My ministry here in Uganda is almost over for this trip. I have just one more meeting scheduled, tomorrow’s Sunday service at Pastor David’s church. So today is a very welcome rest day. This week has been relatively easy – I have only ministered three times – but the exhaustion is cumulative and my body is letting me know about it.
I normally get up at 5am for my morning prayer time, but because I have today off I decided I could sleep a bit longer. By 6am I felt I couldn’t stand being in bed any longer and so got up to start my day … or so I thought. Turned on the light … no light. Since It was still dark and my little torch gives only a tiny circle of light, not nearly enough to do anything by, there was no choice but to crawl back into bed and wait till either the power came back on or the day grew light enough for me to be able to see without power.
By about 7 it was light outside, and barely light in my room – light enough, at least, to dress. Not much later the power came back, and my day was able to begin.
It’s possible that the outage was the result of rain … it was bucketing through the night, and continued into the morning. One thing of note here in Africa is that it never “just rains”, it pours. Massively heavy downpours which start suddenly and stop just as suddenly. Several times on previous trips I have had to suspend or even end a meeting because the rain on the iron roof of the church building has been so heavy that it has drowned out all sound within the building, even with the use of microphones.
Last night was not a good one for sleeping, thanks to the dogs. I have already mentioned that dogs here are kept for only one purpose, guarding the property. Most dogs in Africa are generic: a kind of light tan colour, and looking much like our Australian dingoes. Mostly they are shut up during the day, and released only after the last person in the household has finished anything they need to do outside. There are always a few wandering around outside during the day, but I don’t know whether these are actually strays of just the result of some people being slack in locking their animals up for the day. Almost all households have several dogs, and because they are in close proximity they join with each other in a fury of barking should anyone or anything move where they don’t think they should. And like most dogs, they don’t see their territory as restricted to the area confined by the fences of their property. Someone must have been moving around last night, because all the neighbourhood dogs kept going off.
One of the good things about having a day off is that it is a day when I don’t have to haul myself up into a 4WD. Because my leg strength isn’t great, particularly on high steps, this process falls back to my right arm pulling me up using the hand-hold inside the cabin. Like the rest of me, my right arm is grateful for a rest.
Although some people here do drive ordinary cars, a 4WD is really essential to negotiate these roads. All the people who have been my drivers while I have been here have the most amazing driving skills. I watch them squeeze past each other on roads that are barely wide enough for one vehicle, let alone two, and I think, “How did they do that? The cars must be elastic!” And it all happens without any trace of angst or road rage.
As I write this I am waiting for breakfast, which usually happens around 10am, and is pretty much the same every day: two boiled eggs, a couple of bananas, maybe some chapatti, maybe some “Irish” potatoes (as opposed to sweet potatoes) which are cooked in a kind of tomato sauce. And hot milk/water for my coffee, which I bought because I can’t do without my morning fix.
My supper, which they insist on giving me even though I have tried to tell them that I don’t like to eat at night, is basically the same as breakfast, so most days I end up eating four boiled eggs and four bananas – I think I’m starting to look like a boiled egg and a banana. (Lunch is also much the same every day – rice, potatoes, a kind of green vegetable that is like spinach and is sometimes cooked with beetroot, and some kind of meat in a sort of soup to serve over the rice.)
Since the rest of the countries on this trip are French-speaking, I’m wondering how much French influence, if any, there will be on the food. I guess I’ll find out in a couple of days.