David's third letter from Uganda
This is Koboko situated in the North West corner of Uganda. To be more specific, this is the Hotel Delambiance (De l'ambiance) in Koboko. It's bedtime but there is no point in trying to go to sleep as the hotel generator is roaring away outside my window and I have a dilemma - do I want the generator to be turned off, lose the electric light but be able to get to sleep or do I want the power to stay on a little longer and suffer the generator. Why, I hear you ask, is there a dilemma?
It started in the shower. I had earlier pointed out to the manager that there was no light bulb in the shower. He came to have a look and suggested that I leave the door to the bedroom open and that would give me enough light. I suggested that he try putting a bulb in the light socket but he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't have any so that was that. I was doing my best to have a shower in the gloomy shadows of the tiny ensuite facility when 'something' darted past me. The 'something' was the largest cockroach I have ever seen - a big shiny brown thing the size of a donkey. I made a mental note of its location, grabbed the towel to dry off a bit and went for the can of DOOM. It's actually 'Super DOOM Household Insecticide'. The tin says, "Fast kill of flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches and other insects". I hope it does ‘exactly what it says on the tin’
I re-enter the gloom. I attack. The cockroach comes scurrying out of its refuge stung by the spray. I attack again - like a US Marine operating a flame thrower in the jungles of Vietnam I pursue my victim relentlessly. The cockroach is going crazy. It's climbing the wall. It's coming at me. No! Nightmare, that's another cockroach. There are two of them. They've escaped into the bedroom but I'm hot on their heels with another jet of the deadly Doom. They're heading under the bed. To pot with the Doom - I reach for my shoe. With two beautifully executed movements the cockroaches are dispatched. Like a member of the SAS I return to storm the gloomy ensuite, scouring the walls, weapon of Doom firmly clasped in both hands at the ready in case another fiend should show its face. Bathroom clear, time to check the bedroom. I sense a movement above the bed, yes another one. Forget the Doom. I strike with the shoe - direct hit - the cockroach falls down dead and as it does so I get sight of another scuttling under the bed. There's no way I'm going in there, I may never come out alive! I clamber under the mosquito net, carefully tucking it in round the mattress and settle down to read with the aid of the electric light. Now you will understand my dilemma.
Well, it's resolved for me as the generator goes off and the light goes out. Sometime later in the sleepless darkness I'm aware of movement behind the head of the bed. Surely not a cockroach resurrection? I shine the torch on the floor in the direction of the scuffling noises and witness the most amazing sight. Hundreds of tiny tiny ants are moving the dead cockroach from behind the bed towards the bedroom door. It is spectacular to watch. The ants are merely a millimetre or two in size but they are moving the whole cockroach with amazing ease and speed. One team moves one leg, another team another leg, sometimes creating the sense of the cockroach actually walking across the floor. I watch enthralled at the organisation and co-operation that makes this feat possible. Isn't it amazing what can be done by even the weakest whenever they pull together?
While visiting Southern Sudan a few days ago, I visited a project run by women of the Presbyterian Church. Through their combined efforts several hundred women, many of them war widows, had generated enough income to build guest house accommodation, secure storage facilities for their produce and in so doing pull themselves out of the destitution of war inflicted poverty.
It illustrates what the Apostle Paul talks about with his vivid imagery of the church as a body with each part needing to do its bit. "Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. We are all parts of his one body, and each of us has different work to do. And since we are all one body in Christ, we belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others." We may be a small church in a heavily populated community and feel like ants in a world of giant cockroaches but if we can pull together with each playing our appropriate part we may, in the goodness of God, achieve more than we could ever believe possible for the cause of the gospel.
So welcome to room 16 at the Hotel Delambiance, Koboko, Uganda where the cockroaches may be the size of donkeys, but the ants can be the winners in the end.