Haagen Dazs & a Jerry Can

The other day I walked into a small store in Entebbe that sells produce and wine. It is a high-end store, which mostly caters to the UN crowd who is stationed in Entebbe. We normally get lettuce there when we are craving a salad. They also have a row of freezers full of items you can’t easily get here in Uganda – very expensive things I might add. For instance, there are specialty foods such as frozen shrimp and ice cream. I have never bought anything from these freezers, but always longingly look at the forbidden fruit. I know…I know…

This particular day something new caught my eye. It was a pint of Haagen Dazs ice cream – chocolate no less. Like a parched man seeing the mirage across the desert floor I slid open the freezer to grab a hold of it to see if it really was what it appeared to be. Indeed it was. It was cold, hard, and solid – everything I expected it to feel like in my hand. It was also…$30.00. What? $30.00 for a pint of ice cream? I couldn’t believe it. I set it back into the freezer, slowly closing the door, all the while double-checking the price, and hoping I had read it wrong. I paid for my $1.50 bag of lettuce and headed to the car.

As I got close to home I could see something happening on the road right in front of Cherish. There seemed to be a lot of water on the road and many people standing around with their bright yellow jerry cans. Inching closer, I realized a tractor had just gone down the road and busted the water pipe. Unbelievable! It was free water for the entire village. Generally a jerry can of water costs ten-cents, but today it was free and the village was taking advantage of it. It either spills onto the dirty road, or it gets gathered and used. For the record I vote for gathering it up as it comes out of the broken pipe rather than it going to waste.

It wasn’t until later in the day when I thought about those two situations together. There is a store in Entebbe with a $30 pint of ice cream, and then a few miles down the road are people who are making up some serious income by filling their jerry cans from a broken water pipe, saving ten cents per jerry can. It left me with many questions and no real answers, like:

–       How can these two worlds exist, together, side by side?

–       Has the person who buys the next pint of Haagen Dazs ever had to fill a jerry can with water for drinking?

–       Have any of those gathering water from the broken pipe ever had ice cream, let alone a $30 pint of ice cream?

–       What would Jesus be thinking about this? Really?

–       Do I have any responsibility to do anything?

–       Should I get these two worlds to meet, for the mutual benefit of both?

–       Why does this dichotomy exist all over the world?

–       How many jerry cans can you fill for $30.00? (I do know the answer to this – 300)

This all went down about a month ago and I don’t have any more answers than I had before. I still go into the same store and see the Haagen Dazs staring back at me. The flavors change on a regular basis, so I know it is being purchased. I still go down our same dirt road and see jerry can after jerry can being carried either from the lake or from a tap where the ten-cent transaction took place. These worlds do exist, each moving forward and each doing some good in this world. I do wonder what the Haagen Dazs crowd thinks of me driving a 15 year-old car and living in the village? More importantly I wonder what the jerry can crowd thinks of me driving a car and living in a house with plumbing and electricity? And most importantly, how does Jesus want me to relate to both of them?