Backpacking in the Mountains/Padibe Arrival

Last week, Shawn and I took our first ever (almost real) backpacking trip in the Rwenzori mountains in southwest Uganda.  I say almost because the whole operation (owned by an Australian) runs under the colonial system: you pay to have two tour guides (one for each of you) and four other west Africans carry all of your stuff, plan your route, cook your food, etc.).  The whole concept is humbling and sickening at once, but you have to get used to it because if you want to go up, that’s how they do it here.  Regardless of the inherent system, it was HARD, man!  Hot, steep, relentless.  Our first trek on the trail was straight up the mountain for about 6 hours.  This type of journey really did test my wherewithal and asked that I face my demons.  I will admit that there were a few times where I mentally cursed the bloody idea of walking up a mountain-side in pea soup humidity as a second honeymoon, even cursing the one who came up with the idea (I’ll give you a hint… it wasn’t me… ;)).  But man, as we finally arrived to our first view from high up in the midst of the heather trees (yes, the ones you normally associate with Africa), I was overcome with emotion.  This place was so beautiful and raw.  Monkeys jumped from branch to branch of the high trees, while huge globes of moss hung from the branches, as if out of a Dr. Seuss book, butterflies of all colors and designs followed us upward… and every struggle was so worth the end result.  The next three days on the trail all sort of blurred together but every time I wanted to give up, we’d encounter some new terrain with a new kind of vegetation  that one only can imagine seeing on National Geographic channel. And then, of course, I would cry in overwhelm again and the fatigue would fade. Somewhere along the way I started to realize that how I approached each day on the trail was entirely up to me.  I could focus on my spaghetti legs, or I could focus on the cascading waterfalls.  I could focus on the rain, or I could focus on the new life that popped up around me because of it.  So, while this journey was trying it seemed that God was preparing me for our time in here in Padibe.  It could not have been any other way.

As I alluded to, it has been a hairy first few days in Padibe.  When we woke up at 11:00 on Friday, went over to see the Sunflower Press – yes, it’s real! And very impressive – and began to discuss the wedding plans.  We wanted to make sure that all the people we are friends with were invited and as we mentioned the name of the headmaster of the secondary school, Tommy told us that he was in jail for no good reason.  We asked for details and Tommy told us that one of the rich men in town (from another clan) is after his clan’s land.  Because this man is wealthy, he paid the policemen to arrest the head men in the clan. We are very concerned for the safety of our friends but they will be getting a lawyer and Tommy seems to think that this will all be settled through him.  We are obviously upset about it.  For Shawn and I, it had been difficult to process all of this especially immediately upon arrival.  We are told the land wars and clan struggles are simply a part of the aftermath of war, but the corruption is hard for us to understand.  The situation has caused me to wake up a bit and simply remain present in what’s happening now.  It seems that I was operating under some assumptions that everyone loves me here, that they have been waiting for me to come back, etc.  And, truly, I think that the first few days here have been about ripping away the stories and bringing me back to reality.  This is not about the “story” of going to Uganda, but rather it’s about being here now and experiencing things as they are.

Being here for a second time is similar to reading a book twice.  I know the characters and the plot line is familiar.  The women with jerry cans and logs on their heads are not so shocking to me anymore.  The lifestyle of living in a hut is not quite as romantic as it may have seemed to me the first time around.  Rather, the surface is peeling back and I am more able to see the humanness behind the culture shock, the real people behind the stories.  I put myself in this life and can see the relentless difficulty… what it means to dig in the field every day, to count on Mother Nature to bring the right crop conditions.  While there is something pure about this lifestyle, I also see that there’s something really unfair about it.  How is it that we are born into a society that doesn’t have to face these struggles just to survive?  And survival is not guaranteed after all of that either.  It’s been really difficult to hear about the land wars between clans, the corruption of the police, the cruelty and retaliation that the people are dealing with — the lies, the back-stabbing.  But, just as I realized when hiking in the mountains, we aren’t meant to walk on some man-made bridge up to the top.  There is struggle in the climb because thats simply how it works.  I was thinking that yesterday as Shawn and I were struggling to make sense of the fights: God has given each of us a strenuous path to climb, as we climb up toward the truth; these are the burdens of the Padibe people and because we are connected to them, they are now ours too. We are not guaranteed an easy go of it here, and it was silly of me to think that my month in Africa was going to be one of carefree relaxation.  But that is why we don’t just show up here and expect things to be easy – that’s not why we signed up for this.  It would be a lot easier to just show up and drop off the Sunflower Press machinery and say “good luck”, to send the school fees and let some anonymous kids go to school.  So while the first few days have been challenging, I am making peace with our trek.  Because I have realized that the view from the top is somehow more beautiful when you struggled to get there; when you walk the steep slopes and understand the mountain from walking her footpath.  Instead of resisting the struggle, I am preparing myself to embrace it.  Instead of asking, why me, why this, I will say okay, it’s me – I have been the one chosen for this.  How can I help? How can I be the conduit for good?

We are heading into our wedding ceremony here which has already been a reminder that for every difficulty, there is so much that the people here have and want to give: the donated goat has already been slaughtered (talk about appreciating the sacrifice of food — yesterday we just were petting the little guy and already this morning heard him make his last bleat). This is a mutual journey we are embarking on here, and it’s the relationship, the holding of hands as we struggle upward together, that makes this place, this connection worthy of our time.