Uganda Mission Part 1

Uganda Part 1

Prior to #3 trip to Mexico, I went to Africa with a team from my home church. The timing matters because at that point I was still in the mindset of accepting traditional missions as they are. I wasn’t asking a lot of questions about the dangers of handouts and helping. But my experience in Uganda began to challenge my outlook. To prepare, we raised money not only for expenses, but also for goats, cows and sewing machines to be delivered to the church/orphanage we were volunteering with. I think our intent was to partner long term but not only did that not happen, other problems came through some relationships that were established. I am going to again say “more on that later.” None of our journeys are just one experience at the end of the last, nor are they happening in a vacuum. My changing mindset is the result of interwoven stories and experiences, lessons learned, and information gathered.

One other team member and I were traveling from a different point of origin to meet up with the group in London. She and I failed to hear the part about picking up your luggage and rechecking it on the layover. We, of course, arrived in Entebbe with only our carry-ons. We filled out the paperwork and flippantly said “we will retrieve it when it arrives!” The journey from the airport to the Young With a Mission base where we were staying was like none I had experienced and I knew without being told that we would not be going back for our luggage! The reality of life in Africa in that one-hour journey made it obvious that to ask someone to make that journey roundtrip for our “stuff” would be unrealistic and even rude (is that the right word for clueless Westerner? Perhaps self-centered?).

Our dorm was rudimentary with buckets hung on a hook for a shower, pit toilets, and sporadic electricity. There was a rain collection and filtration system outside our room, and we slept under mosquito nets. I was expecting our stay to be like this (we all have our generalizations and stereotypes to help us prepare), but it was still so foreign. Even as we were staying on a base that offers some basic comforts, things are just not as convenient as they are at home. The contrast between my world and this one was drastic.

Anyone traveling to a developing nation (well, most anyone) experiences the contrast and is thankful for what they have at home. Many of us in developed nations have far more than those whose lives I witnessed up close. A more accurate term I have recently heard in regard to this is to say I am materially rich. Saying I am rich (no doubt I have more money than everyone I met) defines wealth in a materialistic way and denies that spiritual, emotional, and communal ideas of wealth are of great, and even more important, value.

One conversation that stands out to me was with one of the church members who had great dreams of living in America. The images he had seen led him to believe that money is there for the taking (paraphrasing!). I shared with him the realities of American life while we were working on a new wall for their church. Sure, many of us have quite a bit more money than the average Ugandan but that doesn’t keep people from living in debt.  I shared more about the American lifestyle, the cost of housing and other things. What stood out the most about that conversation was his shock and disappointment that people can have so much money and so little responsibility. For me, it shed a new light on the burden money can be. It doesn’t make us better people, in fact, it might do the opposite.

And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19: 23-24

It was starting to be a little uncomfortable, the reality that, indeed, I am a person of material wealth. Period. And it is uncomfy because I ask myself what am I doing with the responsibility, the gift? When you are building relationships with people who are probably living on a dollar a day, you start to see yourself through a different lens. As I write this, I can sense the arrogance with which we approach helping, aid, charity (whatever you want to call it) that people must need what I have and then they can be “better” like me. Materially rich but spiritually poor. Something to think long and hard about.