Sadly our last day in Karamoja – we will miss it. Early church started at 7:15. We were tired from our late night so went to the later service at 10:00. It ended at 2:00, a little longer than usual as they had 84 baptisms! The Anglican Church here only performs baptisms twice a year, each time over 2 consecutive Sundays. Baptism candidates have to complete a several month course first. They baptize by ‘dousing’ (elsewhere known as sprinkling), not immersion, and each person baptized has a parent or ‘God parent’ who is responsible for mentoring them and keeping them accountable. Alcoholism and sexual promiscuity are common here but with strong ties to the church most people give those up and make new friends in the church community. The sermon was very good. The pastor talked about how some churches baptize by immersion and some by sprinkling but what is really important is the change in the person’s heart. Baptism is just an outward sign – the heart change is what really counts.
This particular church was very privileged to have a copy of the Old Testament to read from. There is an elderly gentleman in church who spent 23 years translating the Bible into the local language. The New Testament was published a few years ago and the Old Testament will be published next year. They are currently using his original manuscript in this church! By next year hopefully all the churches will have a complete Bible. In the larger cities in Uganda most people speak English but not in the rural communities – they speak local dialect.
After church we were approached several more times by young boys who wanted to sell us birds they had gotten with sling shots. We had wondered if that might happen after yesterday. Val said they would hunt them anyway and we had not contributed to the demise of the local wildlife population by buying one of them. We decided to decline the rest and let them eat them – none of them were as special as the bird we got yesterday.
We walked into town after church for lunch, about ¼ mile, which took us about an hour as we had to stop and shake hands with and greet everyone we passed. It was fun and great PR for CVM. After lunch evening was approaching and the streets started filling with hundreds of cattle, sheep and goats. In an attempt to avoid the raiders the people had decided recently to bring all the livestock into town every night. For now it is working but Val fears a huge raid in the future that may kill many people due to the large number of livestock in a single location. There is no good solution to the problem aside from hearts changed by faith in Jesus Christ.
Val, Julia and Heidi spent a social evening making a large enclosure for the bird and Liz caught up on the Uganda journal for the BLOG. After nightfall we went cricket and lizard hunting for roller’s dinner. Then we had our last ‘chocolate feast’ on what remained of the stash we brought from the States. We think this was Val and Heidi’s favorite part of each day – they can’t get good chocolate here. It’s pretty much boiled meat, cassava, sweet potatoes and the infamous ‘glucose biscuits’. Val also recounted stories of her experiences with other gastronomic delights here including boiled and roasted mice, hump of camel (solid fat!), 4 days old leg of goat (the lower leg, not the upper leg) complete with maggots and her favorite – goat salivary gland. We have had no internet access for almost a week but hope to send this tomorrow from Entebbe.
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