Miss Rush-Rush

Idi Amin - that name once struck terror into the heart of every Ugandan. In 1975 people were disappearing every day and bodies found floating n Lake Victoria.

Early that May, armed guards arrested a small white woman from a remote Mission Hospital in Karamoja and drove her 350 miles to Kampala's Central Police Station. They took her down two flights of stairs, the air thickening at every step. A shouting warder rearranged the cells; ten men were herded out of one cell into another and she was locked in the empty one.

The air was stale with the sweat of ten unwashed bodies. The walls were black, scratched with African names. The floor was littered with bottles, dirty dishes and old food. Shoes, newspapers and plastic bags poked out from under a board - for sleeping on, I guessed. In the corner was a grimy sink and a toilet sunk in the floor to add to the stench.

The cell door clanked shut; a bolt dragged across.. A Ugandan policeman peered through the bars at this little woman standing under the bare electric bulb. I could hardly believe that this woman was me, Ruth Stranex. I sank down on my case shaking, too stunned even to pray. All I could manage was to repeat in a desperate whisper, "Jesus, Jesus". I remembered the story in my Bible of Paul and Silas singing Psalms in prison. "I'll try that," I thought. I took a shaky breath and opened my mouth to sing Psalm 23, 'The Lord is my Shepherd.' No tune came out, just a croak:"The Lord's..." and I burst into tears.

Through my tears, I dimly saw graffiti on the walls.. "Who scratched this?" I wondered. I thought about South Africa, the land of my childhood, where som many black people were imprisoned unjustly. The thought trickled through my brain:"Perhaps someone who is white has has to be treated unjustly to balance things out."

Wryly, I could hear my mother's voice joking:"Ruth will never die a natural death! If she trips, she's sure to be at the top of the stairs; if stands on a chair and it wobbles over, trust her to grab a shelf packed with jam jars, and pull down the lot! If she slips off a river bank, she'll time it just as hippos are bobbing by. Ruth will never die a natural death!" I could hear the faint echo of laughter. I hoped her words were not prophetic.