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Isaac and pineapple
Isaac is Sam and Eva's sonLivingstone, my (Gerry's) boyhood Scottish hero, would have been ashamed of me. There I was sitting in the Source (of the Nile) Cafe tucking into a long-awaited and much-appreciated meal of sausage, eggs and chips, while this poor man endured 22 bouts of malaria as he spent his whole life in search of the elusive source of the Nile and never did find the place. No such problems today as this place is now a muzungu (white person) magnet. (We won't mention the fact that recent explorers think the source of the Nile is actually in Rwanda, as my friend Jean from Rwanda always maintained!) He would, however, have been happier with me regarding my setting up a business as he was an avid follower of the 3 'C's creed - Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. He was afterall a true-blue Victorian. Yes, at last, I have entered the world of commerce and I am now the proud owner and Chairman of 'Jinja Food Company'!
I had spent several weeks agonising over the name of the company. After much deliberation I chose my top three names which I gave to the lawyer to present for registration. When he came back with
the official documents, I was shocked to find 'Jinja Food Company' had been chosen, that hadn't even been on my list! The other names were already taken he said, I still don't know if the Government department had simply issued me that name or if they had asked him and he had simply said yes, but certainly nobody asked me! However, on reflection, the name may be ok as it is fairly broad and we can always register other names as subsidiaries if necessary.
All being well (or as they used to say in my old church in Scotland 'DV', short for Deo Volente or God willing, actually I have lived for over 40 years not knowing what DV stood for, so I have just checked it on the internet and found a reference to it in a sermon by the old Victorian preacher, Spurgeon. The appropriate verses in the Bible he quotes are "Go to now, ye that say, to day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life?
Kids from Bugiri
Sam has bought 15 acres of land here for planting crops. It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."—James 4:13-17 Interestingly this sermon was published the very week Spurgeon died. The ultimate sacrifice for a sermon illustration!) we are going to export pineapples and other fruits to the UK. I have employed a Ugandan manager who will manage when I'm back in the UK. If all goes well we will expand into other areas. Better trade than aid, as they say.
As for Bushfire, there is so much life here (where 56 vulnerable children live, mainly orphans) and the ‘village’ gets bigger all the time. Two new childrens homes are now built, temporarily occupied by a team of 10 people from Britain, but they will eventually accommodate another 30 children.
Here is a ‘snap shot’ moment from a typical day at Bushfire as I stood and looked around at the goings-on:
A solitary pecking hen
Kids from Bugiri
Sam has bought 15 acres of land here for planting crops. A half- built rocket stove
Boys playing football, some silky skills
A man carrying a large jackfruit
Builders work on the house
A boy half-way up a tree
The sound of clapping, singing and drumming from the large hall
3 guys sit on a log
2 men cycle past
A wee boy digs
Children play volleyball
A young girl holds a small baby
Some boys sit under a tree
A group goes for a walk
Builders work on the school
2 boys carry jerry cans filled with water
And the sun shines
Louis (an Aussie) and myself had the task of picking up the team from Britain at Entebbe Airport. We had to set off the day before and stay overnight in Entebbe as it was an early morning flight and it is too dangerous to drive at night (* more on this particular point later). We had to set off by 3pm to get to the airport before dark.
Fred, one of the boys who lives in the same house as me, helpfully washed the minibus I was going to drive. Unfortunately, he unwisely decided to reverse the minibus in the yard outside the house and duly
hit a lump of concrete, which knocked the spare wheel off its bracket underneath the vehicle! Well this took about an hour (and 3 people) to fit back on. I went back into the house during which time Fred took it upon himself to again reverse the minibus this time onto some very uneven grass! When I came back out to leave for the airport I couldn’t budge the van one inch! It was completely stuck at the back against a small hillock and the front wheels simply spun on the wet grass so I couldn’t go forward or backward! Fred and Irene (an older girl who lives with us) tried to push but to no avail. Another man was called but still no luck. Then Louis arrived, by which time we had been pushing and digging for half an hour. The sun was beating down and I was sweating buckets and we hadn’t even left the back yard! Yet another man was called and eventually we heaved the thing forward and I got enough traction to zoom ahead. Unfortunately there was a hedge about 2 feet in front of me which I went flying into! No damage was done
and we were finally all ready to leave. I’m glad to say everything went smoothly after that and we safely deposited the very tired team at Bushfire the next day.
*The reason we do not travel to the airport when it’s dark goes back to 1994 when Denise, Tom and I were staying near Jinja for 6 months. Mid-way through, Andrew, Tom’s friend, was coming out to visit by himself (he was about 14 years old). His flight was due to land at 6.30am so we set off about 4 in the morning while it was still dark. At about 4.30am we had to pass through Mabira Forest on a single track road as the other side of the road was being resurfaced. As I was driving slowly up a hill I noticed that the road ahead was blocked with concrete blocks with metal poles sticking out of them. Initially I thought this was where I would need to move on to the other side of the road, but as I got closer I could see there was no other side of the road as it had been dug up and on my left was the forest! I now
Diplomate Hotel, Kampala
We stayed here for 2 nights. Wonderful views over Kampala. sensed danger and I shouted out that something was wrong, just as some shadowy figures emerged from the forest. Bearing pistols and an AK47 I reckoned they hadn’t come to serve us breakfast, so I put my foot on the accelerator in an effort to ram through the roadblock. One of the metal poles slammed into the radiator which went up in smoke, and the car stopped!
The 4 robbers surrounded our car and the one with the sub-machine gun pointed at me and motioned for me to get out. I duly obliged. He was not a happy bunny at my heroic effort to evade being robbed and possibly killed and demanded to know why I had tried to drive through the roadblock. Meanwhile the other guys were trying to open the other doors which were locked. Denise was in the back with one of Tom’s little friends and she tried to keep the lock down on the door, but when one of the robbers pointed a gun at her she was forced to open up and get out the car.
At this point I had bizarrely entered into a bartering exchange with the main man. He demanded
View from Diplomate Hotel, Kampala sunset
We stayed here for 2 nights. Wonderful views over Kampala. 5 million shillings (about £2000 at the time), I gave him all we had which was about £20! They found my briefcase which contained a few books, a chequebook, credit cards, flight tickets and passports. They grabbed this and I pleaded with him to give us back our airline tickets as we were on the way to the airport (which was true, although we weren’t going to be flying!), he wanted to know what I could give him in return! I said he was free to take the toolbox, he agreed, then I asked for our passports back, "for what?", he again asked, I suggested they take the spare wheel, "fine", he said! So there we were with him rummaging through my bag looking for our documents to give back to us, I was surprised he didn’t ask me to hold his gun for him!!
Next, one man asked Denise where we were from; on hearing that we were from London he exclaimed that he had a brother who lived there! We were waiting for him to ask us if we knew him! His mate shouted at him to strip us of our clothes (as is the usual practice
in these robberies). They took our jackets but then started to get jumpy and they decided to scarper while the going was good. So off they ran, one with the briefcase, one with the toolbox and the other one rolling the wheel down the road looking like some children at playtime!
We stood stranded in the dark in the middle of the huge forest with a marooned car and Tom’s friend due to arrive in an hour or so by himself. We suddenly became anxious as we realised the robbers might come back if they realised the small amount of money we’d given them.
I decided to try the car, so we got back in and amazingly the engine worked first time. I drove off, but the concrete block got stuck under the car and we ground to a halt 20 yards down the road. Just at that point we could see the lights of a vehicle coming towards us. Denise got out and waved for them to stop. With some hesitation they eventually stopped nearby and 12 strapping young men got out! We explained to them what had happened and they gathered round the car and lifted
Kids from Bugiri
Sam has bought 15 acres of land here for planting crops. it up and removed the obstruction! They said they would follow us all the way to the airport in case we broke down. So off we went with our escort following us behind. The car made it all the way to the airport and as we drove up to the entrance an innocent, smiling Andrew walked through the open sliding door!
We had agreed not to mention the incident to Andrew so as no to freak him out. On the journey home we had to report the robbery at the Police Station at the edge of the forest. I went in myself and the Police Officer asked me various questions, one of which was ‘how many guns did the robbers have?’, not being too sure I said I would ask my wife, so I went out to the car and, forgetting that Andrew was there, I poked my head through the window and said ‘how many guns did those robbers have?’ Andrew erupted in excitement and we were forced to tell him the whole story, which he thought was great!
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rebekah
non-member comment
hi, your blog is awesome. i'm a missionary kid (my parents were missionaries in india up until this year) and now i've settled with my family in australia. my new church here supports Bushfire, and i've been given one of the children to pray for. his name is Ernest. i was looking for information on him, so i went looking on the net for a website, and i found your blog. i still havent found anything about ernest, but i enjoyed looking around your blog a lot! thankyou. rebekah