Living in the bush in Uganda is teaching me a lot about slowing down. At first it frustrated me that most of the day was occupied by doing the simple things that we have to do to survive. My first trip to the bore hole to get water took almost an hour and I only brought back two containers- about enough to cook dinner and do the dishes! The bore hole is about half a mile away and we must go in the early morning or the late afternoon otherwise the heat is unbearable. Taking a shower in our three sided reed cubicle is almost more trouble than it is worth sometimes and requires skill and some flexibility to get clean. Cooking dinner takes about all day, especially if we are having beans or rice which have to have the rocks and dirt picked out first. The beans must soak for several hours in treated water and then finally put on our charcoal cooking stoves which must be stoked and monitored so they don’t get too hot or burn out completely. Just eating and getting clean is enough to exhaust me, not to mention make me ridiculously sweaty. So nothing gets done quickly and there really is no other way to do things but slowly.
Uganda is hot. Let me tell you. Apparently we are here in the hottest and driest time of the year. I pretty much sweat non stop but the nice thing is that so does everyone else so the smell is not all that noticeable. My team has been split a little bit this month because we are living out in the bush and it is safer for us to have a guy around so team Transformers and team Hephzibah have split and combined to make two teams that each have a male. This month my team (we call ourselves team Hephziformers) consists of Dan VanderWal (http://danielvanderwal.theworldrace.org/), Helen Chalmers (http://helenchalmers.theworldrace.org/), Jess, Laura, Cara, Michelle and me. Dan and Helen are transplants from the Transformers and having them around has been a blessing.
But then I look around me and I see these Ugandan women who not only carry twice as much water as I do but they have a small child strapped to their back and they carry the water on their heads and manage to look regal while I struggle and sweat my way back to my mud hut. They laugh together and bathe at the bore hole and even though they live in a camp for people who are displaced within their own country they manage to smile. God only knows what these women have experienced and the horrors that they have lived through with 20 years of war in Northern Uganda. But they make it look bearable and sometimes even fun so I decided to take a lesson from them and enjoy the pace rather than wish I could speed it up and “get on” with ministry.
What I discovered and really learned to enjoy is that ministry happens in the mundane tasks while getting water and it happens while cooking dinner. It may be to people who don’t speak my language or to my teammates who are working alongside me but it is still valuable. I have had very meaningful and challenging conversations over dinner preparations with my team as well as sharing a moment of “muzungu ignorance” at the bore hole with women who laugh at me but always assist me in my task. I am learning that slowing down means truly being present no matter how trivial the task. I am getting over my Americanized mindset of productivity by discovering that that rubric of thinking does not work too well here in Africa. It will drive you mad or just make you super cranky. The World Race is doing a lot to teach me not to measure my day by what I get done but rather lay down at night and thank the Lord for the many opportunities He gave me that day and ask Him for the discernment to see even more tomorrow.
