What, are they out chasing down the chicken?

Alright enough of the downer posts. It’s time for a funny post. I’ve got a great story that I hope you’ll enjoy. 

I mentioned that I went to Karamoja a few weeks ago. It’s a region in the northeast and is entirely different from the rest of the country. While most of Uganda has gone fairly Western by now, the Karamajong take great pride in their cultural heritage, and have held on strongly to their ways of life. They’re a pastoral people, and make their livelihood mostly from cattle-herding. The area is very rural, very tribal. 

So one night, we went for dinner at a hotel that supposedly had good food. We sat there for about 2 hours before the food was served. I’ve traveled enough to not let long serving times bother me, but the next night we still attempted to have a better experience than that. 

We went to a different hotel at 6:00 and ordered dinner to arrive at 7:30, thinking we could order it then go off to freshen up or whatever and come back and it would be ready. They didn’t have a menu, but verbally told us the options for the evening. We all happened to order chicken and various sides to go with it. 

So we arrived at 7:30 with foolish hopes that our food might actually be ready. Food was served at 9:00. 3 hours after we ordered it! 

The next day we found out what had happened. We made some comment about the long wait to one of the employees, and she burst into apologies. “Oh, I’m so sorry for last night! You know, chicken was over!” (Meaning they were out of chicken) “We didn’t want to disappoint you because you had ordered chicken, so we had to go out and seek for chicken, that’s why it took so long.” 

Oy. Seriously? 

There are so many subtleties in African culture, and saying “no” is a very complicated thing. They never want to disappoint you or tell you “no.” They felt like they would have disappointed us greatly by telling us there was no chicken, so they had to find a way to get it. Really they were disappointing us by making us wait 3 hours! (And really why did they tell us they had chicken in the first place when they didn’t?) I would have been fine changing my order to whatever they had ready! But this is the culture, and in spite of having to wait so long for dinner, I can’t help but just laugh about it all.

Ok, you know how when you go to a restaurant and the food is taking a long time, you joke, “Are they out chasing down the chicken?” 

This time, THEY ACTUALLY WERE OUT CHASING DOWN THE CHICKEN!!

May We Not Become Weary

So. The last post I wrote was the first one I had been able to write in over a month. The last month or so has been tough. I knew coming to Uganda that I would experience difficult things. I knew I would grow and change. But I didn’t anticipate the extent to which my heart would break and how it would be sewn back together with love, joy, and hope. I’ve experienced darkness and challenges in many different ways since I’ve been here, but about a month ago, it all came rolling in at once. Day after day there was one thing after another. 

That day that I saw the girl in the slums that I talked about in my last post, I had just come for an outreach with my friend Davy and the organization she works with here. They do weekly outreaches to some boys who live in the slums, teaching them a little because they’re not in school, and then teaching them Bible stories and songs. I thought it was odd that they only reached out to boys. Where were the girls? I learned that the boys tried to get them to come, but they refused. Most of them were too stuck in their ways and preferred a life of prostitution, and didn’t want anyone trying to tell them to change.

So the boys came, and with them came the overwhelming smell of glue, which they sniffed to get high. Several of the boys were just passed out on the benches and most of the rest had a glazed over look in their eyes. 

It rained all afternoon, and a walk through the slums after a rain is enough to break anyone’s heart. Little wooden shacks don’t do much at all to protect against heavy rains. 

We left the outreach and headed to the clinic to see a boy they knew who had been in a fight and had been in the hospital for a couple of days. 

Then I ran into those girls who had run away from the home, and my entire world was turned upside down, my entire reaction to poverty changed forever in an instant.

Are you getting the gist? This was a 3-hour span of one day. The next few weeks continued with things like this happening just about every day. In this time I visited Karamoja, a region of Uganda that is severely looked down upon by other Ugandans. I saw appalling living conditions and more importantly heard countless stories from my friends of warfare and hardships. I learned about how poorly the Karamajong people can be treated by other Ugandans, as though they’re dogs, as though they’re garbage. I visited the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, a place of no hope, no self-betterment, a place of high HIV/ AIDS statistics, darkness, and witchcraft.

I wanted to keep up with my blog, but try to process this into a presentable post? Not happening. Instead I went into a sort of comatose phase for a few days, letting the darkness just engulf me. It was too much. Small things like challenges at work were even too much to think about. Instead I would find myself just sort of glazing over and checking out, feeling like there were too many problems in the world and there was no hope to try to improve any of them. 

Then, like it always does, hope came. Do you know what? It was actually from a Facebook post that someone made on the Dwelling Places page. Facebook is getting really weird and ick, but it turns out good things can still come from it. I’m not sure who it was-- maybe our UK Administrator?-- posted this on the DP page, from the book of Habakkuk, and it was just what I needed:

Habakkuk’s Complaint

 2 How long, LORD, must I call for help, 

   but you do not listen? 

Or cry out to you, “Violence!” 

   but you do not save? 

3 Why do you make me look at injustice? 

   Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? 

Destruction and violence are before me; 

   there is strife, and conflict abounds. 

4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, 

   and justice never prevails. 

The wicked hem in the righteous, 

   so that justice is perverted.

The LORD’s Answer

 5 “Look at the nations and watch— 

   and be utterly amazed. 

For I am going to do something in your days 

   that you would not believe, 

   even if you were told. 


I was also encouraged by Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” 

Violence, injustice, conflict, strife, and darkness with always be there as long as we’re on this side of heaven. But God’s response to Habakkuk was “I am going to do something in your days.” If we wait and trust, God always brings light out of the darkness. I had to be reminded that this isn’t the end of the story. It’s not the whole picture. This is just one piece of it. And God is doing something with it.