Note 1: Just after I finished writing this much-delayed blog entry came the news of the senseless bomb attack on July 11 in Kampala, taking the lives of 76 people who had gathered at two sites to watch the World Cup final. One site was a rugby club on the north side of the city; the other was an Ethiopian restaurant located about a hundred yards from a small market area to which Susan and I walked one evening when we were staying at Bishop McCauley House. Responsibility was claimed by the Somali group al-Shabab, supposedly in retaliation for Uganda’s participation in UN peacekeeping work in Somalia.
Uganda has 3,200 troops serving in the UN force, alongside 1,000 from Burundi. Promises of additional forces from Nigeria, Ghana and other countries have not been fulfilled, probably because the situation in Somalia, with no functioning government and numerous private and religious armies, is so dangerous. According to BBC reports Ugandan military leaders, far from suggesting a pullout, have said that this act of vicious cruelty against the innocent only underscores the importance of the UN’s work of restoring order and restraining terrorist groups.
This is the very worst sort of globalism: one country falls into utter chaos which is exploited by religious and political extremists; other countries send their soldiers to the rescue and their citizens become targets of attack for that reason; and the result is 76 funerals this week for Ugandans, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Indians, Congolese, Irish, and Americans who were watching the finale of a great celebration of global cooperation and of Africa’s emerging place in the world.
Please keep the Ugandan soldiers, the families of the 76 victims, and all the people of Somalia in your prayers this week.
Note 2: Now that I am back in the US where “wide bandwidth” means what it says, and I don’t need to go make a cup of coffee while waiting for an image to load (if I start by harvesting the beans I’ll be back at my computer just about when it’s finished), I have inserted a few photos into this overlong blog entry, but you can view lots more here:
“Come to Uganda before you head back home. You’ll be my excuse to travel to some of the most beautiful parts of the country that I never get around to visiting.” So said our longtime friend David Burrell when we saw him briefly in Nairobi in March. “I have a car—I’ll do the driving, you buy the petrol. Is it a deal?” How could we say no?
David is a Holy Cross priest who spent most of his career teaching philosophy and theology at Notre Dame, interspersed with overseas assignments: teaching seminarians in Bangladesh, leading the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem (which he transformed from a place of bilateral Jewish-Christian dialogue into a place of community and exploration for Jews, Christians, and Moslems), summers studying Arabic in Cairo (so he could understand how much medieval Catholic philosophy borrowed from medieval Moslem philosophy). Then his superior sent him off to Uganda to teach in the ethics and development program of Uganda Martyrs University and assist in curricular planning. This year, his third, there was some miscommunication about his schedule and he was assigned no courses. So he has been free to do more planning and program development, schedule other travel (he was just back from two weeks in Jerusalem), and serve as tour organizer for visiting friends. Our plan was that, after my Daystar duties were finished and we had returned from Ethiopia, we would explore Uganda together from 10-18 May.
(As it turned out my Daystar work was not quite finished, owing to a major error on the university’s part: despite a very formal and seemingly foolproof system for submission and distribution of final examinations, my students were given the wrong exam. After we returned from Uganda, with the advice and help of my head of department, I was able to make appropriate adjustments in exam and final grades. But it still made for a difficult ending to an otherwise very rewarding experience teaching African students in Africa.)
Our Uganda adventure began with a 13-hour marathon bus trip from Nairobi through Naivasha, Nakuru, and Kisumu, skirting the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, and then through the border town of Busia, across the Nile at Jinja, and on to Kampala. It was a beautiful day’s ride on a reasonably comfortable bus, the “Akamba Royal” with three-across seating. But the roads were rough, and it felt as if the bus’s suspension had been borrowed from a donkey cart.
Arriving in Kampala just at dark on Monday, about 7 pm, we got a taxi to Bishop McCauley House, the Holy Cross novitiate on the southern outskirts of the capital where David has his lodgings. The differing cultures of Protestants and Catholics in East Africa were immediately apparent when everyone gathered for conversation before dinner over beer and popcorn. Joining us at two round tables for dinner were half a dozen novices, African young men from several countries, and the house director, Cleophas Kyomuhendo, a Ugandan. Also at dinner that night were a visiting Holy Cross priest from Massachusetts and a young Holy Cross nun, a resident of a community in the north who had an early morning appointment at the US Embassy for a visa interview. The food was delicious, the company welcoming, and we felt immediately at home. Indeed, the room we were assigned, a spacious dormitory-style room with beds with mosquito nets, a desk, and a small corner lavatory (bathrooms were down the hall), became our home base for the week. We could pack for each trip out of Kampala but what we didn’t need in the room to await our return.
Our first destination Tuesday morning was Uganda Martyrs University in Nkozi, about 80 km southwest of Kampala. It’s a beautiful campus on a hillside overlooking the northwest corner of Lake Victoria, bright with flowering trees and shrubs, with an eclectic mix of old buildings carried over from its former function as a school and new buildings to house expanding programs. Its initial offerings—like Daystar’s—were in professional fields such as business and community development, but in the 17 years since its founding it has added programs in health sciences, agriculture, microcredit, and education. David’s responsibility has been to teach in the ethics and development program, expand the Holy Cross presence on campus, and plan for broader offerings in theology and the humanities. There are now about 1200 full-time students in residence (paying fees only a quarter of Daystar’s—Uganda has bargains in higher education too). Three times that many are enrolled part-time, here or at two sites in the capital region. A student led us on a campus tour, including the area of bush in a recently acquired plot of land where the Holy Cross fathers hope to establish a house. (David now commutes from Kampala.)
We had a lively lunchtime conversation with students and faculty whom David had invited to meet us, ranging widely over religion and politics and academic priorities. Well-informed Ugandans seem to have little hope that the Museveni government will ever yield power willingly, or that rampant corruption will ever be seriously addressed. “Uganda is an ethnic time bomb, ready to explode,” said former ambassador Samuel Baliginde, now a lecturer in UMU’s newly established program in diplomacy, “but it’s not openly discussed.” Certainly Kenya cannot be upheld as a model of good governance or peaceful conflict resolution. But David’s colleagues were lavish in their admiration for Julius Nyerere of Tanzania—“a genuine leader who really believed in his ideals, not in power.” He was a deeply committed Christian who attended Mass daily and worked on a Swahili translation of the Bible, they said, but he adopted the custom of wearing a Muslim hat to show his support for religious toleration.
At the end of our week we also visited Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono, 25 km east of Kampala, and I will insert a few notes on that visit here. David had arranged for us to meet Mark Bartels, coordinator of an overseas study program of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities that brings a dozen American students to Uganda each year. UCU evolved from an Anglican theological school, the Bishop Tucker School of Divinity, and was rebaptized as a university in 1997. Its 2004 government charter was the first given to any private university in Uganda. Enrollment is now nearly 6000, and new buildings are springing up left and right on its spacious campus. We had no formal meeting with faculty, only a few brief conversations in passing, so I didn’t get a very clear picture of its theological profile and curricular options. But it seems to be similar to Daystar, which was an important model in its formation. The former Vice-Chancellor at Daystar, Stephen Talitwala, whom I met there in 2001, left shortly thereafter to take up the same role at UCU for a few years before moving on once again.
I asked Mark whether there had been an active debate on campus regarding the infamous Parliamentary bill to impose the death penalty for homosexual acts, a bill whose advocates have received financial support from some American evangelical groups. Mark said there had been informal discussion, but only out of the public eye. The current VC, an Episcopalian from the US, had reportedly wanted to speak against the law, even though he holds a very conservative position himself. But Mark was told that he had been cautioned by the board to keep quiet. It appears that, at UCU as at Daystar, some faculty and many students have lots of questions about the church’s handling of controversial issues such as this but few opportunities to explore them in each other’s presence.
Jumping back a week to our first day of travels, we drove on from UMU for about 200 km to the southwest, skirting (and occasionally glimpsing) Lake Victoria’s shoreline, then inland to the town of Mbarara, passing through forests, rolling grasslands, and farms. As in Kenya the lower elevations are planted in wheat and maize, the higher elevations in coffee and tea. Unlike Kenya, there are also endless expanses of banana plantations, serving the limitless appetite of Ugandans for matoke, a starchy staple made from green cooking bananas.
We arrived at our destination in a torrential downpour. The Ribeka guesthouse was inexpensive ($30 for a double), and rather worn (small rooms, shabby furniture)., The staff were friendly and helpful, though, and our dinner there was tasty. Lacking electrical power, we ate a fine meal by candlelight, were given a jerrycan of hot water for showers, and retired early to bed. In the morning we drove the remaining 100 km to Queen Elizabeth National Park, a vast reserve of savanna and forest on the shores of Lake Albert and Lake George, on Uganda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It has been a protected reserve since the 1930’s, a national park since 1952. The name memorializes a royal entourage that came for a visit in 1954.
Although animal populations suffered greatly from poaching, especially during the disorder of the Amin years, they have mostly recovered. There are 95 mammal species in the park, including about 2500 elephant and 200 lions. QE Park is incredibly rich in bird species: more than 610 species have been recorded, “possibly the highest total for any national park in Africa, if not the world,” reports the Bradt guide. Among them are 54 different raptors, every waterbird of East Africa, and a huge variety of forest and grassland birds.
We caught glimpses of waterbuck and bushbuck and impala here and there, and a few zebra. We took a long loop drive in the savanna after lunch hoping to sight giraffe and lion, but in the intense midday heat all the mammals except us seemed to be napping in the shade. So we returned to the tarmac road and proceeded another 125 km to the town of Fort Portal, where our accommodations were in a beautiful church-run guesthouse, the Lisieux Center. Once again afternoon rains began just as we were arriving at our lodging, but this time they were brief. From the balcony of our room we could look out over lush fields and hills nearby as the sun pushed back the clouds. Also in Fort Portal is Virika Cathedral, a beautiful church in the round built by the Holy Cross fathers shortly after they were first dispatched to Uganda in 1958. Two Notre Dame students, Kathleen Stanley and Anna Dwyer, phoned to say they had just checked into a hostel adjacent to the cathedral. We had dinner together, and on Thursday we all set out in David’s car to visit a Holy Cross residence and retreat center at Lake Saka, just outside town.
And there—in a location that the Bradt guide describes as very scenic but off-limits to tourists—we enjoyed a leisurely day of conversation, reading, swimming, and hiking in one of the loveliest settings we have seen in all of East Africa. There were no novices in residence at the time, only the resident director, Dick Stout, a Holy Cross priest who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, and a few staff members. The view across the volcanic hills and river valleys when we hiked up along the crest of a nearby ridge was stunning. Later, when the five of us dove off a small dock for a swim, the only other living things in the water were the shore birds fishing in the shallows. Our next destination was Masindi, 250 km to the east and north according to the map. But David had learned from friends that the direct route was an unpaved and unimproved road in such poor condition that our Corolla would probably get us only partway there before it became stuck in a rut or sunk in the mud. So we detoured all the way back to Kampala instead, doubling the distance but avoiding the risk that we’d spend the rest of the week in a ditch awaiting rescue. David let me drive the long stretches of well-paved two-lane road from town to town, but when we got to a construction zone just outside Kampala—a 20-km obstacle course that took us longer than the previous 120 km—he took the wheel. We arrived at Bishop McCauley House just in time to join the residents for dinner.
We made an early start on Saturday, getting through Kampala morning traffic with little delay or difficulty. The countryside was as beautiful as on our previous cross-country drive, but a bit less lush, with some arid regions. Masindi is a lively little town, a gateway to Uganda’s north, and our lodgings were in another church-run hostel, Kolping House. It isn’t quite as comfortable as in Fort Portal but seemed more than adequate—until a large group of Indians, arriving en masse for a wedding the next day, rolled in at 2 am and conducted loud arguments in the hallway and outside our window until 4.
A highlight of Masindi was our visit to Aunt Joy’s Fabric Shop, whose owner, Joyce Nnanyonga, is a sister of Cleophas Kyomuhendo, director of the Holy Cross residence in Kampala. There we were introduced to the distinctive styles and patterns of Ugandan kikois (much larger than the Kenyan variety, with an interesting pattern of weaving at each end), even though the power was out once again and the colors were difficult to make out in the darkness of the shop. The shop was filled with customers, and every nook and cranny was stuffed with different kinds of fabrics. And on its veranda of the shop, no more than five feet in depth and twenty feet wide, half a dozen men and women sat working at foot-treadle sewing machines. They are not Aunt Joy’s employees, but rent the space from her and take orders from her customers. A couple of them were eager to make clothes for us—delivery by evening would be no problem—but we declined.
Living with Aunt Joy just now and helping out in the shop is her daughter Resty (Restetuta Kunihira), who joined Susan and David and me for lunch. She is a beautiful young woman with a university degree and lots of energy and ideas who hasn’t been able to find suitable employment, except for a temporary job working in the Masindi area on voter registration. She and her mother invited us to their home that evening and served us supper by the light of candles and electric torches.
Sunday morning—uncertain if we could pull this off, since we had been advised that reservations were essential but none of the telephone numbers we had were answered—Father David and Susan and I departed early for the Kanyiyo Pabidi Forest, a reserve that is home to an enormous variety of birds and several large communities of chimpanzees. (The two students were staying a few more days in Fort Portal.) Like all the northern Uganda reserves, this one suffered grievously from neglect and rampant poaching during the 90s when the northern part of Uganda was engulfed in a civil war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government. After order was restored about ten years ago, the government turned over management of the reserve to the Jane Goodall Institute, whose staff stopped the poaching, helped rebuild bird and mammal populations, and also undertook to “habituate” one of the chimpanzee groups to human observers. One of the guides described the process: “We just go to wherever they are in the forest, follow them when they are moving, and sit down when they stop to eat. After a few months, the chimps ignore their visitors and go about their lives.”
Amazingly, they even include human observers in their security arrangements. Our guide described one occasion when a sentinel chimp dropped down out of the trees while sounding a warning cry, without any reason they could see. Finally he alternated between crying out and looking fixedly in one direction, until the humans at last noticed a gigantic python lurking in the shadows nearby. But the chimps are in no way tame or domesticated. The guides never give them food, never approach closer than ten meters, and give them no encouragement to hang around near the park lodge.
Despite our lack of reservations, we were welcomed and assigned a guide, who collected our fees ($60 per person) and headed off into the forest with us, walking quietly and listening closely for any sign of the chimps’ presence. (She had a walkie-talkie with her, and their reports helped direct us too.) We heard dozens of birds, all of which she identified for us, but saw hardly any of them in the dense forest cover.
After just over an hour of walking down narrow trails we veered off into the brush, and within a few minutes we saw several chimps on the tree branches over our heads. (Two other parties were there as well, an Australian family of three with their guide and a Dutch woman living in Nairobi with hers.) There was one female chimp twenty feet over our heads, lounging provocatively on a branch because she was in her estrus cycle. Near her, biding their time on nearby trees, were half a dozen males waiting to see whom she would favor with an invitation. They all looked down at us with no particular interest. While waiting for the female’s invitation the males groomed each other, swung from branch to branch, and from time to time erupted in loud cries that were echoed by other males scattered through the forest—a 360 degree chorus of loud whoops, most of its sources invisible. The guide explained that the group had split up into a dozen or more small groups for foraging, but from time to time the males in each group stand up, thrust out their chests, and bellow at the top of their lungs. The purpose is mainly to remind the forest’s other residents of what magnificent specimens of chimpanzeehood they are, while also keeping track of each other’s whereabouts.
There was a year-old baby with the group, swinging from tree to tree and sometimes pestering the grown-ups. A few females who were not in estrus wandered over and perched on branches where the waiting males could groom them. At one point a large male dropped down and sat on a U-shaped hanging vine, at last catching enough light so I could get a good portrait. Not once did any of the chimps set foot on the ground, nor did the female seem to be in any hurry to make up her mind. We watched for perhaps 90 minutes, and she did nothing more than shift her position a bit and look around at her suitors. It was a remarkable experience, standing in the forest observing and being observed by animals with whom we share 97% of our genes, yet utterly unable to communicate anything more complex than, “Hey, it’s cool watching you—we hope you feel the same way.”
We saw some spectacular birds along the road to and beyond the forest reserve—huge ones like the blue-throated hornbill and the kori bustard, colorful little ones like sunbirds and weavers—but I didn’t catch any with my camera, alas. (The driver and navigator in the front seat were inexplicably reluctant to slam on the brakes and back up a quarter mile in hopes that a bird would sit still and await the photographer’s return.) It was only about 75 more km to our destination for the day, Red Chilli Rest Camp (yes, that’s a common spelling in Africa), a charmingly funky complex of cabins and campsites near the south bank of the Victoria Nile. (Very affordable for park lodging, just $50 a night for our small double cabin.)
From Red Chilli camp Susan and I walked down the road half a mile to the Nile, now wide and placid, crossed by ferries and frequented by wading waterfowl. One can book a boat here either to approach the falls from below or to see the marsh bird habitats downstream, but we decided we needed to make an early start on Monday instead. Dinner at the camp was very tasty, featuring fish caught fresh from the lake and the river. We met a number of interesting fellow travelers, including an Israeli medical student on holiday who joined us at our table. David said a grace over our meal in Hebrew. Our guest appreciated the gesture but admitted that she never prays.
The dark came quickly, as always in the tropics, but here it was profoundly dark, with measureless depths of stars above. Susan and I walked out to the road with our binoculars to get away from the (very few, generator-powered) lights in the camp. Suddenly she asked, “What’s that noise, and why is it getting closer?” In the light of my torch we saw that it was a hippo, followed by three more, heading up from the river toward nighttime grazing grounds at a surprisingly rapid pace. We hustled back past the gate into the camp, very aware that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal. A guard told us the next day, however, that the hippos in this section of the river are quite gentle and never object to sharing their space with humans. One of them, an older male who died last year, would even come when you called his name.
At meals and in the evenings as we traveled, David would hand around a prayerbook from which we would read Psalms and other Scripture readings of the day. And on Saturday night, realizing that we would be out in the forest with the chimps on the Feast of the Ascension the next day, he celebrated Mass with us in his room. He used a glass and plate from the guesthouse restaurant, beds as chairs, a small bedside table as altar. We each read portions of the lessons and the liturgy, and he shared a brief meditation on how this Gospel story showed once more how little the disciples had understood Jesus’s ministry or his identity. It was a moving occasion, unlike any other Eucharist in our experience, but very much of a piece with the entire week. We felt we had been given the gift of sharing the daily life of a religious order. Everywhere we went, David was welcomed by confreres who housed him, sat down for meals with members of his community, and shared news of mutual friends and unfinished projects. For a short time we became part of that close-knit community as well.
In one sense, David and his confreres have no freedom at all. They may not marry or raise a family; all their income goes directly to the order; and a religious superior has the authority to decide where they will live, what they will study, and what work they will do. But in many other respects they have more freedom than anyone else. No matter where they travel in the world, they will be welcomed by extended households of brothers and sisters who will house them, feed them, and assist in their work. The order provides for the education of its newly inducted members—in the US, in Rome, in Belgium, wherever the most suitable program is found—and matches them with suitable assignments in serving in parishes, assisting in missions, teaching in schools or universities, or in clinics or community organizations. Worried about unemployment? We don’t understand that concept. Worried about medical care? That’s our concern, not yours. Roof starting to leak, or transmission problems on your car? We will take care of it. But what about saving for retirement? First of all, “retirement” has a different meaning in a community in which four people, all of them still fully engaged in work that they love, have just celebrated their 80th birthdays together in Uganda. Second, when it’s time to stop working and rest, the order will continue to look after you and provide what you need.
Perhaps the most remarkable demonstration of what it means to live in this way—in utter defiance of the bedrock principle of modern Western culture, that each human life should be separate and self-directed and acquisitive—came in the half-day we spent at Kyarusozi, a small village between Masindi and Kampala that has long been a center of Holy Cross activity. There we were welcomed by two of the members of David’s order who were part of the four-birthday celebration when they turned 80 last year, Father Richard Potthast and Brother Bernie Klim. (The others were Dick Stout at Lake Saka and Sister Mary de Nardis, head of the Kyaruzozi clinic.) We sat down to lunch with Richard and some other guests, a retired Australian couple who teach village Bible study classes across Uganda. Then we set out by van to visit various sites where the Holy Cross fathers, brothers, and sisters are active in the community: a clinic with half a dozen examining rooms staffed by medically trained sisters and lay nurses; a boarding school (now on summer holiday) where new residences are being built to accommodate growing enrollment; and a large parish church surrounded by several grass-roofed rondavels where small groups meet for Bible study or conversation.
All the buildings have been designed by Brother Bernie, who builds what he designs, sawing beams and pouring concrete and laying out plumbing. On our tour of the new hostels we found him lying prone beneath a lavatory with wrenches in his hand. He also designed a quiet meditation garden adjacent to the priests’ residence, with a stone lantern at the center: he is both a Catholic monk and a Zen master, and he leads classes in both traditions. Father Richard and I sat in that garden for an hour’s conversation before our departure. Wanting to hear all about my research into African politics and political philosophy, he shared his observations about Uganda’s achievements and challenges and asked me lots of questions about Protestant-Catholic and Christian-Muslim relations in Kenya.
Returning home from Uganda was difficult. We felt as if we could happily share the life of the Holy Cross order for another few weeks, and would learn a great deal by doing so. But our departure time was growing near—so we opted for a much quicker mode of transportation on the way home, a Fly 540 plane from Entebbe back to Jomo Kenyatta airport, making the trip in one hour instead of 13. It was a pleasure to be back in our own spacious flat, sleeping in our own comfortable bed, and anticipating a week of packing, saying farewell, and looking back on five fascinating months in East Africa.
