The Fish's Belly

  * Lamentations 3:22, 23

  ***

  Shortly before landing in London, Mac received a delightful text message from Japan. It was from Matano, the man whose life God had touched so profoundly in the few days they had in the land of the rising sun.

  Before meeting the McArthurs and Donald, Matano had been a desperately needy man, fearful and the prisoner of multiple superstitions. He suffered terrible nightmares, which meant he tried to avoid sleep altogether—snoozing no more than a couple of hours a night. His text message, however, testified of his healing and deliverance.

  To my new, dear family,

  I slept eight hours last night for the first time in twenty-five years! I have no more nightmares, no more fear. Praise Jesus!

  Love, Matano

  ***

  Everything went to plan … at first.

  Harry had started his retching act about an hour after his evening meal. It was already well after dark. Despite feeling exhausted—he had only slept a few hours during the day—he settled into the most comfortable position possible on the slimy, smelly bathroom floor.

  Every ten minutes or so he would pretend to be sick, using the bread-and-bean mulch saved from earlier, chewing it up and then spewing it on the floor. He was pretty sure he would never be able to stomach bread or beans ever again.

  The soldiers seemingly prepared for a repeat of the night before.

  The plan would surely have worked … except that the soldier assigned the first shift, again planning to check on the sick old man only every hour, needed to use the toilet himself just ten minutes into his shift.

  Finding the old man gone and the bathroom window open, he alerted the other two soldiers. And knowing Harry couldn’t go too far; they unleashed the dogs—hoping to add some entertainment to their boring existence.

  To Harry, it was a race for his life. To the cruel soldiers and their ruthless dogs, it was amusement, a thrill-hunt.

  Even his plunge into the Lugogo River would not have helped him in the slightest.

  Harry would have been, at the very least, severely mauled by the dogs had he not heard these commanding words:

  “Come with me if you want to live.”

  7

  PRESENT DAY – THE DAY AFTER HARRY’S ESCAPE

  Friday 18th March 2011

  They endured an agonisingly long three-hour layover at Heathrow airport in London. This is actually, by no means, a long layover—unless, of course, you’re wishing time away in order to rescue a loved one.

  The McArthurs and Donald were, at last, back on board a flight headed for Africa.

  Next stop?

  Entebbe International in Uganda.

  ***

  Harry woke up gradually this time, his thoughts fragmented, his memory hopelessly confused. Yet he felt clean, fresh, rested … reinvigorated.

  Did someone wash me?

  A delightful smell filled his nose.

  Coffee!

  He sat up in a flash. “What? Where? How?” The questions poured out.

  He found himself on a simple but comfortable bed on the floor of a medium-sized quaint, spotless and well-lit one-roomed dwelling.

  There was a small wood-burning stove in one corner and coffee brewing in an old, dented coffee pot.

  “Where am I?” Harry shook his head trying to sort out the jumble of pictures in his head: Dr. Marco, bait, beans, soldiers, smelly toilet, dogs! … The river! … The voice!

  Before he could fully piece it together, the door to the house creaked open and in walked an imposing figure.

  He wasn’t tall, and he was slim built … but his skin was very dark and the sunlight streaming through the door behind him animated his features and enhanced his stature.

  He was dressed in old, simple clothes and though bald, he had a bristly beard. And not a fashionable, groomed stubbly beard either, one simply allowed to grow wildly.

  Any anxiety and every trace of fear that hovered in Harry’s mind evaporated the second the man looked at him. In that enormous moment of suspense, the man’s face split from ear to ear in the most generous smile Harry ever witnessed. His white teeth matched his beaming countenance, and for a second, he looked familiar to Harry.

  “Good morning,” the man said to Harry. “How did you sleep?”

  “Umm … uh … fantastic … who are…?”

  “Now, now Mzee,” began the man—a Swahili term of respect used for an older man, pronounced “Mz-ay-ay” (“ay” rhyming with “hey”). “Before you ask your questions, let’s have some coffee before I make you breakfast … I’ve got some ugali, which is maize meal cooked into a delicious porridge,” he explained unsure of Harry’s experience in Africa. “I’ve also got some fruit for you and some small but fresh fish. I hope that’s okay?”

  “Wow!” Harry was dumbfounded. “Who are you? An angel from God?”

  “Maybe something like that,” said the man, a deep contended chuckle emanating from his gentle, soft-natured frame as he poured the coffee into two mugs.

  He then sat down next to Harry, handed him his mug and said, “I’m Dembe Lubiga, so glad to have you in my humble home.”

  And with that, Harry was not able to get any words out—partly out of sheer grateful shock; partly, out of utter physical exhaustion.

  Dembe, sensing the old man’s fatigue, suggested they eat before they talk. “Drink your coffee Mzee. You need some food in your stomach, my friend.”

  ***

  Over a delightful Ugandan breakfast, porridge—ugali—fruit and fish, Harry found his voice.

  “Thank you Dembe … thank you … I don’t know where you came from … but you saved my life.”

  “My pleasure, Mzee. God is good.”

  “Yes, He is … God is faithful … but where did you come from?”

  “Long story,” chuckled Dembe. “Short version … God sent me.”

  “What?” asked Harry. “Please explain.”

  Dembe took a large bite of an apple, put the core down in his bowl, and got more comfortable as he swallowed.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. Long time ago, I had a family. They were killed…”

  “I’m so sorry to hear,” Harry couldn’t contain his compassion.

  “Soldiers. They come at night and killed the adults and took the children. I wasn’t a good father … lazy, drank a lot, selfish … but with other fathers, I tried to fight the soldiers, tried to protect our women and children…” For a moment, his face went blank, his thoughts drifting to another time.

  “And…?” asked Harry.

  “They shot me … two times … here,” he pointed to his left arm where a horrible scar marked the entry point of a bullet, “and here” he pointed to his right shoulder. “Then they smashed me in the head with a rifle,” he pointed to a terrible scar behind his right ear, “and left me for dead. I must have passed out because when I woke the next morning, all the adults were dead … the village burnt to the ground … and the children … all of them, gone!”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” grieved Harry totally lost in the story, knowing that thousands upon thousands of families in central Africa suffered the same horrors as Dembe described. His own adopted son Donald had lost his family in just such an atrocity.

  Dembe was quiet and Harry was deeply impressed by his strength. Somehow he had not only survived, but looked at peace; a deep tranquillity beamed from the man.

  “I dragged myself to a missionary hospital where they healed my wounds and gave me a Bible, but I was angry, very angry … and fell into a deep, dark depression. I thought of taking my own life many times, but couldn’t do it.

  “I drank strong drink more than ever. I tried to sell the Bible for drink-money, but something prevented me from doing so. I remember considering using the pages of the Bible to make a fire to get through a very cold winter, but I couldn’t do that either.”

  Dembe took a deep breath. “Then one day, in total despair, I called out to God … the God of the good-hearted missionaries w
ho had given me the Bible … and Harry; God appeared to me.”

  “Really?” Harry was beaming, captivated.

  “Yes, I don’t know if it was just my imagination or really God, but it was real to me. He didn’t say much, but I felt forgiven, clean, delivered, loved. Total love…”

  The tears welled up in his eyes, and one by one large drops ran down his weather-beaten but handsome face.

  8

  If flapping would help the plane get to Uganda faster, Mac and the children would have flapped their arms out of their sockets.

  The hours crawled by while the anxiety mounted.

  It’s amazing how quickly eight hours whizz by when you’re having fun. In contrast, time drags out agonisingly, feeling like years, when you know someone you love is in grave danger. This was aggravated by the fact that they were arriving at Entebbe International airport blind.

  Where was Harry?

  Where do they even start looking?

  Was he still alive?

  The best course of action Mac figured was to follow Harry’s footsteps. He had planned to go to Kampala, and then on to the area just north of Pakwach; a five-and-a-half-hour drive from Kampala. They would do the same.

  Looking for Harry might be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but since the General was using Harry as bait, Mac was sure it wouldn’t be long before he found them.

  Mac had wrestled with the option of sending the children and Donald to his in-laws in Tanzania, Grams and Gramps. While it initially seemed a safer option, he had felt that he could better protect them if they were with him. The General’s reach was extensive—as evidenced in Japan—and there was no actual guarantee that the children would be safer in Tanzania. The last thing he needed was to endanger the lives of the children’s grandparents also.

  Mac knew he needed to level the playing field in some way. He wasn’t particularly keen on walking straight into a death-trap set for them.

  Keeping his hacked email account open was the first step he took towards wrestling some form of initiative into his hands. He communicated with his boss Roger Johnson what he needed to via his new secure email address, yet shared what he wanted the General to read via his old email address.

  Using the old address, he had emailed Harry informing him that they would be coming to Kampala. He mentioned that he had made an appointment so see the police commissioner to report Harry’s disappearance. He included the details: 3:30pm on Friday afternoon, at the main police station—located near the city centre.

  Mac knew Harry was likely not in any position to read it; but then he only wrote it for the attention of one man: the General himself.

  He hoped to lure the General, or the men working for him, into identifying themselves at a spot he could anticipate. Plus, if it worked, coming face to face with them outside a police station would limit the possibility of weapons being brandished with abandon and mayhem. And, arriving at a location in the city centre, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a Friday afternoon, would also guarantee that a multitude of people would be around—allowing them to get lost in the crowd.

  Smartly, Mac also gave a later arrival time and the incorrect airline in the email written to Harry but intended for the General’s eyes. They were arriving on an early British Airways flight; in the email, he indicated they were arriving on South African Airways via Johannesburg at lunch time. Whether the General fell for it or not; Mac hoped, at the very least, to keep the vengeful warlord guessing.

  He was most relieved to hear back from Roger. The international police agreed to despatch an agent to meet him in Kampala.

  One solitary agent … an army might be more helpful.

  The agent, named Mr. Smith—yes, go figure!—was the same man who had led the task-force in the Zimbabwe operation earlier in the year.

  Mac was grateful to have someone he knew assigned to the case. The only other problem—the first being that a solitary man was posted—was that Mr. Smith would only arrive on Sunday from an assignment in the Philippines. They had a long couple of days to get through. Hopefully, they could remain unscathed before back-up, albeit a lone-ranger, would arrive.

  ***

  “Love,” Dembe continued explaining his God-encounter to Harry. “Love … I never knew what it was until that day … And then God spoke to me. I heard Him say, ‘You are Mine, My child, a vessel for My work.’ That was it, that was all He said, but that was more than enough.”

  “Wow!” Harry felt a deep love fill his heart for this amazing man.

  “Yes, wow!” chuckled Dembe, his face aglow. “There were more wows to come. I then read the Bible from cover to cover, twenty-times … my reading was very poor before, but somehow I could read it. And it made sense, and I understood what God had said to me. I understood that I belonged to Him … I was His child; He was my Father … and I exist to do His will.”

  Harry wept openly, Dembe’s story poured wave upon wave of mercy and grace into his old body, renewing his strength, stirring his faith anew.

  “Mzee,” Dembe continued, “I wanted to go find my children, but I felt God said, No. I don’t know how to explain it. The chance of finding them was nearly impossible, but if I had my way, I would have tried. Instead, God led me here in Kampala, to this spot on the Lugogo River…”

  “So, we are still in Kampala?”

  “Yes. About thirty kilometres from the city of Kampala. You see; I feel God has sent me here to expose the gun-running that happens here…”

  “Really?” Harry couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Yes, weapons come from abroad in the same aeroplanes that then take our fish, from Lake Victoria, to overseas markets. In the same planes! They bring in the guns and take our fish. Our poor people starve, but not before war and violence fill the land.”

  “Oh Dembe…”

  “Sorry, Mzee; I share too much … let me tell you how I came to find you.”

  “Yes, please,” Harry marvelled, hanging onto his every word.

  Dembe was a master story-teller.

  And more than that, he was speaking from the heart and his own life experience.

  9

  Daniel and Rachel quickly packed their bags, and then packed their Dad’s bag in an atmosphere charged with intense urgency. Terrible thoughts of what their father might be enduring at that very moment played on their imaginations.

  “I was out fishing and hunting,” explained Dembe, “close to the mansion upriver, when I saw you being carried from a car into the small dwelling on the property.”

  “You saw me?” asked Harry.

  “Yes, the men carrying you were dressed in military uniforms … I guess that’s what first got my attention, but when I saw you, an older man being so mishandled…”

  “I was badly treated?”

  “Yes, you were obviously unconscious, but they threw you around like a sack of maize.”

  “No wonder my body ached so. I thought I was just getting old.” Harry hadn’t lost his sense of humour.

  Dembe smiled. “That’s when I felt God speak to me…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been investigating the gun-running over these years, but never felt it was time yet…”

  “Time?”

  “To act. I’ve been waiting for God’s signal … waiting, praying, learning. When I saw you, I was angry at the way they treated you, and God spoke into my anger and said, ‘Now …now is the time. This man is a key to your future.’ That’s what I heard God say.”

  Harry recognised the sense of righteous anger Dembe referred to having felt God’s hot displeasure at injustice many times before.

  “I’m a key to your future?”

  “Yes, somehow we’re connected Harry…”

  It was the first time that Dembe used his name. The confidence with which he spoke made Harry, by no means a gullible man, believe him.

  “I waited and watched the dwelling you were held captive in. I wasn’t sure how I was going to rescue yo
u, but then I saw you come running towards me…”

  “You watched me that whole time?”

  “Yes, for two days … I never left my spot … I waited and prayed and watched … I knew when I saw you escaping, God was at work…”

  “It was so dark, how did you see me?”

  “Yes, it was dark … but my eyes had adjusted to the darkness; you were running out of the light.”

  Harry marvelled. “And…?”

  “I realised our only way to get away was the river, so I jumped in when you fell in.”

  “Is the river dangerous?”

  “Yes, all sorts of dangers … but I know the river well.”

  “How far away is that from here?” asked Harry as a shiver ran down his spine.

  “Far … you passed out…”

  “Oh dear, yes I did.” Harry had no recollection of what transpired after that.

  “It was a good thing … I first swam upstream with you and then doubled back downstream later … and carried you out of the river to my home here…”

  “How far?”

  “We’re about three kilometres from where you were held captive.”

  “Three kilometres!” Harry suddenly realised the enormity of Dembe’s rescue act. “Was I unconscious the entire time?”

  “You came around once or twice, but you were out most of the time.”

  “Dembe … thank you, how can I thank you?”

  “No need … you’re my neighbour … doesn’t our Lord teach us to love our neighbour?”

  “He does … and to go the extra mile … but you’ve gone way beyond that!

  Dembe smiled, the warmth that radiated from him stemmed from a deep, intimate relationship with Father God, “Now, my brother, tell me your story…”

  Harry shared his whole story: his calling, Donald, Mac and the children, the General, project New Hope, Dr. Marco … and bait … yes, Mac and the children were in danger. Somehow, in Dembe’s presence, he felt unhurried, at peace, despite the urgency of the situation. It was little surprise to him when Dembe explained that his name meant, “Peace.”

  Dembe was delighted to hear that Harry was a missionary doctor, stirred by Harry’s passion to serve his African brothers and moved to tears when he heard that Harry had adopted a young Ugandan child.