Getting ready to go...

I leave Friday, and to be honest I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the stuff I have to get done. I know that once I am on my way, none of that will matter anymore. Uganda and South Africa here I come!

Where I left off...this is the letter I wrote after my last trip

  I think I might be in love, or maybe it’s just a serious crush.  I am in love with a country, a continent a people, a way of life that is Africa. She; I am pretty convinced that Africa is female; she has crawled up inside of me and won’t let go.  Uganda has played a big role in creating this infatuation. There is something here, in the air, a magic that I struggle to put my finger on, just when I feel like I am getting close, she darts away just out my reach. 

My movement here in Uganda can’t be categorized by such a mundane concept as time, I catalogue it in small moments that have forever changed the way my spirit moves: ideas like grace, humility, compassion, hope, and joy those are the sign posts that mark my journey. 

Grace came to me at the Naguru Reception center.  Abandoned children are picked up by social workers or police and brought to this center and then they are supposed to be placed in other orphanages- although it doesn’t always work that way.  To say that this place was heartbreaking would be an understatement, I can’t begin to describe the malnourishment, the struggle to survive you see all over these children.  Despite that we played with a flat ball, they sang, and some ran around. (I am hard pressed to describe the ones laying in the background to sick to move, covered in flies.)

Shafiq was the little one who grabbed my finger and would not leave my side. He walked everywhere with me, when I would sit down he would sidle up next to me and lay his head in my lap.  He was starving for touch and contact, many of them were. I would sit and rub a back or an arm, trying desperately to overlook the open sores or wounds that will never fully heal—often I would get a little smile.  Grace.

Humility showed up at the Kampala school for the physically handicapped, in the form of Joy. Joy is the head administrator. Sitting behind her desk her presence was large not just in size, but in spirit, she radiated.  “Ask me questions, I like to answer questions.” She bellowed. Before the question was even out of my mouth, she would begin.  She shared her struggles, how she didn’t even want the job to begin with, twenty years ago the idea of working with handicapped students overwhelmed her.  “God pursued me” she explained.  She was honest about the tears and the abandonment, and reflective about how each student deserves the best we have to offer, and bragged about the success stories. (Students who went on to law school, or  opened their own tailoring business.) Humility swirled around my chair as I thought about the things that make me upset, and I reflected on the extraordinary journey this woman takes students on, changing the course of their life, and not with any fancy piece of equipment or multiple aides, just her and a dedicated group of teachers who understand humility.

Compassion knocked periodically over the course of my journey, not the feel sorry kind of compassion, the kind of compassion that moves mountains and creates change.  It was in the voices of the teachers. In Jinja at the Ntingalu school I came out of a classroom only to spy a young male teacher perched on a bench across the courtyard, in front of him he had what appeared to be an open book and big white ball that he was drawing on.  I wandered his way, interrupting his work.

                “What is that you are working on?” I asked sliding next to him along the narrow wooden bench.

                He smiled, “ I am making the Earth.”

I looked closely and sure enough he had carefully constructed a globe, out of white tape and meticulously drawn latitude and longitude lines.  His dull pencil was beginning to work on the continents; open in front of him was an atlas.

                He went on to explain, “I want the students to understand space and how the planets move, I will probably only be able to finish the Earth, sun and maybe a few planets. “ he sighed, “at least then maybe they can understand.”

Hope peeked around multiple corners, her eyes always bright and always smiling. She spent a lot of time with me at Bishops West; a school that has a special needs program and a program for the deaf. While I found hope in every classroom, sitting on the shoulders of children who otherwise would be left behind, I found her also perched on the grass under a tree.  I had a moment listening to the head teacher, Harriet, where I was so overwhelmed with her patience and grace that I had to turn away, my heart was racing and I thought I was going to cry. I can't even imagine her daily journey.  There in the grass on a woven mat in the shade of the trees was a mother holding a small baby. I ventured over and made the usually cooing sounds to what appeared to be a 6month old in well-worn, grey, tattered footed pajamas. As I asked the typical questions:  “How old?” Commented on how beautiful the baby was, she indicated with her hand and a pointed finger that she was deaf and could not hear me. We smiled at each other, the baby gurgled and smiled, I sat for a few moments and imagined that this was the place she felt safe. Sitting in the shade of the trees with her baby, she put her hands in prayer towards me as I got up to walk away. Hope.

I cannot underestimate joy’s presence on this journey. Joy bulldozed down the dirty dusty roads.   Joy showed up in the voices of children as they yelled, “Mzungo” upon spying a car of white people driving by.  Joy danced as we had a farewell party in a classroom at Mukono School, the teachers and staff had all gathered to bid us farewell and to say thank you for our work.  It really should have been the other way around. The teachers had not only opened there classrooms to me, but their lives. I learned personal stories, about family and loss about the struggle to survive.  Joy sang welcome songs and played barefoot football in a rocky field.  Joy smiled a gap toothed smile, sat in the grass and listened to stories over and over, always asking for one more.  Joy dashed in and out of classrooms, and caught giant bugs on the beach at night.

To think about how little it takes to make such a huge impact makes my heart hurt.  Sometimes I think we may get it all wrong, let us not forget to focus on the real big things like, grace, humility, joy, and compassion.  As I move into this school year I challenge you all to look for those small moments, the ones not ordinarily seen, the ones we feel. The sheer joy of learning, the compassion of great teachers who make the Earth for their students, the grace to know that sometimes all it takes is a touch or a smile, the humility to understand that we don’t need things and hope that with every move me make, we are changing the course of someone’s life. That’s powerful work.

Heather