Jason in Uganda

Today at 4 p.m. in Kampala, the Uganda Christian University men’s basketball team will put on uniforms and basketball shoes for the first time and tip-off against Kampala International University. I’ll be coaching. If the game starts any later than 4, I’ll be nervous because at 6:30 I must find a car with a driver who knows Kampala well enough to get me to the Ambassador’s house for Thanksgiving Dinner. By 7:30 I should be looking for the cranberry sauce.

Right about then, there’ll be a dining room table in Southeast Georgia full of food and forks and knives and praying hands and just a measure of sadness. We don’t have too many traditions in our little Mehl nucleus, but we have one that’s strong as both my Grandpa’s put together. Thanksgiving and Christmas we stand behind our chairs and hold hands and sing the Doxology.

Collectively, we’re thanking God for the food. Singly, we’re doing much more. It’s Grandpa Boese who was big on the Doxology and who lead Ma’s big family in singing it the million Missouri and Oklahoma and Texas times they sang it. So it’s Ma who always leads us, and just the thought of starting it tears up her eyes and only she knows what she’s thinking about her father who’s with her Father in Heaven, and her mother and her sister and brothers in America. And Dad’s thinking something, and Anne’s thinking something, and Corey’s thinking something, and little Rosalyn’s eyes are squinted shut on something and now big little Jacob’s eyes and ears will be open on the whole thing for the first time in his World. For me every year is different depending on how much I look across at Ma and her eyes. I know I’ve never gotten through a whole Doxology without looking at her eyes. But I also know I’ve never sustained that look from “Praise God” to “Amen.” Some years if she looks up at my eyes with hers, I sing and try for a few words to smile her to some kind of happy sadness. Some years I look over at Dad after Ma and find tears behind his glasses. When I look at Anne I try to return the Angel smile she gets when she sings that’s now been refined with two touches of mother. The last ten or so lucky years, Corey’s been next to me and I haven’t needed to look at him to know his big teddy bear tears. The one thing that’s sure as Thursday--Ma won’t make it singing through to “Amen.”

This year I won’t know who looks where and who sings how long. There won’t be an empty place at the table--big little Jacob will be doing his best to fill the spot I used to fill--so there won’t be any staring at a lonely chair. But I suspect, among the looks shared and passed around the hand-holding circle, several will be directed at the plate of cranberry sauce. Ten or so purple slices of equal width layered-out in a circle on a medium sized plate--the one from the bottom of the can with just a little more shinning slickness than the rest. And after everyone’s sat and turkey and gravy and rolls and butter and fresh jam have been passed and re-passed and everyone’s full of everything they wanted seconds of, the table will be cleared for pie and coffee and someone will see the cranberry sauce plate with the pink-purple thin juice settled around the four or five un-touched slices and they’ll say, “Jason wouldn’t have left those.”

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As big as New York is with it’s small talk and farewell kisses and ghosts of electricity and night watchmen and D-trains, it don’t have the room to house the cold shower and charcoal and good morning and hand-washing reality of every Ugandan conscience.

A big container full of stuff was shipped here to the University from Virginia July 15. I packed up a bunch of books and most of my cd’s before leaving Wheaton and UPS’d them to a guy in Virginia and he put them on the container. Every other missionary at the University from North America sent at least a few boxes to the guy in Virginia, some sent mattresses and furniture. The best-case-scenario for shipment was one month. Since Stephen Noll wasn’t sure if he’d be around late August and was sure I would be, he had the guy in Virginia label all the missionary stuff “Missionary items for Jason Mehl.” One third of the container was computers and monitors. Another third was hospital equipment for a clinic way in the west near the other UCU campus in Kabale. The other third was my responsibility.

Before I left the US, Stephen Noll sent me a couple emails about the importance of me having all my paperwork in order and at hand when the container comes. So I had this vision of me landing and being all caught up with everything being new and jet-lagging and the Noll’s wouldn’t be around and I’d be the only white guy in the entire country and I’d be looking through luggage pockets for papers and have to do all kinds of official stuff I’d never done before. Silly worries like most worries.

The container arrived last Saturday, November 1. We got updates here-and-there on where it was last seen and we’d make jokes--Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Kenya--sheiks on camels wearing Doc Martens reading Kerouac and listening to Dylan. Finally the container was officially spotted in Kampala. Every day for two weeks we were told “tomorrow.” I was no longer worried about paperwork and presence and all that. The Noll’s were here and I understood that I wasn’t the only white guy in the country and it wouldn’t matter if I was. Somewhere around October 28 I saw Mugaga, Stephen’s assistant who knows the guys in charge of clearing containers and is himself in charge of taking care of such matters at the University. Mugaga’s a young guy with a bit of slyness in his eyes that’s not suspicious but comforting in a way to a westerner who’s used to seeing slyness or at least some kind of measured honesty or cynicism in most pairs of eyes. So I saw Mugaga and we shook hands and held hands through the conversation.

“Good morning Mugaga.”

“Good morning.”

“What’s the word on the container?”

“Tomorrow.”

“This has been a month of tomorrows.”

“Yes, well, tomorrow is tomorrow. Tell me, are you the one with the cd’s?”

“I’ve got a bunch of cd’s in one of my boxes, yeah.”

“Everyone is impressed with your collection.”

“Everyone?”

“The guys down at customs.”

“You know them?”

“Yeah. They’ve taken many of your cd’s and copied them to their computers.”

“Is that legal?”

“This is Uganda.”

I was laughing and he was smiling. At first I felt a little violated. I was never worried about the cd’s being gone. Mugaga wouldn’t have said anything about it if they were stealing stuff. But the violated feeling left quickly and was replaced by genuine happy curiosity and pride. Back when I was listening to mostly Christian music I left my windows down in my car and someone made off with all seven or eight of the tapes I had in the front seat. I figured it was o.k. because maybe the thief took them and listened to them and found Jesus listening to Take6’s Christmas album. I wanted to know, which of the 400 cd’s did these Ugandan customs guys take and copy? And how did they choose what they took? Besides the Beatles and Frank Sinatra and the one Public Enemy album--there’s no way they’d know who the people were--Sarah Masen, Silver Jews, Sixteen Horsepower? Maybe they’d learn something about something--maybe something about Life maybe something about Art maybe something about Jesus maybe something about America maybe something about Dylan’s New York with its small talk and farewell kisses and ghosts of electricity and night watchmen and D-trains. Maybe nothing.

Mugaga’s tomorrow was not tomorrow--but tomorrow came and the truck pulled up and stopped and the doors swung open and the first box visible was the square one with Tyndale House tape torn off and the top flaps all ripped and re-taped and the sides falling apart. “Missionary items for Jason Mehl” it said. Maybe so.

Posted by at 5:23 PM | Permalink