A Week of Surprises (January 19th)

A WEEK OF SURPRISES!
After living in Fort Portal for almost 5 months, some aspects of Ugandan life have become as natural as breathing…I’m not saying that we have accepted those aspects as healthy, normal or beneficial, but that we have learned to manage the circumstances in order to survive to face another day! We have listened to the advice of both savvy Ugandans and Americans made wise by experience, as well as being baptized by fire in the midst of our own personal trials and tribulations. We have stood our ground and planted and unfurled our flag of an ethical standard on a foreign soil which is not always hospitable to our demands.
So when I say a “week of surprise,” you might be guessing something like unexpected visitors, a sudden influx of funding, a missing box in the mail, a food item from home we haven’t eaten in months…who knows what you are thinking. But what we are saying is that in the midst of continued difficulties, frustrations and trials at work in the mission field, God blessed us with a week of tiny little incidents which spoke huge words of encouragement to weary souls who are looking for any bread crumb to catch as it falls from the table of ethics, integrity and Biblical principles. Each incident alone would stand tall and proud in any of this journaling, but realizing that they each came in the span of less than a week probably shows that God knew we needed a rather large dose of “I’m walking this with you” pills.
In a country where the headlines and articles on the first 3 pages of the daily newspaper reflect which department of the government is under scrutiny for corruption, or which MP is under fire for the same, and a constant topic of conversation with Ugandans is corruption, we have come to accept this reality of the country in which we live. The tendency to not quite tell the entire truth and the accepted use of deception and deceit to pepper transactions in this culture threatened to undo us from the first week of life in Uganda. Since our goal has been to use donor money wisely, protecting their interests in having us here in Uganda to build a school, we have taken very seriously the battles we have had to fight to be engaged in legitimate business. We have gone head to head with a variety of institutions and businesses to get legitimate refunds, fought Barclays bank over lost wires, wrangled with the URA over our car title, and simply accepted that we can always be hoodwinked into paying far too much for a long list of commodities. Fortunately, we have also been blessed by many Ugandans who seek a different standard from which to function…a life where you can trust your fellow citizen, business deals do not disintegrate into accusations, and accountability creates a stronger economy. But for now, no matter who we work with and what we are trying to accomplish, we are wary, suspicious and fully expecting to draw the short stick. The daily goal is to see it coming and do the best you can to circumvent the situation and come out victorious!
So within the span of one week, we heard Headmaster Julius explain to our new teacher Michael that Christ Aid Academy was more about building a school and caring about the students than it was about salary…Isa, the chef at Sunrise Lodge, called us to report that we had dropped a 10,000ugx note on the floor on our departure from a delicious dinner…and Yusef, our construction foreman, carefully counted and reported that the cement bag delivery crew had stolen 2 bags of cement. We were flying high on those incidents alone…a headmaster who grasped the concept of building a community through building a school rather than grasping at shillings, a young chef who was worried that we get our 10,000ugx back in our pockets instead of slipping it into his, and a construction foreman who took the time to count 103 bags of cement to verify the theft instead of shrugging it off as the Ugandan way.
We were in for an even bigger treat than we could have ever imagined…after Bob accidentally hit a parked car in the Mountains of the Moon parking lot. Yes, hit a car! Let your imagination run wild with that incident…in a country where no one wants to go to the police because they might just need a bribe to “make something happen” in your favor, what in the world do you do when you hit an unattended car? In a country where very few people carry car insurance because they can barely afford a car, much less the payment for insurance, who are you gonna’ call? It’s dark, it’s late, no one saw…our car has no damage. Of course you go find the owner! We would think of doing nothing else.
Now that the situation is resolved, it is actually a little humorous how it all happened. Bob was not in the best mood anyway, having camped at the construction site most of the day, working with the mission team, and wanting only to put his feet up at home, relax and enjoy some down time. On his afternoon return home, he and Stewart had struggled with the back door of our Prado to get the latch working properly when suddenly…pop…Stewart undid some very important part of the latch and the door would not shut…at all. With all heads gathered together in commiseration, Gladys, Stewart and Bob hopped in the car to head to the nearest known body-shop guru for a quick fix and I headed to Mountains with the mission team. Bob arrived very late, didn’t order, nibbled off my plate and was ready to go the minute he arrived.
In the deep dark of Ugandan night, no moon shining, no stars out, a small, also very dark car had parked next to our front passenger side…with maybe only a foot between our rather large Prado and the baby SUV. As Bob hopped in the driver’s side in the deep dark Ugandan night, he never saw the small, also very dark baby SUV, started the car, put it in reverse, turned the wheel, hit the gas and undoubtedly firmly whacked the baby SUV. While I stood waiting at the pickup spot, Bob was ending his day all alone on a not-so-good note. When he walked around the corner from the parking lot with no wheels under him, I knew something was not right. Somehow, he stayed calm, all the while I’m sure thinking he should have stayed at home with his feet propped up and enjoying some down time instead of being at Mountains of the Moon at 10:30 on a very dark Ugandan night.
He found a hotel employee who immediately came to the car, inspected the damages, shook his head is dismay, and said he knew the owner and headed back into the hotel. In just a few minutes, a young Ugandan man came out of the hotel, Bob backed our Prado up so the lights could shine on the damage…a broken rear view mirror and a dented and scratched door. There were attempts at light conversation and no wailing and moaning from the owner, and soon he and Aiden exchanged phone numbers, calmly agreeing to meet the following morning to “settle” the situation. And just what does “settle” the situation mean in a foreign African country? We could only imagine, and spent the better part of the late evening and the early morning plotting and planning how to at least survive the situation without too much financial damage. You would have thought we were lining up our troops to go into major life and death battle instead of simply figuring out who to call, where to meet and what to offer the owner of the damaged car.
Lots of prayer and a good night’s sleep later, we both woke up with the same idea! Call Lew, the Baptist missionary who always tells the truth, confronts a situation head on, and knows how to financially arm wrestle his way through any troublesome situation. There was no thought of calling an insurance company because that means you file a police report. You file a police report and you crawl down into the abyss of money passing under tables or behind backs. We both wanted to just honestly pay for the damages, wish Aiden the best, and be happy that no one was hurt! The resolution to the problem could be so very simple from our perspective, but from every story we had heard about such dealings in Uganda, from both mzungus and from Ugandans, we did not expect simplicity. We expected weeks of hotly contested estimates on how much it would take to repair the minor damages.
We called Lew, only to discover that he had commitments and would not be around. We called Jeff with no answer…we called Doug with no answer… all these Americans had far more experience, ours being at zero, than we had in dealing with delicate situations here in Uganda. As Bob sat and puzzled over how to proceed without his wing man, I sat and tenaciously held on to the idea of Lew going with Bob. For some reason, my mind wouldn’t let him go to Kyenjojo, the neighboring town he was headed to. In a few short minutes, Lew had called back, said he would delay his departure, and head to Bob’s meeting with Aiden. Wing man back in place, Bob drew courage, we decided that we would pay no more than 1,500,000ugx for the car repair, analyzed how to withdraw that many shillings from the bank and we headed out in the Prado of now ill-repute.
Knowing that these meetings take place between only the involved parties and chosen wing men, rather like an old fashioned duel, I hopped out of the car to spend time with Brandi and her baby girls, while Bob and Lew headed across the street to Mountains, swords of truth and honor ready to be unsheathed. Brandi and I settled in for a long talk and the possibility of morning tea while Elizabeth played and Abigail slept. In 10 short minutes, we were stunned as the men walked back into the house with an amazing story. They were headed to a body shop at St. Joseph vocational school to get an estimate on the damages because…
When Bob and Lew arrived to face Aiden and his wing man, Aiden never drew his sword, but instead immediately told Bob that our car had not damaged his rear view mirror…it had been previously broken. Bob was stunned and asked why he was telling him the truth. Aiden replied, “You hit my car and came to find me. My countryman would have left and never told me. You told me the truth, I must tell you the truth.” Bob asked how he would like to proceed in taking care of the car repair. Aiden replied, “You should not pay any more than it costs to have the car repaired. Let’s go to an auto body shop and get an estimate. You can pay them directly or give me the money and I will have it fixed in Kampala when I return.”
Bob and Lew were speechless…and continued to suspect foul transactions on the horizon. Unfortunately we have already been groomed to suspect that Aiden would take us to “his” body shop and the price would be…let’s say…expanded a bit. So it wasn’t until the entire transaction was completed that Bob and Lew breathed a deep sigh of relief and took suspicion out of the equation. Aiden had broken the mold and played fair. He had stepped up to the plate to go to bat for ethics and honor. He told only the truth and nothing but the truth, asked only for what was rightfully his and the case was closed.
On arrival at the St. Joseph vocational school, run by the priests so one would assume ethics are fairly important, the mechanic studied the baby SUV and gave an estimate of 159,000ugx…keep in mind, we were prepared to pay up to 1,500,000ugx to simply walk away from the accident and not hear from Aiden again. Aiden thought it was too much for Bob to pay and argued to have it reduced to 140,000ugx…Bob and Lew stood in wonder as Aiden worked diligently to be sure the price was fair, and finally agreed with everyone on 150,000ugx and called it a good day’s work. With legitimate shillings in hand, Aiden left having done a good day’s work as well. With a smile on his face, he told Bob, “I hope my handling this fairly will mean someone else will be fair to me some day.” There is an order to the universe which blesses us all…an order which calls on each of us to choose God’s ways so that chaos will not be victorious. The simple step of speaking truth spreads out in ripples which go farther than we can imagine and influence more than we can know. Minds have no need of churning, souls rest easy, and lives peacefully move on. We think Aiden just made our Hall of Fame for integrity and honesty…and we pray he will be fairly treated someday when he finds himself in need of the same honesty he showed us after Bob hit his very dark baby SUV in the deep dark of a Ugandan night.