MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 05-11-2010
Greetings from Uganda! It has indeed been an interesting few days. Remember how I said we were swimming in mud? We decided to switch from that to actual swimming. On Sunday morning, thieves came onto our place and stole five of the angle iron poles we had placed for the fence we were going to construct this week. So, we had to move up our schedule a bit. Instead of going to church with my family on Sunday, I had to go down to the police station and file a report. We tried to get the K-9 unit to come and see if we could find the culprits, but they could not come. I got some more angle iron, and got some more poles made so they could be set in place and the mason could get to work installing the fence on Monday morning. My guard was much more vigilant that night, and no more poles were stolen. We then began installing the fence in earnest on Monday. As of now, it is complete, except for a small section near the wall our neighbor is building, which will be completed as soon as his wall is complete.
Now for the interesting part. I put one of my men to work planting some local cactus type plants around the perimeter of my compound near the hedge, which lies just outside the fence. This will have the effect of creating in time a natural thorny barrier that will be better than barbed wire. So, they were busy planting them, 117 in all as it turned out when something very unexpected occurred.
I’m in my room, taking a few minutes to read my Bible and pray, when I heard a sound sort of like the sound of a heavy rain coming, only louder. I went outside, and Anna too, to see what it was – no rain. Weird. Then we rounded the corner of the house and saw it, a 20 ft geyser spouting towards the heavens. One of the workers had broken the MAIN WATER PIPE which ran along the road there with his hoe. Thus began one of the longest Mondays of our life.
My new trash pit quickly filled with muddy water, and other less savory things. Then the torrent rushed down my hill, and slammed all that dirt up against our house. Muddy water streamed into our garage and into the house. In short order we had 3 to 4 inches of water running down the hall. The river quite literally ran through it. I’m frantically trying to contact somebody, anybody to turn off the water, while my wife ran up and down the road trying to figure out the same thing. My man Mordecai took off on a boda and fetched the water people, and finally got the water turned off. By this time, as it turned out, the water had streamed into our concrete septic tank and ripped out two walls because it was poorly constructed to begin with (more on that).
I was frantically grabbing things and moving them out of harms way. I shinnied up our water tower to turn off the water to the tank since I didn’t know how long our tank full of water would have to last. Anna is busily sweeping water out of the house with a broom. The other missionaries rallied around us, and in very short order, a cleaning crew descended on our place and began the work of cleaning the mess.
By this time, I had gone to the water office to face the music. The cost of fixing the pipe was immense, and time was of the essence because water was shut off to half the town. As it turned out, my part amounted to about $200, which was the LORD, because the part they paid was much higher. The guy who did the breaking took off for parts unknown. We don’t know where he is.
Well, the damage is fixed, the pipe is well covered now (someone had dug a drainage trench there, which caused the whole mess). We have cleaned up the worst of the mess. The amazing thing is, because of the how African houses are constructed, we are actually doing fine. Nothing was damaged, and because our stuff has not arrived, everything is safe.
The damage to the septic tank was catastrophic. There are actually two. The first, which was well made, is undamaged. The second, larger one was apparently constructed from spit and mud by some local idiot with his own three hands. This one failed. It was beginning to show signs of failure already, just from the rain, and had this fortunate accident not occurred, could have collapsed in the future and taken one or more of us with it.
Here’s what we’re going to do. The second tank is a loss. We’re going to carefully break the concrete cover stone, preserving the part that covers the good tank. The rest of the junky one will be collapsed, and dumped in the hole. Into this hole will go all the remaining rubbish on our place, the four stumps, and anything else we want to get rid of. We will fill this with dirt from the hill out back, which is dirt we would have had to remove anyway to make a retaining wall in the future. We are in the process of digging a pit for a latrine, and this dirt can also go in the hole. So, we’ll get a better, safer septic tank out the bargain, and a clean compound as well.
Pray for us. By doing it this way, it reduced the cost to maybe about a $1000, but this is certainly not money we expected to have to pay. God has already taken care of some of the cost, so we should be fine for the remainder of the month. Just pray nothing else goes wrong. It has certainly been an eventful time here so far. God is good. We’re not discouraged, and we have our work cut out for us in the future as we attempt to learn the language here and begin to minister to the Runyunkore people in their own dialect. It would be nice to get all the major stuff done, however, so we can focus on the other.
God bless and keep you,
James Huckabee
Missionary to Uganda
The trip to Mbarara went well. We got here just before dark, and just in time for church to let out.