Manry Family

We’ve been in Uganda for less than 72 hours but feel like we’ve already accumulated the experiences of a much longer visit.  I’m still trying to absorb it all and can offer little insight right now, just impressions and questions that I continue to ponder.  Down each red dirt road (or construction zone, or trail, or path) we discover and experience a way of life unknown to us, yet familiar to a great majority of the world’s population.  Let me share some of the events, scenes, and interactions that have filled the last three days.

On our second morning Ben Langford took us on the “tour of Jinja,” a tradition handed down from the original mission team.  The tour of Jinja is intended to offer historical and spiritual insight into this unique city. At each stop Ben shared a word, a scripture, and sometimes a song that affirmed that the people we encounter and the sites we see are all created by God for His glory. We visited the source of the Nile River, the largest river in the world that millions of people depend on for their sustenance and livelihood.  Here in Jinja, the waters that flow through provide electrical power for almost all of Uganda, a resource for local fisherman (potential disciples?), and rapids to be admired and rafted.  We also explored Jinja town.  There was small metal shop where several Ugandans find employment shaping, cutting, and welding scrap metal into useful and inventive tools.  The Jinja Market contained about anything you could imagine: hardware, grains, produce, clothing, fabric, dried fish, and meat (including a cow’s head proudly displayed on the counter).  It was the antithesis of an American mall--no marketing, just a collection of merchants in a bones economy offering the necessities of life.  On the outskirts of town is the Jinja hospital, a collection of buildings (wards) housing people with a variety of sicknesses being treated by an overwhelmed staff with limited resources.  The scenes we took in represented what many of us in America could only describe as poverty.  But the surface meaning is only part of a story.

We have been amazed by the friendliness and generosity of the people here, even amidst their daily struggles.  Greetings are long, involving, and warm.  People take time for each other here and display an authentic interest in the other’s well being.  Perhaps the best story to illustrate what I mean took place today when we visited the Musima village.  Greetings took several minutes as our gracious hosts immediately set to make us comfortable.  Zippora, the wife of Moses, a local leader in the church there, set out to prepare for us a meal after the greetings were over.  For the next couple of hours our children played with the Ugandan children and we shared life with the people in Musima who seemed to care about nothing else except us and the present moment.  The women in our group sang songs with the children and I tagged along with Ben and Spencer as they shared with and encouraged the men in the village.  We were then served a meal of hot chai (a delicious tea), matooke (a staple food which is basically steamed and mashed plantain bananas), and chicken, all of which required a tremendous sacrifice of time and resources. What stuck me was not just their generosity, but that as they served us the meal they served themselves nothing, caring only for our satisfaction.  While I am told this is the customary way visitors are treated here and that they are more than glad to do it, I could not help but feel (and still feel) an awkwardness to have received so much from a people that in my eyes have so little.  There is a wealth here that cannot be quantified by the American measurements of money and accomplishments, and convicts me to consider my own stewardship of the opportunities and blessings God has given me.

Our time with the mission team has been enjoyable and meaningful.  We’ve had many conversations about life, missions, Uganda, and our families, all tinged with humor and the realization that we are all simply, through faith, trying to make sense out of all these things.  I can say there are at least three members of our family that seem to be adjusting very well to life in Africa.  In addition to having at least an initial affinity to local foods, Luke, Connor, and Lydia Jane seem to be quite comfortable in the Jinja dirt.  We, on the other hand, are still having to get used to them being dirty though. 

There is much more to tell, but perhaps this can give you a glimpse into our lives right now and the world we are exploring in Jinja, Uganda.  Check out some of the photos in our family album.