2015 - The Making Of A Teasm

Monday, July 6, 2015 11 days to go….

I have been thinking for a while that it was high time to kick off the blogging for our trip … so here goes.

To be honest it still doesn’t quite seem real to me. In 11 days I will step on a plane from everything that is familiar, and some 20 hours later I will step off a plane into … well, I really don’t know. I keep reading things. I talk to people. I think that I have some intellectual inkling of what I will see and hear … the roar of the boda bodas … the chaos of Kampala … the different languages … fruit and tea and (best of all) coffee growing on trees … roadside coffin sales … the mob of people meeting us at Marare … cell phone towers in places that don’t even have electricity … children everywhere … dust … but I don’t think it will really impact me until it surrounds me.

So I’m probably not going to write anything about what we are going to see until we are there. It won’t age well. Instead before we go I want to talk a little about what we’ve done to get here … “the making of our team”. It may sound a little heavy on fundraising, because quite frankly that’s a lot of what we have done … but also because it has actually been the primary thing that God has used to form us into a team.

We first met in January of this year … a group of nine from four families, each knowing the others to varying degrees (some very little…). Right off the bat we heard the challenge .. raise how much by when? … and we went to work. 

We immediately dove into the deep end, starting with the most complex event, the Silent Auction and Dessert Evening, organizing it in six week. We’ve written elsewhere about what a success this was, and a very concrete wake-up to some of us as to how God was going to bless and take care of us, so I don’t need to repeat that. But we also very much saw each other in action. Going out of our comfort zones to approach donors (with great success). Organizing team meetings. Going over (tons and tons of) details. Hauling stuff. Decorating. Preparing food. All that stuff. And we did it together, remarkably well for a group with such limited familiarity with each other. It was a huge step to forming us into a team.

After a not-so-long break we went fundraising in May full tilt. This started with a fundraising team experience in which we faced a bit of adversity together. The first Saturday of our BBQ at Wallish didn’t start that well … with the Yellowhead actually closed between Edmonton and there (how often does that happen?) it took some of us well over an hour to actually get there. But it worked out OK. 

The second Saturday seemed to start out even worse … but in a very real way it was the greatest for forming us as a team. We got there in the howling wind and rain … we were close to just calling it a day. But as we sat there we realized that the Wallish staff were actually looking forward having BBQ lunch, and we decided to go ahead. We set up in the cold (thank goodness for the team members who brought coffee!), unable to even set up a tarp to shield us due to the strength of the wind. We persevered … and the people (and, in time, even the sun) came out. And we knew that we could work together, and even enjoy it, under less than ideal conditions. A good thing to know! (and thanks to Wallish Greenhouses!)

But if that wasn’t enough we had a third fundraising weekend in May … selling parking in the Comfort Heating lot for the Rainmaker Rodeo. Fortunately this was a much easier thing, with much better weather to boot. (and thanks to Comfort Heating) But at the end of it we were tired; but we also knew we could depend on each other to persevere. 

After this we went (deservedly, I would say) for something a little more relaxed. In some other years the Run/Walk for Marare has been quite an elaborate event, but this year we decided to make it low key; a simple event just for anyone to drop in. But that was OK; because it became another reminder that our team was part of a bigger team; the whole group of those who have gone to Marare before and have the village in their hearts.

In all our other events we saw members from former teams conspicuously showing their support; and we definitely saw it again at the run … organizing the venue and course at Goldbar Park (very nice), serving food, and then coming out to run and walk and just plain support us. A great feeling of being supported in community.

Anyways, just a few highlights … there were other things we did too, plus the excellent training sessions with Gary at our meetings (every two weeks!). But in the end one result; we have been formed, by the experiences that God has provided us, into a team.

So I don’t know what I will find when I get off that plane … but I know that I will face it with God, and with my team.

DID YOU KNOW?

And finally a bit of Ugandan trivia … why do they call the motorcycle taxis boda bodas? I mean, it rolls off the tongue delightfully, but why that name?

Well, here is the answer from Wikipedia….

“The name originated from a need to transport people across the ‘no-mans-land’ between the border posts without the paperwork involved with using motor vehicles crossing the international border. This started in the southern border crossing town of Busia (Kenya/Uganda), where there is over half a mile between the gates … . The bicycle owners would shout out boda-boda (border-to-border) to potential customers”