What Pictures Cannot Tell- January 23

“Where are the pictures?” everyone wants to know. Please remember – we are playing with a new system to the IT folks in Uganda. High-speed broad band and all the technical blessings and nightmares it brings are just being discovered here. Some days, everything is slick as a whistle, and others…well, get your cup of tea and relax at the computer while attachments attach. Just yesterday, we sent our grandchildren two beautiful pictures of a colobus monkey and a close up of a majestic kob wearing its horns like a crown, both taken in Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve. In an instant – pictures attached and email flew through the system. Two hours later, we tried to send a former student pictures of the school building and students with no luck. Tricky system, and some day we will be smarter than it is.
Until then, we will send pictures to a friend in the states who will post on our blog – we have decided that trying to get pictures through to one person will be more successful than getting them to a host of individuals. And as we have made that decision, wondering why in the world our efforts at sending the visual part of our experience are daily thwarted, we have also begun to ponder what the pictures really tell everyone at home. Are they speaking the truth? Do they reveal personalities? Are they uncovering emotions that lie behind the penetrating eyes and beautiful smiles? Are they unraveling the mystery of the Uganda scowl? Do they tell hidden stories? Do they guide the viewer to a deeper understanding of Ugandan? Will you know Uganda better because you have seen a picture of its landscape and its people?
If I showed you a picture of a Ugandan woman, hunched over her hoe, wrapped in beautiful, but dirty, fabric, barefooted and dripping from the sun’s heat, surrounded by baby green shoots bursting through mounds of dirt, what would you see? Would you hear a mother contentedly humming to her baby sitting on a cloth nearby in the dirt? Would you sense her gratitude that the earth is cooperating as it willingly bears its burden to feed her family? Or would you ache with the sorrow that she daily carries because this small field she digs is her only source of nutrition for her 6 children? Would you read in her bent-at-the-waist frame the weariness of years of loss…of spouse, of children, of parents?
If you saw a crystal clear, gushing mountain stream cascading down the sheer drops of the Rwenzoris, would it take your breath away? Would you see the valley stream it empties into on its way to providing a much-needed water supply for village residents? Would you see it as the source of both life and death for the up-country peasants who have no clean water source, but must have water to survive? Would you think of the creativity and ingenuity being used by people all over the world to invent new ways to provide clean water for a people plagued with intestinal diseases, parasites and worms which claim young lives on a regular basis?
Would you think Jesus is Lord of the crowd with hands raised clutching a Bible, eyes closed, and mouths open in praise and worship? Would you applaud the ease with which these people embrace a faith, brought to them long ago by colonizers and evangelists who baptized without permission and claimed entire villages for the Lord without conversion? Or would you be puzzled at the blending of tribal customs and Christian teachings which constantly leaves a native in confusion over how many wives to take and why men and women can be equal in the eyes of God but not in the local village? Would you thrill to the pulse of the drums behind the song being sung or wonder if they understood the words since few of them study the Bible? Would you take for granted the statistic that 85% of Ugandans are Christian and whisper “how easy it is to believe when you have nothing else in your life” or question if they have ever understood the Gospel?
What would you really see if I showed you a photo of a young Ugandan girl in a school uniform with books covered in newspaper clutched to her side? Would you consider her privileged to be getting an education or grasp that Uganda works to give a free education to all its citizens? Would you see her in a sea of faces – 50 to 60 to be exact – in her classroom, realizing that free education has brought the masses to the door without adequate provision for each student? Would you flinch at the blows she can receive from a teacher as discipline, a common practice in overcrowded campuses? Would you see the ragged and torn dress she puts on when she arrives home in exchange for the neatly pressed uniform she works diligently to keep clean for school? Would you catch a glimmer of the determination it takes for someone who walks 5 kilometers to and from school each day to possibly find a way to lay claim to a future of promise?
If you looked at the candid shots of men, boys, teens, young adults pushing bicycles loaded with matooke, cases of soft drinks, cartons of eggs, gerry cans of water, or bundles of wood…would you sigh and think “how sad they don’t have a truck”? Or would you see each step they take behind their bikes as they push their wares to market as the first step to developing as a small businessman? Would you understand that the peasants are just now beginning to grasp the idea of expanding their production to sell to a public who can bring them shillings to provide education, food, clothing, housing and healthcare for their families? Would you see them sitting one afternoon under a eucalyptus tree at a local village meeting where agriculture experts are teaching them how to financially benefit from the small pieces of land they own? Would you applaud their efforts at pushing produce to market just as you applaud the opening of another Starbucks?
If you had a picture of a “slasher” along the side of the road, whacking away at the tall grass threatening to interrupt traffic, would you wonder where the weed-eater was? Or would you see how good it must feel to a Ugandan to expend his energy in a worthwhile endeavor when the other choice is to sit under a tree all day long? Would you understand that there are days where petrol for a weed-eater is unavailable because it can’t get here from the noisy port of Mombasa on the Kenya coast, so keeping life simple is often a blessing?
If you thumbed through my stack of photos and stopped at the minister or the priest with his neat black and white collar encircling his neck, smile on his face and his arm around a local child, would you rejoice that Christianity has arrived in Uganda to the tune of 85% of the population? Perhaps you would see churches filled with lively congregations, opportunities for the Gospel message to be taught and God’s word to be studied. Maybe you would ponder the sacrifice that so many genuinely and passionately have made to be the feet, hands and heart of God this far around the world? But would you also see what the Ugandans sometimes see when they see a pastor’s collar…the possibility that faith and corruption walk hand in hand and that God’s word cannot possibly be true if the man who tells me it is true doesn’t walk his talk?
If you saw jumpsuit-clad workers for the electrical company, straining and heaving to pull up new electrical poles into place, charged with the challenge of bringing electricity to western Uganda, I’m certain you would have high praise for the present government which is working to bring sufficient infrastructure to its people, no matter how close or far they are from Kampala. You would feel good about Uganda and its progress to provide for its people, understand that many countries have come alongside of this tiny “pearl of Africa” to bring it opportunities for prosperity and help it extend the life expectancy of its people. You would imagine the smiles on the faces and the explosion of applause as the light switch goes on the first time in a small hut on a remote hillside. But would you add one plus one and get three, as most families will? Would you see productivity or futility? Electrical voltage brought to rural huts does not equal light – can the peasants afford electricity? Do they have enough shillings in their pockets to reach up and grab the energy from that wire that has been so carefully strung on the pole to connect to their own hut?
And if you scanned photos of faces, hundreds and hundred of Ugandan faces, what would you see if you looked into their eyes and behind their smiles or their scowls? Would you worry about their survival – will they die from disease, malnutrition, exhaustion? Would you understand the pride they take in their country, and even more specifically in their kingdom? Would you read the bewilderment in their minds as they struggle with the dilemma of how to cling to generational ties and still yearn for a cell phone and a television? Could you ever imagine that they are just simply content with their hut and a plot of land which feeds their family, even though that simple contentment also most often brings early death according to western standards? Would you wonder what will happen to their daily lives as they are more and more forced to engage with the 21st century which eludes them financially but surrounds them with its toys and tools every time they leave the village?
What would you see if you have never been to Africa…to touch it, to smell it, to experience it? And what will we see after we leave this place? Will we read pictures with a new understanding, or will we put Uganda behind us and see only what we want to see – will our glance at a photo be one dimensional or multi-layered with colors and hues shining through the glossy finish? Will photos speak a deep new language to us of the universal body of Christ or will we lapse into our superficial reactions of dismay and sympathy when we see an African face? Will God have carved a new place in our hearts which will prompt prayer for a people we once did not know and unity with spirits we still might not understand? We don’t have all the answers, but we do know that each photo has captured a moment in time of Kingdom progress which has not been wasted – it has been part of the earthly journey for all of us, African and American, on the way to eternal life with the Father.