delivered May 18, 2005

Dear Friends,
 
Have you heard of the red earth of Africa? Well, it's true. Just look at my socks when I wash them out in the sink. The whole place is red clay, so the rain soaks right in and there are no lakes around -- just some swamps.
 
Yesterday after church, Bishop Tom invited us to a meeting at his office on Monday morning, so we appeared there at 9:30 this morning. Mathew joined Christine, Chuck, Adelitus Ken and me in the Bishop's office. After introductions, Mathew outlined what we have done so far. Bishop Tom's wife has been ill and in the hospital for the last two weeks, so we hadn't seem him here, although he did pick up Adelitus and put him on the bus when he arrived in Kampala.
 
Then the Bishop spoke and related his entire story which if I repeated, I'd spend the rest of the night here. He is an impressive person. He studied for a year at a bible school in Dallas and had a vision that he was to unite the people in his home, Uganda. He said that instead of preaching heaven, heaven, heaven all the time that he should do what Jesus did in helping the people he came in contact with. So the city of Lira gave him some swamp land and he wondered what to do with it. The swamp has receded and there stands the All Nations Christian Care Center.
 
The Center has specialists in education, water and sanitation, food distribution, medicine and health. He only hires people with special skills, not just ministers. And they never ask about a person's religion when they are giving help. Although the Center is right next to the church, it is a separate entity with a board of directors and a certificate from the Ugandan government much the same as a non-profit charity would get in the U.S.
 
We are exploring ways of continuing our relationship with the people of Lira, so Mathew has provided us with a summary of the work they do and will get us a copy of last year's audit.

Yesterday was Sunday, our day off, so in the afternoon Ken took us on an adventure. We used our Global Position Systems (GPSs) to find the intersection of 33 degrees east longitude and 2 degrees north latitude. It's just about 15 miles south of Lira. There's a website for such places. People go there, take a picture of their GPS, a general; picture of the area, and then a picture in each of the four compass points. I was wondering what kind of place we wound wind up in and if we'd have to hike miles through the bush. But with Mathew driving in what is really his back yard, we arrived within a couple hundred yards of the site. There were some small farms there and one old woman was terrified that we had come to confiscate her land. Mathew explained that we were just crazy wazungu and that there was nothing to fear. Closest to the intersection was another farm with a boy of high school age who understood exactly what we were doing and knew all about the Internet! Remember we were miles from any sizable town. Ken's and my GPSs were in agreement to within about 10 feet, so we took our photos and photos of all the curious crowd (six, maybe) that had gathered and then left. Well, it was really more exciting and fun than this e-mail indicates.
 
In other news....
 
Adelitus has correctly identified two cases of Typhoid Fever in Erute camp. So tomorrow he will contact the group leaders and start a public health information forum about keeping clean and washing hands. We've gotten treatment for 23 people from the camps so far. There's supposed to be a nurse living at Erute, but we've never seen her and she has sent no one to the hospital.
 
Mathew is catching the 4 a.m. bus to Kampala tomorrow to buy 1000 axes for about US$ 2.00 each. We've discovered that the rocket stove isn't used often because there is no small wood pieces to use, so an ax is essential.
 
Our second brick yard is just down the street from the train station. But there are no trains. Not since the Idi Amin reign, and it will cost millions to rehabilitate it when this part of the country is cleared of the LRA rebels. Rail is essential for the export of manufactured goods and crops. It would certainly facilitate brining goods from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Everything has to be trucked now.
 
Bishop's move two. We will meet the Bishop tonight again for dinner, probably at the Pan Afric (no "a") Restaurant, one of the only three good restaurants in town. He's taking us to to dinner to thanks us for our work here.
 
The Lira Hotel always has conferences going there. Today, there was an Elections Commission meeting as well as a seminar for teachers. It's amazing how many groups and NGOs there are here -- in the middle of nowhere! We have received a report of a joint commission that has evaluated all the problems with the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons). It is very well done and frank. All the big NGOs here had input and explained the methodology and results.
 
Well, gotta so clean up for Bishop Tom.

Peter