Gulu District
I went to Uganda
a number of years ago,
to the Gulu District,
way up north.
Near where Joseph Kony
and the LRA had been.
We set up a clinic
in a school
that had been built
on one of the killing fields.
We brought in all our food,
slept in tents,
and cooked over propane.
The sunrises and sunsets were amazing.
We took pictures every morning and every night.
The Ugandans laughed,
“Don’t you have the sun where you come from?”
The field where our tents were pitched caught on fire.
A line burned steadily towards our stuff.
We rushed to move things out of the way.
The Ugandans laughed,
“It will rain this afternoon and put things out.
If not, we will put it out.”
That night the rain came.
The Nile diverted beneath my sleeping bag.
Some of us were a little discouraged.
The Ugandans laughed,
“The sun over here dries our clothes.
Doesn’t it do that where you live?”
They asked us to bring stocking caps.
We thought that was strange, but the women
in our church knitted dozens and dozens of them.
I sent back a picture, "Look! They like them!"
Later I found out they wore them because
malaria gives you hard chills even when it is
90 degrees outside.
We brought Bibles and taught their pastors.
They brought drums and taught us how
dance with abandon during worship.
I think what I learned from the Ugandans
was better than what they learned about me.
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