From getting up to speak in front of hundreds of youth, to
perfecting the art of eating without silverware, to trying fried grasshoppers
bought off the street, today was one of those “nonstop adventure” kinds of
Saturdays…
(For the whole story, a lot of pictures, a video clip of downtown Kampala, PLUS video
documentation of our grasshopper eating experience, please do click “Read
More”.)
“So where are we
going anyway?” The question arose for the umpteenth time as Alyssa, Jordan and
I walked down the hill this morning headed…somewhere.
“Gayaza,” answered Emma (Emmanuel), our friend from the
Bible College/official tour guide for the day. Gayaza! That’s the place on the other side of Kampala where I
visited at the Boarding School way back when. Only this time we were heading over, not to visit a school, but to
participate in a youth rally at a local church. Not that we knew what we were
in for…
Getting there involved another very fun taxi ride through
downtown Kampala. We had to get out, navigate a moving maze of taxi bumpers and
foot traffic, and pass through a labyrinth of market stands before finally
emerging into a taxi park. There, we wandered around yet another maze—this
time made of taxis—until finding a van bound for Gayaza.
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| Emma bought us banana and potato chips from a vendor for the taxi ride. I opted for banana. |
Video Clip - downtown Kampala
Upon reaching the church, we took our seats near the front
and watched as the program began. It started with a short worship session,
followed by announcements, selections from performing artists and—of all
things—a rapping contest. Eventually the main speaker, an American pastor named
Mosher, stood to give his testimony and a message from 1st Timothy.
He found it necessary to yell, as the microphones had decided to stop working.
No one else seemed to want to speak or sing because of the technical
difficulty, so the pastor turned to Alyssa and I and asked “Can you guys speak
without the machines?” Yeah. (?)
Fortunately, we’d had enough advance warning about this
opportunity to share something that we were able to prepare and pray throughout
the week leading up to now about what to present. I actually had something to
say this time! Ok, God…here we go.
“Brother Patrick!...No…Sister Patricia!” Someone called from
the front. Thus, standing up, I walked to the platform along with Alyssa and
began to shout out a short, 3-minute message at the building-full of high
school students before me. It was just an analogy about a moth trapped in a
room, buzzing around a light bulb instead of escaping out the door. I wanted to
explain how like the moth gave itself a headache chasing something that gave
only artificial light instead of flying out to the sun, so also we often chase
things in life (money, relationships, fame and even the dreams God gave us)
that only provide an artificial sense of satisfaction and happiness in life. We
need to abandon those dreams—stop buzzing around them and banging our heads
into them hoping they’ll make our life complete—and run towards God. We need to counter intuitively
throw aside, count as loss or surrender to God everything else we think could
make us happy—including our dreams—and seek God Himself until He is the most beautiful thing in our
sight. Then, eclipsed by the glory of the Sun/Son, we find ourselves immersed
in the real light (satisfaction and
joy) we were chasing all along.
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| Thank You, Lord! (Once the adrenaline rush settled down, and the sense of exhilaration eased when we took our seats again after speaking, only one thought parked itself on my mind: "I can't believe I actually did that!" I decided to just not think about it.) |
By the time the others had finished speaking, the
microphones were ready for action again. Several dancer/singer types, Christian
artists from here in Uganda, ruled the stage and pumped up the crowd for the
next segment of time. At the climax of the saga, one of the artists jumped down
to the audience and started making way for us Muzungus to come up and join the
dancers on the platform! He managed to pull Jordan up, but when he opened his
hands toward me I stepped back behind Alyssa and offered her up instead. I
never realized those two could dance.
 |
| The outside of the church building |
“You thought having to teach Sunday School on the spot was bad!” Jordan panted as he and Alyssa
returned from the improvised performance in front of what had by now
accumulated into a crowd of four-or-five-hundred youth. “I can’t believe I
actually did that,” added Alyssa. Good
thing I only resolved to be a youth SPEAKER, I thought.
We left after lunch, which, due to a low number of forks and
an inclination for a more thorough experience, I tackled with my hands. By now I've gotten much better at managing the rice without getting any up my nose:
the trick is to stick it together with beef broth, then take small clumps in
your fingertips. Next you slip your thumb behind the bite’s worth of food now
cradled on your fingertips, so that you can use your thumb to flick it off your
hand as you tip your fingers toward your mouth. I don’t know if this is the
official technique, but it works for me.
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| Pedestrians in Kampala |
On the journey back, as we again stood amidst the hustle and hubbub of the downtown taxi park, we finally made good on some long-ago-made plans to buy grasshoppers. See, November is the start of grasshopper season here, when you are free to eat as much insect meat as you want.
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| Entering the taxi park |
Several vendors had actually
set up stands, there in the taxi park, laden with mounds of fried grasshoppers. It’s
a popular food item! The wings and legs had been removed, but the heads and
eyes and whatever else is in a grasshopper were still intact—a pile of a
million little fried bodies gazing up at us from behind their papery carton.
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| Sugar cane for sale along the road home |
Not until returning home to Seguku did we actually tie into our little purchase, a memorable event documented for your viewing pleasure. The video starts with Emma explaining what we’re doing, and then goes on to show our first reactions to the snack. The "snack" actually wasn't too bad; in fact, if I hadn't known what I was eating, it would have been pretty good! Like a hollow, salty potato chip, I found it to be (thankfully) more "crunch" and less "spurt." Enjoy!
(Click the CC button just below the video if you'd like captions shown.)
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