Life in The Family International

Sunday: Slept soundly at the convent until I couldn’t sleep anymore. We met with some of the politicians of the Nakapiripirit district yesterday afternoon, and made plans with them: We’d get a tour of Karamoja in the morning while everyone was still in church, then after the service, come back to the convent to distribute the goods. It sounded like a doable plan. That would give us enough time to see some wild sights before the busy afternoon started.

Guaranteeing that these people were going to arrive today “African time” (they said they’d pop in at 8:00am) we slept soundly till around 9:30. Rather, I slept—I’m sure Robin was up and busy doing early-morning photography or something. As predicted, they didn’t arrive till past 10:30, before spending yet another hour or so chatting with them.

Actually, we found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma. We were informed that another politician in this area wanted to be present when we distributed the goods. He wanted to make a speech, etc. etc. We were a little frustrated, assuming that the “big-shots” only wanted to be in on the activity because they saw this huge truck packed with donated goods. (No one made a stir the last time the team with donated goods came with a small van of 300 shoes.) I for one, was seething. This politician wouldn’t arrive until the evening to make his speech. Meanwhile all the people had walked here early in the morning to receive the donations…and now, all because of one man, we had to waste a whole day? I fumed that maybe we should just ban all politicians. After all, he only wanted the glory, the acknowledgment, right? He had nothing to do with the project. This was our project, it’s not like he ever lifted a finger to get the goods here…and now…he wanted us and hundreds of poor people to wait until he got here at 7:00!!! The stupidity of politics!

We didn’t have much choice though, so we talked back and forth about the changed plans for the day. I felt so annoyed! Half a day of traipsing the countryside was cool, but I didn’t want to waste anymore than that! And all these people? They would have to walk back home now, another three hours—and for nothing!

Thankfully the others on the team took it calmer than I did. We decided to pray and get directions from Up There. So we stopped a moment to get quiet and know what to do. In the end, it was decided that a messenger would send the people home, and we would go with a smaller van up towards the camp to check out the roads and see if they were indeed passable by the truck. (We were told that recent rains had turned it to thick mud and that there was no way the truck could pass.) We really wanted to at least see the IDP camp for ourselves and get some video footage for the sponsors and donors of the goods, so that they could see where exactly the items were going. Then we would return with the big truck on Monday and distribute the goods at the campsite proper before proceeding to the next camp in Moroto district (the place where they spit on you and stick you under their armpit). We would spend the night there and then leave the following morning to return to Kampala.

At last a decent plan was formulating…

The van seated us plus a bunch of other young Karimojong men. We went up a good road that turned off onto a goat trail of mud. Yes, it was tough, but nothing as near as we feared. We arrived fine at the camp and spent some time talking with the children there. I wore my Karimojong cloth slung over one shoulder, in the tradition of the women in these parts. It was sad to see the conditions here, so far from the nearest bore hole and not much food around besides sunflower seeds and millet. One of the little girls I held suffered from a burnt hand—God knows how it was scalded.

After checking out the camp (it was near empty because everyone had trekked down to receive the donations) we started back where we’d come from. Only minutes later, the van stopped. It had run out of gas! And we were literally in the middle of nowhere! They sent a runner to go to a nearby mission house where they had fuel. Meanwhile, we all waited in the blistering sun. I found it a good time to take snapshot portraits of some of the beautiful children on the roadside. But still, it was quite funny, having a breakdown smack dab in the wilderness—one of those things you just know is gonna happen!

Finally, an hour later, the runner returned in another vehicle with the fuel. We were on the road again in no time! All the way back, we could see the groups of people trudging back wearily, and again I felt angry at that one man who had to spoil everything. The others on the team felt upset as well, but we tried to keep up our spirits. “Well,” one said, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, right? Maybe there is a reason God is allowing this to happen totally contrary to what we’d planned. Maybe there’s something we’re not seeing so we just have to trust the Lord about this.”

Later that evening while chatting with our truck driver, it became apparent that there had been some kind of misunderstanding. He had wanted to be back in Kampala by Monday night, not Tuesday!—Which meant that we would have to do everything we’d planned within Monday—including the long drive home. There was no way we would make it to two camps in the same day with the amount of time we’d anticipated it may take to distribute goods to hundreds of people! Our driver kept on insisting that he’d already told us we would have to be back Monday night, so we had to comply. We decided that Moroto would have to wait for another trip. But we had all these tons of stuff! So, as night fell, we began offloading half the supplies onto the nuns’ compound (I won’t drop names as to whose brilliant idea this was!) to leave there until it could go to Moroto at another date.

When the sisters came out and we asked if we could use their storage room for the things, they said, “Oh no, we have been having problems with theft. If you leave the things here, it will put us in danger of robbers again!” The sisters had been so kind and hospitable to us. Putting them in danger of anything negative was the last thing we wanted to do! So then came the task of putting everything BACK in the truck!

I was even more upset by this time—it was dark, I was tired and hungry, and very frustrated with a certain politician who’d brought all this confusion on us! But I no choice but to roll up my sleeves and get to work throwing the goods back onto the truck. Finally we prayed about our next move and decided to just give it a rest for the night, wake up early tomorrow (oh yeah I forgot to tell you that the politician changed his agenda and decided to come to the convent at 7am instead to go with us to the camp), visit the camp with the donations, hand out everything—all ten tons—that we had at this one camp, and then start for home at midday.

So there, that’s what happened today. Sometimes circumstances are way beyond your control and you just have to flow with the program. And sometimes, it takes a whole lot of faith to trust God that He knows what he’s doing and even all this going back and forth is for some reason. It’s not a lesson I easily learn—obviously, because the Lord is testing me on it yet again…

Nyx is a vounteer Missionary Member of The Family International. Her missions have taken her through South East Asia, India, East Africa and South Africa. She currently runs charity projects for terminally-ill, indigent children in The Philippines and is also a child-education consultant, youth counsellor, freelance writer for TV, radio, magazines, a voice-talent, illustrator, artist, Events Host and Music Marketer. She is the eldest of 13 siblings, and a Taurean who enjoys spicy food, open-bar nights, long baths, photographing people, and throwing festive parties. Dislikes: Whiny women, bratty children, spoiled men. More about Nyx

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 10:21 am and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.