Days 24-30:‏ The African feeling

5.10.09: DAY TWENTY FOUR. YWAM ‘Hopeland’ base, somewhere outside Jinja.
Tonight, stalking through the throbbing tropical darkness with no agenda, swigging a bottle of Stoney ginger beer, I finally felt it: The African Feeling. I don’t know if it’s just a nostalgia thing, remembering that first holiday in Tanzania aged 12, in swimming pools and land rovers and semi-open air restaurants. But I like it. I feel at home in it. I feel alive in it. Doing my first proper squat-job just now didn’t faze me. The mozzie net suits me fine. A great evening telling wonderful stories from around the world. Maybe it’s the ex-pat life I’m eulogising.

But there was other nostalgia today as well – rolling through Jinja, the covered arcades, the cafes, the Busoga Trust office (www.busogatrust.co.uk). A surprisingly lovely chat with Johnson, who runs the trust in Uganda. He told me I should live in Africa. ‘It’s a beautiful place to be’, he said. I certainly taking some samples. And when I signed his visitor’s book, I saw Rev Ezekiel had visited just before me. So I stopped wussing out, that weird paralysis concerning ‘someone you used to know’ broken by the great joy of giving and receiving interest in Johnson. I got in touch, arranged to meet, great. I realise this is a way of giving love – choosing to visit, devote time to people. O r to host. That I might do nothing practical, might even take these guys away from their vital work, just emphasises how African culture (and, I think, the human heart) prizes the power of simply giving someone your attention.

11.10.09: DAY THIRTY
Just had a great moment. The last few weeks we’ve been watching East Africa’s answer to X Factor: the snappily titled Tusker Project Fame Season 3. Our favourite, throughout, has been the down to earth reggae singing Rwandan with the French accent – Alpha. Oh yes. The worry throughout has been that the Kenyans would win because they have a bigger population and more money. But they had 2 contestants in the final tonight, and they split the Kenyan vote. When Alpha’s name came out the envelope, me and the rest of the household exploded off the sofas, danced round the room screaming “Alpha!” Good times.

9.10.09: DAY TWENTY EIGHT. Independence Day (‘Uganda’s 47th birthday – 2 years above the life expectancy’, according to the comedians I saw tonight)
Got on better with drama groups this week. Some lovely moments, like when playing ‘Pass the clap’, starting to invent new ways of passing, Juko put ‘the clap’ down his trousers and I told him to go and wash it… Yesterday Namuya actually waited for me to walk together.

10.10.09: DAY TWENTY NINE
First session taking 4-12s. I’ve been thinking, ‘I won’t know what to do, they’ll be bouncing off the walls’, but they were fantastic, really well behaved, I was clear, and we did some good stuff.

7.10.09: DAY TWENTY SIX. LMCC office, Namuwongo.
I’ll do this later. Two ragged little boys have followed me in and seem to be expecting me to entertain them. I’ve got nothing. But interruptions like this are usually from God, so let’s try and go with it…

8.10.09: DAY TWENTY SEVEN. 7.22pm. Still in Namuwongo, over half an hour after I got in the taxi.
Now I know what Gridlock looks like.

It rained all afternoon. The road to the school, being resurfaced, is now impassable. The driver is pulling overtaking moves that make me blush. Town taxi park is 40+ minutes walk, but I wonder if it still might be the best move. I’ll text home for a straw poll…

Pay, get out, haggle a boda (motorbike taxi), bundle for a taxi in town, chat to the lady next to me, who manages disasters for the Red Cross. The conversation grinds to a halt as the passengers nod, and I write this (more and more raggedly as we get out of the jam and beyond street lights):

Those boys were hard work. I was trying to talk to them, asking questions, as I might usually do when trying to engage with someone. But their English wasn’t great, so every question took about 3 attempts, if they got it at all. And then I didn’t understand half their answers – they were rarely answers to what I’d actually asked. But they didn’t make any efforts to initiate anything else. I don’t know what they wanted, or expected. My best guess is they just had nowhere else to go. They stay with one’s grandfather in the city, who feeds them but can’t afford their school fees. One’s mother is still alive but workless in the village. They both wore their school uniforms – possibly their only clothes. I’ve seen them in the same dirty half-buttonless shirts and cut down belted up men’s trousers before. I couldn’t identify the set of white marks on one’s head.

I don’t know how they keep smiling. It’s like a default or something. They may be bored, hungry, bereaved and hopeless, but they’re just aware of a strange mzungu who might do something interesting, be nice, or give them something. All those heavy things which would crush me don’t seem to affect their mood at all. Maybe it’s a spiritual thing, like I wondered last week. Or maybe Africans only think in the moment, while I consider the ups and downs and responsibilities of my whole life most of the time. We think it’s foolish: not to worry where our next meal is coming from and so miss a good few. But is there a secret of happiness there?
I gave them nothing, by the way. Not because I thought it unwise. Because I didn’t want to. I felt pressured, abused. I’d done nothing to stir friendship except not tell them to clear off or ignore them. In a way I treated them as equals, human beings. But also that’s nonsense. We’re not equal. I have every thinkable advantage over those guys. And I didn’t even give them a sandwich, or tell them about Jesus’ offered relationship with them. I made same excuse, shut the door on them and ate my packed lunch.

I’ve been driven really strongly on this trip to connect with and understand Africans as equals in a way that’s totally right and good. But I’ve also been feeling a lack of simple compassion. I don’t want my heart broken, my greed exposed, my mind blown by the inconceivable injustice of reality. I want to do my bit and go home. But God sent me those two boys because He doesn’t just want me to be good – He wants every part of me. And I don’t want to change.

Roughing it for 3 months doesn’t let me off the hook. Like Tolstoy, I can live and work as a serf, but I’m still a master. The question is; how can I be a good master? To an extent, that’s what people want. That’s what people need.

Love you all very much,
Tim