Tom Musgrave April 11 1995

Have you ever experienced something that had a powerful influence on you and on your life, but you were unable to grab a hold of the experience and share it with others? Such is the case with my second journey to Fort Portal, Uganda. There are so many emotions and feelings and questions and answers and insights and bewilderment and struggles within me about my experience in Uganda that it is really difficult to set down on paper what it is that needs to be said.

Our second journey to Uganda (I say "our" because I did not go alone, Colleen, the boys, all of you, were with me every step of the way) has brought me the closest that I have ever been to truly experiencing a portion of the Paschal Mystery. I had decided after my return from our first journey to Uganda in January/February 1994 that I would not return to Uganda again without my family. I thought I was safe with that decision. I was wrong. Christ had different ideas. The summer of '94 was full of hints and suggestions and point blank direction about returning to Uganda. Finally after trying to avoid the obvious, Colleen and I both came to the same conclusion -- "Thy will be done". And so it was that plans to return were set in motion.

The goal, the mission, of the second journey was to bring tools and computers and hands on knowledge to a people and a country that can use all the help they can get. The construction of a Diocesan center in Fort Portal was in the planning stages and the hopes were to help get the project up and going so that they are more able to help themselves. I do not want to spend much space and time on the actual work load or specifics of the construction, that is a story of its own, I would rather share some of the insights of the experience of working side by side with people who, even though they have been held down so long and should have no hope left in them, are the most hope filled people I have ever met.

My tasks brought me in close contact with Br. Bernie, a young man of 64, who has served in the missions for 30 years (give or take a couple of years). Br. Bernie is a Brother of the Holy Cross, and has been asked to oversee the construction of the project from start to finish. We became friends when we first met, and even better friends as we shared the joys and frustrations of getting a project of this magnitude started in an area lacking in the needed materials, tools, knowledgeable labor force and money. Br. Bernie taught me patience, gentleness and perseverance, all by example, all with his heart. I was an impatient and anxious student, but he continued to teach, and I slowly caught on. Some of what he taught me did not sink in until my return home -- never too late.

I worked the closest with Br. Robert, a young African Brother of Saint Joseph the Worker. Brother Robert was anxious to continue his learning of the carpentry trade and wanted to pick up as much knowledge of construction as possible. This young man taught me more things than I could ever teach him, and I don't think he even realizes it. He taught me about surviving and about continuing on even when the path seems unbearable. He taught me about caring, in his "spare time" Br. Robert takes care of orphans and there are plenty of them to go around. Quite a task for a young man in his twenties.

I worked with Steven, a young man of 18 who has been on his own for several years and lives day by day on what he can earn each day. There is Br. William, a young Brother hungry to learn as much as he can about construction so that he can help rebuild after the devastation of the earthquake. Then there is Henry and Paul, blood brothers who helped for a short time before heading back to Kampala to continue their jobs as teachers, even though they had not been paid for six months because the school has no money. John, the "fundi" (job foreman), who was amazed that a white man would be on the job sight and be digging in the hard baked clay and getting sweaty and dirty. The list could continue on and on, with the men who stomped the mud and carried it on their backs to stuff in the walls of the tool storage hut. And the man who dug the 15 foot deep hole and built the latrine for the construction sight, all with only a shovel and sweat, not even a ladder. Then there are the six laborers who dug the foundation trench for a week straight in the HOT sun from 7 am til 4 pm without a water break or a lunch break or any kind of rest, rest comes when the job is done. There is Bonaface, who asked for my help to start his woodworking business so that he can support his wife and two children. My good friend Patrick, the driver for the Bishop, who has five children, a small farm, and has taken in two orphans to care as his own.

I cannot list everyone I worked with, but the faces will remain on my mind and in my heart forever. The dozens of men who would be at the jobsite EVERY MORNING, looking for work, any kind of work, and I would have to turn them away because there was not enough work for everyone at that time. These are not lazy and ignorant people, these are human beings who have very few opportunities. As I worked beside these individuals I tried to understand what made them different from me and vice-versa. The answer was absolutely nothing, we are the same, we are just located on two separate continents.

We here in America feel that we deserve what we have, because we have worked hard to get it. We not only deserve it, we EXPECT IT! The majority of us have worked hard to be where we are at, but I have worked with people who work every day, day in and day out, just to survive, and that is all that they can do right now is survive. We need not feel ashamed or guilty of our good fortune and our circumstance, but we do need to share or richness, even though we sometimes fail to see how rich we really are. All the things that we take for granted on a daily basis; vehicles, gas, food, clothing, homes, jobs, absence of constant fear, warm showers, consistent electricity, drivable roads, telephones that work, refrigerators -- the list continues, but all these are LUXURIES to hundreds of thousands of people. And we expect and demand them every day.

The MEMORIES of Uganda are the grasshoppers for supper, the long hot trips in the back of a jeep, digging in the hard baked clay with an Ekirimizo, the hot sun and long rains, the struggle to get even the most basic of materials, the driving on the left side of the road, flowers everywhere, beautiful mountains, cockroaches, missing my family every minute, the inability to communicate with the outside world, goat intestine for Christmas supper, building with mud and poles and twine, diarrhea, diarrhea, diarrhea, getting lost in the jungle, seeing baboons face to face, warm pop and beer.

The EXPERIENCE and the true story of Uganda is the people. The orphans that are everywhere, the women carrying babies on their backs, the men and women along the roads everywhere carrying bananas and charcoal and cassava root and water and everything else on their heads, the little children who run out to see you even though they are stark naked, the large number of women, men and children who walk for long distances to attend daily Mass, the workers who work in the hot sun and never utter one complaint, the average man, woman and child that work all day just to live for the next and do so with hope in their heart and a smile on their face. This is Uganda, this is the story of the missions. People, real people. Not statistics, not just numbers, but real people who need a helping hand. Children of God, just like you and me.

Tom Musgrave