This post was written by Kathleen Price, a member of the Uganda team. Follow along with updates from the Uganda team as they cultivate relationships with our new partners at the Bududa Learning Center in eastern Uganda
I was fortunate enough to recently hear Mary Nell McPherson speak at ACTS Sunday school, about the ‘pale blue dot’ – Carl Sagan’s description of the insignificance of the planet Earth compared to the vastness of space. To paraphrase his words ‘everything and everyone you have ever known, or seen, or read about, or experienced, happened on this pale blue dot’. Today I have seen so much more of this dot than I could have possibly imagined and we are just beginning.
Today was a travel day, from Entebbe, located on the shores of Lake Victoria, through Kampala (the capital of Uganda), heading northeast to Bududa, in the shadow of Mount Elgon, the oldest and widest volcano in Africa, a mere 20 million years old. Contrary to what Court might tell you, the bus ride is close to eight hours, and it is eight hours of raucous, riotous, glorious life.
Sensory overload doesn’t begin to describe it – the colors, the sound, the motion – all at once, all in different directions and speeds, momentary glances through the window that tell the whole story or nothing at all. Shopkeepers, mechanics, woodworkers, restaurant owners, hairdressers, school teachers, bus drivers, farmers – and all in one block. Groups of people walking, many hand in hand or arm in arm, small armies of motorcycles, cows and goats and chickens, all in the mix. It is chaos and yet it flows in and around and over and under and the only ones who seem surprised by it are the people in the bus. There are signs of Christianity everywhere here (no literally, there are signs, as in the billboards, and the sides of buses and on the back of a truck, next to the painted words ‘I love my job!.’ How many of us can say that?)
It is embarrassingly easy and astonishingly arrogant for us to see all this and conclude that it could be ‘better’ or that we can ‘fix’ it. I think it must be frustrating for our African partners when this happens. That somehow we know more than they do and that our ideas must be superior (while I’m thinking of it, that must drive God a little nuts too, since we are always pulling that same nonsense on Him as well). I’m no biblical scholar, but the charge is to ‘love your neighbor’ not ‘fix’ them. In order to love your neighbor, you actually have to spend time with them, in communion with them, eat with them, talk with them, argue, debate and reconcile with them. This is why we are here in Uganda – to truly see our brothers and sisters in Christ – and to really know them. And to love them as we love ourselves.
It is tempting to see our ‘pale blue dot’ and think that what we do with our time on this insignificant planet is also insignificant. It’s not true. The connection we have with each other can never be insignificant – in fact, I believe it is the only significant thing we can do with our time, our energy and our love. Like our drive today, it can be frustrating, overwhelming, beautiful, humbling and messy. Such is Africa. And such is faith. Trust. Let go. Be.
Kathleen Price
Uganda Team Member