St. Mary Kevin Orphanage

Our next stop on day 1 in Kampala was a refreshing dose of hope after our experience at Nsambya Babies Home. St. Mary Kevin Orphanage is a home and school for an older group of orphaned  children. In contrast to our experiences that morning, St. Mary  Kevin provided an atmosphere of love and nurturing to its children, along with encouragement to develop creative talents in art and music. Here, the children seemed more peaceful and happy.

Everywhere, there were cues to remember the goodness of God, to respect others, to find joy and peace in the struggles of life… My personal favorite – “Be silent, or say something better than silence.”

Children’s artwork adorned the walls and shelves, and we were treated to an amazing performance of music and dance by the students, including expressive musical storytelling, a band complete with brass and their traditional percussion instruments and colorful traditional costumes.

While the children performed for us, a small group of children came to the door of the pavilion to watch and listen. One small child came at my bidding and sat with me. I thought it was a little boy I was holding on my lap. When I asked a caretaker his name, however, she said it was a girl and that her name was Chandya. She was a beautiful little girl. She was missing her front four teeth, so I’m guessing she was about 7 or 8 years old. She liked seeing the pictures I was taking of the performance in the display on my camera.

I was impressed by the opportunities for productivity provided     by St. Mary Kevin. Whether painting a well, caring for farm animals (pigs, chickens, goats and a cow) or making bricks, there were plenty of opportunities for the children to be responsible and develop skills that will serve them in being productive members of society and developing a sense of dignity and self respect.

As they did everywhere, the kids here loved my sunglasses and my camera. Put the two together, and you get quite an exciting time!

After seeing conditions in the North, those at St. Mary Kevin are quite good. It is hot and dusty and not all of the children have mosquito nets over their beds. Still, it’s obvious that the operation is well-managed and that there are volunteers and sponsors who are aware of the need and contributing what they can. Even while we were visiting, in fact, there was a group of volunteers from Denver playing with the kids and working on the facilities – painting, building, etc.

All in all, the visit to St. Mary Kevin Orphanage was a positive experience. Although the plight of the orphaned children there was sad, it was encouraging to feel the love and concern that the    staff obviously had for the children. I felt like they were being given a leg up in a really tough world, and I left feeling uplifted after a downer morning.

Next stop, Reach Out Mbuya – a co-op of HIV+ women in Kampala from whom we bought our shipment of beaded jewelry in the fall.

 

Another Perspective

I want to call out another perspective on our recent experiences in Uganda. Suzy Gillies, APF’s founder and president, has a blog of her own (Suzy’s African Adventure), where she has been sharing her take on the trip.

Good news is that, while I tend to be really detailed and – ok, I’ll just admit it – “verbose,” Suzy’s very conversational/personal. :) She’s also capturing more of the macro view of the trip.

So, while you’re reading about my experiences, make sure to pop over to her blog as well and read about how she’s coping with the transition back, about day 1 in Kampala (So happy she took a picture of me with the nameless boy at Nsambya – I didn’t have one of those!) and making our way up to Gulu on day 2.

More Nsambya Pics

I had to post a few more photos of our experience at Nsambya…

The Nameless Boy (Kampala – Day 1)

At Nsambya Babies’ Home in Kampala, a polite staff of caretakers busy themselves with various and sundry duties around the home, while we Mzungus (i.e., white people) anxiously await our opportunity to hold the beautiful children we’ve heard so much about. We no sooner get through the door when numerous  children are reaching out for us to hold their hands, pick them up or otherwise  interact with them. Playing is not enough; they need to be touched, held, nurtured.

Attention, however, comes at a price. Their need is so great, and their socialization so lacking, that they fight – literally clawing at each other – for our attention. Turning attention from one child to another means an inevitable slap, punch or scratch.

While children, Mzungus and caretakers move about in the enclosed courtyard, one small child lays on his side, nearly motionless on the concrete in the hot African sun. He pays very little attention to what’s going on around him. No matter, as the children and caretakers also pay him little attention.

But I notice him, and, once again, my heart is broken. He’s wearing nothing below the waste, and his tattered shirt is soiled with urine. His bald head betrays a history of severe malnutrition; his lack of attention to the people around him tells volumes about a likely pattern of neglect in his first years of life.

I reach down and take the little boy in my arms, forcing myself to ignore my aversion to him in his state. He looks up at me like he doesn’t know how to think of me. Who is this white person? Another new face… What is he doing here?

I don’t even know if I have the answers to his questions.

And speaking of questions…

“Excuse me,” I say to a volunteer – a college student in a nearby town spending three weeks helping at Nsambya. “What is this boy’s name?” I ask. But she doesn’t know. He’s new.

“Do you have any clothes for him?”

She rustles through a pile of donated clothes and finds a pair of old shorts. They’re too big – falling off of him – so she gets a pair of pants. They’re also too big, and they’re pink, but you know what they say about beggars… She finds a clean, pink shirt to match.

I find one of the caretakers and ask again, “What is this boy’s name?”

“We don’t know,” she says. The police found the boy on Saturday, she says, and brought him to Nsambya. It’s Monday today; he’s only been here in this strange place for two days.

No wonder he doesn’t react. If I were him, I don’t think I’d know what to make of this strange world either…  Maybe he’d cried all his tears long ago. A sad thought, considering he can’t be more than two years old.

I hold him a while longer and then give him to my wife, Kirsten,  and go to play a more raucous game of tag with some of the older kids. She lovingly takes him and holds him.

Bath and potty time… The caretakers gather the children together into a large “bathroom.” They bathe them and set them all onto plastic potties to do their duty. But once again they’ve forgotten the boy. The kind volunteer I met earlier takes him aside to a small basin and bathes him in the sun.

Time for us to leave… As we make our way out of the building, we pass by the bathroom. Just around the corner inside the room is the boy, once more alone, this time sitting naked on a potty, looking down with no one attending him. We touch his head – a final attempt at a loving connection.

 

It’s the last time we will see him, except in our pictures…

Getting To Know You (Day 1 – Kampala)

I love newness. Change, transition, new people, new cultures, new animals, new sites and sounds… That’s why I love traveling, particularly to places I’ve never been before.

Monday morning, we woke early to a symphony of sounds – birds I’d never heard before, a call to a Muslim prayer service, roosters that I swear forgot to set their clocks back in the fall because the sun isn’t even close to cresting over the horizon.

25 hours travel the day before didn’t exactly leave us feeling wide- eyed and bushy-tailed, but we were excited to be there and awoke willingly. Pulling my mosquito net aside, I braced myself for  everything ahead of me. Two orphanages and a new culture to discover, not to mention so many new things to take in with my full range of senses...

First thing, Suzy and Shawn got out of the 24- bed dorm and into their own rooms. Shawn actually took the double room next to me to share with Joseph when he arrived, while Suzy shacked up in  Suzanne’s suite. Then off to a hearty breakfast, where we would be sharing the dining room with the Red Chilli’s two oversized (no – fat) dogs, which were lying around lazily on the floor.

Breakfast was fantastic, albeit a little slow coming. Ugandan pancakes (which are actually slightly tweaked Danish pancakes, or larger, thicker crepes), passion fruit juice (“100% pure fruit juice, with sucrose added”) and fruit plates, which included watermelon, passion fruit (which was good, because I didn’t know exactly what a passion fruit was) and some of the best pineapple I’ve ever had.

While the others were getting their things into the car to head out into the city, I took a moment to try and spot some monkeys in the trees. I had been told that there were monkeys. No luck. Try again tomorrow…

Driving into the city, several things struck me. First, the red dirt. Everything in Uganda is tinged an ochre red color. And, being the dry season, dusty…

Second, the birds. They’re everywhere. And not just small, colorful ones like I imagined in an equatorial country. (Note – Equatorial is not the same as tropical. Uganda is not tropical; it’s sub-Saharan bush. Warm year-round, but more like a beautiful lush desert than an island paradise.) Of course, there were small birds all around. I particularly liked the little black and white “love birds” that would fly everywhere in twos and “snuggle” when they landed on a power line. What really captured me, though, was the HUGE Marabou Storks. They’re 2-3 feet tall with long  skinny legs and enormous beak, and they’re EVERYWHERE! In trees, on street lamps, rooftops and, of course, circling in the sky.

I’m told the storks are Uganda’s natural garbage disposal, eating everything people toss aside – food, paper, whatever. Which brings me to my next observation – the garbage. In my experience, most people tossed their garbage aside rather than finding a garbage can. Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw more than a handful of garbage cans the entire week. This was tough for me to take, and I took every opportunity to silently pick up after others when they tossed aside garbage in my presence. (More on that later…)

Next was the traffic. Lots of traffic, although I discovered later in  the week that this traffic was nothing. And people walking through the traffic – salesmen, pedestrians and even children. Right down the middle of the road at times, asking for food. 

And bikes… It’s amazing how much stuff – big, bulky stuff - people can carry on their bikes and motorcycles (called “boda bodas,” or “bodas” for short).

And the women carrying things on their heads… Not just little things, mind you. Big things, balanced with incredible dexterity right on top. Amazing…

**************

Our first stop on day 1 was the bank, to exchange our U.S. bills for Ugandan. This was relatively uneventful, if you don’t count the security guy standing guard outside the bank with a shotgun. A bit shocking at first, but you get used to it, as most of the guards and police officers have guns (usually large ones, often AK-47s or other machine guns) in their arms.

Back to the bank… Exchanging U.S. money for Ugandan is simple – give them a few U.S. bills and they give you lots and lots of  Ugandan ones. The exchange rate is roughly 1 U.S. dollar to 2000 Ugandan schillings. It gets confusing sometimes when you’re dealing in hundreds of U.S. dollars to talk about millions of schillings, but we weren’t dealing with that amount of money at one time very often, so it wasn’t too bad.

Having exchanged our money, we were ready to dive headfirst into our Ugandan orphan experience.

Next up – a heartbreaking visit to Nsambya Babies Home in Kampala…

Giving a Sandwich, Getting a Life

My first brush with poverty was unexpected…

The drive from Entebbe airport to the Red Chilli hostel in Kampala was full of interesting things to take in. More than anything, I felt the fascination of a new place, breathed the equatorial air and absorbed what little I could see in the midnight surroundings. At first I wished it were light, then I realized how much of it would have been lost on me anyway, that maybe it was a blessing to be offered only a fraction of what there was to absorb that first night.

Still, there are things I remember… The dim lights in the countless shops that were nothing more than shacks with a few shelves on the wall. The people – men, women, children – that apparently didn’t sleep at night. The rolling hills. President Museveni’s new home in Kampala standing in sharp contrast to the conditions in which so many of his people live, even in Kampala, which is relatively opulent compared to the North. The palm trees. The sprawling city. The stickiness… Our kind driver, Kiganda – an endless fountain of knowledge!

As we made our way through the sprawling city, our “hunger” got the best of us, and we pulled out our snacks. The others hadn’t appreciated the curry chicken salad sandwiches from the last flight and had stashed them away in their bags. I didn’t think they were so bad, so I took one of them. I hadn’t taken two bites when we found ourselves stopped at one of the two traffic lights in Kampala facing a beautiful little girl and her even younger sister reaching up to our open window asking for food. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so hungry. She took the sandwich and some other snacks with a smile and a thank you.

With a half-eaten sandwich, I had somehow purchased a piece of my soul that I hadn’t known was missing…

Processing - part 2...

Funny how the emotion of such a heavy experience can catch up to you at completely unexpected times... I'm doing my best to keep it together at work today and focus on the task at hand. So much to do! :\

Red Chilli Hostel

Red dirt, mosquito nets, great breakfasts, bohemian culture, goats, dogs, geckos in the showers and early wake up calls from a million exotic birds… That is the Red Chili. It was a good touch-down for the first couple of nights, in Kampala!

It didn’t start out so hot, though… 25 hours of air travel and an exciting drive through the city in the middle of the night will do more than prepare a group of 30-something travelers for sleep. It might just get them a little cranky. So it’s no surprise that our first thought was something like “You’ve got to be kidding me,” when we find out that they didn’t have enough rooms for us upon our arrival.

Suzy and Shawn were troopers but none-too-happy about taking a couple of beds in a dorm with a bunch of traveling girls already asleep in the room. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t take care of, though. They gave us another room in the morning, which Shawn shared with Joseph (more on him later). Suzy shacked up in Suzanne’s room on night two.

Among other things, I’ll remember the Red Chilli as the place I discovered Ugandan pancakes, our morning staple for the remainder of the week. I introduced them to our boys this morning. I think they will become a permanent part of our breakfast repertoire in the Carson house…

I’ll also remember Red Chilli as the place I first saw a Jack Fruit. I haven’t yet had one, but I’m told they taste like Pineapple, but not as sweet and with seeds. They look pretty funky on the tree – kind of like giant green knobby warts, often growing right near the trunk and larger branches…

Processing

After 30 hours of travel – from Entebbe to Heathrow to O’Hare and finally to SeaTac airport – we’re finally home from our week in Uganda. Already, I’ve been asked several times how it was, and I can’t for the life of me decide how to answer that question. “Great!” truthfully doesn’t even come close to describing “how it was.” Beautiful, horrifying, sad, productive, hard, exciting, frightening, hot, sticky, life-changing, too short, long enough, expanding, unsettling, exhilarating, shocking, encouraging, fulfilling, frustrating, touching, edifying… These would all be appropriate words to describe the experience.

Truth be told, I’m tired, and I have a lot of processing to do in the coming days/weeks/months. To experience so much in so short a time leaves me feeling a bit overwhelmed. Like this picture of a Ugandan girl picking tiny stones out of a pile of rice, I need to sort through the last 10 days piece by piece until I can truly process all that there is to take away from the experience. And, even then, I have a feeling I’ll be discovering new ways it has changed me many times over in the future.

Stick with me, and I’ll share my experiences as I fill in the blanks, piece by piece, story by story, picture by picture…

Creativity

"Anonymous" made a comment today that (s)he has a hard time keeping up on blogging because of the need to feel like what (s)he writes is creative and interesting. I'm with ya, Anon. I usually hold back from writing until I feel like I have something really interesting to say. Not sure that's the point, though, is it? Maybe a blog is just a dialogue with the rest of the world about life - creating interactions for mutual enlightenment...

Of course, my K last night made a comment about how my blog needs to be more interesting. She compared me to CJane (who I suspect has more time to put into her blog than I do), who she said is much more interesting. Of course, after reading CJane's blog, I can't disagree. Her blog is WAY more interesting to read than mine. :\

Hmmm... Maybe I should hold off writing again until I think of something more creative to post about...

Nah.

Dialogue

So, I mentioned on my Facebook page that I want to become a more prolific writer. It's actually one of my goals for 2010 -- "Write more, starting with my blog." My problem is that I often have a hard time thinking of things to write about. That's why I asked people to send me questions to answer. You know, make it more of a dialogue, rather than just me spewing forth my many nuggets of wisdom and brilliance. ;)

Here goes nothin'...

Juliana Hind asks: "What does prolific mean to you?"

You'd think this would be an easy question, but not so much. It means I actually have to put a stake in the ground and commit to some level of prolificity (yeah, I know, that's not a word -- not a problem). Problem is, that would also imply that I've given it that much thought, which of course I have... not. Actually, I've given it a lot of thought, but this is one of those things that I've gone back and forth on so many times that I somewhat doubt my own ability to stay consistent. In other words, I've recommitted myself to writing so many times and then fell away from it that I wonder how long I'll last this time??

So, parenthetical question... How many of you have tried to change something over and over and over again, only to continually fall back into the same old habits you're trying to change? If your answer to that question is "not me!" then either I seriously doubt your grasp on reality, or I really admire your sticktoitedness. In any case, I'll probably write about this again sometime (changing things in our personal lives), but not today. For now, I just want to know how you've gone about changing something about yourself that you struggled for a long time to change and then, finally, succeeded? How'd you do it? What was different about it that last time?

Anyway (which, according to all my old high school friends used to mean "go to that hot place down under" -- and I don't mean Australia), back to the question... What do I mean by prolific? What am I willing to commit myself to this year? How about 2-3 posts a week to start with? If I do more than that, great! It'll be easier if y'all engage in a dialogue with me, so help me out! Answer my questions, and ask me more! Be creative! I'll try to answer as many questions as I can, whether I have any clue about the subject or not. :)

Could be interesting...

Well-Paired Team

I saw this poem this morning, by Orson Scott Card (author of the Ender's Game series - one of my favorites), about marriage. Given recent discussions we've had in a marriage and family class I'm in at church, this seems very appropriate. And reminds me how grateful I am for my K.


Well Paired Team
By Orson Scott Card

You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts,
Forced to travel with a clumsy fool
Or trot along behind a receding dream
(You had to stop and help me when I tripped,
While you would never stick to my passionate script),
Using one another like an ill-made tool,
Like ox and antelope yoked in a single team.
And yet ... somehow, together, we managed to pull
An empty cart straight uphill;
And look -- the creaking, rickety thing is full
Of crockery, old rags, a child or two.

At the start, knowing nothing, we said "I will,"
And now look at all the things I made with you,
All our baggage, all our breakage, art
By unskilled artisans, yet beautiful,
Yours and mine, no matter how peculiar;
New and strange, no matter how familiar.
Some passages were merely dutiful.
Who could know, on our ignorant starting day
That, pulling such a long and weary way,
The man, the woman, strangers side by side,
Would end the trek inside each other's heart,
Trading forgiveness and repentances,
Finishing each other's sentences,
Only to be stranded,
The team -- for now at least -- disbanded.
Now we see how all the road maps lied:
Our destination was the yoke we shared,
Badly at first, but by the end well paired.
And only when you died did I leave my home
And pointlessly, empty-carted, roam.
You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts.

The meaning of happiness

Question: Is it possible for a human to have a fullness of happiness when there are other human beings in the world who are suffering in unimaginable ways?

Answer: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." (Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1986) You can achieve true happiness in this world, but not when you're acting out the opposite of love; not at the expense of empathy for the real suffering of God's children - no matter what form that suffering takes. It's counter to God's plan. Love, sacrifice, service, faith, empathy for others = charity = the pure love of Christ = true happiness.

Over the past year, I've read a few books on child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda. At first, I was satisfied to have opened my eyes to the tragedy that is a part of so many people's lives there. Then K and I became friends with a couple - Suzy and Shawn - that did more than read about it. They were doing something to make life better for these people. Suzy had already gone to Uganda twice to serve in orphanages and Internal Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, and was making plans to start up a non-profit aimed at sponsoring the education of orphaned children.

After spending an evening editing an executive summary document for her, everything changed for me. That small investment changed something within me, and I knew I could no longer sit on the sidelines doing nothing but read books and feel bad for these people. I knew I had to be a part of it in a significant way. And that's how life changes in an instant...

Now, I'm a member of the board of directors of African Promise Foundation. We buy products from widowed women, often with AIDS (this helps the women feed themselves and their families; right now it's necklaces and bracelets made out of beads crafted from recycled paper) and sell them for a profit back home in the States. We then feed that profit back into the widows' community to sponsor orphans' education and build a healthy, thriving community around them. It's a simple model - one we hope will ultimately be easily replicable in many communities. And one of my favorite parts about it is that the hero of the story is the women who make the necklaces. Through the wealth created by their own handiwork, their children and their communities will have a brighter present and future.

I'm so excited to be a part of this! This is world-changing work... One person, one community at a time. APF started because of a promise Suzy made to a man named Tiger in an IDP camp in Northern Uganda. I can't wait to one day (hopefully soon) go to Uganda, hold the children for myself and make my own promise to them to do what I can to rally people here who are so privileged to ease their suffering.

Bing "Northern Uganda" to learn more.

"Living Proof" ad

Love this new ad from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation...