Crossing Borders-TIA (This is Africa)

Thursday, I met up with the CMC team and we traveled about 9 + hours through some Ugandan countryside. I can see why they call Uganda the pearl of Africa. I woke up in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We stayed in tents up on platforms, It felt a little like Swiss family Robinson.

It was nice to have a chill day to process all that we have encountered. Then we took a boat out to this incredible island that an organization out of Denver is building a retreat/community center on. The idea is that it will be a place for people to come and discuss difficult problems in Africa.

Then we had dinner at a hotel overlooking the lake to celebrate one of our team members birthday. The full moon boat ride back to our tents felt a bit like a dream.

But, then the next day it was back to reality... The idea was that we would cross the border into Rwanda and within 2 hours be in this town that the CMC advisor, Leslie, had spent a month in and works with a program sponsoring some girls that could not continue at school to learn a trade at a sewing school. That was the idea, but TIA...We got held up at the border for 2 hours because we didn't have a letter from Ben the Head of CLD Uganda saying it was ok to take the taxi van over the border. So we waited and waited... Eventually we crossed into Rwanda and at some point realized we had crossed the wrong border and ended up going to the capital way south of where we needed to be largely because of miscommunication and the fact the no one ever thought to look at a map... So our less than 2 hr drive turned into an over 9 hr drive...

At first though I'm pretty sure It was known early on that we were on the wrong road, it wasn't communicated to us. Most things take longer than you think they should here, so we didn't think much of it taking longer. We didn't even realize we were on the wrong road till we got to Kigali, the capital. Leslie turned to me and said, 'Where do you think we are?' And I said, 'That looks like Kigali' as we approached a huge city on a hill. I knew we were in trouble when she said, 'That's REALY far from where we are supposed to be.' It was 4 and no one had had lunch so we all were a little cranky to realize we had gone the wrong way and rather than asking directions gone 4hours south only to turn around and go north another 3 hours on a different road. TIA... You really just need to let go of plans and roll with it here. It's like therapy for type A people. Luckily the CMC crowd is pretty chill, everyone was fine until the last hour or so.

Though long, the drive was so beautiful! Kind of like driving through the pages of a national geographic magazine. Miles of tea fields in valleys surrounded by mountains with terraced gardens that look like patchwork quilts spotted with small mud houses. They farm every available inch of land and it's so fertile. I wish my little garden could be like that! The sweet smell of eucalyptus in the air was soothing. Women walked on the side if the road with babies tied on their backs. Most people have a heavy load on top of their head and seem to carry it effortlessly.

We are now in Musanze, Rwanda. A sweet little town. I've been impressed by Rwanda so far. The infrastructure is better and it's so much cleaner and less chaotic than Kampala. They actually have trash bins around the city and once a month everyone has to not work and clean up the cities. You can really tell a difference from Kampala where there is trash everywhere.

While we were stuck at the border yesterday, a woman came up to me begging for money. She didn't speak English so communication was difficult. But she kept pointing to the stump of her left leg which was amputated above the knee and her right foot which was swollen from elephantiasis. As a rule we don't give to people begging as I discussed in a previous post, since it reinforces the cycle of poverty and dependence. But, it tugs at your heart and man it would be a lot easier to throw some money at her and at least feel like I'm doing something. During the long car ride I was thinking about her and how she was pointing at her wounds... The first thing she did when meeting a stranger was show them the result of the wounds she has suffered in this life... I don't know why her leg was amputated, maybe from the war or the genocide or maybe she got an infection in a leg damaged by elephantiasis. I don't know what caused her wounds, I only see the result of it. And, the worst part is she is living a life defined by her wounds... The first thing she shows a stranger... We all have wounds, as westerners they tend to be on our hearts...that we can't change... But, do we live our lives defined by our wounds and is that what we are showing the people around us?