Almost Home: Greetings Along the Road

From Sago . . .

To Kampala, God is Good. . 

A week ago we packed our rental car and drove from West Virginia to our nearest International Airport, Dulles. It is a legitimate observation that selecting Sago and Bundibugyo as our two homes makes no sense given our pre-COVID travel habits: one is 4.5 hours and the other 8+ hours from the airport. But the nature of home is that we are more selected than selecting. Sago is where my ancestors landed in the rural mountains where those on the margins could wrest survival from the woods and small farms, and Bundibugyo is where Ugandans who fled Amin and met a number of us in the USA eventually welcomed the peculiarity of foreigners because they saw the potential for good and truth and love in our paltry attempts to live the Gospel. Twenty-nine years later in 2022, and feeling the limitations of a post-injury pace, we tried to plan a sensible week-long journey to Bundibugyo. 

And the highlight of the week has been, and continues to be, greetings along the road. 

After mostly laying low for months of recovery, we were grateful to be able to stop and see my 91 year old Aunt Ann en route to Dulles. My dad was the youngest of 15, and Aunt Ann, the second-youngest, is the last of his siblings to remain. So it was sweet to connect with that tie to ancestry before embarking on another cross-cultural cross-continent journey.

And en route, God kindly arranged that our two hours in the connecting airport Schipol in Amsterdam would be the SAME two hours that Lilli and Patton Johnson, the two high-school aged teen kids of the late Travis, and Amy, would also be switching planes as they traveled back from Uganda. We met for breakfast and marveled at the beautiful people who had grown up from the small children we left in Bundi in 2010, and who had to leave a few years later when their dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  What a privilege and joy to even get a brief glimpse of the way that suffering and solid parenting and hope and grace have formed these two.

Once in Uganda, though we’ve spent 4 days in Kampala not yet Bundi, God kept bringing people for us to re-une with. Josh and Anna were on the way out for their 4th baby and 1rst girl to be delivered in late April in Florida near Josh’s family, so we enjoyed a too-short time to catch up over a couple of meals, to marvel at how just 6 months transforms kids, to thank them for stepping unexpectedly back into team leadership when we dropped out. We celebrated our long friendship and major milestones together, and we will miss them until they return after Home Assignment. 

We were also graciously welcomed by the hosts of the apartment we like to stay in in the city, the Clarkes, who came to Uganda the year we were married (about six years before we did) and have impacted medicine, politics, education, business in amazingly positive ways. Honored to know them. 

Teachers Laura and Michaela were also passing through the capital on “Spring Break” with Laura’s visiting parents, whom we had met at their home in Seattle once and were happy to see again on this side of the ocean. It is so meaningful to our community to see family visit our team. 

And of course team mates make regular trips to the capital for legal issues like immigration and licensure (we spent two days in the tedious process of renewing our medical license) or for some specialty shopping (we also stocked up on cheese and medicine) but we also have Ugandan friends who come to Kampala for studies and work. Dr. Isaiah continues in his second of three years of a Paediatrics Masters (what we call residency in America).

    

Ivan we saw in Mitiyana, where he has completed a post-nursing degree internship year and awaits licensure registration. Thankfully the hospital asked him to keep working, as he proved himself hard-working and competent in his internship.

The surprise of the week though was the Isingoma family.  Christine and Edward Isingoma live in Hoima, in the NW of Uganda, but maintain a home in Kampala for their kids and visits, and were in town briefly for a burial of an in-law. Isingoma called Scott and we met in town for “coffee” which turned into a party to thank God for preserving my life and giving us a long friendship . . . they brought four of their young adult children and one grandchild, which was delightful. In 1993, a few months after our arrival, it turned out that our team had to be gone for Christmas for various reasons except the newbies, and this family embraced us for our first holiday, inviting us with baby Luke into their hospital housing at Nyahuka Health center to feast with them. Many times in the ensuing decades we have worked together, most notably when Christ School was imploding on Dr. Travis mentioned above and we asked Isingoma to help us by returning to Bundibugyo as a temporary head teacher, an assignment that dragged into years and cost him personally but blessed the community and us. Now he’s a senior political, cultural, church leader and Christine runs a primary school, and their children are artists and lawyers and accountants and parents, and honestly in the world there are few friends with whom we have more in  common. So it was  an unexpected treat to see them.

I am typing this in the car as potholes jar my keyboard, heading west to Bundibugyo. More reunions await, with more of our “foster sons” along the way and back in the district, more or our team in Fort Portal, and then the real reuning time in Bundibugyo. I feel uncomfortably unworthy of the attention, doubting that my own bike-riding ineptitudes which nearly killed me qualify me for such kind attention from all these people along the way. But I also see that the accident and absence have just peeled back the layer of what is always there and true for all of us: we are loved, by God and a unique community of humans. That love may remain hidden enough to cause us doubts, but then a tragic event allows clarity. So we continue to return, each encounter paradoxically exhausting and invigorating, trying to be sensible but faith.  

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And since all of this is happening in a world context we can't forget or ignore, war and disease, courage and tragedy . . we leave you with Bono's Saint Patrick's day poem: