I love the days that you can feel like you are more than a tourist or a person just visiting. Because we are staying with people in a home and Angella has pretty much been adopted as a sister and daughter to us, we get to have a glimpse of what it feels like to be a part of the community here.
In the morning, mom and I sat around and read, watched some T.V. and caught up on some work that we had to do. Last night I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I went to bed before midnight and slept until I got a text message from somebody in the states at 2:00 in the morning. It doesn’t usually bother me, but for some reason, I couldn’t fall back to sleep this time. If I haven’t said before, we are 8 hours ahead of Minnesota time. As I was trying to fall back to sleep I kept hearing mosquitoes buzzing around near my head. Then I wouldn’t hear anything for a while and just when I thought it was safe to fall back to sleep, one would show up again! On top of the mosquitoes, I occasionally heard rustling of plastic. I knew that we had a plastic garbage bag in the room and we had a few food wrappers and things that cockroaches might like. I kept picturing them crawling all over the floor and eventually making it up onto my mattress! Every once and a while I would turn on my headlamp to try to find the mosquito, but when I did, I heard the creature in the black bag scurry away from the light. It went on for over 2 hours before I finally drifted back to sleep. Despite the middle of the night sleeplessness, I still managed to be away at 7:30 and not able to stay in bed! At least I got to sit around most of the day. At one point, I tried to take a little nap, but it lasted a measly 5 minutes.
Angella decided not to meet up with us at all during the day, but would catch up with us when we went to her friend Susan’s house for dinner. My mom and I took a cab ride to Garden City to get some money from the ATM, eat lunch, and maybe walk to the craft market nearby. By the time we got to Garden City, we decided we wouldn’t have enough time to walk anywhere. I was craving a pizza from the place in the food court, but for no apparent reason, it was closed. We settled for Chinese food. The service is so bad sometimes! Our server just didn’t bring some things and never explained what he was doing. At one point, he set the sauces down in front of us and then 5 minutes later another server swooped in and took them from us and delivered them to another table. Then, when we were finished with all our food, our waiter came back with the sauces and asked if we needed them. We didn’t ask for them in the first place, they were taken from us without explanation, and then when we have no use for them, they were offered to us! Almost all the waiters ended up just sitting down at random tables by the time we left. Clearly it doesn’t matter to them if they look busy or not. They just wanted to sit down. TIA!
We were supposed to meet Max, the person who runs Little Angel in Rubaga at 5:00 at his house. We were going to leave at 4:30, but Jozeph assured us we needed to leave at 4:00 in order to avoid the jam. It still took nearly a half hour to get there. We had picked up some rice, beans, school books, juice, and treats at the supermarket on our way. The two mothers were very appreciative of what we had to bring them. The children were excited to see us again and showed us around the house. I really don’t know how this place is run. Max apparently used to have sponsors for the kids for school and people who helped out paying the bills. The mothers said the sponsors are now gone and Max pays for all the bills himself. He has barely paid the mothers anything lately. One of them said she has only gotten paid 100,000 since January. That’s only $50 in 7 months! She doesn’t want Max to know that she told us but she is stuck because she has a family she needs to support and they can’t have her just going away to a job that doesn’t pay any money. The focus of our trip is to provide medicine and we also have some donated money to buy a food, clothes, or maybe a couple games for some of the places. We need to find a way for these places to survive on a daily basis. We heard about a few social programs from the other orphanage that I think we will recommend. The problem is, Max never made it. He was stuck in a jam. You would think he would have planned better considering he come to Little Angel nearly every day and works downtown. Jozeph told us what time we had to leave and he rarely goes to Rubaga. Even though we waited for a really long time, we still had fun. The kids ended up singing and dancing around the living room. I think kids really enjoy singing. It’s especially wonderful when they sing songs about Jesus! It’s great to see their smiling facing praising the Lord! Even though they have very little, they are very thankful for everything that they do have. We decided that we should buy them shoes for school. They brought us out the shoes they do have. Some have so many holes in them, they look like sandals. One pair had the inside sole so worn down that all you could see is the plastic support at the bottom. We drew lines on a piece of paper to try to mark down their sizes. Hopefully we will be able to find inexpensive shoes in all the right sizes when we go to the flea market on Friday.
At 6:30 we met up with Angella at her house. Luckily Jozeph is awesome and knows how to get around the city and avoid the major jams! He’s a great cab driver. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Jozeph is a hard working guy. He went to school until Primary 7, which is just about junior high. His family no longer had money to support him in school, so he got a job working for a company. After many years with the company, they changed their policies so that in order for him to continue, he would need more education. Since that was not possible, he invested in a boda and started driving around town. Eventually he saved up to buy more bodas and hire drivers for them. Then he decided to sell the bodas and buy a cab. Now he has his cab, a few bodas, he owns land in the country, a house in Kampala, and supports his wife and children along with his brothers and sisters. He’s really a hard working guy. He drives his cab seven days a week from morning until at least 9 or 10 at night. It goes to show that if you put your mind to it, you can make things happen in this country. Jozeph has said numerous times that the men in this country are lazy. They tend to have 5 wives and not work and then expect people to give them things. It’s sometimes nice to hear what people in the country thing about the people living here. It gives you a perspective that you might not otherwise have discovered.
Susan the woman in charge of the international students at Mulago. Ross met her on his first trip and we usually stop in to see her at least once or twice. She is pretty good friends with Angella so she wanted to host us for dinner. Her sister, Barbara cooked a lot of traditional food – Matooke, rice, beans, pork, vegetables, and chapatti. Susan is also a really short lady! I think she makes my mom look tall when she stands next to her! We took a picture together and Susan was still shorter than me when she stood on the couch! Susan’s favorite part of the night was watching my mom and her niece, Clarissa, interact. They had flashcards with animals on them. My mom was saying the words in English and Clarissa was saying them in Luganda. Neither really understood what the other was saying, but they were communicating the same thing. We are going to bring some crayons to Susan’s office for Clarissa in the next couple of days. It’s the least we can do! Hopefully when I apply to a program here as a 3rd or 4th year student, she will approve me to come! She apparently has all the power to accept or reject student applications!
Friday, July 23, 2010
Day 14 - July 19
Sometimes its just nice to have a day that is not to stressful and a bit more laid back. Today was perfect for that! Angella and I set aside the day as our time to organize what we need for the medicine cabinets and get Yassin, the office messenger, to fetch them from all of the places where he knows he can get them at a good price. First off, let me just say how much I love the idea of an office messenger. In the states, we just order things online, call somebody to deliver, or go out and get what we need ourselves. With Yassin, anything is fair game. He sometimes goes to fetch something Angella forgot at her house. He goes to town to buy medicine for the clinic. He delivers paychecks. Anything you want, Yassin can get it. He knows all the best places to shop for clinic supplies. He must be one of the most valuable resources that the clinic has! Luckily, Angella can have him fetch our medicine too!
I walked in to Angella’s house around 11. I did a lot of walking today! I loved every step! The big hill is getting better. Because of the rain we got yesterday, I think some of the dust has settled. It’s still a killer steep hill that got me only slightly winded, but as soon as I slowed down, it was not a problem. I realize more and more why people walk slow. It’s hot and long, so if you take your time, every walk is a lot easier. I noticed that many of the same people are doing the same things every day. I am trying to figure out what everybody is doing at their jobs. There is a group of people digging out clay and forming it into pots. Every time I walk by, the yard is even more full of them drying in the sun. There is a man always sitting near a large pile of smoking stuff in his yard. I don’t know if he is cooking or making bricks or just burning garbage. At the “valley” of the hill I walk in is the place where all the garbage is burned. It smells and I try to hold my breath for those two minutes that I have to walk through the cloud of smoke. I’m sure that there is something bad that I’m breathing in that’s worse than the smell because they burn ALL of their garbage. At least it’s all in one place. There is actually a fine if you litter in this neighborhood. I’m more than slightly impressed by that law! Today, the man burning the garbage stared at me for a while. Finally I said hello. He smiled and waved and then said, “You walk a lot. Why do you walk so much?” I actually had something to say. Angella taught me a phrase for “I want to walk”. I said it and he just laughed. I probably didn’t say it right, but I think he got the picture. I learned the phrase so when the Boda-Boda drivers call out as I walk by I can tell them, “No, I want to walk”. It should come in handy quite often. I was surprised I even remembered it this morning!
It was hot by the time I reached Angella’s so I needed to sit on the floor and cool off. We talked about our plan for the day and then watched a collection of World Cup videos and commercials that her friend had put together for me. Those songs will always remind me of the trip because for my first week here they were all that I heard and saw on T.V. and radio. Thanks to Richard, I will hopefully get to see them for a very long time!
We decided to take a Mtatu to the nearest ATM and then walk the rest of the day. It’s nice to be able to just get money out of an ATM rather than carry everything in cash like I have in the past. It’s worth the $5 charge from Wells Fargo to do it! However, I always feel uncomfortable carrying around all that money once I’ve got it!
We walked to a place called UHMG (Uganda Health Marketing Group) where Gloria had told us to go and buy mosquito nets. At the gate, the guard asked us for ID. It’s the first time I’ve needed it, but I’m glad I had my passport with me. Angella didn’t have anything to prove who she was, but they let us in any way. At least now she can’t say that I never have a reason to carry my passport! We talked to a women in the reception area for a couple of minutes and she instructed us to go to their warehouse. At this point I was just hoping we wouldn’t get there and be told to go someplace else again or that they will cost just as much as they do in the grocery store. It happens a lot and when you have no clue if people are sending you to the right place or for the right thing. Luckily, she assured us they prices are low to allow more people to buy them and that the warehouse always has them in stock.
We walked to Garden City to grab some lunch before heading to the warehouse. While we were sitting in Javas, a guy walked in the door that was dressed like the guy in the music videos for one of the world cup songs. I pointed him out to Angella and told her what I thought. She casually said that it wasn’t him but the guy walking in is a famous singer in Uganda. Wouldn’t you know, he walked right up to where we were and asked me if he could use the extra chair at our table. He then sat down at the table next to ours. I kept glancing over trying to figure out what a famous person does at a restaurant. He was working on some photos with a guy who must have been his manager and listening to some music. At one point I asked Angella his named. She quietly said Maurice. I didn’t understand so I loudly repeated, “Maurice or Morris”? Of course Maurice heard me and responded by looking in our direction. The rest of our lunch, she said he kept looking at me. I probably wanted to know how I knew is name. If I were Allie Bentrud, I probably would have found a way to talk to him but I’m just not that good with celebrity sightings! Apparently in Uganda people really don’t make a mob scene when they see famous people unless they are huge international stars. At least I can say I kind of talked to a famous person and he used my chair!
We took Boda’s to get to the warehouse! Oh, how I miss riding bodas! I know they are probably the most dangerous of the three ways to travel, but if you find a good one and you’re not in a really crazy congested area, they are perfectly safe. They are slightly more expensive than a mtatu, but you get to places so much faster! You are darting in and around the stopped traffic and you constantly have the fresh (by fresh I mean smoggy) air blowing in your face. It’s better than an expensive, stuffy cab that has to get stuck in the jam with all the rest of the cars.
We got to the warehouse and the people were super helpful and we were able to buy the nets for about $5 each. Last year when somebody recommended a good place, we paid twice that price! We’ll have to remember it for the future! We ended up with 25 nets, which meant a big box and my back-pack full of them! We still decided to take Boda’s home. Angella took the box and we managed to get them all back to the house.
By the time we got in, Yassin called to tell us he was available. The bodas were already gone, so we walked all the way back to the clinic. It took us nearly an hour to look up the drugs and decide what he needed to buy, but we finally got it done! It’s going to cost just over $200 to get supplies for 18 medicine cabinet. I paid that much to get half of that amount of medicine for only 10 cabinets. Clearly it is better to buy medicine here than it is to bring it. We learned our lesson. This project is all about figuring out what works best and then going with it.
On the walk home, I felt Africa all around me. There were 5 cows with hug horns being chased down the road by a guy with a stick. The kids were coming home from school. Some girls in my favorite pink uniforms said hi! Maybe I should see if I can go with them to school some day! The garbage pile was full of people sorting and mixing the pile to make it burn better and salvage anything that is still useful. One of the guys at the clay pot place waved and said hello. Some children hollered out Mzungu over and over until I turned and waved at them. Halfway up the big hill, a overtook a man walking my direction. He said, “afternoon, madame”. I then started to talk with him since we were headed the same way. His name is Stephen and he works in Ntinda but lives on the other side of the hill with his wife and children. He walks most of the time. We parted at the top of the hill and he wished me a good night. As I passed the soccer field, there were tons of guys out playing with an old tattered ball. I could faintly hear beating drums and in the distance I saw a line of girls dancing to the beat.
By the time I got home, I was really tired and probably pretty dirty. I took a shower and decided to relax the rest of the night. My poor mom had been home all day just catching up on reading and cleaning. She didn’t want to go out anywhere, so we heated up some leftovers. Gloria came over because she was locked out of her place until Susan got home with the key. It was Gloria’s last day of work before the wedding! She’s getting so excited. I can’t wait to stop by and see what the weddings here are like on Saturday! Gloria is so full of energy and is hysterical to be around. She also let us use her internet connection to post some blogs and check some emails. I want to make sure I don’t miss too many messages while I’m here, just in case they are important!
Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, so I’m excited to finally have more than a couple hours to rest and relax. We are just going to meet up with Max at Little Angels. He’s the guy who runs the place and we want to know a bit more about it. Then we’re going to have dinner at another Susan’s house. It should be another good one!
I walked in to Angella’s house around 11. I did a lot of walking today! I loved every step! The big hill is getting better. Because of the rain we got yesterday, I think some of the dust has settled. It’s still a killer steep hill that got me only slightly winded, but as soon as I slowed down, it was not a problem. I realize more and more why people walk slow. It’s hot and long, so if you take your time, every walk is a lot easier. I noticed that many of the same people are doing the same things every day. I am trying to figure out what everybody is doing at their jobs. There is a group of people digging out clay and forming it into pots. Every time I walk by, the yard is even more full of them drying in the sun. There is a man always sitting near a large pile of smoking stuff in his yard. I don’t know if he is cooking or making bricks or just burning garbage. At the “valley” of the hill I walk in is the place where all the garbage is burned. It smells and I try to hold my breath for those two minutes that I have to walk through the cloud of smoke. I’m sure that there is something bad that I’m breathing in that’s worse than the smell because they burn ALL of their garbage. At least it’s all in one place. There is actually a fine if you litter in this neighborhood. I’m more than slightly impressed by that law! Today, the man burning the garbage stared at me for a while. Finally I said hello. He smiled and waved and then said, “You walk a lot. Why do you walk so much?” I actually had something to say. Angella taught me a phrase for “I want to walk”. I said it and he just laughed. I probably didn’t say it right, but I think he got the picture. I learned the phrase so when the Boda-Boda drivers call out as I walk by I can tell them, “No, I want to walk”. It should come in handy quite often. I was surprised I even remembered it this morning!
It was hot by the time I reached Angella’s so I needed to sit on the floor and cool off. We talked about our plan for the day and then watched a collection of World Cup videos and commercials that her friend had put together for me. Those songs will always remind me of the trip because for my first week here they were all that I heard and saw on T.V. and radio. Thanks to Richard, I will hopefully get to see them for a very long time!
We decided to take a Mtatu to the nearest ATM and then walk the rest of the day. It’s nice to be able to just get money out of an ATM rather than carry everything in cash like I have in the past. It’s worth the $5 charge from Wells Fargo to do it! However, I always feel uncomfortable carrying around all that money once I’ve got it!
We walked to a place called UHMG (Uganda Health Marketing Group) where Gloria had told us to go and buy mosquito nets. At the gate, the guard asked us for ID. It’s the first time I’ve needed it, but I’m glad I had my passport with me. Angella didn’t have anything to prove who she was, but they let us in any way. At least now she can’t say that I never have a reason to carry my passport! We talked to a women in the reception area for a couple of minutes and she instructed us to go to their warehouse. At this point I was just hoping we wouldn’t get there and be told to go someplace else again or that they will cost just as much as they do in the grocery store. It happens a lot and when you have no clue if people are sending you to the right place or for the right thing. Luckily, she assured us they prices are low to allow more people to buy them and that the warehouse always has them in stock.
We walked to Garden City to grab some lunch before heading to the warehouse. While we were sitting in Javas, a guy walked in the door that was dressed like the guy in the music videos for one of the world cup songs. I pointed him out to Angella and told her what I thought. She casually said that it wasn’t him but the guy walking in is a famous singer in Uganda. Wouldn’t you know, he walked right up to where we were and asked me if he could use the extra chair at our table. He then sat down at the table next to ours. I kept glancing over trying to figure out what a famous person does at a restaurant. He was working on some photos with a guy who must have been his manager and listening to some music. At one point I asked Angella his named. She quietly said Maurice. I didn’t understand so I loudly repeated, “Maurice or Morris”? Of course Maurice heard me and responded by looking in our direction. The rest of our lunch, she said he kept looking at me. I probably wanted to know how I knew is name. If I were Allie Bentrud, I probably would have found a way to talk to him but I’m just not that good with celebrity sightings! Apparently in Uganda people really don’t make a mob scene when they see famous people unless they are huge international stars. At least I can say I kind of talked to a famous person and he used my chair!
We took Boda’s to get to the warehouse! Oh, how I miss riding bodas! I know they are probably the most dangerous of the three ways to travel, but if you find a good one and you’re not in a really crazy congested area, they are perfectly safe. They are slightly more expensive than a mtatu, but you get to places so much faster! You are darting in and around the stopped traffic and you constantly have the fresh (by fresh I mean smoggy) air blowing in your face. It’s better than an expensive, stuffy cab that has to get stuck in the jam with all the rest of the cars.
We got to the warehouse and the people were super helpful and we were able to buy the nets for about $5 each. Last year when somebody recommended a good place, we paid twice that price! We’ll have to remember it for the future! We ended up with 25 nets, which meant a big box and my back-pack full of them! We still decided to take Boda’s home. Angella took the box and we managed to get them all back to the house.
By the time we got in, Yassin called to tell us he was available. The bodas were already gone, so we walked all the way back to the clinic. It took us nearly an hour to look up the drugs and decide what he needed to buy, but we finally got it done! It’s going to cost just over $200 to get supplies for 18 medicine cabinet. I paid that much to get half of that amount of medicine for only 10 cabinets. Clearly it is better to buy medicine here than it is to bring it. We learned our lesson. This project is all about figuring out what works best and then going with it.
On the walk home, I felt Africa all around me. There were 5 cows with hug horns being chased down the road by a guy with a stick. The kids were coming home from school. Some girls in my favorite pink uniforms said hi! Maybe I should see if I can go with them to school some day! The garbage pile was full of people sorting and mixing the pile to make it burn better and salvage anything that is still useful. One of the guys at the clay pot place waved and said hello. Some children hollered out Mzungu over and over until I turned and waved at them. Halfway up the big hill, a overtook a man walking my direction. He said, “afternoon, madame”. I then started to talk with him since we were headed the same way. His name is Stephen and he works in Ntinda but lives on the other side of the hill with his wife and children. He walks most of the time. We parted at the top of the hill and he wished me a good night. As I passed the soccer field, there were tons of guys out playing with an old tattered ball. I could faintly hear beating drums and in the distance I saw a line of girls dancing to the beat.
By the time I got home, I was really tired and probably pretty dirty. I took a shower and decided to relax the rest of the night. My poor mom had been home all day just catching up on reading and cleaning. She didn’t want to go out anywhere, so we heated up some leftovers. Gloria came over because she was locked out of her place until Susan got home with the key. It was Gloria’s last day of work before the wedding! She’s getting so excited. I can’t wait to stop by and see what the weddings here are like on Saturday! Gloria is so full of energy and is hysterical to be around. She also let us use her internet connection to post some blogs and check some emails. I want to make sure I don’t miss too many messages while I’m here, just in case they are important!
Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, so I’m excited to finally have more than a couple hours to rest and relax. We are just going to meet up with Max at Little Angels. He’s the guy who runs the place and we want to know a bit more about it. Then we’re going to have dinner at another Susan’s house. It should be another good one!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Day 13 - July 18
Sundays always seem to give me a new outlook here. It’s almost always started out by going to church, but then there usually seems to be some other bonus that lets us know that we are moving forward. Both of the other times we’ve been here, we’ve seen God helping us along the way and guiding us where we need to go. This trip especially has been that way. Whenever we get discouraged, he places something right in front of us to help us out and give us new hope. Last night we prayed together about what to do with the village and about where we could use our resources most wisely. Today during worship, the pastor had people break up into groups of three to pray for each other’s needs. I prayed with Emmie and Grace. It was wonderful to be able to lift up requests for each other, even though we had never met. That’s a beautiful thing about the body of Christ. It’s not limited to one geographical location or one particular group of people. We are all citizens of the same earth and we can come together with the bond that is Christ.
The message today was about the church as a family. Pastor Chris talked about how our families can be frustrating sometimes but when it comes down to it, they are the people that impact us the most. They are able to guide us when we are lost or confused. They give us advice when we are unsure of what to do. They make us laugh and bring us joy. They comfort us when we are sad. Just because we are not related by blood doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same relationship with our church family around the world. We can rely on people in the church to help us in our walk with the Lord. When you think about the family of the church in a global context, it gets to be really overwhelming. To think that there are people in every corner of the great big earth that are praying to the same God that loves all of us, despite our shortcomings, is simply amazing! I have a hard enough time sometimes just loving my close family or friends that are near. Can you imagine how much love there is to cover the entire world?
During church, a heavy rain came down and you could immediately feel a coolness in the air. It’s the first real rain since we got here and I know we needed it. Hopefully the dust will settle for at least a day or two. After the service, we met up with Angella’s sister, Kate, for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (which also serves local, Indian, and Asian food). I don’t think I’ve been to many restaurants that stick to just one food influence except for the Indian restaurants! It is fun to see the interaction between Angella and her younger sister. They laugh and joke with each other and make fun of each other for crazy things, but you still know that they really love each other. Family here is much more important than it seems to be at home. When somebody needs money, an aunt or uncle will provide it. There is no expectation that anybody will ever pay you back for it. If Kate comes to town, Angella pays for her food, transportation, and anything else that she wants. We do that to some extent back home, but I don’t think it is as widely accepted across families. In the states we have this weird mentality that is so focused on self preservation, that we often overlook ways to be really supporting each other.
After lunch we met Angella’s friend Godfrey, who had told Angella about an orphanage we should visit earlier in the month. He offered to take us there for an impromptu visit. It turns out there was an old woman who kept taking in orphans off the street. She ended up with over 20 children living in a very tiny home, which Godfrey pointed out along the way. She passed away about a year and a half ago, but the community didn’t want to abandon the children. People worked with the local church and found a home for them to rent and a woman to step in and take care of them. There is a social program that provides a month of food and rent at a time. The church supplies some clothes, beds, and toys for the children. Another program allows the kids to all go to school up to a certain age. Some local sponsors are going to help the children attend the older children when they need to attend school.
When we arrived at the house, you could tell it had a fell a lot like Need for All, only it was much better kept and when we learned about the programs involved in caring for the children, we realized it is much better than Need for All ever was. The only thing they are missing is health care! PERFECT! When Ross wrote the grant, this was exactly the description that we were looking for. The mother, Hilda, was wonderfully welcoming to us, even though we came on such a short notice. Only a handful of the 22 children were there because the rest were at church. They were super polite and you could tell they care about each other. When we handed out some cookies, they all shared with each other, which is unlike a lot of little kids we see. We are going to come back next week to meet with all of the children and discuss the study with them some more. We walked away feeling so good about the day! This place is within walking distance of Angella’s house, so it will be a great location. God really has a way of connecting us to where we need to go and at the right time. Angella’s friend Godfrey is a teacher at an international school with the same age kids as my mom. I think it was great for my mom to e able to meet and talk with him. He’s going to take us to see his school on Wednesday before we go back to the orphanage to meet all the kids.
We got back to Angella’s apartment and made a spreadsheet and some pages of information for Deo to fill out about the children at Good Hope Initiative. It is not that hard of a list, it just needs to be a list of 100 children who are actually orphans with no living mother and father. Although Deo has claimed that the children are orphans, we don’t really know for sure. In order for the study to be valid we need to make sure that we are working with an orphanage rather than just a program to get the village kids together. It’s really hard for me to say that we can’t help all of the children with the benefits of the medicine in the study, but in the long run, we won’t be able to help anybody if we don’t have a valid set of data. We have other money and projects that we are planning to do with the village so we won’t be leaving all of the kids out. There just needs to be some organization or else we will never get any work done when we go there.
It was nice to come home feeling like we accomplished a lot today. It’s weird how just one little visit can change your whole outlook.
On another note, food is getting to be a challenge. You find that everything has the same texture and not the same kinds of flavors as at home. Fruit is always delicious. It’s the main courses that get monotonous. Everything has the rice and beans type of texture. I find myself craving something, but I never know what it is. Today was the first day I didn’t have a Cliff bar for breakfast, but Digestives with really weird peanut butter really didn’t do the trick either. Maybe tomorrow I will find something more appetizing than the usual stuff we’ve been cramming into our stomachs! The thing I miss most is salad! It’s not like I eat it super often at home, but at least a couple of times a week it’s in my diet. It’s not really safe to eat it over here because it’s generally washed in the water. In the interest of not risking getting sick, I avoid it. I still have a few weeks to go so I better try not to think about salads too much until then!
The message today was about the church as a family. Pastor Chris talked about how our families can be frustrating sometimes but when it comes down to it, they are the people that impact us the most. They are able to guide us when we are lost or confused. They give us advice when we are unsure of what to do. They make us laugh and bring us joy. They comfort us when we are sad. Just because we are not related by blood doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same relationship with our church family around the world. We can rely on people in the church to help us in our walk with the Lord. When you think about the family of the church in a global context, it gets to be really overwhelming. To think that there are people in every corner of the great big earth that are praying to the same God that loves all of us, despite our shortcomings, is simply amazing! I have a hard enough time sometimes just loving my close family or friends that are near. Can you imagine how much love there is to cover the entire world?
During church, a heavy rain came down and you could immediately feel a coolness in the air. It’s the first real rain since we got here and I know we needed it. Hopefully the dust will settle for at least a day or two. After the service, we met up with Angella’s sister, Kate, for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (which also serves local, Indian, and Asian food). I don’t think I’ve been to many restaurants that stick to just one food influence except for the Indian restaurants! It is fun to see the interaction between Angella and her younger sister. They laugh and joke with each other and make fun of each other for crazy things, but you still know that they really love each other. Family here is much more important than it seems to be at home. When somebody needs money, an aunt or uncle will provide it. There is no expectation that anybody will ever pay you back for it. If Kate comes to town, Angella pays for her food, transportation, and anything else that she wants. We do that to some extent back home, but I don’t think it is as widely accepted across families. In the states we have this weird mentality that is so focused on self preservation, that we often overlook ways to be really supporting each other.
After lunch we met Angella’s friend Godfrey, who had told Angella about an orphanage we should visit earlier in the month. He offered to take us there for an impromptu visit. It turns out there was an old woman who kept taking in orphans off the street. She ended up with over 20 children living in a very tiny home, which Godfrey pointed out along the way. She passed away about a year and a half ago, but the community didn’t want to abandon the children. People worked with the local church and found a home for them to rent and a woman to step in and take care of them. There is a social program that provides a month of food and rent at a time. The church supplies some clothes, beds, and toys for the children. Another program allows the kids to all go to school up to a certain age. Some local sponsors are going to help the children attend the older children when they need to attend school.
When we arrived at the house, you could tell it had a fell a lot like Need for All, only it was much better kept and when we learned about the programs involved in caring for the children, we realized it is much better than Need for All ever was. The only thing they are missing is health care! PERFECT! When Ross wrote the grant, this was exactly the description that we were looking for. The mother, Hilda, was wonderfully welcoming to us, even though we came on such a short notice. Only a handful of the 22 children were there because the rest were at church. They were super polite and you could tell they care about each other. When we handed out some cookies, they all shared with each other, which is unlike a lot of little kids we see. We are going to come back next week to meet with all of the children and discuss the study with them some more. We walked away feeling so good about the day! This place is within walking distance of Angella’s house, so it will be a great location. God really has a way of connecting us to where we need to go and at the right time. Angella’s friend Godfrey is a teacher at an international school with the same age kids as my mom. I think it was great for my mom to e able to meet and talk with him. He’s going to take us to see his school on Wednesday before we go back to the orphanage to meet all the kids.
We got back to Angella’s apartment and made a spreadsheet and some pages of information for Deo to fill out about the children at Good Hope Initiative. It is not that hard of a list, it just needs to be a list of 100 children who are actually orphans with no living mother and father. Although Deo has claimed that the children are orphans, we don’t really know for sure. In order for the study to be valid we need to make sure that we are working with an orphanage rather than just a program to get the village kids together. It’s really hard for me to say that we can’t help all of the children with the benefits of the medicine in the study, but in the long run, we won’t be able to help anybody if we don’t have a valid set of data. We have other money and projects that we are planning to do with the village so we won’t be leaving all of the kids out. There just needs to be some organization or else we will never get any work done when we go there.
It was nice to come home feeling like we accomplished a lot today. It’s weird how just one little visit can change your whole outlook.
On another note, food is getting to be a challenge. You find that everything has the same texture and not the same kinds of flavors as at home. Fruit is always delicious. It’s the main courses that get monotonous. Everything has the rice and beans type of texture. I find myself craving something, but I never know what it is. Today was the first day I didn’t have a Cliff bar for breakfast, but Digestives with really weird peanut butter really didn’t do the trick either. Maybe tomorrow I will find something more appetizing than the usual stuff we’ve been cramming into our stomachs! The thing I miss most is salad! It’s not like I eat it super often at home, but at least a couple of times a week it’s in my diet. It’s not really safe to eat it over here because it’s generally washed in the water. In the interest of not risking getting sick, I avoid it. I still have a few weeks to go so I better try not to think about salads too much until then!
Day 12 - July 17
Today was another one of those rough days. Not because we couldn’t get anything done, but because we saw some of the “real Africa”. There is a village in a place called Mbende where a man we met, Deo, has started a project called Good Hope Initiative. He grew up in the village and many people have donated land and buildings for him to use as a center for the orphaned children of the village. He now has two different buildings in two different village areas where the children come, mostly on Saturdays, to do their homework and do some singing together. He also has placed orphans in homes with guardians that take care of them after their parents have died. Some of the other children in the program are simply disadvantaged because the parents are even more poor than the average villager. They may have less land, or poor growing areas, or are not able to work on their land. The truth is, I don’t think any of the kids in this village really have an “advantage”. There is little access to health care with only a small clinic building. Even when the doctor prescribes a medicine, it is usually unavailable or too expensive. Angella reminds me often that people here don’t die because of misdiagnosis or not knowing what to do – they die because they can’t pay to treat it. She sometimes feels like when people come to her, she ends up telling her what is going to kill them. If she says they have malaria, they know what drugs to buy, but they can’t afford them. If she finds they have cancer, chances are they won’t be able to pay for chemo drugs. It’s a sad, sad story but is a story shared by the majority of the population, so few people have time or money to mourn each other’s situations or help their neighbors pay for their health care. When you get immersed in this place, you are overwhelmed at the reality of the needs. The statistics are staggering. When I hear about how many people die from treatable diseases, how many women die in childbirth, and how many children don’t make it to age 5, it doesn’t hit me. When I see people dying from treatable diseases, children without mothers, and babies wasting away, I don’t know where to put all of my thoughts and emotions because there are too many to contain.
The drive out is much worse than it was last year. The roads are under construction in most places. If you thought construction season in Minnesota is bad, try dealing with construction here. I’m pretty sure it is a 5 year plan. There is over 60 miles of construction area, and in the whole distance, I only saw 10 men working and two different machines to do the work. Things are probably not going to go very fast when 5 guys with shovels are moving dirt from a huge pile onto the road. When I was with Gloria, I thought the dust was bad. THIS was BAD! There is constantly dust in the air. Every tree, building, and probably person on the side of the road is a shade of red from their coating with dust. You have to drive with the windows open or else you will suffocate from the heat. When you roll them down, you suffocate from the dust. It’s times like these that I thank God that he put hair in my nose to filter out the air! For more than two hours there and back, we were on bumpy roads with clouds of dust. There were times when big trucks would go by, and we would have to quickly roll up the windows and stop the car because there was so much dust coming in and the cloud was so thick that you couldn’t see anything in front of you. When we got home, Angella finally got a glimpse of herself and saw that she had brown hair instead of black and that her cream colored shirt was nearly brown! When I took a shower, my hair kept rinsing out reddish brown water. Usually my feet are the problem, but this time, it was my entire body! I’m sure when I was my clothes, there will be a bucket full of red water!
We are trying to check out Mbende to see if it will work for the orphanage project medicine cabinets. I have been there once last year, and I wanted Angella’s opinion on how it might be able to work. Our problem is that we are not quite sure exactly what Deo’s project is and how it works. He seems like he really cares about the village and the children, but he doesn’t really understand what we are trying to do. We need to be able to provide medicine cabinets to homes with only orphans and caregivers that will be using the medicine so we can track how much medicine is used. I think Deo’s understanding is that we are supplying the whole village with medicine and that we are somehow going to save the day! We just don’t have the resources to do that yet. When we discussed the trip earlier this week, Deo said there are 130 orphans, so we planned accordingly with candy, crayons, and a couple of coloring books. When we started to line the kids up to hand things out, children just started coming out of the woods. In the village, word spreads fast and when people here there are Mzungu’s giving things out, they all want to see. We counted nearly 200 children plus numerous guardians. As we asked Deo more questions, we realized that many of the children are not actually orphans and that a lot of them live in a home with mostly non-orphaned children. In order for the study to work, which I hope it will, we need to have proper accounts of which children are orphans and which are “disadvantaged” and distribute them properly. While we ate dinner later that night, Angella and I decided that we need to give Deo a “homework” assignment of listing the children who are orphans, their guardian, and what their relationship is. Hopefully he will be able to complete the assignment so that we can move forward with project. If not, we will still return to the village this time with people and some things that they need, but we won’t be able to enroll them in the study the way we were hoping.
The second center we went to was the main center where the children come and where some of the orphans actually live. The people of the village brought chairs for us to sit in and the children all lined up to sing songs. There is one that they sang called “We are the children of Uganda” that has been stuck in my head all day. It’s really repetitive and has a catchy tune. Seeing all of those children lined up singing about how they are the children of today shining brightly really makes you wonder. They are standing in torn, dirty clothes. They go to village schools where they often have no school materials to learn with. Most of them won’t have money to attend higher grade levels or university. If they are the future of this country, what will the future of the country be like? I really hope that there are ways to get them more help than we can give them. Our focus is on bringing medicine, but there is always so much more that can be done. Even if we just provided medicine, our small organization is not able to sustain any sort of project this big yet. Hopefully someday it will be different and we will be able to provide much more.
Today we brought some candy, a single coloring crayon, and ripped out pages of a coloring book for each kid. I felt like such a cheap person bringing so little to them (however, we knew beforehand that we were going to bring more later once we assessed the situation). The kids were so happy with just one piece of candy. The truth is, that one piece of candy is probably something they only get when there are visitors to the village. I just wish there were a way to control the madness. We prepare for a certain number, but I know that number will always be much higher because the children of the village will continue to arrive. How do you turn away a little kid who shows up wanting your help? I really don’t know the answer. I just know that we can only be faithful with the things we have been given and we can distribute what we have the best ways we know how.
After we got home tonight, I felt like we had two days of harsh situations. Yesterday was just a lot of little things. Today was physically exhausting from the dusty, bumpy ride and emotionally exhausting from the realization of the poverty in the villages. We need to come up with a plan for Mbende and how we can help. We need to figure it out in the next couple days so that we will have a good plan before Pamela and Nick arrive.
The drive out is much worse than it was last year. The roads are under construction in most places. If you thought construction season in Minnesota is bad, try dealing with construction here. I’m pretty sure it is a 5 year plan. There is over 60 miles of construction area, and in the whole distance, I only saw 10 men working and two different machines to do the work. Things are probably not going to go very fast when 5 guys with shovels are moving dirt from a huge pile onto the road. When I was with Gloria, I thought the dust was bad. THIS was BAD! There is constantly dust in the air. Every tree, building, and probably person on the side of the road is a shade of red from their coating with dust. You have to drive with the windows open or else you will suffocate from the heat. When you roll them down, you suffocate from the dust. It’s times like these that I thank God that he put hair in my nose to filter out the air! For more than two hours there and back, we were on bumpy roads with clouds of dust. There were times when big trucks would go by, and we would have to quickly roll up the windows and stop the car because there was so much dust coming in and the cloud was so thick that you couldn’t see anything in front of you. When we got home, Angella finally got a glimpse of herself and saw that she had brown hair instead of black and that her cream colored shirt was nearly brown! When I took a shower, my hair kept rinsing out reddish brown water. Usually my feet are the problem, but this time, it was my entire body! I’m sure when I was my clothes, there will be a bucket full of red water!
We are trying to check out Mbende to see if it will work for the orphanage project medicine cabinets. I have been there once last year, and I wanted Angella’s opinion on how it might be able to work. Our problem is that we are not quite sure exactly what Deo’s project is and how it works. He seems like he really cares about the village and the children, but he doesn’t really understand what we are trying to do. We need to be able to provide medicine cabinets to homes with only orphans and caregivers that will be using the medicine so we can track how much medicine is used. I think Deo’s understanding is that we are supplying the whole village with medicine and that we are somehow going to save the day! We just don’t have the resources to do that yet. When we discussed the trip earlier this week, Deo said there are 130 orphans, so we planned accordingly with candy, crayons, and a couple of coloring books. When we started to line the kids up to hand things out, children just started coming out of the woods. In the village, word spreads fast and when people here there are Mzungu’s giving things out, they all want to see. We counted nearly 200 children plus numerous guardians. As we asked Deo more questions, we realized that many of the children are not actually orphans and that a lot of them live in a home with mostly non-orphaned children. In order for the study to work, which I hope it will, we need to have proper accounts of which children are orphans and which are “disadvantaged” and distribute them properly. While we ate dinner later that night, Angella and I decided that we need to give Deo a “homework” assignment of listing the children who are orphans, their guardian, and what their relationship is. Hopefully he will be able to complete the assignment so that we can move forward with project. If not, we will still return to the village this time with people and some things that they need, but we won’t be able to enroll them in the study the way we were hoping.
The second center we went to was the main center where the children come and where some of the orphans actually live. The people of the village brought chairs for us to sit in and the children all lined up to sing songs. There is one that they sang called “We are the children of Uganda” that has been stuck in my head all day. It’s really repetitive and has a catchy tune. Seeing all of those children lined up singing about how they are the children of today shining brightly really makes you wonder. They are standing in torn, dirty clothes. They go to village schools where they often have no school materials to learn with. Most of them won’t have money to attend higher grade levels or university. If they are the future of this country, what will the future of the country be like? I really hope that there are ways to get them more help than we can give them. Our focus is on bringing medicine, but there is always so much more that can be done. Even if we just provided medicine, our small organization is not able to sustain any sort of project this big yet. Hopefully someday it will be different and we will be able to provide much more.
Today we brought some candy, a single coloring crayon, and ripped out pages of a coloring book for each kid. I felt like such a cheap person bringing so little to them (however, we knew beforehand that we were going to bring more later once we assessed the situation). The kids were so happy with just one piece of candy. The truth is, that one piece of candy is probably something they only get when there are visitors to the village. I just wish there were a way to control the madness. We prepare for a certain number, but I know that number will always be much higher because the children of the village will continue to arrive. How do you turn away a little kid who shows up wanting your help? I really don’t know the answer. I just know that we can only be faithful with the things we have been given and we can distribute what we have the best ways we know how.
After we got home tonight, I felt like we had two days of harsh situations. Yesterday was just a lot of little things. Today was physically exhausting from the dusty, bumpy ride and emotionally exhausting from the realization of the poverty in the villages. We need to come up with a plan for Mbende and how we can help. We need to figure it out in the next couple days so that we will have a good plan before Pamela and Nick arrive.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Day 11 - July 16
It was bound to happen. It happens every year. It can’t be helped – if it can, somebody needs to tell me how to stop it. I’ve had a day that I LOVE this country but I HATE this country!! There are road blocks with every project that we do, but we can just work through them. Usually we have one problem every day, but there always seems to be a day when every project is super frustrating!!
We started the morning going to Mulago hospital to meet with Evelyn’s doctors. She is a girl who we saw last year that was born with a deformity that basically prevents her from defecating at all. (If you don’t like a graphic picture in your head, don’t read the rest of this paragraph!) In order to fix the problem, there are numerous surgeries involved. The first is called a colostomy which is done so that the pressure built up from the feces in her intestine can be removed. Part of her intestine is now exposed outside of her body so that she will not be backed up with feces anymore. It’s one thing to have the surgery, but it’s another to have the surgery and then do nothing for months! The surgery was done in February, and there has still not been anything done!!! There was supposed to be another surgery to put the intestine back and fix the problem, but the surgeons don’t know what to do and they want to wait for a skilled set of physicians from another country to help them out. Evelyn’s mother comes to the hospital from the village at least once a month and is then told to come home. She has to keep the wound area clean while living in the village which is nearly impossible when you have to take care of your family in the village.
The situation has gotten out of control because the mother doesn’t understand why they keep sending her home and nothing is getting fixed. The doctors and nurses don’t care to do anything because they are frankly sick of the mother. Angella and I spent over an hour yesterday talking to the nurses and to Deo, a guy from the village who knows Evelyn very well. He is frustrated that he can’t help. Today we sat around for more than two hours waiting to talk to a doctor or nurse. The nurses ignored Angella when we tried to ask her a question. The doctors were just too busy on rounds. Finally, we saw a doctor that Angella knew that we could talk to. He didn’t know much since it was his first day, but it was at least a way in. We finally found that there is no real plan for Evelyn yet, but she will come back in two weeks for the doctors to come up with one. We’ll go back to the hospital to try and figure out what the plan is. For now, if anybody knows a team of surgeons that is willing to come and do a crazy surgery as a volunteer job, I’m sure they’d love to have you and Evelyn wouldn’t be the only case to tackle!! It’s just so upsetting to see a very sick kid not really getting help because of the lack of resources. That’s what’s going on with Evelyn. They want to fix what’s wrong but they don’t know how and they don’t know how to find out. I really just pray that we can find a way to fix this poor little girl! She is very sweet until you try to see her wound. She immediately screams and cries. Poor thing!!
While we were waiting we got pretty hungry and tired so we decided to go to the cafeteria and grab a snack and a soda. We tried to stand in line but found that people just kept pushing their way right in front of us and they were getting served. Lines don’t exist here, especially if you are Mzungu. I finally put my money in front of a woman’s face so that she was forced to see me and serve me. Maybe I just don’t know how to navigate the lines here, but I tend to feel like people will push in front of me but not other people. The same thing happened in the grocery store as I was waiting in an actually check-out line. After the first person went in front, I thought he was just rude, but after the second tried I was not happy and I ended up just edging my way back in front of her and putting all of my water on the counter in front of her. I need to figure out that system fast!
While we enjoyed our soda and donuts (not anything like our donuts other than the fact that they are fried in oil!) we decided to try to call Joshua’s step-mother again. Joshua had cancer last year and we accompanied him during one of his chemotherapy appointments, along with his father, Wycleif. We also took him to the zoo with his stepmother, Jessica, and two of her daughters. When I tried to call Jessica, she spent the entire conversation complaining that I had her number. She denied knowing me, refused to claim that she was Jessica, and told me that I should tell Angella to stop giving out the wrong number. I double checked the number when I was done and it was definitely the right one! I repeatedly asked about Joshua and she kept changing the subject by asking me a question. She never denied or confirmed that she even knew Joshua! She finally just hung up on me. I wasn’t about to waste more air time on her. I decided that maybe I should try Wycleif’s number again even though last time it was not in service. To my surprise it worked! The man on the other end was Wycleif and he informed me that Joshua is still alive and in school and we will get to see him next Friday afternoon in Entebbe while I am waiting to pick up my friends from the airport! Praise the Lord! Something worked out today! Let’s just hope that plans don’t change again before Friday!
Our next project was to go to what I would describe as a flea market to get clothes to bring to Watoto. Even though they get clothes from the orphanage, they often don’t get the right types of clothes so the kids go with the same things all the time. There is a truck that drops off a huge pile that all of the 8 houses in the complex get to choose from. The problem is most of the other houses have older children in them, so they usually don’t send many little children’s clothes for them. The flea market would over-stimulate any person’s senses. There are people everywhere and all of them are yelling in Luganda. Occasionally I could pick out Mzungu – sometimes in a laughing tone because they were surprised to see us there, sometimes shouting to get our attention, other times a not so friendly tone. Regardless, the color of my skin determines the price of the clothes. There are some umbrella’s set up with clothes nicely hung. Some people have tarps laid out nicely with folded clothes. Then there are the piles…..piles of every sort of kids clothes you can imagine just thrown on top of a tarp. A man will holler out a price and show and item of clothing and then throw it down to pick up another. Once we found a tarp that looked promising. We told the guy what we were looking for and he began to try and show us what we wanted. After spending 15 minutes gathering a pile of clothes and deciding what we like, all the while sweating in the hot mid-day sun, he told us the price would be 1,500 per shirt. It’s only about 75 cents, but the price for the woman before us was 500 and we knew it was not a fair price for what we were getting, so we tried to haggle. He refused so we walked away. He lost on the sale of 20 items, and we went to start the process all over again. We had to go to at least 4 tarps to get enough clothes for the 2 young girls and one older girl that we didn’t already have clothes for. We then spent nearly 45 minutes trying to find pants and shorts for the boys. They were harder to find and even more difficult to get a good price. They were trying to charge 5,000 for shorts worth 2,000 or less. We had to go to many and walk away after wasting time. Even Angella was getting angry at the way people were treating us about prices. I should be used to it by now, but for some reason, today was just too much! Often, once we walked away people agreed to the price we wanted, but Angella turned to them and said we had a price and the refused and now we will find something else. Even though we were cheated out of the real price, we were able to use the money people had donated to get a lot of clothes! In all, we had 14 pairs of boys pants/shorts, 5 pairs of girls pants, 14 girls shirts, 4 dresses, and 16 pair of underwear. The price? 93,500 shillings……in US dollars ---- just about $45. Clearly better than anywhere we could have gone back home, but it still should not have been that much. I wouldn’t have minded if people were cheating me out of the prices if I was buying it for myself. We even tried to explain we were buying the clothes for street kids and orphans, but that doesn’t pull on anybody’s heart strings at the market since we weren’t putting any clothes on their own kids back.
I must sound really bitter right now, but I am truly frustrated with the system. It’s not the actual money, it’s the principle. There are plenty of good people in this country who don’t take advantage of us, but there or more that do just because of our skin color. It’s so weird to know that the way people look at me is based on my race. It’s not something I think about at home because there are so many different people living together, but here we really stand out. It works to our advantage sometimes. For example, everybody was being checked in the supermarkets and large restaurants with metal detectors because of fear of bombs. When our friend Susan went through, the man checked every pocket of her wallet, which folded up was thinner and smaller than my bag. When I opened up my bag he barely looked and didn’t check any of the obviously large pockets that could have been filled with anything! I can walk up the hospital and go through any security point and not be stopped or questioned even though it’s not during visiting hours and I’m not a doctor, but if Angella does the same thing, she would be questioned, stopped and probably prevented from passing, even though she IS a doctor and has real reasons to be there. Discrimination is not cool, no matter who it affects and no matter if it works as an advantage or disadvantage.
On a lighter note, on the way out of the market, I saw a stand selling Obama jeans. There was a huge tag on the side with our president, endorsing the genes. I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t know about them, and I don’t know if he would endorse such a product. They are used genes being sold under a false name and a price that is not showing their actual value. I wonder if he would respond if I wrote him a letter about it?
Tonight we went bowling with Angella, her sister, Kate, a friend, Richard, Susan, and my mom. The bowling alley has 6 lanes that were almost all full. I’m pretty sure I could see the streaks of wax that were not rubbed in, and the ball was taken if every direction but straight as it went down the lane. Nobody seemed to care and nobody really seemed to know how to bowl either! It was quite a sight on every lane. Sometimes the ball would not land until halfway down the lane. A guy next to us laid down on the ground after every ball. There was a lot of dancing by people in every age group. The pins usually came down, but by the time the gate went up, there were often 3 or 4 laid down already. Then you had to reset and hope the next one worked out. At one point, it took four tried to get 10 standing pins! At least there was an electronic score keeper. However, it never really added in strikes and spares with the right point system. I was upset that I got exactly 100, despite 6 spares. Then I realized that I had actually knocked down 100 pins. I’ll never know what the real score was! TIA!
Overall, a frustrating day, but I know tomorrow will be better! We are going to Mbende to check out the village and decide what types of things they need and how many medicine cabinets they will be needing. We also need to determine whether the children are orphans or they are just poor children in the village. The study we are doing requires orphanages so I am hoping that they fit the description!! Thank you for letting me vent today! I’m hoping that this will be the one frustrating day of the trip and that the rest will go a little smoother!
We started the morning going to Mulago hospital to meet with Evelyn’s doctors. She is a girl who we saw last year that was born with a deformity that basically prevents her from defecating at all. (If you don’t like a graphic picture in your head, don’t read the rest of this paragraph!) In order to fix the problem, there are numerous surgeries involved. The first is called a colostomy which is done so that the pressure built up from the feces in her intestine can be removed. Part of her intestine is now exposed outside of her body so that she will not be backed up with feces anymore. It’s one thing to have the surgery, but it’s another to have the surgery and then do nothing for months! The surgery was done in February, and there has still not been anything done!!! There was supposed to be another surgery to put the intestine back and fix the problem, but the surgeons don’t know what to do and they want to wait for a skilled set of physicians from another country to help them out. Evelyn’s mother comes to the hospital from the village at least once a month and is then told to come home. She has to keep the wound area clean while living in the village which is nearly impossible when you have to take care of your family in the village.
The situation has gotten out of control because the mother doesn’t understand why they keep sending her home and nothing is getting fixed. The doctors and nurses don’t care to do anything because they are frankly sick of the mother. Angella and I spent over an hour yesterday talking to the nurses and to Deo, a guy from the village who knows Evelyn very well. He is frustrated that he can’t help. Today we sat around for more than two hours waiting to talk to a doctor or nurse. The nurses ignored Angella when we tried to ask her a question. The doctors were just too busy on rounds. Finally, we saw a doctor that Angella knew that we could talk to. He didn’t know much since it was his first day, but it was at least a way in. We finally found that there is no real plan for Evelyn yet, but she will come back in two weeks for the doctors to come up with one. We’ll go back to the hospital to try and figure out what the plan is. For now, if anybody knows a team of surgeons that is willing to come and do a crazy surgery as a volunteer job, I’m sure they’d love to have you and Evelyn wouldn’t be the only case to tackle!! It’s just so upsetting to see a very sick kid not really getting help because of the lack of resources. That’s what’s going on with Evelyn. They want to fix what’s wrong but they don’t know how and they don’t know how to find out. I really just pray that we can find a way to fix this poor little girl! She is very sweet until you try to see her wound. She immediately screams and cries. Poor thing!!
While we were waiting we got pretty hungry and tired so we decided to go to the cafeteria and grab a snack and a soda. We tried to stand in line but found that people just kept pushing their way right in front of us and they were getting served. Lines don’t exist here, especially if you are Mzungu. I finally put my money in front of a woman’s face so that she was forced to see me and serve me. Maybe I just don’t know how to navigate the lines here, but I tend to feel like people will push in front of me but not other people. The same thing happened in the grocery store as I was waiting in an actually check-out line. After the first person went in front, I thought he was just rude, but after the second tried I was not happy and I ended up just edging my way back in front of her and putting all of my water on the counter in front of her. I need to figure out that system fast!
While we enjoyed our soda and donuts (not anything like our donuts other than the fact that they are fried in oil!) we decided to try to call Joshua’s step-mother again. Joshua had cancer last year and we accompanied him during one of his chemotherapy appointments, along with his father, Wycleif. We also took him to the zoo with his stepmother, Jessica, and two of her daughters. When I tried to call Jessica, she spent the entire conversation complaining that I had her number. She denied knowing me, refused to claim that she was Jessica, and told me that I should tell Angella to stop giving out the wrong number. I double checked the number when I was done and it was definitely the right one! I repeatedly asked about Joshua and she kept changing the subject by asking me a question. She never denied or confirmed that she even knew Joshua! She finally just hung up on me. I wasn’t about to waste more air time on her. I decided that maybe I should try Wycleif’s number again even though last time it was not in service. To my surprise it worked! The man on the other end was Wycleif and he informed me that Joshua is still alive and in school and we will get to see him next Friday afternoon in Entebbe while I am waiting to pick up my friends from the airport! Praise the Lord! Something worked out today! Let’s just hope that plans don’t change again before Friday!
Our next project was to go to what I would describe as a flea market to get clothes to bring to Watoto. Even though they get clothes from the orphanage, they often don’t get the right types of clothes so the kids go with the same things all the time. There is a truck that drops off a huge pile that all of the 8 houses in the complex get to choose from. The problem is most of the other houses have older children in them, so they usually don’t send many little children’s clothes for them. The flea market would over-stimulate any person’s senses. There are people everywhere and all of them are yelling in Luganda. Occasionally I could pick out Mzungu – sometimes in a laughing tone because they were surprised to see us there, sometimes shouting to get our attention, other times a not so friendly tone. Regardless, the color of my skin determines the price of the clothes. There are some umbrella’s set up with clothes nicely hung. Some people have tarps laid out nicely with folded clothes. Then there are the piles…..piles of every sort of kids clothes you can imagine just thrown on top of a tarp. A man will holler out a price and show and item of clothing and then throw it down to pick up another. Once we found a tarp that looked promising. We told the guy what we were looking for and he began to try and show us what we wanted. After spending 15 minutes gathering a pile of clothes and deciding what we like, all the while sweating in the hot mid-day sun, he told us the price would be 1,500 per shirt. It’s only about 75 cents, but the price for the woman before us was 500 and we knew it was not a fair price for what we were getting, so we tried to haggle. He refused so we walked away. He lost on the sale of 20 items, and we went to start the process all over again. We had to go to at least 4 tarps to get enough clothes for the 2 young girls and one older girl that we didn’t already have clothes for. We then spent nearly 45 minutes trying to find pants and shorts for the boys. They were harder to find and even more difficult to get a good price. They were trying to charge 5,000 for shorts worth 2,000 or less. We had to go to many and walk away after wasting time. Even Angella was getting angry at the way people were treating us about prices. I should be used to it by now, but for some reason, today was just too much! Often, once we walked away people agreed to the price we wanted, but Angella turned to them and said we had a price and the refused and now we will find something else. Even though we were cheated out of the real price, we were able to use the money people had donated to get a lot of clothes! In all, we had 14 pairs of boys pants/shorts, 5 pairs of girls pants, 14 girls shirts, 4 dresses, and 16 pair of underwear. The price? 93,500 shillings……in US dollars ---- just about $45. Clearly better than anywhere we could have gone back home, but it still should not have been that much. I wouldn’t have minded if people were cheating me out of the prices if I was buying it for myself. We even tried to explain we were buying the clothes for street kids and orphans, but that doesn’t pull on anybody’s heart strings at the market since we weren’t putting any clothes on their own kids back.
I must sound really bitter right now, but I am truly frustrated with the system. It’s not the actual money, it’s the principle. There are plenty of good people in this country who don’t take advantage of us, but there or more that do just because of our skin color. It’s so weird to know that the way people look at me is based on my race. It’s not something I think about at home because there are so many different people living together, but here we really stand out. It works to our advantage sometimes. For example, everybody was being checked in the supermarkets and large restaurants with metal detectors because of fear of bombs. When our friend Susan went through, the man checked every pocket of her wallet, which folded up was thinner and smaller than my bag. When I opened up my bag he barely looked and didn’t check any of the obviously large pockets that could have been filled with anything! I can walk up the hospital and go through any security point and not be stopped or questioned even though it’s not during visiting hours and I’m not a doctor, but if Angella does the same thing, she would be questioned, stopped and probably prevented from passing, even though she IS a doctor and has real reasons to be there. Discrimination is not cool, no matter who it affects and no matter if it works as an advantage or disadvantage.
On a lighter note, on the way out of the market, I saw a stand selling Obama jeans. There was a huge tag on the side with our president, endorsing the genes. I’m pretty sure Obama doesn’t know about them, and I don’t know if he would endorse such a product. They are used genes being sold under a false name and a price that is not showing their actual value. I wonder if he would respond if I wrote him a letter about it?
Tonight we went bowling with Angella, her sister, Kate, a friend, Richard, Susan, and my mom. The bowling alley has 6 lanes that were almost all full. I’m pretty sure I could see the streaks of wax that were not rubbed in, and the ball was taken if every direction but straight as it went down the lane. Nobody seemed to care and nobody really seemed to know how to bowl either! It was quite a sight on every lane. Sometimes the ball would not land until halfway down the lane. A guy next to us laid down on the ground after every ball. There was a lot of dancing by people in every age group. The pins usually came down, but by the time the gate went up, there were often 3 or 4 laid down already. Then you had to reset and hope the next one worked out. At one point, it took four tried to get 10 standing pins! At least there was an electronic score keeper. However, it never really added in strikes and spares with the right point system. I was upset that I got exactly 100, despite 6 spares. Then I realized that I had actually knocked down 100 pins. I’ll never know what the real score was! TIA!
Overall, a frustrating day, but I know tomorrow will be better! We are going to Mbende to check out the village and decide what types of things they need and how many medicine cabinets they will be needing. We also need to determine whether the children are orphans or they are just poor children in the village. The study we are doing requires orphanages so I am hoping that they fit the description!! Thank you for letting me vent today! I’m hoping that this will be the one frustrating day of the trip and that the rest will go a little smoother!
Day 10 - July 15
I got to spend another lovely morning with Gloria at a different HIV clinic. This one was much more rural than the first. We picked up John, a counselor on the way. We had to drive much further on some unpaved roads. It was amazing how much dust there was! There were many times when we had to roll up the windows to avoid a huge dust cloud coming into the car! All you see is a cloud of red coming at you! There were men working on the roads that were wearing masks. It’s the first time I’ve actually seem somebody here protecting themselves against the dust, so I knew it must be bad! There was a truck going down parts of the road that was watering down some of the dust. I’m sure it was a fix that would last half a day, but by the afternoon I’m sure the sun would have dried up all the water and the dust would be back.
The clinic is in a rural area that I would consider a village, with cows grazing and chickens running around. At one point, a rooster stuck its head into the patient room just to see what was going on. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before, but the rooster’s here are really not so bright. I assumed that they crow in the morning to signal the sun coming up. These roosters crow at all times of day. The sun could be at its highest point and they crow. The sun could be setting and they crow. It doesn’t seem like it fits the job description when they are calling the sun out when it’s already out or its setting for the day. Silly roosters.
The people here at the clinic were much the same as at the other one, only there were fewer of them. It was sad to hear some of the stories again of girls who had boyfriends who they think gave them HIV, but they aren’t sure and the boyfriends are no longer around. Two of the girls were under 20 years old. One of them is in school to be an engineer, which is a program you have to be very smart to get into. She is a brilliant student, but was either too in love or not informed enough about HIV to practice safe sex. We had one patient who sent her husband because she was too sick. She had some x-rays done at a private hospital because she was having difficulty swallowing. The problem was that she didn’t go to the hospital that the program endorses so none of the records were done right and the center can’t follow up on her. She now needs to go back to the right hospital to get the tests done again. Even though the program is a good one, it still has some of the technical and logistic problems that we often see with insurance companies and health care in the U.S.
On the way home, we had a huge detour to get back to the main city of Kampala. They were working on the road so they just randomly diverted us to a country road. It was much worse than the dust with all of the bumps! I don’t think Gloria has been driving that long, and the bumps are not easy to go over! They are so high that unless you are able to hit them perfectly, your car will scrap against the top of them. By the end of the half hour ride, I think we had gotten the hang of it. You have to go at an angle and then slowly turn to the opposite direction. If you hit it straight on, you are bound to hear that awful scraping noise as you know something is being damaged underneath the car! These need a more dramatic name than speed bumps because you have to basically stop and go 2 miles an hour to get over them without damage!
On the way home, we had to stop at the hospital to pick up something on the wards. I assumed it was something for the clinic. As we were walking, I heard Gloria say something about eggs. I was a bit confused. Then she explained that we were picking them up from another doctor who raises chickens. We had to walk past all of the patients and sit in a room where the patients wait to be seen. They get interviewed by nurses at tables. I’m pretty sure there were at least 5 patients at a time. Clearly HIPPA is not a concern here. There was one patient that Gloria pointed out as a prisoner. He was dressed in bright yellow matching shirt and shorts with stripes that looked like they were drawn on. If I didn’t know, I would have thought he was a guy going to play soccer. I sat and watched him and tried to figure out why he was in prison. He seemed to be so gentle and shy. It’s possible that he was with a guard of some sort or maybe he was just really sick so he was quiet, but I couldn’t picture him doing anything really bad. It got me wondering why people go to prison here. Do they steal things, damage property, or something as bad as murder? I really don’t have a clue, but I do know I probably don’t want to end up in a prison here. The conditions are clearly not as good as there are at home!
When the doctor was finally free, she escorted us out the building and across a few parking lots to her car. She reached into the front seat and filled two plastic bags with at least 2 dozen each! I don’t know how Susan managed to drive them home once I was out of the car without breaking them, but she did! When we saw her later that night, she informed me that all of the eggs made it home completely intact!
One thing I found extremely fun about today was trying to park a car! Gloria found a place to park on the sidewalk, which meant we had to go up on the curb. We probably spent 5 minutes just trying to get on. A security guard came up to us. I thought he was going to instruct us to get off the curb, but instead he just helped us park! On the way out another security guard talked to Gloria in Luganda. At first I thought we were in trouble, the she described that her license plate number was the same as his wife’s initials. I love that it was a conversation starter! TIA!
We finished off the night with dinner at Krua Thai with Troy. It’s tradition that the last night is at a good restaurant, and we talk about the trip. This time is different because we will be remaining after he leaves. I will have to continue the work for Medicine for Sick Children and just communicate with him through email and phone messages for the rest of the time!
At dinner, we also got to meet a doctor from Duke University who is doing some work in nutrition. She is starting some research at Mulago and has a few months to set things up. It’s amazing how long the process can be. She needs 3 months to set up the study and then some medical student will come for a whole year to gather data. I know it takes a lot of work, but I don’t think it will take a year! He’s going to have to find some other work to keep himself busy!!
We got a ride home but since Gloria’s car is low to the ground, she dropped us off at the top of our really big hill! It was amazing that my mom was not upset. She was prepared this time with socks to protect her feet from the dust and a flashlight to see where we were going. I think it was just because Angella was with us. She was much more upset when it was just her and I. Either she is more comfortable after some time or she trusts Angella more than me.
The clinic is in a rural area that I would consider a village, with cows grazing and chickens running around. At one point, a rooster stuck its head into the patient room just to see what was going on. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before, but the rooster’s here are really not so bright. I assumed that they crow in the morning to signal the sun coming up. These roosters crow at all times of day. The sun could be at its highest point and they crow. The sun could be setting and they crow. It doesn’t seem like it fits the job description when they are calling the sun out when it’s already out or its setting for the day. Silly roosters.
The people here at the clinic were much the same as at the other one, only there were fewer of them. It was sad to hear some of the stories again of girls who had boyfriends who they think gave them HIV, but they aren’t sure and the boyfriends are no longer around. Two of the girls were under 20 years old. One of them is in school to be an engineer, which is a program you have to be very smart to get into. She is a brilliant student, but was either too in love or not informed enough about HIV to practice safe sex. We had one patient who sent her husband because she was too sick. She had some x-rays done at a private hospital because she was having difficulty swallowing. The problem was that she didn’t go to the hospital that the program endorses so none of the records were done right and the center can’t follow up on her. She now needs to go back to the right hospital to get the tests done again. Even though the program is a good one, it still has some of the technical and logistic problems that we often see with insurance companies and health care in the U.S.
On the way home, we had a huge detour to get back to the main city of Kampala. They were working on the road so they just randomly diverted us to a country road. It was much worse than the dust with all of the bumps! I don’t think Gloria has been driving that long, and the bumps are not easy to go over! They are so high that unless you are able to hit them perfectly, your car will scrap against the top of them. By the end of the half hour ride, I think we had gotten the hang of it. You have to go at an angle and then slowly turn to the opposite direction. If you hit it straight on, you are bound to hear that awful scraping noise as you know something is being damaged underneath the car! These need a more dramatic name than speed bumps because you have to basically stop and go 2 miles an hour to get over them without damage!
On the way home, we had to stop at the hospital to pick up something on the wards. I assumed it was something for the clinic. As we were walking, I heard Gloria say something about eggs. I was a bit confused. Then she explained that we were picking them up from another doctor who raises chickens. We had to walk past all of the patients and sit in a room where the patients wait to be seen. They get interviewed by nurses at tables. I’m pretty sure there were at least 5 patients at a time. Clearly HIPPA is not a concern here. There was one patient that Gloria pointed out as a prisoner. He was dressed in bright yellow matching shirt and shorts with stripes that looked like they were drawn on. If I didn’t know, I would have thought he was a guy going to play soccer. I sat and watched him and tried to figure out why he was in prison. He seemed to be so gentle and shy. It’s possible that he was with a guard of some sort or maybe he was just really sick so he was quiet, but I couldn’t picture him doing anything really bad. It got me wondering why people go to prison here. Do they steal things, damage property, or something as bad as murder? I really don’t have a clue, but I do know I probably don’t want to end up in a prison here. The conditions are clearly not as good as there are at home!
When the doctor was finally free, she escorted us out the building and across a few parking lots to her car. She reached into the front seat and filled two plastic bags with at least 2 dozen each! I don’t know how Susan managed to drive them home once I was out of the car without breaking them, but she did! When we saw her later that night, she informed me that all of the eggs made it home completely intact!
One thing I found extremely fun about today was trying to park a car! Gloria found a place to park on the sidewalk, which meant we had to go up on the curb. We probably spent 5 minutes just trying to get on. A security guard came up to us. I thought he was going to instruct us to get off the curb, but instead he just helped us park! On the way out another security guard talked to Gloria in Luganda. At first I thought we were in trouble, the she described that her license plate number was the same as his wife’s initials. I love that it was a conversation starter! TIA!
We finished off the night with dinner at Krua Thai with Troy. It’s tradition that the last night is at a good restaurant, and we talk about the trip. This time is different because we will be remaining after he leaves. I will have to continue the work for Medicine for Sick Children and just communicate with him through email and phone messages for the rest of the time!
At dinner, we also got to meet a doctor from Duke University who is doing some work in nutrition. She is starting some research at Mulago and has a few months to set things up. It’s amazing how long the process can be. She needs 3 months to set up the study and then some medical student will come for a whole year to gather data. I know it takes a lot of work, but I don’t think it will take a year! He’s going to have to find some other work to keep himself busy!!
We got a ride home but since Gloria’s car is low to the ground, she dropped us off at the top of our really big hill! It was amazing that my mom was not upset. She was prepared this time with socks to protect her feet from the dust and a flashlight to see where we were going. I think it was just because Angella was with us. She was much more upset when it was just her and I. Either she is more comfortable after some time or she trusts Angella more than me.
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!
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!
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