Day 2 on the Amy for Africa Mission to Moyo is complete. It was a day of travel through Kampala, Uganda’s largest city with 5 million population. Traffic was a nightmare. The highly congested city has four stop lights. That’s right, four. It was an eye-opening look as we passed through the streets with vendors selling everything, including toilet paper, to anyone who may need it. Our adventuresome bunch continued toward Gulu, our destination for the night.
There is only one road in to Gulu and it’s much like traveling a forgotten back road in Kentucky. Pot holes are more like craters with hardly a smooth patch anywhere. The Chinese have some of their engineers in fixing up roads but it’s hardly even a work in progress. We held our breath with several near-misses from incoming traffic, including one with a truck coming at us about 40 mph. We all thought he was going to hit but somehow (we know how) missed. We held our breath on several other close encounters but not didn’t do as well with our water. The girls had an, uh, adventuresome pit stop in the tall weeds and learned how hard doing that business can be while wearing a skirt.
But it wasn’t just the ladies. Chris was ready to pop before forcing a stop where he cut loose for what had to be a record time about 30 minutes outside of Gulu. It reminded me of the Tom Hanks’ scene in “League of Our Own.”
Aside from that, we mostly listened as Bro. Floyd engaged us with lessons of history both past and recent of the area. Gulu was once a place where Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized. Poverty is so real in these places, much worse than most (any?) place in the United States.
We go on to Moyo on Wednesday and begin the shoe distribution on Thursday. We will do three days of distributions, take a day of rest, and then four more next week. Pieces are falling into place and we are thankful for a safe day of travel. We passed by Karumma Falls and saw baboons along the roadside.
Our night ended with a dinner in Gulu where the food was good and service, well, let’s just say was slow. Several team members could have crawled up on the table and called it a night.
Everybody remains excited despite being tired of travel both in the air and now on the ground. Keep praying for us!!!