We left Nairobi on a night bus headed for Kampala, the
capital of Uganda, accompanied by Austin and Jodi’s team. 12 hours on a bus. We know the drill by now.
We arrived in Kampala sometime in the morning, hungry, dirty
and ready for some sleep.
Austin’s team was told their city was only a few hours away
and they choose to finish out their trip that same day. So they immediately jumped into the back of a
pickup truck and drove off towards some unknown bus station.
As for Jodi and my team, we had previously been told that
our cities were many hours away and that we should stay the night in Kampala
and continue our trip the next day. So
we prearranged with a guesthouse that
they would come pick us up from the bus station and take us there for the night
and bring us back to the bus station in the morning. It was all worked out. They told us their drivers name was Dale. All we had to do was find Dale and be on our
way.
We offload the bus and wait, looking for Dale.
I see Callan approach a man holding a baby who is staring
intently at us. He proceeds to ask him
if his name is Dale, the man agrees.
Callan happily announces to all of us that we have found Dale. Halleluiah.
He asks Dale where the bus is and Dale points and motions for us to
follow him. So we get all of our gear on
and follow him through the busy morning streets of Kampala.
After a 15 minute trek through the streets where we seemed
to be the newest attraction at the zoo, Dale stops, strangely now with no baby
in his hands, in the middle of the craziest bus station I have ever seen. There are people everywhere. Almost
immediately we were surrounded by people trying to sell us bus tickets to who
knows where. “Why are we now at another
bus station,” we all wondered. Buses were
honking and revving their engines. It
was the most chaos I have ever seen, literally.
I look left and see Austin’s team roll up in their truck just as Callan
is interrogating Dale. I see Austin
dragged off by the hand into a crowd followed a few minutes later by Sam
chasing after him. As I am watching that
scene I hear Callan above the noise sternly saying, “What is your name?”
As we all soon realize, Dale isn’t in fact Dale. Callan tells him we won’t be needing his help
anymore and walks away. We are back to
square one, looking for Dale.
We know we need to get out of the crazy bus park so we can
call Dale and get this all worked out. I
look around, there is literally no quiet or unused spot on this street. It makes my heart panic a little. We know we
need to call the real Dale to let him know our new location. Problem: our Kenya SIM card doesn’t work in
Uganda. Answer: Holland and Jodi go get
SIM cards and minutes.
So we find a less chaos spot on the street to plant the two
teams and Jodi and I trek off to get the phones taken care of. Before I walk away I am handed a wad of team
money, I stick it in my pocket and we go on.
We find the shop and get it all
worked out. We start back towards the
teams in hopes to get this whole mess sorted out.
I lead Jodi and I through two parked cars back to the
street. I still have my pack on so I
barely fit, bad decision. A man tries to
squeeze through going the opposite way and ends up strangely pushing me out of
the way into a car. At the same moment I hear Jodi scream “HEY!” I look back
and see her holding the arm of the same guy that was passing through. Somehow I realize what happened. She caught him pick pocketing me. I look
down and see a bill hanging out of my pocket. He played dumb, of course. It was all so strange. Of course the small amount of money he got had
long been passed off to one of his cohorts.
So we just walk away.
We got back to the teams and shortly after the real Dale
pulls up in a spacious van and whisks us off to the guesthouse for the night.
On the ride there I was thinking about all that had just
gone down. Within our first 30 minutes
in Kampala we were lied to and stolen from. That was rough. I felt defeated and
was already developing ill feelings towards the country of Uganda in general
and definitely for Kampala. I wanted to
sleep and shower and for the day to be over.
After we arrived at the guesthouse we all more or less
crashed for the afternoon. We woke up,
found dinner, ATM’s and a whole slew of other things that were needed. We headed back to the guesthouse to have some
worship. Towards the end two Ugandan’s
asked if they could join us, we welcomed them and they joined in.
After it was over we asked them what brought them to
Kampala. They proceeded to tell us they
were a part of a bigger group of people who worked for invisible children. They were going to the US embassy the next
day in hopes of getting visas to visit the US and tour around spreading
awareness over the next few months.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was me missing
every clue known to man but I didn’t pick up on the fact that they were all
from northern Uganda, or that they worked for invisible children, or that they
were going on tour of the US to tell their stories…I don’t know how it didn’t
compute…but it took me so long to realize that they ARE the invisible
children. They don’t merely work for the
organization; they have been through the program. They excitedly told us we
could read their stories and watch videos on THEM on the website. They are the
face of invisible children. They are the
invisible children.
So over the next hour or two we heard bits and pieces of
these people’s stories. They excitedly
told us what states they were each going to and we got to meet the ones going
to our homes. We got to share with them
where we were going also. It was so
exciting to know that they were going to our homes and we were going to theirs,
literally.
We took pictures, exchanged emails, told stories about American
food and culture and Ugandan food and culture, told them must eat restaurants,
and asked what they learned in their American class that day.
I retired to my room that evening changed. I think for the first time I really believed
in a cause. I saw these people my own
age and how their lives are completely changed because of invisible children. And though they have thousands of reasons to
be bitter, untrusting people they weren’t.
They were joyous, hopeful, and kind.
And as I climbed into bed that night I heard robin yell,
“today has been redeemed.” And it was.
That day remains one of my favorite on this trip.
