What Do You Say?

Saturday our day friend and longest attending church member, Lilian(she started attending our church under Pastor Jay in 1997) lost her husband David.

Mourning here is a very visible practice and when we had brought David's body to his house in Loco literally hundreds of people gathered to weep and wail for David. We cleared out the house so the body could be viewed and then I left as the women began there wailing. This continued all night and started again when we put the body into the casket early Sunday morning. It grew to a crescendo as we loaded the body of the late and the family into the truck. Then I drove Lilian and her kids and David's two cousin brothers, his niece and his body 320 kilometers to David's family home in Kaberamaido. The trip was uneventful but because of the poor condition of the road it took us 7 1/2 hours to get there. It was a quiet ride but not too bad as the wailing stopped as soon as we left Loco.

For the entire trip the 20 something niece never made a sound but as soon as we arrived at the family home she started to shriek and scream for her uncle. It was so sudden that it scared the daylights out of me. Then the thirty or so family members started in!

I left to find a better route for the three bus loads of people who would come the next day from Jinja. I made it back to Soroti just after dark after finding a better route.

When I went out to the truck in the morning I had a flat tire! Last trip to Soroti I had three. So I hoped it would not get multiplied and the day grow worse. But it did! Bev called me with the sad news that Katherine, David and Lilian's oldest daughter, two day old infant had died on the trip home from Fort Portal. So now double tragedy.

I waited in town for Bev and the three buses to arrive. They got there at 12:15 and Bev climbed into the truck with me to show them the route. After about 5k I noticed the buses were falling back. Bev said they would catch up. Then we got the call, bus #2 had broken down. We went back loaded people on the two buses and put ten people in our pickup. Now we commenced again. Things went well until we got to the "shortcut" I had found. Apparently the road looks different at midday than it does in the evening. I took the wrong road! After 17 k where the fork was supposed to be and it wasn't I asked where Kaberamaido was. The old man said take this road to the left and you can't miss it. and we didn't. Now the burial was difficult but to not get us back to Jinja too late the family shortened the service and we left at 5:30. We took Lilian's kids with us and Katherine remained with her mom. Then the struggle to get home began.

We stopped for fuel in Soroti and the rear tire looked low on pressure. We inflated it but needed to get on the road as lightning started crashing down around us. We had a large tarp so we covered the guys in the back and took off. 20 kilometers later the tire went flat. Thankfully it had stopped raining but we still had to change the tire. Sending the buses on we changed the tire in record time. We hoped that the tires would last until Mbale town. Three did but one didn't!

So here we are, flat tire no spare, next to a small trading center that has no services. Fortunately we had caught up to the buses when the passengers stopped to relieve themselves.

We sent Martin and Steven on the buses with the two flat tires to Mbale 15k ahead. By now it was 10:00pm. Seven men and my wife stuck under the full moon in the middle of nowhere. Four of the men decided to nap by the side of the road, laid out the tarp, crawled in and promptly went to sleep, looking like four dead accident victims to anyone passing by. Martin returned with one tire at 1:30am but Steven's motorcycle hire broke down on the way back with the other tire. Guess what the break down was? Yep, flat tire!

We got Martin's tire on the truck, found Steven on the way, loaded up his tire and the motorcycle driver AND his motorcycle, and went to Mbale. Dumped the motorcycle and driver then prayed we could get to Jinja in one piece. We did! The last bit of adventure was when security police stopped us to see what was under the tarp. Imagine his surprise as he reaches for the tarp and five heads pop up! Praise the Lord that the police officer didn't shoot anyone and praise the Lord we got home by 5:00am.