up just after 7am. Getting out the door this morning involved unlocking 2 locks on the inside of the gate, getting through the door with my purse, large camera bag and day bag, putting everything on the ground while I crouch down, reach inside the little flap to lock the main door on the inside, then lock the little flap on the outside. (Normally Angela is home and I don’t have to go through this trouble, but she was away in her village for the holidays) I picked everything up off the ground, we got into the vehicle and off we went to Jinja.

As we were on the road, my very full purse emptied out on the floor of the car. I struggled to find pick everything up as we three ladies were squished in the back seat and my camera bag was on the floor at my feet. Our first stop was at the Rainforest Lodge in Mabira Forest. Mabira Forest is in between Kampala and Jinja; and the lodge is situated right in the thick of the forest. Luke, as CDP manager, was looking at different places that work teams could stay at for retreat after their time in the villages. BTW…the Rainforest Lodge is amazing. It will be my go to place when I just need to get away for a few days to relax and rejuvenate. We left Mabira forest and continued along to Jinja. We made a pit stop at the Kingfisher Lodge so Luke could check it out as well. It is a favorite destination spot for retreats hosted by my church. We tried to stay for breakfast, but it seemed they were “all out!”

After a quick breakfast of Spanish omelet’s and sausages in a small “restaurant” in Jinja town, we headed to Bujagali Falls. The name makes is sound more important than it is. It is really a series of rapids that are part of the Whitewater Rafting and Kayaking route. They are definitely beautiful, but once you’ve stared at them for a while, you’re ready to move on. We played a rousing game of Phase 10 (combo of Uno and Rummy) then each of us went off on our own for an hour. Jiin, Semi and Yoshi went for a boat ride on the Nile, I sat and read a book, and who knows what Luke did. It was then time for the highlight of our trip…the Mexican Restaurant at the Palms Guesthouse. Yes Mexican in Uganda! The owner’s wife is Texan and she has done a fantastic job replicating a darn good Mexican meal. After lunch we briefly shopped; I picked up a 4 3 foot wooden giraffe and a nice pair of heals while Luke looked for a motorcycle jacket at the market. Then it was home….and that’s where the fun starts.

Our first problem was trying to get gas. We didn’t know it at the time, but the post-election violence in Kenya was just beginning to take it’s toll in Uganda, most notably at the pump. We found some at an unusually high price then carried on our way back home. It wasn’t until we had just got into the Kampala city limits that I realized I hadn’t seen my keys anywhere (Oh yes!!!) After a frantic search through my purse, bags and car it was determined my keys were not there. Don’t forget, this is not just a house key. This is 3 gate keys plus a house key. Angela has a set of keys, and while she was somewhere in the city, she wasn’t answering her phone. Now the kicker is I was supposed to be at a New Year’s Party in just over an hour. Luckily my friend (who’s house it was at) called to give me directions so I asked if her dad had bolt cutters. Thankfully he did, so after dropping Jiin, Semi, the giraffe and all my bags off at the FH office, Luke dropped me off at a gas station to wait for Makinzi to come get me and take me to her house. After Luke had left I called Makinzi and told her I was there. She told me her brother, 15 year old Jesse, would come down and get me on his motorcycle. So I waited, and waited, and waited. It’s after 7pm and dark, and I am in a strange neighbourhood and the only Muzungu around. I waited next to the security guard who kindly brought me a stool to sit on. At this point I was pretty distressed as you could imagine. Loosing my keys and having to cut off all my locks was not how I intended to ring in the New Year. After around 25 minutes of waiting, I called Makinzi to find our where Jesse was. It turns out he had got in an accident on the way to get me and that Nat (another 15 year old from the youth group) would come and get me on his motorcycle. This was a bad situation getting even worse!

Finally Nat shows up to get me, but he has no shirt on. So here I am on the back of a motorcycle with a half naked 15 year old from youth group. I’m trying to sit as far back as I can and not touch Nat, but also not fall off as we bounce down a typically pot holed road back to the Makenzie’s (Yes my friend is Makinzi Mackenzie). We get to the house and it turns out Jesse had taken the motorcycle with no light and he didn’t put on a helmet. He got about 10yards from his house and crashed into a boda boda. He had a pretty bad concussion and his dad took him to a clinic to get checked out. I got the bolt cutters and Nat and Harley (Youth Group kids) to come with me to climb over the fence to cut the lock on the inside of the gate. There was no way I would be able to 1. climb the fence and 2. have enough strength to cut the locks. So we walked down to the end of the street and the boys haggled with a special hire. We agreed on a price and off we went. Of course it is after 8pm on New Years Eve and traffic is awful. We got halfway to my house when the driver decides he needs to get gas. In order to save time, I gave the boys money to pick up new locks and we dropped them off in Kabalagala (near my house) while I went with the driver to get gas. Remember that fuel problem I talked about earlier. Well know it is a full blown crisis. The first two stations had no gas and the third one which did, had tremendously long lines. When we finally go back to Kabalagala to pick up the boys, Praise God, they came almost right away. We picked up Jiin, Semi and the giraffe and piled into the car to make the short trip down to my house. As we pulled up to the gate, the headlights flashed on something shiny on the ground. MY KEYS!!!!! They had been sitting in front of the gate for over 9 hours. Why, you ask, didn’t I check there first. Well the answer is, I assumed that when my purse emptied onto the floor on the way to Jinja, they got lodged next to the door and probably fell out when I opened the door at the Rainforest Lodge in Mabira. Not once did it cross my mind I had left them in front of the gate. If I had left them in front of the gate, then someone would have robbed me blind.

So lesson learned…don’t curse God when He is watching over your gate. And get a third set of keys cut.

Note: I did end up at the party and had a good time. And Jesse is OK.

When Love Came Down

So the last time I posted I was telling you about my Christmas Day so far. I also said I would post later with the rest of the details. As today is January 1, 2008, it is obvious that I didn’t. But better late than never…right?!?!

Christmas Eve was spectacular! That’s the best word I can use to describe it. Jiin and I went with Sonya and Bruce and their children to Kampala Pentecostal Church (KPC) for their 5pm showing of their Christmas Cantata. It is something that the church does every year, 3 shows a day for 15 days, with the last show Christmas Eve. KPC is a very large church (1400 cell groups) with at least 4 “churches” that I know of. The Christmas Cantata was at KPC Central in the heart of Kampala. It used to be a theater, so it is massive; the scale of the Orpheum but not so grand. And funnily enough, the head pastor is from Alberta and the Worship Pastor is from Toronto. My friend Downie Mickler (her husband used to work with FH Uganda) is friends with the Worship Pastor and his wife, who also happens to be the KPC Choir leader. Downie arranged for us to have the entire second row reserved as we had several families attending together.

Right from the start you could tell this was a big production. There wall in front of us has a large screen in the middle, and all around the screen the wall was painted with an African sunset scene, complete with the silhouettes of elephants and giraffe. It was stunning. There was a complete band, with the drummer sitting behind plexi-glass to mute the sound. When the lights came down, the choir came in, and in, and in. It was at least a hundred person choir. The women were dressed in zebra patterned tops and black skirts with white trim on the bottom. The men were dressed in traditional Ugandan dress: black pants, white long robe and black suit jacket. And then the show started. There was a narrator who kept the show going and little movie clips on the screen, and an enactment of the nativity in the corner. But the singing and the dancing…it gave you chills. It was phenomenal, stunning, and electric. The choir was perfect and the dancing amazing. When the show ended two hours later, I stood up, looked at Sonya and told her,” I don’t want to go home now next Christmas. I don’t want to miss this!” (Don’t worry…I’m still coming home)

And that was Christmas Eve. Jiin and I came home, had a friend come and visit then off to bed. It was a great Christmas Eve, my first in Africa.