First Communication From Tom Bingham in Uganda
Thursday, July 13th, 2006, 8:30 am, Uganda Time
(Wednesday, July 12th, 10:30 pm, Seattle Time)

An Adventure in Uganda 

Our team has safely arrived, but already has a lot to tell.  We have been in Uganda now for one night.  It is 8:30AM on Thursday, 7/13/06 as I write this, but since we are 10 hours ahead of Seattle, that would make it 10:30PM Wednesday night for you all.  Here are some early stories.  Photos will follow later. 

Our Travel Experience

We all arrived at SeaTac at 11AM on Monday, 7/10/06 in order to catch a 2PM flight.  We were able to check the bags (of which we had about 20) all the way through to the final destination of Kigali Rwanda.  

There were to be four flights in total, first to Chicago, then after a 3 hour layover, a 7 ˝ hour flight to London.  There we had to wait in the airport for 8 hours, but it took at least two of those hours to go through the entire process just to get to the right gate.  There, due to your prayers and an astute customer service agent, it was discovered that the wrong flight number was assigned to our luggage for the final segment.  None of the bags would have arrived.  But instead, it was corrected and no luggage was lost. 

From London we took another 8 hour flight to Nairobi Kenya, and then we had to wait in a very slow line and tedious process to get our final boarding passes for the final segment.  So three hours later we were on a DC 9 (the smallest plane we took) and flew about an hour and a half to Kigali Rwanda.  It was a strange feeling entering a city where so much genocide had happened only 12 years earlier.  Yet for any visitor today, you would never know anything so atrocious had ever occurred. 

After clearing customs, and securing a mountain of luggage, we exited the secure area and found Skip Sorensen and Brian Davis waiting for us, not only with appropriate vehicles but with food and drink.  A welcome sight. 

From here we drove out of Rwanda toward Uganda.  You need nerves of steel to ignore the driving.  People everywhere, walking, riding bikes, and some cars – but mostly people walked or rode bikes.  So we stopped to pick up a number of bottles of fresh water.  We stopped in a parking lot outside of a store, at most 10 minutes.  The lot was almost empty, but by the time we were leaving, we were getting a parking ticket.  Why I cannot imagine, but they paid the ticket on the spot and off we went.  But we were interrupted by about a dozen or so young boys, perhaps 10 years of age.  I thought they wanted money when they held out their hands, but we just started shaking their hands and they thought that was funny enough that it seemed to satisfy them. 

The road to Uganda is pretty.  It is paved most of the way, but watch out for the pot holes.  Skip says it takes many months for them to fix them.  As we arrived at the border, we had to stop to clear customs.  Our team was led by Brian Davis to pay our visa fees and get our Uganda stamps and Skip went off to register the cars.  It was there that a bit of an adventure began.

A Hasty Marriage? 

At the first crossing at the Rwanda / Uganda border, while were waiting for Skip to return from registering the vehicles, Tom, Stephanie, Christy and Amy were waiting outside the truck, which was locked of course.  I noticed we were being examined by about 8 young men, perhaps ranging in age from 16 to 20 years.  They approached us and one of them tried speaking English to me.  After a little broken chit chat, one of his friends pointed at Amy and announced that he liked her.  No problem in communication here.  Amy looked a little uncomfortable but did well and we just ignored it.  But the young man was not so easily ignored, and repeated that he liked her. So I avoided the subject by asking things about them and thought I had succeeded in changing the subject - but … 

Another, much taller young man, I would guess about 20 announced that he had $1,000.  So I complimented him on that and tried to keep the discussion on his money rather than on our girls.  Then he announced he was Muslim.  So I said “I see, well we are Christian” and then the first young man who was interested in Amy said he was “Protestant”, and we said we were too.  Thinking that we were now on better discussion turf, I was going to proceed with that topic – but … 

So then the tall Muslim reminded me he had $1000 and then pointed at Stephanie and said, “I like her and I want her.  I have $1000."  As tempting as the $1000 was (just kidding) I figured I could not avoid the issue any more and said, “No I am sorry but I talked to her father and he would not approve”.  And then a thought crossed my mind and I pointed at Christy and said, “And I also know her father would not approve either”.  But, just to keep things light I turned to Amy and said, “But she is OK”.  Amy looked a bit stunned of course and I could see her searching for James' whereabouts, but he was not there.  Our good natured “protestant” laughed and understood the jest, but nevertheless Amy took this opportunity to go fetch James (her boyfriend) and bring him nearby.   

By this time Skip had arrived so we had to depart our newfound friends – and no bride to offer.  Our Muslim looked disappointed as we left.  After conveying the story to Skip he informed me that selling Stephanie would be a violation of the rules, so despite how tempting the $1000 might be, it was right to turn it down – besides Skip said he was lying about the $1000 anyway. 

We all arrived safely.