Mubende Day

May 22, 2009

Today was a great day! Anything would be great compared to the bad way we ended yesterday, but this truly was a day of discovering Uganda in a way that I haven’t in either trip that I have taken here.

A man named Deo had contacted Troy months ago because he had seen the Medicine for Sick Children website and wanted to know if Troy could help him with anything. We met with him earlier in the week to hear about his organization, Good Hope Initiative. Deo is a very young man, but he is working hard to do amazing things in his village. He has over 130 orphans in the village that he grew up in that he has placed with guardians. Six of them stay in a building in the central part of town with some people that watch over the land that Deo has been given. We didn’t know how we could help on this trip and most of the money from our Foundation has been spent or is committed to the Medicine that we delivered to the hospital. Plus, Ross and Troy had plans to meet with people and get some work done in the city for the rest of our time here. I offered to go and visit the village – by Mtatu if I had to. Everyone we talked to said it takes about 3 hours to get there, so it would be an uncomfortable journey. Luckily, when we called Deo to let him know I would be coming with Melanie (a girl for New York that lives in the HVO house now too) would be able to visit on Friday, he found a friend with a car that would take us.

As usual, everybody is on Africa time. We were supposed to leave at 8 and both Melanie and I were ready to go with plenty of time to spare. I packed up a few stuffed animals, some pens and a bunch of suckers and chocolate. I also stuffed a few balloons that I had found in my dresser drawer in St. Paul into a side pocket. I like to travel with random goodies in my bag just in case I need to distract a random kid or I feel like giving out something to make somebody smile. By 8:30, Deo called to say they were stuck in a jam and they didn’t get here until 9:00. We had to stop for a couple of things in the city and we ended up in a total jam. It felt like we were sitting in a parking lot. I wish I knew the name of Deo’s friend, but he never said it, even when he introduced himself. We didn’t talk a whole lot on the ride out because with the windows open and driving fast it’s difficult to hear anybody in the front seat talking to you. Melanie and I were excited to be out of the city again. The landscape changes from the hills covered in rusty tin rooftops to rolling hills covered in lush green forests of mtako, banana, mango, papaya, and all sorts of beautiful trees. The trip didn’t take as long as we expected because Deo’s village is in Mubende district, which starts just a few kilometers from Mityana, which is just over an hour from Kampala. The actual town of Mubende is another 70 kilometers from where we ended up.

Every time you drive down a road in Uganda, you see a small section of road with mud and brick houses lining the sides. Usually people are selling fresh fruits and vegetables or meat of some sort on a stand near the road. We drive by them all the time, but I’ve never actually stopped or looked to see what is behind those buildings. This was my chance to find out. It turns out that behind those store fronts along very narrow dirt roads and walking trails is where the real village people live. Deo was very excited to show us the places where the guardians stay with some of the children. We must have stopped at 10 different houses with anywhere between 2 and 14 children at each. We stopped at the center first. The center is a small building that has the name of the organization painted on the front and the room that makes up the main center has a dirt floor, no electricity, and is big enough to fit an old coffee table, a couch, and three small chairs. It was just perfect for the four of us plus two of the guardians to sit in. Almost none of the villagers speak English, so the day consisted of us smiling a lot and Deo explaining things in the village language to the people. My favorite place of the day was a house that took the longest to get to. We had to drive on what was probably just a walking path. It was similar to the trails that we use a four-wheeler on at the cabin back home, but we were doing it in a four door car. I’m surprised that car doesn’t have more damage from the rough places we took it. This home consisted of a main building of brick and two smaller round huts for cooking made of mud with straw roofs. The guardians are an older couple that has been married for 49 years. I think that the wife is 80 and her husband was older. It must be true that the people in the village live longer than in the city because I haven’t seen people in the city at all that are as old as the people we met in the village. We were welcomed into the main home and the JjaJja (a name for grandmother or care giver) rolled out mats and set out chairs for us. We sat down and slowly the little room filled up with children of all ages. The room itself is probably no bigger than six feet by six feet and this is where all 14 of the children sleep on mats on top of the dirt floor. The wall paper consisted of lots of old U.S. magazine pages. One was an M&M add from a Christmas commercial and another was a full spread on why Kathy Lee left Live with Regis and Kelly. Those things must have been up for a very long time. At least it gave us something to look at. I happened to have some Hershey’s kisses that hold up surprisingly well in the heat. I gave each kid one and Deo spoke with the guardian about the mosquito nets that we brought along with the school supplies that Deo had purchased. She kept smiling and saying thank you to us. After the kids were given enough sugar and the light rain that had swept through stop, we moved the mat and chairs outside. Deo, his friend, and another organizer from the village named Jared then took us out to see the animals and plants in the backyard. The place can pretty much sustain itself. There are chickens, goats, and pigs that run around close to the house. There are both Banana and Matooke trees growing in bunches. There are chilli plants, a vanilla bean tree, mangos, papaya, jackfruit, sugar cane and avocado. Jared decided to get us an avocado and shouted to one of the older boys. He came out with a large pole and tried to pierce them on the stick, but it wasn’t working, so the boy climbed the tree. He was like a little monkey going from branch to branch and knocking down dozens of avocados. He reminded me of the monkeys that live in the tree by the guest house and knock off nuts that make it sound like a hailstorm outside in the early morning. When we came back from the woods, there was a pile of all of the items we had been shown. A young man was using a machete to cut up the sugar cane into pole about 2 feet long. Then Deo cut and peeled a small piece into even smaller pieces for us to try. People just chew on the cane and then spit it out once they have sucked out all the sweetness. I’ve always wanted to try but was scared to buy it off the streets. It was a perfect opportunity. It has the texture of woodchips, but tastes sweeter than sugar. It was a nice little treat in the middle of the day. I can’t imagine that it would do anything good for your teeth if you chewed it as often as most Ugandans do.

We continued to visit homes for the entire afternoon and then went back to the center where the rest of the children and guardians were gathered. People brought the couch outside and the children began to gather around. I think there were many who were still scared of us because they were much slower to approach than the kids at orphanages in the city. There was a boy earlier in the day who started crying when Melanie stepped towards him because he had never been that close to a person with such light skin! After Deo had successfully gathered his crew, the older boys sat down in front of four drums and the rest of the children lined up near them. A sweet girl began to sing a song that repeated “We are maaaaaarching forward, we are marching forward, we are, we are, we are marching forward.” She had a beautiful high voice that soon blended with a choir of little ones marching closer until they stopped in two rows in front of us. They then sang a few songs and danced traditional dances for us. On Saturdays, Deo gets the kids together to teach them songs and dances and to have activities together as a group. When they were through singing, I decided to try to hand out some of the suckers and chocolate that I had. I first singled out a little boy who tentatively came up to me to get it. Slowly, little ones came up to get their piece of candy and by number 10 or so, they all started to see it was ok and soon there was a huge crowd of little palms turned out to get a “sweetie”. Luckily, I had packed a lot of extras and kept finding random candy. We then lined up the older children to get school books and some pencils. I also happened to have some nice pens in my bag and had enough to give one to all of the kids in the top 3 grades in school. I wish we had more to give them, but pretty much all that we have from Medicine for Sick Children has been spent and given out to the hospital and there are many children in this village so it is difficult to provide something to all of them.

After all of the treats were handed out, Melanie and I thanked the people gathered there and Deo translated what we said to them. Everybody was very appreciative of us, even though we only provided a few things for them. I don’t know if they expect Troy and Medicine for Sick Children to be doing a lot with them in the future and that’s why they were so excited, or if they truly appreciated just a little bit of support. I am very thankful that they were so welcoming and willing to share their lives with us. It seems like this could be a very good place to start a clinic or some sort of medical project for the foundation. It’s not too far out of Kampala and the people definitely need help with health care.

The women had cooked Matooke, rice, cabbage, avacodo and some sort of peanut paste for us for lunch. Melanie and I crammed in the center with Deo and his friends to eat while the children ran around outside. After we ate, Deo told me about a sick girl who was born with a defect that is causing serious trouble. He showed her to me and I realized that she really needs to go to the hospital. It’s a problem with digestion so that her entire belly is swollen. I had seen enough distended bellies in the past two weeks to know that she needed medical attention. I think that Deo thought that Troy could fix it, but he doesn’t realize that Troy is a hematologist, not a surgeon. Hopefully they bring in the little girl and try to get her free surgery at Mulago to relieve her pain and suffering.

Melanie and I were supposed to be back in Kampala at 6 in order to be at the taping of the final episode of a show called Stand Up Uganda. A pharmacist she met at her volunteer job invited us to go with him, but the doors closed at 7. We didn’t even get back to the city until 6:40 because we had stayed so long in the village. Her friend, Jerome, called and said they were keeping the doors open at least another half hour, so we quickly changed and hopped on bodas. We made it with only about 10 minutes to spare. Stand Up Uganda is a reality T.V. show looking for the best stand up comedian in the country and the winner gets $10,000 US, which is a lot of money, especially here. The comedy itself wasn’t that great, mostly because I didn’t get a lot of the cultural jokes. Afterwards, even Jerome said it wasn’t that funny, so I guess my lack of Ugandan background didn’t affect it that much. When the show was finished, we went with Jerome and two of his friends to a Turkish restaurant. They were very nice and one of them had a car, so it was a little easier getting around. The restaurant was very loud so it was difficult to talk and get to know the guys we were with. We drove to another place, but Jerome decided that it wasn’t a good crowd and it was already close to midnight, so we went home. I had a busy Saturday ahead of me, with a trip to Watoto and some work in a slum called Katanga, so it was probably good. All in all it was a great day and we got to see a lot of things that you don’t normally get to unless you have a guide to take you to a village. I’m very thankful for the experience and hope that it can happen again some time.