March Madness
Just some random events from the past month to give you a taste of the cultural experience in Kampala….with a surprise ending!

Night on the Town
When we are meeting new people in Uganda, they will often ask, “how do you like Uganda?” We often tell them that we love the Ugandan people because they are so friendly, but that we do not like the city because of the horrific driving conditions. Tony Gibson, the ministry director of Heart of the Bride, just finished a visit with us, and our last night out was one of those nights when the traffic was crazy. It was Thursday night, which ordinarily would have been a fairly calm time to drive. However, it was the night before Good Friday and in Uganda Easter is a 4-day holiday beginning on Friday. Thus, the traffic was very heavy as people prepared for the holiday and were moving about. We went out for dinner at a restaurant about 6 miles from our house and traffic was fine getting there…getting home was another story. When we left the restaurant traffic was bumper-to-bumper and barely moving. We had not gone but about 0.5 km when my car was rammed in the rear twice. I was able to pull to the curb and immediately got out of the car to assess the damage and find out what happened. I was confused because we were moving so slowly that it did not seem likely that someone would hit us from behind. The driver of the car behind me also exited his vehicle and began explaining to me that the taxi, or matatu as they are called here, had pushed him out of the way in order to get through a roundabout. The taxi, which is a minivan, had placed his bull bar on the rear bumper of the car behind me, and then pushed him out of the way. When he did this, the car behind me rammed by car. The damage was restricted to the rear bumper and is only cosmetic, fortunately.

Well, that was just the start of a wild adventure home. It took us two hours to drive the 6 miles to our house, and almost that entire time was spent just navigating the first three miles. There was so much traffic that much of the city center was in gridlock, with traffic unable to move in either direction and preventing either from being able to move. It is not uncommon when traffic gets heavy for people to create their own lane by pulling out into oncoming traffic. This is an extremely annoying habit that I have yet to have patience with. On this particular night, it was occurring in both directions and two-lane roads could not support the newly established four lanes of traffic, which resulted in gridlock. At one particularly bad intersection, civilians had gotten out of their cars and were directing cars one-by-one through the intersection. They even had whistles! If not for them, then we would probably still be sitting there. There was a car full of Dutch people directly in front of us for most of the drive home, and one lady passenger was furious with the events. She got out of her car on multiple occasions and yelled at the oncoming cars blocking the way. It was great entertainment. At one point when we had totally stopped, she got out of the car and bolted for a small grocery store. Tony joked that she was going to get some beer to calm her nerves. He was close…she was getting cigarettes. Once we finally got through the jam we stopped at another small store to get some groceries, and we saw her buying wine. Hopefully, she has calmed down now because she was close to a nervous breakdown or heart attack.

In order to get through the heaviest part of the jam, we had to drive on the sidewalk and squeeze through spots that could not have had more than 2 or 3 inches of clearance on each side of the car. It was definitely our craziest driving experience yet, and one that I hope is never repeated nor topped.

Pests at School
We recently had our class schedules interrupted for some unplanned inspections. Each class, in turn, was told to report to the school nurses station to have their heads checked…for lice. There have been three outbreaks of lice since Christmas and several boys have had to shave their heads. On this particular day, one girl in my class had them, as did girls in Christian’s and Blake’s classes. Fortunately, none of our boys had lice, (nor me!) and we all kept our hair. They said this is not uncommon, but that this was the worst year in recent memory.

Witchdoctors
We are always hearing witchdoctor stories and you never know what is true and what is just legend. They definitely exist here, and some of them have real spiritual power. During the recent violence in Kenya, we heard multiple reports of weird events. During the violence, looting was rampant and the witchdoctors in the coastal city of Mombasa decided to take action. We are told that many of the witchdoctors gathered and put curses on anyone who stole things so that they could not steal or would return items. The following events are accounts that we heard from many Kenyans. Some of them said that they even saw some of the events on TV.
• There were stories of people who stole bikes who could not get off of the bikes and had to keep pedaling until they collapsed.
• People that stole TVs and carried them on their backs could not remove the TVs from their backs until they returned them.
• People who stole cell phones would hear the ringing of the phone coming from their stomach.
• People who stole timber could not release the timber until it was returned to the place it was stolen from. They even said that the timber was speaking to the people and would tell them to put it back in its original place in the warehouse.
• And some tales that are not related to the post-election violence…some Tanzanian men were speaking to the students recently about marriage and were warning them of the dangers of impotence from being “bewitched”. They said it was very common in their village.

Too Much of a Good Thing
Some recent activities reminded me of an event several months ago that I don’t think I ever related. We often go swimming at a local resort that hosts large conferences. Just over a week ago, Anwar Gaddafi, political leader of Libya, was attending the conference and so security was very tight and included metal detectors. Several months ago, security was high, and we also had to pass through metal detectors and be inspected. During one those inspections some police officers asked me if I was married. When I told them yes, they then asked me if I would like to have another wife. I explained to them that I was happy with one wife, and that my current wife would not approve of another wife. They explained to me how sweet Ugandan women are and how all men need more than one wife. They told me that my wife did not need to know about another wife because I could keep her in another town and visit her while on “business trips”. They were half kidding and half serious. They told me that if I got them 10 cows that they would arrange the whole thing. After about 5 minutes of trying to convince me that this was a good thing, I noticed a female officer off to the side listening to the whole exchange. So, I asked her, as a woman, what she thought about what they were trying to talk me into, thinking that she would take the side of my wife and say it was a bad thing. However, she caught me totally by surprise when she responded, “yes, you should take a second wife and it should be me!” They all got a good laugh at my expense and I have since avoided being baited into such conversations.

Could It Finally Be a Girl?
We have been pursuing adoption for several months now and it has gone much slower than we anticipated and is much more complicated than we would have thought. We have often wondered why it is taking so long. Well, maybe we have our answer. As part of our adoption process, we have had to undergo medical testing for various diseases, including HIV (we were both negative), which involves a fairly comprehensive blood screening. I guess they just want to make sure that adoptive parents are not going to die soon. Anyway, they called us back in last week to get our test results and Pamela had tested positive on one of her screenings….yep, the one for pregnancy. This was quite the shock for us! So, now we wonder if we should continue to pursue adoption or not. I have heard many stories about people getting pregnant right after adopting, but I did not know that just pursuing adoption could cause such things.

Blessings from the Tribe,

Kevin