From the World, There is No Escape but Jesus.

Uganda is far more than simple grass huts and tiny villages. The thriving city of Kampala, located just an hour away from my home near Mukono, is a classic African city. With stores for designer clothes, fancy restaurants, and malls for the youth to spend their time in, this city still contains touches of Africa as a constant reminder that this is, in fact, Uganda. I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in Kampala on Friday. After a week of eating rice and beans on a daily basis, I was more than ready to venture to this city in hopes of finding the closest pizza parlor.

The hour ride to Kampala was hot to say the least. The sun had decided to shine full force, never mind that I had been super brilliant that day and decided to wear black, and forty people in a bus made it beyond stuffy. Katie and I found this billboard (pictured here) more than fitting. It was such a relief to climb off the bus. After a death-defying scramble across busy streets, due to the fact that pedestrians do not have the right of way, I found myself in a mall called Garden City. My first emotion? Excitement to see other mzungus!

In East Africa, mzungu means “white person.” It’s a phrase I hear all the time. Some locals use it semi-discreetly by whispering the word to a friend and pointing me out. Others use it as if it were my first name…”Hi, mzungu! How are you today?!” I’ve decided this is one of the many things that are very different from back home. In America, if a parent sees their child staring at someone different from themselves, whether it is because of the color of their skin or another reason, the parent is quick to reprimand the child. In Uganda, this could not be more opposite. I was walking home last week and I literally saw a mother turn her baby around and point at me while softly saying mzungu. At the mall, I found myself doing this. I think I stood and stared at a group of mzungus for a good five minutes before I realized what I was doing.

After excitedly walking to the food court of the mall, I realized that even food courts are not the same world-wide. Apparently in Uganda, you sit like a normal restaurant and someone comes to take your order. It was definitely a little awkward because I had to keep turning people down until the place I wanted food from approached me. I had never been so excited to order a pepperoni pizza in my entire life. It was different from American pizza, but it was pizza none-the-less.

Then Katie and I, along with two other USPers, decided we wanted out of the civilized African mall so we ventured forth to a craft market a couple blocks away. The road we followed to the market was busy, but seemed safe so we had little worries. The market was cute and the people were so kind. We bought a few things and learned a new way to fix our hair before heading back to meet the main group at Garden City. However, as we approached the main road (pictured here) that would take us there, I noticed a large gathering of people…one that had not been there an hour and a half earlier.

Curious but not nervous, we kept walking…until I noticed the soldiers. It was then that I began to realize that almost everyone on the street, minus the soldiers and the four of us, looked decidedly Muslim. I very quickly came to a stop, causing the girls around me to also stop. Then, out of nowhere a man appeared and answered the question I was too afraid to ask. “It’s a demonstration,” he said, “They are killing our Muslim brothers in Israel and we stand against that.” Numbly, I nodded my head and smiled, unsure of what else to do. In my head, I was thinking at a hundred miles a minute. This was an anti-Israel demonstration…we were all Americans…America is generally known to be pro-Israel…the people demonstrating were Muslims…we were all Christians…they were Africans…we were all mzungus, which made it impossible to blend in…this has the potential of becoming dangerous…

The four of us moved a few feet away and spoke quietly, trying to decide what to do. Our options consisted of waiting it out from a distance and possibly being late to meet the group or walk right past the rally on the way to mall and be on time. I strongly urged the group to wait it out, being that we were only a few yards away from the Uganda Christian University bus we had rode to Kampala on and we all had cell phones. Katie, however, had different ideas and simply started walking toward the mall, forcing us to either be left behind or follow her. She told me later it wasn’t until we were practically directly beside the demonstration that she noticed the soldiers. Then, she started all but running. The crowd was so thick it was hard to keep up with her as we shot past the demonstration and headed for the safety of the mall.

Looking back, God was definitely with us. Though it was a very peaceful demonstration that was over in less than thirty minutes and I do not believe we were actually in any real danger, it was definitely an emotion-stirring experience. And through it God gave me this amazing calm. It was like He told me we were all going to be okay. The fact that I was in a foreign country with a history of violence, surrounded by people who have not always been accepting of Christians made the situation much more frightening than a similar experience in American may have been, but God wanted us to experience it here. He wanted us to see the struggles of others and feel compassion for a people different than ourselves. And so many struggles became apparent to me through this: the struggles Israel, the struggles of Palestine, the struggles of Ugandan police and soldiers, the struggles of Ugandan citizens, the struggles of us, as Americans in this uncertain land and time. Thank you, Father God for giving me this experience, for it is one experience/lesson I will not soon forget.

After meeting up with the group and a quick ice cream break (pictured here), we soon headed for Mukono. I was happy to have had the opportunity to experience the joys of civilization once again, but was content to be on my way “home.” A weekend full of new experiences and family-bonding was in my future and I was going to make the most of it.

P.S. Tori misses her favorite roomate, Tära. :)