We grew accustomed to living in the house with four entry doors. Ladies who knocked on the dining-room door probably saw Ellen working at the table on the Zande hymnbook, making corrections in the files where the scanner had failed to recognize a character. Ellen was becoming part of a ladies group started by Mbolifulani, the RTK director’s wife. Ellen loved the interaction with them and was soon preparing lessons, from the Bible, on the role of wives in the family. The kitchen door, was where our former dorm workers came in. They knew Marko and freely came to visit, especially Abrahamu. The builders working on the studio building used that door too, when looking for me for wage advances. The men from the press usually came in the living-room door, it was the closest to the press. The office door was less frequently used, but we were never lonely.

Since we were no longer living in the dorm complex, as part of the Rethy Academy staff, we cared for our own firewood and water needs. The water system was less reliable, but whenever there was any water pressure Manasse made sure to fill our elevated reserve water drums. He also cared for the grounds around our house and worked with me to maintain our wood supply so we could have hot water. Marko and Manasse helped Ellen set up the tubs for the Matag wringer washing machine, so our laundry could be done out back near the kitchen door. We had recovered a fridge too, so our house was all set up. Ellen sewed some curtains for the windows and some covers for the foam cushions we had made for the simple couches Eliazar had made for us. We anticipated having guests, when other missionaries began returning to Congo. The station guest house was adjacent to us, and we worked together to get that set up again. We fixed up Jeff’s room as we looked forward to the end of his first term at RVA.

Ellen took our turn to monitor the short wave radio communications net that was still operating using the SSB transmitter owned by the hospital. The one at the dorm, used by the missionaries, had been lost during the rebellion. It was still necessary to keep in contact with Bunia and Nyankunde, where the administrative offices, flight, and health services were located. It was our means of exchanging messages with Nairobi where contact with the States was maintained. It was also needed for communications with other stations where medical services were offered. I was glad Ellen took that responsibility for us.

One day, after transmitting the outgoing messages and delivering the incoming ones, she was on the main road headed home when a young man, on a bicycle, stopped abruptly in front of her. He may have disliked her reaction for he demanded, “Do you know who I am?”

I guess the young man expected everybody to know him, for he was not pleased to hear, “No, I don’t know you.”

“I am an important soldier; I am the Commandant in Kwandruma.”

“How could I know you are a soldier; you have no uniform?”, she replied.

“This is my duffle bag,” he stated emphatically, pointing to a kaki canvas bag with an identity number painted on it in white. Ellen immediately recognized it as a bag routinely used by AIM Serve, the AIM purchasing service in Nairobi, to send mail to Zaire before the rebellion.

Somehow her reply to him, “No it isn’t, but you can have it.” Left him speechless.

He was one of the child soldiers given a gun and authority by Kabila, yet he must have recognized Ellen as one who was neither intimidated nor impressed. They were the local authority now and we were grateful that we heard nothing more from the Commandant.

The people who had been in authority under Mobutu had not all fled, but their livelihood had been lost. We had had a local immigration authority, perhaps self-appointed under Mobutu, who came repeatedly to inspect the missionary’s passports. I’m sure he offered his services in Kwandruma, charging some sort of fee, and stamped the receipts with the official seal given him by the former authorities. We knew him as ‘Green Boots’.

He eventually showed up at our dining-room door, still wearing the same boots. He had changed from being the one demanding to see our documents, to a destitute man, with no authority, asking for help. He related that his wife had told him to leave. He had filled his house with things looted from missionary houses at Rethy, but they had nothing to eat. She had opened the door of their house and told people to come take the stuff. He had no friends and no garden to harvest. He may not have been a member of a local tribe. Our help couldn’t have lasted him very long.

When caring for our turn for the radio net, Ellen received a lot of hospital news. Njabar and Uwor, who made frequent trips to Kampala to purchase medicines for the hospital, reported that yet another bus had been attacked and burned in the Murchison Falls Park. The remnants of the LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army had never been fully defeated by the Uganda government and had retreated into the huge game park. There they killed the wild animals as they pleased, and robbed the passenger busses that came by. The busses, creeping up the steep hills in a forested part of the park, were easy targets. That was the route we had used rather recently, when we took the pick-up down for new tires.

Some multiband radios were able to pick up the short wave signals used by our communications network, and there were those who monitored it. Even before the message came officially, from the network, we got word from someone else, who told Marko, who in turn told us, that my elderly mother had passed away a couple days ago. We had recently seen my parents at the AIM Retirement center in Florida and both had then been in good health. We had heard nothing of her stroke and rapid decline since only the most urgent messages were sent by radio. We did find out that my sisters were already there and the final services would be the next day. Mom’s last day had come, and passed, and I still needed to make arrangements to fly back as soon as possible.

In view of the number of busses that had been attacked and burned by the bandits we asked advice at the hospital about traveling by bus. I’ll never forget Uwor’s answer. “If it’s your day, it is your day!” Very reasonable. Everything is under God’s control, even the days the LRA bandits choose to attack the cross-country busses as they used the main route through Uganda.

Ukumu helped us travel to the border and into Uganda to catch the bus to Kampala at Goli. We again took the AANK bus and followed the shortest route through the park. We passed the hulks of three burned out busses and then, in Kampala, caught the express bus to Nairobi. It wasn’t yet our day.

The bus made an extra stop at the top of the hill above Kijabe where we were met by Jeff & Laura Wilson. Ellen would stay with them at RVA while I traveled onwards to Orlando, Florida.

It was good to find my three sisters there with Dad. They were caring for him and things were running smoothly. There were a number of finance matters to care for, but all of Dad’s accounts were in order. My elder sister, Leilani, had made many decisions and she so much enjoyed caring for Dad that she was even thinking of living there and helping other elderly missionaries at the retirement center. She cared for the cemetery plots and the grave markers, preparing for the time when Dad’s day would come.

My Mom and Dad had been through many things together during their 58 years of marriage and Dad would find it very hard without Mom. I don’t think he had ever cooked a meal for himself. Though she worked as a nurse with him in his hospital at Banda, she also cared for all the household tasks and supervised the help they then employed. Who would now care for Dad?

Leilani had left her bank teller job in Texas to come help Mom and Dad before the day of Mom’s death. She also found fulfillment in helping others who lived there. She had been living alone and had no debts or dependents. The administration at the AIM retirement center agreed that having Leilani live there as Dad’s caretaker, would be a suitable solution. My two younger sisters had responsibilities to return to in Oregon and I had the radio studio to build and the press to manage back at Rethy. I was eager to return to Ellen and Jeff at Kijabe so I made reservations for the return flight.

After the bus trip to Kampala we went to pick up the Toyota so we could shop a little and load up supplies to take back to Rethy. Top on Jeff’s and my list was to find a motorcycle we could afford. The shop we found had lots of old motorcycles including a Honda MTX liquid cooled 2 stroke 50cc on/off road bike. Jeff had ridden his mom’s 60cc Honda Chaley before the rebellion and I thought it would be good for Jeff to have his own bike which he could ride and maintain for himself. We loaded that bike, our supplies, some stuff for Ukumu, and some building materials for the RTK studio building on the truck.

We followed the same route the bus had used on our return trip to Congo. We again saw the burned out buss hulks on the side of the road in the Murchison Falls park. I thought of Uwor’s encouragement to travel anyway, even if there were bandits on the road. “If it is your day, it is your day!” It was not to be our day that time either, as we crossed Uganda without incident. God had more for us to do.

The crossing at Goli went smoothly as we left Uganda and followed the winding track between the border posts to Mahagi. Although there was a new government in the DRC at Kinshasa, things were much the same at the border.

The customs assessed was always unpredictable. The importer was likely to present an under-declaration of what he was carrying in his truck, and the officials would search the truck to see what might be hidden and not declared. The receipts were supposed to be shown to prove the purchase price, but those could be lost or inaccurate. The officials would calculate something and tell the importer what he had to pay. The payment was somehow negotiable.

Our load in that pick-up was so small that they could easily see what was there. Of course the motorcycle caught their eye and they said what we had paid for it as shown on our invoice, was a false declaration. They told us what we had to pay in customs. I tried to convince them that it was a small 50 CC bike for my son, a toy, not a business transport vehicle, and I could not pay for customs twice as much as what the motorcycle cost! It was a used bike, and the invoice was in fact accurate!

A ranking soldier from Kabila’s army showed up and wanted to ride the three miles between the border posts back to Goli. I was assigned to drive him, so I did, and returned to wait some more hours at Mahagi for the officials to serve us. Their first customs proposal was basically a demand for a large bribe.

Night came. The offices were locked. The officials went to their nearby lodgings to cook their supper.

That night Jeff slept in the front seat of the Toyota. There were some soldiers sitting around their flickering fires so things should be safe from bandits. Ellen and I found lodgings in a mud and wattle guest-house, basically a row of rooms with all the doors opening outside. The odor from a frequently used outhouse reached us as it was not far away. There were mosquitoes and no mosquito netting. Ellen had a face cloth and drinking water so we could at least wash our faces before trying to sleep. It was a very uncomfortable, long, night.

No one was in a hurry in the morning. I marveled that Ellen somehow had found something for us to eat. We walked around, waiting. Office hours were not dependent on the sun, or the number of vehicles waiting to be served. I had a hard time convincing Ellen and Jeff not to start walking the forty kilometers to Rethy!

We heard a truck approaching from Uganda. It was the same ranking soldier returning from Goli after the event to which I had provided transport.

“Are those people still here?” he demanded of the officials who unlocked the gate for him.

It was finally our day to travel, the rest of the way to Rethy! God was good! I don’t recall that we paid any customs that day.