Get Uncomfortable

“One third of the world—that’s about 2 billion people, men, women and children—lives on less than $2 a day. That’s $60 a month, $720 a year. Some of us spend that much on our cars each month (car payment, insurance, gas, etc.). That ought to be enough for us to realize there’s a need.” –Todd Philips

We’re definitely getting a glimpse of that need here in Kampala. The Watoto Children’s Orphanage provides permanent foster care in an “ideal family” consisting of a housemother and eight children for legal orphans between the age of premies who have been abandoned at the hospital to youth before they’re old enough for university. The house that we’re helping to build was funded by your donations for our trip and is obviously more modern than surrounding local homes. Although the Watoto homes have a fireplace in the kitchen, three relatively small bedrooms compared to my own at home (one for the mother and four children in each of the other) and a wide hallway for the table, driving to the work sight has provided us with a glimpse of sod houses often with a sheet hanging in the doorway. Brown and black cows and black and white pigs, goats, chickens and roosters all wander through the yards. Toddlers are bathed in low buckets outside and young children play outside in the red dust. It sounds like a nice life, doesn’t it?

Until the curious children who came to our work sight to see the mzungu (“ma-zoon-goo” means white person) mentioned they were hungry. At about one-thirty in the afternoon, they said that the last time they had eaten was dinner time the night before. The undernourished (“We want chicken but it’s too expensive.”—a chicken costs less than $2) kids are wearing (present tense because I’m sure they are wearing those clothes at this moment) torn clothing caked in dirt. By torn, I don’t mean the hard-used tears that are straight in the knees of our American jeans. Charles has a ripped angle in the back of his little red jeans that from certain angles probably shows too much skin. The other tears are the over-used tears that we very rarely see even if you’re like me and buy second-hand clothing and wear it for ten years. Holes along shirt collars were the most notable for me because I couldn’t understand how a shirt could wear through like that. An eight year old boy carried his little sister, Angela, over to us twice in the past week. Both beautiful children, Angela has a wide grin that comes easily and reveals her few teeth that already have brown spots. She also only wears a soiled dark pink shirt—no diaper for this baby who can’t walk yet. For long distances, her brother pulls her on a homemade sled—a rectangular water container cut in half with some type of rope tied to one end. The older children have white teeth and we’re told that they’re healthier than city children because they can eat food from the farms. The first day we were on the work sight, the children wandered over when they were supposed to be digging for sweet potatoes. Our twenty-four year old guide insists that that’s a job he’d never want because it is difficult labor. Another boy was lucky to have the job of watching the cows when he discovered us. As a team of Christians, we’ve been daily seeking how God is calling us to serve these children and trying to put our faith into action concerning these children who could so easily become one of the morbid statistics that we’ve already read about Africa (1 John 3:18).

Yesterday, we visited a poor school that houses six teachers who teach approximately seven hundred students between the baby class up to primary seven. Can you imagine my humility as an ex-teacher who struggled with fourteen special ed high schoolers at a time before these teachers who are each responsible all day long for a hundred children packed into one room (sometimes five per bench which would probably seat two American children) without text books and only one cupboard of books that is in the headmistress, Harriet’s tiny office. It reminded me of one of my my co-teachers, Mr. Meekins who told me, “Miss Parrish, you go to Africa. You go there because kids there want to learn. Go and if anyone gives you grief, you’ve got a large black man here ready to defend you.” The children did a presentation for us outside near their playground which consists of a barren dirt field where I caught a photo of a footprint in the dust. Dancing and smiles, singing and drum beats from these literally poor children in simple uniforms (one little boy looked ridiculous with only his top collar button buttoned until I realized that all of the others had fallen off). Some are barefoot. A boy wears pink girl shoes without regard to our gender expectations. Then, before we met with the school staff and board, I spent some moments interacting with the kids—probably fifty handshakes (with them thinking, “I touched a mzungu!”) and talking with a few of them. I met a beautiful little girl who had lost her front tooth. I kept trying to take a photo with her but literally thirty kids kept pushing her out of the way. She’d get knocked down while I showed the kids photos of themselves and I’d yell, “Where’s the baby?! Pick up that baby!” (I know she’s not really a baby, but she was much smaller than the rest of them.) The kids had their report cards since it was the last day of school before vacation and I’d tease and encourage the kids who’d place their over-sized thin notebook reports in my hands (probably the only over-sized thing in this country). They need basic school supplies, textbooks and another school building. Those were the needs that they requested. From our own educational experiences, we’d love to also add instruments and laptops to their resources and we’re plotting ways to help this primary school called St. Pius.

There’s more. There’s the little boy, Greg, at the baby orphanage who doesn’t look like his fellow toddlers. He’s got beautiful black curls and wide eyes with tan skin. I saw him sitting by himself sucking his thumb and when I sat nearby, he crawled into my lap. We sat together for a while until I had to leave. When Arnold, our Ugandan team leader and friend from school, asked someone what Greg’s story was, we learned that his mom was a prostitute that died and left him in the house alone. Thank God someone found Greg and enabled him to come to Watoto where he’ll be cared for in a Christian community until he is old enough to go to the university.

There are about six premie (sp?) babies at that orphanage in incubators. Tiny, sickly infants who could very possibly have AIDS themselves were laying right before our eyes. We couldn’t touch them because we hadn’t washed our hands yet (they let us into the room without washing?) but I knelt down within eye sight of one of them. I understood the baby’s solemn facial expression and was probably cooing him when all of a sudden, he grinned the best smile I have ever seen in my life. Sure, it could have been relieved gas, but he was looking at me and smiled. Again, I thank God for Watoto and it’s workers’ faith in action caring for these abandoned children.

Comparing the poverty here in Uganda and in the US, Arnold mentioned his observation that in the US, the poor have options. They can choose a shelter. They can choose to spend money on basic necessities or drugs. They can choose to appreciate their free public education (the children at St. Pius have to pay a small fee for their lunchtime meals). Here in Uganda, it doesn’t seem like people have so many options. We’re talking about life or death situations. The school children sang a song with the lyrics, “We’re mountain movers. We move mountains with the power of the Lord.” May I be a mountain mover and move mountains with the power of the Lord too.

Mom and Sherri, You can stop worrying for the moment. I am planning to return home as was planned at the end of this trip. I’ve got a youth group to lead. But I wanted to share with you all some of the things we’ve witnessed in the past week. If the statistics were not enough and if my observations were not enough, the fact that I have touched these children, I have held half-naked Angela, thumb-sucking Greg and the “baby” at the school and shook the hands of so many others, I’m not sure I can be satisfied returned to my comfortable lifestyle. How can I return home to drink a $4 Java-chip frap when those kids can’t eat a $2 chicken? The fact that I have in the past debated whether I could sacrifice an extra treat for the benefit of another person is convicting as I look into the eyes of a joyful, literally dirt-poor child. This sentiment isn’t initiated by guilt, but rather, out of compassion for these brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m wondering what I can do. I need to do something. James 1:27 (photos later)