Last Day

It’s really hard to believe, but I leave Uganda tomorrow morning. I feel like I should attempt to summarize what has happened over the last two and a half months, but the thought of trying to do that is pretty daunting!

The relationships that I’ve formed with some of the women here will remain with me for years to come, and I’m anxious for the day when I can come back here to visit them (P.S. next time I’m bringing Ben and/or my family with me, so get ready you guys). It sounds really cheesy and cliché, but getting to know the women has not only allowed me to learn a lot about their culture, but it has taught me so much about myself. Before I came here, there was a deep desire in me to help the poor and less fortunate, but for whatever reason, I was too scared/lazy to actually act on that desire. After being here and seeing what it’s really like for people to live in poverty, there is a completely renewed desire in me to connect with the poor at home. I’m a little nervous for what will actually happen when I get home because I know that it would be very easy for me to fall into the pattern of giving money and being satisfied that I’m helping, but I truly feel like I need to actually interact with people at a soup kitchen (or wherever) in order to feel like I’m making a difference. Annnnyway, I really hope that I won’t fall back into living my life like I was before I came and that I will actually live outside my comfort zone!! As a side note, most of what I’ve learned has been really brought to the forefront of my attention by conversations Rachel and I have had while walking around the villages and Jinja…so, thank you so much for that Rach!!!

Changing the subject a little, we’ve spent most of the past week in Walukaba at various women’s houses, which has been great (as always). We helped Getu (she stepped on a nail about 6 weeks ago and her foot still isn’t healed) wash clothes and do dishes one morning, and yesterday we hung out at Santa’s (the woman covered with beads in the picture) house and helped her make necklaces pretty much all day. One highlight of the week was a visit to Sylvia’s house (picture of her and her two kids, Jaquline and Joram)…she’s the woman who Rachel and I gave money to so her kids could go to school. After talking about it, Rach and I decided that we felt like we should sponsor her kids, which means that we’ll keep sending money to her so that she doesn’t have to worry about paying school fees anymore. The change in her attitude has changed so much since the first time we met with her! The first time we met with her, she didn’t smile once and she seemed very detached. This past week, though, she smiled pretty much the whole time we were there, and talked to us openly, which was great! When I first heard her story, I hoped that us giving her money for school fees would relieve a burden and make her life easier, but I guess I didn’t realize the drastic difference it would make in her overall quality of life.

Thank you so much to everyone who has read this over the past couple months! To everyone at Church of the Nativity at home, your thoughts and prayers have been SO MUCH appreciated…thank you for really opening your hearts to these women, hearing their stories, and buying their necklaces! I kind of feel like I’m going to start giving a thank you speech that would belong at the Oscars, so I’m gonna just leave it at that! See you soon!

Walking and thinking

The excitement has died down a little since the Gulu/Kitgum extravaganza, thank goodness. That said, not too much has been going on other than a lot of walking around Walukaba and Danita, spending time with the women. Walking around a lot has been really nice, actually, because not only is it great to be outside and feel connected to what’s going on, but it’s definitely a good time to talk about what we’ve experienced and absorb everything we’re doing.

The other day, Rachel and I took about a 4 hour walk, which was fun...we walked out to Masese, a small, very poor village right on Lake Victoria. We had taken a couple kites and some bubbles with us, so when we got there, we broke out the toys and were surrounded by kids within about 5 seconds. The kids had a great time with the bubbles, and enjoyed the kites even though they didn’t really work that well! I gave my kite to a little boy, and he actually came back to say thank you, which was AWESOME because they usually just take whatever you give them and run away. After we finished, we walked a little farther along the road, and a group of 5 boys followed us (in the picture) and sang us lots of songs along the way, which was really fun.

Lately, a lot of the cultural differences between the US and here have really caught my attention. One, the role of women here is VERY different than at home…the majority of the time, they do all the work and the men sit around and don’t do anything all day. Two, people here seem very out-of-touch with themselves. When we’ve asked them questions like, “What is your favorite thing to do?” or “How would you describe yourself?” they have no idea how to answer. It might just be that they can’t express themselves well enough in English to answer, but even people who speak English very well can’t seem to really comprehend what we’re asking. Three, it seems that thinking of the future doesn’t really happen much. Most people seem to just exist in the moment, and don’t bother to think about what has happened to them or what their dreams are for the future. Who knows why this is, but I kind of think it might be because for so many people here, the purpose of their life is to survive, not necessarily to enjoy living. Coming from the US, where the culture is so incredibly focused on having fun and enjoying yourself, that concept has been really hard to understand! Maybe I need to stop trying to analyze everything, and just accept that people here live their lives differently, and that’s totally ok!

Once was enough

Rachel and I took the trip of a lifetime last week...we went to Gulu and Kitgum (in the north of Uganda). My motto for the trip became "Once was enough" which kind of clues you into how the trip went. To be blunt, the whole experience was pretty awful, but there were definitely some good points and things I'm glad I saw.

We stayed in Gulu for a day, and were able to see an IDP camp (internally displace peoples camp). These camps are like refugee camps, but for people who are refugees within their own country. The particular camp we went to (the picture of the huts is in the camp) was started in 2003, but people in the north have been displaced from their homes since the mid 1980s because of the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) activity. The rebel activity has calmed down a lot over the past few years, so many people have left the camps and returned to their villages, which is good. While people are glad to be able to return home, they are still really worried that the rebels will come back because the rebel leader (Joseph Kony) refuses to sign a peace agreement. The camp we visited seemed nice compared to the descriptions I've heard of other camps, but the pe0ple we talked to said that life there is very hard because there is virtually no food. The UN stopped passing out food last June, so people have had to somehow come up with food for themselves. One man we talked to said that the UN decided last month to hand out food to the disabled people in the camp, but he said it wasn't enough, and he didn't know when/if they were going to give out more. My impression of the place was that it was a nice place for people to come to feel safe, and even though the war has stopped for now, the whole situation can definitely still be classified as a crisis because people are stranded in these camps with no way to get home and no access to food.

One of the men we talked to was a very elderly man (in the picture). He said he has been displaced from his home for about 10 years. A while ago he returned to his village with a group of people to try and find some food, but while they were there, the rebels attacked them. Everyone started running away, and he tripped and fell into a ditch. Falling probably saved his life because everyone around him was shot, but when he fell, he dislocated his hip (I think), so now he can hardly walk. His children are with him in the camp, which is good, but he's stuck sitting there all day because he isn't able to go look for food or try and find work. It's really overwhelming to think about how many stories there are like this in just this one camp, let alone in northern Uganda, let alone in East Africa, let alone in....you get the point.

After Gulu, we took a bus to a town/village called Kitgum which is pretty close to the southern border of Sudan. We met some really neat people while we were there, and decided that about 15 hours in a village was more than enough for us. We slept in the village, on the floor, and the second we laid down to go to bed, started hearing every kind of creepy noise imaginable. For some reason, the people we were staying with decided it would be a good idea to slaughter a pig at midnight...it made some interesting noises, to say the least! Sometime during the night, Mr. Buggy McFangs decided to bite me, and I woke up feeling like my arm was on fire. I laid there in the pitch black thinking of the worst scenario...it went like this, "First my arm is going to go numb and become paralyed. Then the poison is probably going to reach my brain at which point I'm going to start having seizures and die because we're in the freaking middle of nowhere and there's nothing anyone can do." I think that might have been a little of an overreaction. There wasn't even a mark from the bite when we woke up, and I can still move all of my limbs. Anyway, I happily jumped out of bed at 5am to catch the bus back to Jinja (this was the first time in my life that I've been happy to get up at 5 in the morning).

Soooo, the good points. The stories we heard in the IDP camp were incredible, for one. When we reached Kitgum, a couple guys took us around their village (which has been converted into an IDP camp) and told us about the night that the rebles attacked, killed 40 people, and abducted many children. We walked past about 15 graves in the span of 5 minutes or so, and 9 of these graves were from one family. It was really sad/eerie/strange to walk through a place where such horrible things have happened, and talk to the people that survived. Most of the women in Suubi are from areas around Gulu and Kitgum, so it was great to see where they are from. I expected it to be really dry and desert-like, but it was really green and very beautiful! Also, the stars we saw in Kitgum were unlike anything I've ever seen before. There weren't any lights for miles, so I'm pretty sure we could see every star in the sky. It was awesome.

I have 2 weeks left here, which is crazy! In some ways, it seems like I just got here. Some days I feel like I haven't really done much or experienced many things, but when I go back and read my journal (thanks to my Mom for getting me a journal...it's come in very handy!), I can't believe the awesome people I've met and the incredible stories I've heard! I'll definitely have a place in my heart for the Suubi women and their families long after I've gone home!

Trying to save the world...one person at a time. (Just kidding)

The past week has been pretty busy and exhausting, but looking back, it seems like most of our time was spent doing a lot of random stuff that isn’t really blog-worthy, so hopefully this isn’t too boring!

Dave and Josey left on Tuesday, which was sad, but we’ve bounced back and have been doing lots of projects to keep ourselves busy:-) The last few days, we’ve been working to organize a big art project with some of the Suubi women’s kids. We borrowed some big frames and brushes from a painter in town, bought a bunch of old sheets and paint, and Stevi and Dillon made canvases for the kids to paint on. The idea behind this project is that Stevi and Dillon will take the paintings back home and sell them as a fund-raiser for Light Gives Heat. There were 17 kids painting, and some of the things they came up with were great! We asked them to paint their home, family, school, or favorite place in Africa. Most ended up painting a house, a few people, some trees, and other random stuff like that. This boy named Joel did my favorite…it’s what the picture is of (the Suubi house and Uganda). It was definitely a great way to spend an afternoon!

We spent yesterday (Saturday) morning with Claire, a Suubi member. She works the night shift at Amani Baby Cottage, and then has to come home, cook for her kids, and clean, so she doesn’t really ever get to sleep. We helped her wash clothes and do dishes…I like to think that we helped a little, but people here are so efficient at doing things that sometimes I feel like I’m just making it harder for them by trying to help! I definitely now have a huge appreciation for washers and dryers, though! I’m going to be excited about doing laundry when I get home just because it’s going to seem so easy compared to what people have to do here! As a group of 4 white people, we attract a lot of attention when we visit the villages, so there was a crowd of 20-ish kids gathered around the front of Claire’s house for the first half hour we were there (Rachel and Stevi are actually washing clothes somewhere in the middle of the crowd of kids in the picture). You’d think that they would have better things to do than stand around and watch us try and wash clothes, but apparently they were entertained!

On Friday, Rachel and I were introduced to a woman named Sylvia and her family. Her husband died of AIDS about a year ago, and she’s been having a really hard time since then. She’s the first Ugandan I’ve met that hasn’t been overly happy to meet me (not that I’m really that great, but people here are usually just very welcoming and happy to meet new people). She was really nice and very polite, but she just seemed really sad. Given all the horrible things the people here have been through, I would think that everyone would be more like Sylvia, but that’s not the case (for whatever reason). Her mom runs a “restaurant” in a small village, which is their only source of income, and she has a 6 year-old son and a 3 year-old daughter who she’s struggling to support. Her son is in school right now, but given the circumstances, I doubt he’ll be able to continue going to school for much longer. The cost for the kids to go to school is a lot for her, but it’s hardly anything according to American standards, so Rachel and I are going back this week to talk to her about sponsoring her kids so they can both go to school. My hope is that we can help her kids to get through school, and hopefully by sponsoring them, we can relieve a lot of pressure from Sylvia so she can get back on her feet!

Daisy, Villages, Cats, and Goats

We spent a few days last week talking with a bunch of the Suubi women and visiting their homes, and I have to say that every story I hear amazes me more than the previous one! One of the women we talked to last week was Daisy, and before talking to her, I never would've guessed that she's been through so much in her life. She always presents herself as fairly well-off and never asks for anything for herself, but always conveys the needs of the other Suubi women. She and her family moved to Jinja from the north in 1986 because of the war, and they were able to move into a large, nice house in town. Her husband had a really good job, and it sounded like they were living a really comfortable life. I don't know how long they lived like that, but one night, men with guns showed up at their house and told them they had to get out. She, her husband, and their 6 kids lived outside on the porch for a week until the men came back and made them leave. They were able to find a place to live in a village 5 or 10 minutes outside of Jinja. Their house is in decent shape, but it's pretty much one room divided into a sitting area and a sleeping area. Her husband lost his job, and still hasn't gotten another one, so Daisy makes the only income for the family through Suubi and a small vegetable stand in a local market (she's with Dillon in front of the stand in the picture). She has been able to send all 6 kids to school by applying for FINCA loans (FINCA is an organization that gives micro loans to people in third world countries). What really amazes me about Daisy is that she lost everything, but she has made a life for herself - she's the secretary of the FINCA chapter in Jinja, she built the vegetable stand in the market, she's sent all of her kids to school, she teaches the Luo literacy class and helps translate for the English class for Suubi, and all of the women in Suubi respect her so much! I think she's the perfect example of how someone can overcome adversity and make a life for themself!

This past Saturday, we took Patrick (our night guard) to the viallge where he grew up, and where his father still lives. The village is called Pallisa, and it's about a 3 hour drive northeast of Jinja (it's really close to the Kenyan border). The picture of the field was somewhere close to Pallisa during the drive...the landscape was really pretty. I've spent a lot of time in the villages around Jinja, but this was a totally different experience! There is a small town near Patrick's land, but his land is really remote. After playing with the kids and watching the adults, it seemed like they were all really happy and very content with their lives there, which is not the case for many of the people living in villages close to Jinja. I think the difference in happiness must come from the fact that people in rural villages own and farm land, and can survive on the crops that they grow, but people who live in villages close to town cannot own land and have to buy all of their food. Not only this, but school fees are insanely more expensive in town, and most people have to pay rent for their homes. Patrick said numerous times that he would much rather live in Pallisa than in Jinja, and almost all of the Suubi women have said that they would love to move back to their villages in the north where they can own land. Being from America where there is constant pressure to get a job and make money, it was kind of hard for me to understand why someone would want to live in the middle of nowhere where there are no jobs, and they would have virtually no source of income. After visiting Pallisa, I can now see why people would want to live like that, though! Western cultures have come into places like this and tried to "make them more like us" by creating cities and towns, so now people think that they need to move to the city to get a job and make money. The problem is that there aren't nearly enough jobs, so people move to towns and end up being much worse off than before. It's kind of overwhelming to think about because it's such a huge problem and there is definitely not an easy solution!

When we left Pallisa, we loaded up one of Patrick's goats in the back of our van and set out on the 3 hour drive back to Jinja. It smelled pretty nasty by the time we got home. Mrs. Goat hung out around the house for a couple days, but then Patrick, Dave, Dillon, Josey, and Daniel (Patrick's son) killed the poor thing yesterday for lunch. Rachel, Stevi, and I chose NOT to attend the actual killing, but we enjoyed lunch!

Some exciting news...we found a kitten yesterday walking around Walukaba, so now the Suubi volunteer house has a cat (which will be great once she weighs more than .25 pounds because we kind of have a mouse problem). Stevi, Renee, and I are really excited about it...everyone else thinks we're crazy. It's probably only 3 or 4 days old, and it was just lying in the middle of the road by itself, so we couldn't leave it (I'm sure everyone that knows me can totally picture how the whole scenario played out. "Guys, we can't leave it! It's so cute and small! We have to take it home."). Sooo, we're feeding it via eye dropper, and hoping that it survives:-) I know you're all going to be on the edge of your seat wondering how little Snoopy/Splinter/we haven't really come up with a good name yet is doing, so I'll definitely keep you updated.

Deep Thoughts :-)

When I first got here, I was so overwhelmed with the fact that I was actually in Africa, that I didn't really allow anything to sink in. It's not that I wasn't noticing the extreme poverty and the horrible conditions that people here are living in, it was more that I was so shell-shocked by actually being here and witnessing these things, that I didn't actually SEE them. That sounds SOOO cliche, but it's true! The last couple weeks, the gravity of everything here has really started to make an impact on me. I don't know if that's because I've been talking to people about it, or because I've finally seen enough for it to really register, or because I've had enough time to get over the initial shock and start really thinking about what people have to live with, but I'm definitely feeling that the issues and problems here should be brought to the attention of as many people as possible.

Through all of this, the hope of the people here comes through, so it is hard to feel sorry for them because, on the surface, they are all happy, joyful people. Dave (the director of Light Gives Heat) has told me since the beginning that the last thing people here want is your pity, which is very true (this is not to say that they won't welcome your help, though!). But, I have at times felt overwhelmed by helplessness because there are so many people here that deserve good lives and they probably won't ever achieve that. When I'm sitting at Amani holding and playing with kids, it's so hard to know that some of them will probably never be adopted, and will live their entire life in poverty. When we're walking through Walukaba and see a woman cooking a meal for her 8 kids, it's heartbreaking to know that that will probably be their only meal for the day. When I'm walking down Main Street, it's hard to constantly walk past the kids begging for food and money. That said, there are many amazing volunteers here trying to eradicate situations like these, which helps me to have hope that the standard of life will be raised within the next generation or two. As easy as it is to get caught up in all of the sad stories, that's more than a little depressing, so I've been trying to focus on the good, and think of ways that I can help and contribute to all of the amazing things that are happening here.

The more I have talked to other volunteers here, the more that I have realized that one of the best ways we can help is by telling the peoples' stories. In my case, I have been blessed enough to be welcomed into the lives of the Suubi women, and I feel that it is my duty to them to tell their story at home. So, thank you so so so much for reading my blog, and I'd definitely encourage you to read the blogs of the other Suubi volunteers (go to lightgivesheat.org and click on Stories From The Field) because they're all awesome (my opinion might be a little biased, but whatever)! I really believe that we can truly help these women by telling as many people as we can about them...the more people that know about them, the more likely someone else will be inspired to help!!!

Pictures

Here are the pictures from the Gertrude blog. Sorry it's taken me so long to get them up!