c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The young Winston Churchill called Uganda “the pearl of Africa.”

But by 1990 the name evoked a bullet-pocked montage of television images. They included Jewish hostages slumped in exhausted terror, tormented by the maniacal Idi Amin and the faces of children, newly orphaned by the “slim ” disease, AIDS.

Years of tyranny, corruption and disease had left the “pearl” covered with blood.

I, a wife and mother of two, received my first invitation to make a “mission trip” to Uganda 16 years ago. My avocation as a writer and Christian retreat leader had brought me to the attention of the Anglican chaplain at Makerere University. I accepted the invitation, and traveled with a group of other Christian women from the U.S.

The chaotic inferno of Entebbe’s baggage claim and Ugandan customs was not promising, but soon we were welcomed by gleaming faces and outstretched arms, ushered into a Technicolor world that even the equatorial sun couldn’t bleach out. Coppery earth, emerald banana groves, flame trees, pale purple jacarandas and Day-Glo bougainvillea flashed by as we careened like Keystone Kops on the “wrong” side of the road, mercifully missing boda-bodas (motorbikes) and taxi touts. On the street, women walked erect and brilliant in their magenta, gold and turquoise busuutis.

All the while our hosts supplied running commentary: “This is no longah a lahnd of feah.”

Four-foot storks making raucous announcements from the treetops of Makerere’s campus would have been enough to convince me that this was Wonderland. But as it turned out, it was not the “unlikeness” that captured me. It was not even the beauty of the place, still gorgeous after going so many rounds with evil.

It was the people.

As the chapel filled with several dozen ladies looking regal in both Western and traditional attire and their “smart shoes” (a point of pride to Ugandans), we missionaries exchanged “Where’s the exit?” glances. What were we doing here? Who were we to speak of suffering to women who had seen their husbands and families hacked to death, who had fled with nursing infants into exile, who even now had homes filled with their siblings’ orphaned children? Nonetheless, we told our stories: the ongoing grief of rearing a child with severe developmental delays, the humiliation of plunging into homelessness in one of the most affluent counties in the U.S., the loneliness of being single, the fear of our children getting AIDS, the heartache of a partner’s infidelity, the burden of being sandwiched between growing children and dying parents.

And we shared the comfort we’d found through faith.

At the end of the session we were quickly encircled by the women of Uganda. Ignoring cultural differences, overlooking our low status in the hierarchy of pain, with supreme grace they validated our struggles and offered their friendship. Their joyful humor, their patience, their steadfast spirituality evangelized us in the broadest sense of the word. From that “close encounter,” I came home with the shape of Africa imprinted on my heart.

Today, three trips later, I am still smitten. My contemporaries, now cherished friends, remain steadfast. Many of the students I met and prayed with then are now professionals: barristers, urban planners, teachers, broadcasters, journalists and doctors.

They are blessed with extraordinary role models. They include wives of pastors who seem to live in a perpetual miracle of loaves and fishes and healthcare workers doggedly teaching the ABC’s of AIDS prevention (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms) in a culture whose folklore celebrates the trickster, the Don Juan.

Most of all, I am impressed by the young women who, having survived abduction by diabolical groups with outrageous names like the Lord’s Resistance Army, are working to heal others and end such horrors.

These Ugandans, and others like them, are the real pearls of Africa.

MO/JL RNS END

Editors: To obtain a photo of Elizabeth Mulloy, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

(Elizabeth Mulloy, author of “Divine Love Song,” has made four mission trips to Uganda. An artist living in Reston, Va., she exhibits paintings of her travels at valearts.com)