Day 9 - July 14

SUCCESS! We had a few goals today and all of them were met! We have to get all of our information for our orphanage project gathered so that when Pamela and Nick arrive, we will be able to just go to these places and take the information down. We have not visited them since the last time which was over a year ago, so we weren’t even sure if they still existed (which can happen often here!). The phone numbers we had for both places no longer work, so we had to try to find them simply based on memory.

Luckily, Angella at least new the general neighborhood to find Little Angel, an orphanage with about 20 children. We had to drive past the biggest catholic church in the city to get there. It was nearly impossible to pass because there were two funeral services going on. The priest was giving a Eulogy for a woman named Alice whose life was tragically ended by the bombs. I just heard briefly what he said as we walked by and the speakers blasted his comments. Alice had lived her life for the Lord and you could tell by the way she gave of herself that her heart was in the right place. I just can’t imagine what it would be like if that happened to me or somebody I knew. There is so much hurt and so much forgiveness, and it seems like it would be very difficult to be forgiving through all of the hurt. Only the grace of God would be able to overcome it!

Once we got out of the nightmare of a jam (we were literally inches away from cars on every side as we drove through) we had to try to find Little Angel. We went up and down a hill and asked all the Boda drivers, but nobody had a clue where to find it. We went back up to the cathedral and then down another hill It looked more familiar than the other. The problem is that all of the times we went last year, we got lost too so we weren’t sure if we were remembering being lost or going in the right direction! We finally found a Boda driver who knew the place and directed us to the right road. Sure enough, Little Angel was still there! The mothers even remembered us and went right to the medicine cabinet to show us. They had kept good records of what they used and when! I can’t wait to go back and actually take notes on what they have done. Three of the children were home because their school was closed after somebody in it was affected by the bombs. There is not much in the house. I don’t think they even have enough dishes for all of the kids and the water and electricity have not been working for 4 months because they couldn’t pay for it. They’ve been borrowing from the neighbors for now. Can you imagine caring for 20 children without water or electricity? We might have to try to find a way to help them out with that in addition to helping with the medicine. We got a new phone number for contacting them and we have a better idea of what we need.

On the way back, we decided to try to contact Ssalil. Him and his brother, Henry (or Chiwa) were neighbors to the Woolies when they lived at Need for All Orphanage. They used to come over all the time and play with the kids and were really great at taking care of them. About a month ago, I got terrible news from Angella that Henry had passed away. He had gotten sick and went to the hospital where he was prescribed anti-malarial medication. Even with the medicine he got worse. Three days later, his mom decided to return to the hospital, but he died while he was waiting to be admitted. Henry was one of the people that I had a heart for. He always came up and talked to me and when I came back the second trip, he was the first to come up to me and ask if I remembered him. It’s nice to have somebody remember you, especially when you always come with the Wooly (Ross). The kids all know him so well and everybody else just becomes a bunch of Mzungu’s that come to hang out when he is around.

You may think HIV/AIDS are a big problem in this country, but it is by far not the biggest reason people die. Malaria is still the biggest culprit of taking the lives of children here and may be the #1 reason for adults too. HIV/AIDS has programs run by really large organizations that provide the medications for free. Malaria strikes anybody at any time and people often can’t afford to come to a hospital or to pay for the anti-malarials. I think Malaria needs to be the next disease that people really focus on over here with something more than mosquito nets. You get bit not only at night, but during the day too, so it’s really hard to just prevent malaria by avoiding mosquitoes. Maybe some drug company could try to work on something cheaper, longer lasting, and more practical than Malarone and other anti-malarials. The problem is, I don’t know if any pharmaceutical company would want to “waste” their money researching and producing a drug that they can’t charge $8 per pill and that the main consumers would need the drug as a charity. They would much rather produce drugs to help people that can pay lose weight, enhance their sex lives, or stop them from losing their hair. The more I’ve learned about pharmacology, the more I realize how much is driven by the people that create the drugs. They produce what is most marketable and profitable. I don’t know where all of their money goes, but I highly doubt it goes to many charitable projects. There is one good story that I remember from my business class. If you’re bored, try researching Merck and finding a cure for River Blindness in Africa. It happened in the 80’s or 90’s I think, but it made me have a lot of respect for their CEO (who is no clearly no longer there considering some of the things that have gone on with the company in the past 10 years)

The next part of the day, we planned to devote to finding a woman called JaaJaa in the slum of Katanga that is near the hospital. I dropped my mom with our neighbor, Gloria, who took her to look at her wedding dress because Angella and I knew it would be overwhelming and we honestly had no idea where we had to go or if we would even find her. The slums are overwhelming, even if you’ve been there. Picture those commercials on TV for Christian Children’s fund and then think 10 times worse. There is garbage everywhere, the smell is suffocating, and there are dirty children running around everywhere. As we walked down the hill, little children started to come out and yell Mzungu. Some got brave and grabbed my hand. By the time we got halfway down, I had a little parade of kids following me. It’s really odd to be the center of attention and I tried to get them to scatter as soon as I could. Last year, I distinctly remember children coming up and grabbing my hand or touching my leg and then feeling their hands creep into my pockets to see what they could find. It’s tragic that they learn from such a young age how to survive on the streets. Children should be children, running around and playing, not searching for ways to get money or food.

As we were walking, I remembered that there was a river of garbage that we had to step over by going on a broken cement drain pipe to get to JaaJaa. I saw what I thought it was and told Angella to turn. As we entered a narrow row of buildings, we both decided it was a familiar place. Just after passing a turn, Angella looked back and decided to ask somebody. The first person she asked pointed to the turn we had come back to and said it was it! No kidding! We were in exactly the right place! Praise the Lord! I thought we would have been walking around for hours before we found it! Sure enough JaaJaa was sitting on a dirty pile of clothes with a kid in her lap. The only thing that changed was that there were now bunk beds (3 sets of 3 beds) rather than 4 beds lining the walls. It was still impossible to breath or move. There were still flies everywhere and there were still piles of dirty and probably moldy clothes and bedding. JaaJaa remember us and even still has the medicine cabinet from last year. She reported that all of the children as still around but are at school. We have lots of information to collect, but we will wait until next time when Pamela and Nick are around to get that done. I was overwhelmed by the sights, and I’m sure it was good to keep my mom away for just the day. She will get to see it when we are much more organized and won’t be so distracted by all of the things that are so new and overwhelming. She had fun with Gloria and got to get a Chapati to eat (which she had been wanting since the first one she tried) so I think she had a good day.

Angella and I decided to walk to find a place to eat. We ended up settling on iBamba, a restaurant at the Uganda museum. The setting was nice, with a large grass roof covering us sitting at our big table on couches and comfortable chairs. The service was SO BAD, even for Uganda standards. Angella ordered, but the girl didn’t wait for me to be ready, so she said she would come back. After 20 minutes, my mom and Gloria had arrived and we finally just told a different waitress what we wanted. 20 minutes after that, the original waitress came back to ask us our order, and was confused when we told her we already ordered. Clearly she couldn’t talk to her co-worker, even though they were the only two working and there was one other table. Angella got her food and pretty much every 10 minutes they brought out somebody’s plate. After everyone got their food except me, I was informed that there was no naan left in the whole place, so I could order something else. By the time I got my white rice and curry, everybody had been done eating for at least a half hour. I’m used to slower service here and not always having everything available, but this was ridiculous! At least we had nowhere to be so we weren’t upset!

We decided to walk home since it was a nice day and wasn’t too hot. We thought we could walk until we got tired and then take a taxi the rest of the way. We never got tired so we ended up walking for nearly 2 hours. It was perfect because by the time we got home it was just getting dark and we didn’t feel bad staying in for the rest of the night. It was a really long day, but I consider it quite productive because we were able to find and meet with everybody that we set to! That doesn’t always happen!