I'm baack

To Kampala.

Kitgum can be summed up in two words. Severe gastrointestinal distress and lots of bugs.

Actually it was a good time. Not good as in fun, but good. We saw a lot of suffering. Not like limbs blown off, ears cut off suffering, but continual, mind-numbing circumstances that kill hope and cause unrelenting misery.

We visited a Night Commuter shelter every weeknight. The one FRM works with is lead by this great bunch of guys, Richard, David, Charles, Charles, another David I think and another guy. So we did a skit, taught some little bible studies, others in our group danced with the kids. There will be photos when they become available and I am not on a 24k connection. This group are the only ones reaching out to the kids, and the kids really respond to it.

We taught some basic health/medical stuff to the caregivers at the Kitgum Infant Care Center, which is an orphanage run by a guy named Terrance, who works at the hospital. Terrance is in charge of the nutrition department and he has 24 orphaned children that he has taken in, on top of his two children and six other dependants, which are presumably close family that have been orphaned. It is an amazing thing. We also saw his hospital, which is the best in Kitgum, and one of the group said it best, we keep our houses cleaner than that hospital. In the past 6 months 11,000 children alone have gone through there for treatment. The smell, welll, it must be smelled to be believed. Especially, if your sense of smell is heightened by severe gastrointestinal distress.

We went to an outreach in the IDP (internally displaced persons, think refugee) camp. The Richard, Charles, David group put it on. It made Kitgum seem like a luxury resort. Kitgum made Kampala seem like a luxury resort. Kampala makes Spokane seem like the Emerald City. So yes, 26,000 people crowded into a few acres with 6 bore-holes (water pumps) and 200 pit latrines. Appalling. Their tukuls (sp?) are round little huts, maybe 6 feet across and 4 feet high, entire familes live in there. There is literally about a foot apart. Anyway these guys did an outreach there that went well. Naturally it attracted all the drunks and nuts, who were fascinated by our whiteness and had to explain their lives to us. Of course, everyone there stared at us everywhere we went. That’s an uncomfortable feeling, especially knowing that some of them are rebels.

We ran out of gas, for the stove, the first day there. Electricity came and went, I think it was on for almost 6 hours one time. That was exciting. We ran out of water (not drinking) for a couple of days, had to use pit latrines those days. Which as luck would have it coincided with the worst of the severe gastrointestinal distress. Good times, good times. But, our last day, we had electricty, gas and water all at the same time. It was like a holiday.

It poured rain a couple of the afternoons. And after it rains like that the bugs come out. The first night it was the termites. Wait until you see the pictures. Since we had the only lights on in the city, due to our generator, they all came to our house. Which delighted Rose, our cook. So we went out and caught termites. And she fried them up the next day. They really taste like nothing. There is a hint of an undefineable flavor, definitely not chicken, but seriously, they taste like nothing. The next day it was flying ants. Which we did not catch and did not eat. But they got into everything that the termites didn’t. Also, there were cockroaches and spiders, but they were just a background nuisance. Except that one latrine I used where they started crawling up the sides of the pit toward me, that sort of made me nervous.

So there’s a lot more, but that’s enough for now.