By Nate Sunderland
Idaho Falls Post Register
REXBURG, Idaho — Madison County Fire Capt. Chris Huskinson got a little more than he bargained for during a mid-November humanitarian trip to Uganda.
Huskinson was accosted by highway bandits about 20 miles outside the city of Mubende, where he was part of a volunteer teaching expedition.
“I was scared to death,” he said.
Huskinson was traveling with Poulsbo, Wash., Fire Department Lt. Edward Wright, who was leading the expedition, and two Mubende city officials, when their vehicle was stopped by a log road block.
The group was ambushed by four men waving machetes and sticks. Another man, holding an AK-47 assault rifle, stood away from the other bandits.
“When you’ve got someone with a big knife waving it at you - you don’t know if you’re going to get killed or what’s going to happen,” Huskinson said. “They had us back and forth on the ground, in and out of the car, and they searched us four times.”
The bandits took everything the expedition was carrying before letting them go.
Wright contacted the police, who mobilized a large team of officers and police dogs to apprehend the robbers. The police captured the robbers, which Huskinson said is a rarity in Uganda.
The American EMTs then got a taste of what Huskinson termed the “harsh Ugandan justice system.”
“We thought we were going to see them get shot right there in front of us,” Huskinson said. “We thought ‘Wow, this is an eye opener. We’re not at home anymore.’”
The bandits were not executed but did endure a public interrogation.
Instead, they were struck, spat upon and yelled at by police officers armed with assault rifles, as well as regular citizens and members of the national media, Huskinson said.
“That night we were on national (Ugandan) TV,” Huskinson said. “It was a big deal, because we had been robbed, the mayor (of Mubende) was robbed and they caught the guys.”
The men were sentenced to an extended prison term. They face a dark and likely brief future under Ugandan law, Wright said.
“The fact that the police found the men so quickly tells me that this was a deeply humiliating event for the country,” he said.
Huskinson said police later confided in him that because of the high-profile nature of the incident, the men likely would be “shot trying to escape” once the humanitarian expedition had left the country.
Ugandan culture doesn’t put the same value on human life Western culture does, Huskinson said.
“Uganda has faced problems that we in the West can’t even begin to imagine,” Wright said. “They’ve endured tribalism, colonialism and dictatorships. It’s understandable that they look at life a little different then we do.”
Despite the ordeal, Huskinson said he doesn’t want to paint Uganda as a bad place.
He said the trip was a wonderful experience and that other than the robbers, the people were some of the kindest and most generous he’s ever met.
For two weeks, Wright and Huskinson taught a prehospital care First Responder course to 15 volunteers in Uganda’s fledgling emergency service program.
In a country of 32 million people, Huskinson said Uganda has only 17 fire trucks and nine ambulances. Most of the emergency vehicles are in poor condition and the departments lack equipment.
In Mubende, the closest fire brigade was more than 100 miles away.
Wright arranged the donation of an ambulance to help establish the community’s first fire station.
The experience was challenging, partly because of the robbery, but it was also was very rewarding, Huskinson said.
“The robbery is a great story, but the real story is about the people,” he said. “These people have no concept of prehospital care, and it was neat to watch them learn and grow.”
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