UGANDA MOTORCYCLE -- FUNNY!

What a story.  Should make you laugh, and that’s nearly always a good thing!

About Christmas time at New Hope Uganda, 1995, we received a box of gifts from my daughter, Renae.  As I show you the home across the compound from us, it will look very rainy.  It wasn’t the day this story will progress, because in the November through January stretch, it usually doesn’t pour  -- it's the dry time.  So, here’s photo number 1.

Do you see the red motorcycle?  Nice, huh?  Dave LIKED it.  He hadn’t driven one for nearly ten years, since shortly after our marriage; Omaha was not a safe place in those years.   And, in Uganda, with many crazy motorcyclists, unless we had stayed there for a very long time as missionaries and had income, we simply wouldn’t go that way.  We’d walk, take public taxis, let friends pile us into their cars with everyone else, do boda-bodaing [passengers on bikes].  Kept the cost down, and usually safer, to say the least. There, if he DID drive a motorcycle, for fun, he wouldn't need a license, especially out in the bush area.

WELL, one day that Fall, Dave asked Richard if he could borrow the motorcycle and that we would stay on the local roads, not too many miles, but just have a good time.  So, yep, we got on it.  And, YES, we used helmets. [Dave would NEVER do it without one and wouldn’t let a passenger not wear one.] He drove to Kiwoko, about 3 miles away, drove around the town, and we came back.  That was it.  We...had...fun!  LOTS of fun!!

A couple months later, when Christmas came, and we received our gifts, one of them was a video of The Lion King.  Dave was a piano teacher for Emily, one of Richard and Alison’s children.  I took the video across the yard to Alison; thought they would enjoy watching it.  Alison looked around the cover and saw the name of the composer, Elton John.  She told me, rather casually, that she had heard that her cousin was at our Oscar event with him on stage. 

I was shocked.  Big eyed.  “Who????”  She said, “It is Julia Ormond.”  Then she said that when Julia was in First Knight with Sean Connery, Julia invited her family, including Alison, to come to a scene-area in Wales, and, as I recall, she said that the family, as a gift from Julia, stayed at a castle connected to the movie process.  I could never have imagined this.  Alison also told me that Julia’s present movie was Sabrina. [On our flight home, 4 months later, April, 1996, while over the Atlantic, that movie was shown on the plane.  What a chuckle!]

NOW, the funny and amazing part.  While talking to her, she said that Julia had donated a gift to them.  And, yep, it was the red motorcycle.  Did I laugh, grin, shake my head with amazement? Yes, I DID!
 
When thinking about my hundreds of Ugandan stories ... more and more hitting my blog in the next stretch of time ... this one jumped in as a “laughinger”, not a “seriositer”.

Oh, and here’s a photo of Alison and Richard...

Could be a challenging party time for Brits, doncha think?  They smiled.

and one of my favorites of Richard teaching a Ugandan how to handle the oxen. Richard was a good teacher ... and one of the funniest, most humorous, men I’ve ever known. [Now, because of family schooling, etc., they are living back in their part of England after many years in Uganda. But missing their Ugandan "family" and friends there... and missed much by the Ugandans.  [Dave and I sure understand that one.  We do, too.]