Under African Skies

Last night after dinner (I had seconds!) we played cards (Presidents) under the stars. The sky on this island is huge. We could clearly see the Milky way streaming across the sky. We played by candle light with a hundred small white flies all over.

Erin had questions about the Church. She is stuck on issues of homosexuality and the role of women in the Church. Jeff and I tried to address both. I was trying to explain how womanhood is just as important as priesthood then realized and said that coming from me it isn’t going to mean anything. I told her she should ask women in the Church. I said, and Jeff agreed, that I never met a woman in the Church that felt like they were being made to be submissive or pacified.

Kelley (who was baptized maybe a year and a half ago) was in the tent and joined the conversation from the dark, 10 yards away. She said that she has never felt so honored or empowered in being a woman as she does now in the Church. She eventually came out of the tent and we all talked about faith and our motivation for living by it.

Jeff and Kelley were so good at expressing how things work. Kelley talked about how she had the exact problems with the Church that Erin is feeling. She said what really attracted her was the fact that everyone in the Church told her never to take their word for anything – to always ask God, the source of all truth, for confirmation of the things she was being taught.

We talked about how much love Heavenly Father has for us. How He did not create us to send us to some everlasting hell. We talked about progression. Under the stars, the conversation was much more amazing than the version I try to put together here.

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We get on a boat and wait at the other end of the island for an hour until the boat is full. Sleep. My seat is slanted and uncomfortable. It is chilly. Some of the Ugandans are making jokes with each other and one laughs with such a loud high-pitched voice. Ha.

We get to the mainland and are carried to shore. I think the man purposely carries me the female way (like over the threshold) instead of the male way (piggy-back.) It is impossible to keep your pride as a muzungu in Uganda.

There is a man wanting to see our id cards. We ask to see his and he shows us his military id. Special precautions for Chogum. Nuru says it’s ridiculous to the man and the crowd that has gathered. She is funny and somehow articulate in her Ugandan English.

Ugandans don’t have government issued ids. Why ask for an id that I can just create? And she went on a rant about Chogum and the Queen and how Ugandans will never be able to tell that she was even in Kampala and she most definitely will not make it down to such a small village. The man said, “Yes, but there are many ways to kill a goat.” And we said thankyoubye.

We eat and haggle haggle for a fair taxi price to Nsumba. We are home and there is a black and white goat. It is fiat and I hope it is pregnant. I saw a baby goat on the Island the size of a small puppy. I want one,

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I just watched the goat get butchered. They ripped the skin off, emptied the stomachs, and crocheted the intestines. I wasn’t as grossed out as I thought I would be. I didn’t see it’s throat being cut, so I think it made it easier to imagine this goat as a different one that I was petting a few hours previous.