By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Some day Armstrong Gidongo will be an airplane pilot, but it’s debatable whether he will ever experience as exciting a trip as the eight-month solo journey that he took as a boy, not yet 18, from his impoverished village of Navugoya, Uganda, to Israel, where he hoped to tell the Israeli government that his people, the Abayudaya, were Jews too.
Someone should have told the Men’s Club of Congregation Beth Israel to fasten their seat belts, because Gidongo’s land travel was a bumpy ride —filled with bravery, strange new sites, disappointment, and eventually triumph of a sort.
At a dinner meeting Wednesday evening, June 18, Gidongo explained to Men’s Club members and their guests that in journeying to the land of the Torah, he had set out to fulfill a dream of his father’s, whose quest was turned back in the 1970s by the Ugandan government of Idi Amin. Under the Ugandan dictator, relations with Israel were forbidden, especially after Israel’s famous 1976 raid on the Entebbe Airport to free captives taken prisoner by Palestinian hijackers.
Because he was not yet 18, Gidongo’s Jewish mother and Christian father came up with a “maneuver” to help him begin his Exodus, from a land where Jews were oppressed, to the Promised Land. They told Ugandan authorities that he was older than he was, so they would issue him a passport – a stratagem that Gidongo laughingly compared to the trick the parents of Moses played on the Egyptians by weaving a basket in which he could float down the river.
However, in 2005, when Gidongo started his trip, there was no daughter of Pharaoh waiting to adopt him and make him part of a royal family. Far from it.
He traveled a short way east from his village to Kenya, and then north to Somalia, which he described as being “no joke—it was a country in a big mess,” and once there, he was immediately arrested. A prisoner for three months, Gidongo said a Somali war lord during that time took a liking to him—especially because Gidongo, having been schooled in a former British colony, could speak English. The warlord was willing to help Gidongo if he would first become an English teacher to his children.
“If we (Jews) are not determined, we cannot survive,” Gidongo told the Men’s Club.
From his Somali captor, he learned many survival tricks, for example in the desert one should drink hot water, not cold, so equalize the temperature between the outside of the body and the inside. Be like a camel, the man taught him.
Allowed to proceed on his journey, he went to Ethiopia from which he had hoped to cross the Red Sea to Yemen. But as that proved impossible he travelled west to Sudan, “where I almost died from lack of water” and then traversed Egypt to arrive via the Rafah crossing in Gaza. There he befriended some residents of Gush Katif, the Israeli settlement that was about to be withdrawn on the orders of Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
He traveled with them into Israel, becoming, he believes, “the first person to step on Israeli soil from the Abayudaya.”
Anxious to begin his mission of introducing the Abayudaya to the Israeli people, he promptly identified himself to authorities as having come from Uganda – and that was all the Israelis needed to hear. Another African refugee! They ejected him from Israel, sending him back through the Erez crossing into Gaza. He likened his sense of despair to European refugees trying to flee from Hitler’s Germany, only to be refused entry into other countries including the United States.
Heartbroken, Gidongo said he made his way back to Cairo to visit the Embassy of Uganda, but his fellow Ugandans could give him no help. He continued west to Libya, where again he was arrested, and subsequently deported back to Kenya. All told, it was a journey of eight months only to end almost exactly where he began.
Although his personal mission failed, Gidongo said he is determined to do what he can for the Abayudaya people whom he estimates now number about 1,500; with perhaps a third of them adults and the rest children.
American Christians eventually took cognizance of the Abayudaya, and recognizing them as Jews, worked to gain them entrée to Israel on the theory that once the Jews of the world are gathered in Israel, they will pave the way for the return of Jesus. Gidongo didn’t argue theology with them; he was grateful for the help, which has been supplemented by various American agencies, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. A San Diego couple who have taken a great interest in the Abayudaya and helped to make their story known are Ed and Rae Samiljan. Ed also is known locally for having been the driving force behind the establishment of Camp Mountain Chai.
Rabbi Michael Berk, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, was in the Men’s Club audience. He said both the Reform movement and the Conservative movement of Jews in the United States have recognized the Abayudaya as Jews and are working in Israel for their recognition.
In the nine years since his momentous journey, Gidongo, who preaches the message of resourcefulness, has not been waiting around. He has decided that it is his duty to help build up his people, who live subsistence existences. Always a fan of airplanes—especially the kind that like on the “wings of eagles” could take his people to their Zionist home—he made up his mind to train to become a pilot.
As luck would have it, he met in Uganda a businessman from San Diego County, Larry Kesslin of Carlsbad, and Kesslin’s family. Impressed by Gidongo, the Kesslins helped pay for Gidongo to take flight training in Kenya. After arriving back home, they talked to Phil Thalheimer, owner of San Diego Flight Training International, and told him about the young man in Uganda with a dream.
Thalheimer, a member of Congregation Beth Israel and a former unsuccessful candidate for the San Diego City Council, told the Men’s Club that he became really interested in Gidongo when he learned that not only was he a young man with a dream, he was also a fellow Jew. Thalheimer decided to bring Gidongo to the United States on a 12-14 month program that started in March.
Gidongo currently is living in the Scripps Ranch area with the family of Deb Plotkin, founder of U-TOUCH, an organization that helps rural peoples, including the Abayudaya, create computer and technology centers. Plotkin was the one who had introduced Gidongo to the Kesslin family, according to a recent news article distributed at the Men’s Club meeting. The article was written by Kristina Houck, a U-T community press reporter based in the Del Mar area.
Gidongo said that East Africa in general, and Uganda, in particular, is in great need of pilots. He told of a cargo plane that once remained loaded and on the runway in Nairobi, Kenya, unable to take off because the only pilot available had decided to take a vacation to visit his family.
If he can become certified as a pilot, and perhaps start a small flying service, he might be able to carry cargo for the people of East Africa, while also providing employment. He might be able to help the Abayudaya’s economy take off, Gidongo said. Yes, going to Israel is one dream, but Gidongo knows from bitter past adventure, it pays to have a contingency plan.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com