Tears on the Equator - Muzungu

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In the beginning, in 1973, when a young couple met at a seminary in the city of Boston, during a time of great racial tension over an issue called bussing, they dared to share a dream and the dream was about faith, progress, unity, love and sustainable development in Africa. She trained in education, her Canadian husband schooled in medicine. They would return to the Ugandan paradise island of her youth in Lake Victoria only to discover that beauty hid the beast; that an interracial couple, white and black and their Ancient Orthodox faith would cause a spark which turned verdant fields into flames of conflict. Truths would be told and taboos would be broken. Courage would be unveiled and passions uncovered. This story is about the glue that maintained the vision until time, politics and war wore it away. It is also about survival and rebirth and the ultimate seeds which gave birth to a new crop of hopes.

 “What are you looking at old man?” the young doctor queried. The elder was looking into a rotten log. “I am seeing the face of God,” he smiled standing up, allowing the doctor to see the sun kissed orchid.”

“The face of God,” he said, and so it was, for their five years on Bukasa island uncovered the weaknesses and strengths of this couple and the community around them. That they would fail was inevitable, but that they would survive in a real and mystical way was the hidden treasure.
YOUR JOURNEY TO EQUATORIAL AFRICA BEGINS HERE!  

In 1957, Gerasimos Kambites unknowingly began a love affair with Africa. More than 25 years later his autobiographical book, Tears on the Equator-Muzungu, tells the tale.

Follow Dr. Kambites on a journey of immeasurable joy and sorrow as he is drawn to the Sesse Islands of Lake Victoria, Uganda, only to be thrown back to his homeland, Canada.

Endure the struggles Gerasimos, his Ugandan wife, Sarah, and their children face as they work to set up a school, a medical practice and an Orthodox Church on Bukasa Island in the face of the outbreak of the 80s AIDS epidemic.

Become a witness to their five years filled with the suspicions of the local people, corrupt officials, political turmoil, marginal living conditions, lack of communication with the outside world, absence of a medical support team, and inconsistent funding.

Observe the couples’ faith and endurance constantly tested, even with the death of their own child. At times the problems will seem insurmountable. Gerasimos’ personal demons and quick temper will often get him in trouble, but he holds true to his convictions.  The story is riveting!

Accompany Dr. Kambites on medical emergencies in a small boat, traversing Lake Victoria in bad weather, in the middle of the night with severely ill patients. Face with him the challenges of building the school, medical clinic and church with little equipment, materials or skilled labor.  Encounter the corrupt gun-toting officials that will eventually lead to Gerasimos’ expulsion and witness his family’s harrowing escape from Uganda.

Despite all of the unimaginable hardships, Gerasimos Kambites will show you the beauty of Uganda --the kindness, hard work and determination of the local people and incredible insights born of true faith.
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 1

They lived just past the King’s Tomb, a huge beehive structure made of steel and straw. It was here that the Baganda buried their Kings. Just beyond that memorial, nestled on one of the seven hills outside Kampala, lay Kasubi Village, each house built of daub and wattle and set on a plot, each plot marked by a banana grove, each grove ringed with cassava. At six the stillness was broken only by the sounds of people rising. “Sarah!” a girl’s voice shouted from the muddy road, “are you sleeping?”

“Not likely,” Sarah grunted, chopping at the red earth. Her friend Ethel clambered to her side.

“Is it today?”

“Perhaps,” Sarah answered, continuing to hoe for tubers.
 
 “Does the Bishop know anything?” Ethyl asked, referring to His Grace Theodoros Nankyama, the African-born hierarch guiding the Ugandan Orthodox Church and running the school. He had applied for scholarships to St. Basil’s Academy, across the Hudson from Westpoint in New York, for his two prize pupils, Sarah and Ethel.

  “Maybe. He said we should come after classes, but he has been saying that for  a month.” She puffed with the effort of hoeing against a clump of rain-soaked red soil. After three years of caring for a mentally-ill old man, running a house, studying by candlelight, preparing food, working for Asians (when they never trusted Africans near their cash registers), and longing for an unfettered education in America, she dreamed of release. She dared hope against poverty. As her father’s eldest daughter, her responsibility included caring for a very large family. Now life was on the cusp of changing, but that knowledge was not yet revealed to her....

SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 3

Who has done this, who has done this?” An angry voice shouted, pulling me from a deep sleep. Where was I? “They must be punished!” a man yelled.

Clambering out of my cot, I pulled back the curtain. Kampala, hazy and awakening, lay in the distance. An enraged Nick Roussos, my fat Muzungu host, waved wildly in the courtyard of his mansion. The white minivan in front of him had no front window.

“You slept last night,” Nick accused a cowering servant. “Are you the watchman? How did the thieves get here? Maybe you are one of them!” “No, Ssebo,” the man begged, “not me.” The fat man raved on. I closed the window to the cacophony and quickly made my way downstairs.

In 1972 Idi Amin deported 100,000 Ugandans of Indian descent and many whites left as well. Nick Roussos’ family fled to Kenya leaving behind their hotels and homes, which were soon looted and occupied by soldiers. Impressive dwellings rapidly became hovels.

“You should have seen this place when we came back from exile,” he said, swallowing a huge serving of eight scrambled eggs smothered in butter. “There were pigs living here, pigs! Shit everywhere, everything trashed and goats,” he sputtered, “goats on my mahogany floor! Goats! The toilets broken, electrical switches torn out, a three-stone fireplace in the kitchen!” He shouted excitedly, his porcine face turning red with rage and food
flying from his twisted mouth in disgust.

“Calm yourself,” his mother urged, “we have a priest at the table.” She poured him a cup of coffee and called the houseboy to bring more food. The skinny man approached the table with bacon and sausage. Roussos dug in.

“So Priest, what do you think of that?”
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 2

Bullet holes pocked the walls and floors of the new airport. Stagnant pools of water on the unpainted cement floor reflected shards of plate glass from windows shot out in a past airport skirmish. Nothing had changed in the last year, even less in the last three. Child soldiers, some barefooted and others wearing green rubber sandals, smoked cigarettes and strutted about the unlit hall, cradling either AK-47 automatic rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The soldiers had ritual scars carved into their temples that looked like the number 111 marking them as members of Uganda’s Northern Acholi tribe. Since independence from Great Britain in 1966, the Nilo-Hamite from Uganda’s north had systematically crushed the southern Baganda Bantu, leaving Uganda an angry, frightened and fragmented tribal  society.

Our flight carried a few white people, called Bazungu, two of whom were volunteers traveling with us, Cameron and Erika. But most passengers were returning Ugandans, their suitcases crammed with retail goods. They too were anxious. Their gauntlet through officialdom was more difficult than mine. My white skin carried some protection. The poorly-dressed customs officials contrasted vividly with their sharply-dressed returning brothers loaded with goods and attempting to explain their way through archaic tariff barriers. In a symbiotic dance of bribery, resentment and economic reality, guided by the common goal of profit, the exchange of bribe money was a win-win situation. Everyone profited except the common man. But in Africa, common men did not fly in jet airplanes. Passengers jostled for position in a lineless crowd. Oppressed by heat, stress and anxiety, sweat poured through my black priest’s robes. Somehow, out of the chaos, we progressed toward the immigration man with his all-powerful piece of chalk and rubber stamp; the last barrier through the airport....


SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 4

We all looked forward to seeing the Tanzanian tugboat hauling the barges with our containers and the miracle of having everything arrive intact. The cumulus clouds gave way to the pressure of sun and wind and drifted away, leaving the sky
hazy and the air muggy and close.

“Good morning, Musawo,” greeted Bandassa, our self-appointed pier foreman rounding the lodge on the path down to the lake. He wore cut-off trousers torn in several places and a green shirt, also torn so badly that it served little or no purpose. Its shredded threads neither covered his body nor protected him from the sun. He stood at the door and smiled, his white teeth gleaming.

“I am going down to help finish the pier,” he said, hesitating a moment, signaling he wanted something. “Will you join me?” “Alright, let’s go together.” Not having been down to the water’s edge in several days, I asked how the work was going. “There is not much left to do, another little while and the last of the pier will be finished. I have the names and hours of those who have worked. They will have the better reward when the boxes come. Really, Musawo (Doctor), we have to thank you so much for what you do for us.”

“I haven’t done much yet,” I answered. “The real work is ahead.”

Praise from this enthusiastic gentleman was just flattery. During the Amin years, he lived on the mainland and allegedly was a muyaaye, an informer, and one who lead gangs of cutthroats to their prey. When things turned against him, he left his victims and retreated to the sanctuary of the Sesse Islands. But he had charm and spoke reasonably good English. He was intelligent and always worked the angles.
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 5

John, get in the house with Angie,” I said tensely as the civilian with the machine-gun appeared on the path to the lodge.

“Why, Daddy?” he asked innocently. “We’re just playing.”

“Do it,” I insisted. Chris’ wife, Maria, sewing on the veranda, looked at me, alarmed.

“Keep working, Maria,” I said. Despite appearing calm, I was frightened.

Soldiers on the mainland were something I was used to, but armed civilians on the island proved another matter entirely. We had heard disturbing news that a British housewife was shot in the face and killed during a brazen daylight assault in Kampala’s richest and most secure neighborhood, while four visiting
Scandinavian aid workers were machine-gunned down on a dirt road just ten kilometers from the city. The assassins wore civvies. In the chaos of anarchy, color and wealth meant nothing; guns, everything.

I kept the intruders in sight. The point-man was armed with an assault rifle capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute, the others carried machetes. They disappeared around a bend for a moment. I clearly heard the slap, slap, slap of their rubber sandals on earth and their sing-song talking. My heart pounded. Now they were much closer. The leader’s strides lengthened in response to the hill’s ageless opposition, his cold-steel weapon kept afloat with a light touch. He and the gun were well-versed with this approach. Then in an instant he was before me, shifting the weapon to his left hand. Our eyes locked, and he smiled. Thin and short and wiry, he clambered up the three stone steps by the mango trees.

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” he said pleasantly. We shook hands, his wet with perspiration. “I am Constable George, from Bugala Island.” Viewed from the lodge, his home was a thin blue streak on the horizon some fifteen miles away. Now I recognized him. Two weeks earlier, he had stopped our boat to check my identity papers.
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 6

It was all a struggle at every level. It seemed a never-ending ascetic labor. Every passion I had was put to the grindstone again and again. Everything that happened required more strength and more patience than I believed I could muster. As well, it asked of me more wisdom, more courage and more prayer. Constantly tired and constantly opposed, I believe we were sustained by grace alone. While I never wanted to quit, I just didn’t want to go on at times. The works were there—education, service, rescue, unmercenary medicine—as well as the spiritual labor, praying for one’s enemy and loving those who hated us. We shed so many tears, it seemed impossible for the spiritual combat to continue. But it did, and we were far from leaving it behind. The place for working it all out was Bukasa, ironically, the center of paganism in the Sesse Islands. In many ways, this personal struggle was the heart of our time in Africa—the reason, perhaps, of why we were there at all. It was not for them that God brought us, it was for us.  At least that is how I see it now.

Poverty, ignorance, superstition, venomous xenophobia attacked us all. We were hated by so many, each battle was more difficult than the one before. We felt loved by so few, or, at any rate, I did. My children suffered, Sarah suffered, our parishioners suffered. At times on the edge of despair, I wondered if my ego and insanity had brought this all on us; I knew it had done more than its fair share of the damage. Who did I think I was to come so far and want to build a tower so high?

Until the time of my holy ordination, though I opposed sin in my life, still it was the victor and I was the poor defeated wrestler. Since then, I had made spiritual strides in choosing Orthodoxy, in accepting my priesthood; the grace of the sacraments had mitigated the struggle, but had certainly not vanquished it. I had learned, though, to push this struggle into the background, at least in others’ eyes, if not in my own consciousness. But there was no place to run on Bukasa. 
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 7

The people barrier comprised of mindless soldiers in Entebbe, just by Kitubulu Bay, had been there forever. Roadblocks never accomplished their goal of maintaining the status quo but they remained, regardless. They were initially instituted by Milton Obote during his first mid-1960s government, then carried on
through the rule of Amin and the many post-liberation governments, and they had acquired an unusual permanence in the face of so much chaotic political change. On an exhausting day in 1984, we met ragged soldiers at a roadblock, cigarettes dangling, hands on weapons, sitting lazily in the afternoon sun, harassing passers-by. There was an established pecking order to the bother. Only the very rich in their Mercedes or government vehicles were waved through. Nonblacks usually received better treatment than Africans. A frightened Muzungu might be forced to open his trunk and bags and perhaps be coerced into a small
bribe, but a frightened Ugandan would be accused of having a reason for fear and might suffer a severe, if not fatal, beating.

The terror established at the roadblocks served two purposes. It cowed an already terrified population and defined two societies: the soldiery/ruling class and the ordinary citizen, who, in a guerrilla war, could be the enemy. Uganda had been in a guerrilla war for three years at this point. Milton Obote’s government
still controlled much of the country, but Museveni’s guerilla rebels had begun to sting deeply, controlling the countryside at night and heightening tension, especially in the cities. As we passed through the checkpoint, Chris said, “Pull over quickly, Father. Look at the dust ahead. The President’s motorcade is coming.”

God help the unsuspecting motorist who did not notice the oncoming presidential convoy of black Mercedes limos. They came crashing down the middle of the highway at seventy miles an hour led by two motorcycle outriders. Behind the first Benz a truck came overloaded with Special Forces. It careened wildly,
bullets flying as the man with the 50-caliber machine gun periodically fired into the air. It was all very dramatic. The President sat in a curtained air-conditioned Benz, very much a prisoner of his own regime’s popularity.
SNEAK PEEK - Chapter 8

We’re coming to visit you,” said Bob Layton, engineer, corporate boss, political hopeful and past President of the Westmount Rotary Club of Montreal. His organization had agreed to spearhead our application for development funding from CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency and principal
source of funding for non-governmental organizations in Canada. At this point, we desperately needed an infusion of funds and the call was most welcome. 

Sarah and I had already donated the first of a few years of our labor without salary. We had both worked 80 to 100 hours per week for two years prior to arriving on Bukasa. The original seed money for the whole project came from our first National Geographic story published in July 1980 which shone a light on
Uganda and its needs. I also spoke to many Orthodox churches, raising another $30,000 in cash.

A chance meeting surprisingly began our valuable relationship with the Rotary Club, helping to fill out our financial foundation. During my internship I removed a chest tube from a patient. He had read our article in National Geographic and said, “my organization would like to help you.” When the Rotarians had initially expressed an interest in donating to our project, I
was cautiously optimistic and asked Layton, “What do you want in return for your dollars?”

“Just a little plaque on the door saying Rotary helped,” Layton answered. “We can probably get more money from Rotary International,” he said. “Let me look into that.” When asking Archbishop Vitaly, my spiritual advisor, about the issue of
accepting aid from the club, he had commented: “They never want little, they always want it all. Remember what anyone gives, whether they know it or not, comes from Our Lord.” The first $10,000 from the Rotarians helped move us to Uganda and get the project going. Their connections also facilitated moving the many containers we would eventually fill. And in the eyes of the government of Canada, having an organization like Rotary working alongside us legitimized our project.