Yesterday we travelled to Paidah, in the far north-west of Uganda, around 400kms from Kampala, on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of our newer affiliated pastors is located here, and I felt it was important to meet him, regardless of the distance involved.
We were supposed to leave at 9.30am. However, they had taken the car in for a service the day before, and it was not yet finished. “There’s just a little bit to finish. It won’t be long.”
So, because I was expecting that we would go any minute, and I didn’t want to begin something important and have to stop in the middle, I decided to while away the time playing games on my phone.
The morning passed playing games. No sign of the car.
Lunchtime came. I ate. Still no car. “It won’t be long now.” More games.
By four o’clock I was getting pretty cranky. I texted the pastor to suggest that we abandon the trip for the day, since even if we left then and there it would be well after midnight when we arrived, and that we go up today instead. “No, we have to go today. It won’t be long.”
Now I was really cranky and upset. I felt that he was showing absolutely zero concern for my welbeing, in that I would get very little sleep ahead of a full day of ministry. And when I was bundled into the car at 4.30, I told him so in no uncertain terms.
So my journey began angry and upset. Then it got worse. I needed to withdraw some cash at the ATM. I find the conversion to local currency confusing at the best of times, but was pretty sure I had worked out the amount I needed correctly. The ATM itself was difficult, with a non-responsive touch pad that had to be poked several times to get it to enter a figure, but I was sure I had entered the right amount. But when my money came out, it was a fraction of what I had asked for. I felt sick on the stomach. If this was the machine that had given me the wrong amount, I stood to lose around $700 – money I definitely could not afford to lose. Had I, after all, entered the amount incorrectly? I was sure I hadn’t. And I kept remembering the currency exchange in Kenya at the start of my journey that short-changed me by $200. There was no way I could check the current transaction till I could get online, so I spent the first part of the journey angry, upset, and feeling sick on the stomach at my possible loss.
As the trip progressed I was able to hand it all over to the Lord, repent of my reactions (and later apologize to the pastor) and trust God to work it all out one way or another.
For about half the distance we had good, fast roads. Then we turned off to come to Paidah, and things went downhill very rapidly. The roads from rough to goat tracks. Every time a car (or more likely truck) passed us, a cloud of dust totally obliterated the view. Add to that the habit of African drivers of not dipping their headlights when approaching other traffic, and our driver, Ronald, had his work cut out for him.
The laughable thing was that, even on these appalling roads, there were speedbumps. Really? I would have thought the road itself was all the speedbump that was needed.
As the night wore on, we passed through multiple small settlements, and with each one I wondered, “Is this it?” No, time and again it wasn’t.
Finally, at 2am, we saw a sign saying Paidah. The pastor and his wife had waited to meet us, and took us to the hotel. At 2.30 I finally got to my room, but that wasn’t the end of the day. A rowdy party (disco?) downstairs kept going through the night. I looked at the clock at 5, my normal getting-up time, and noted that they were still at it. After that I drifted to sleep out of utter exhaustion, and woke around 8.
Today I had two back-to-back 1-hour ministry sessions in the afternoon.
The pic is looking down the road from the hotel.
