First Week Back...

Can't say enough about how good my mechanic is here at home

I find myself driving on the wrong side of the road and can’t for the life of me remember which is the proper side to be on until another car or a stop sign appears.  I’m wearing a watch that shows two different times both of which are not the right time for here.  I'm desperately trying to keep track but I haven't arrived on time for anything all week.  Last sunday I arrived at church in time for the benediction.  This sunday it was half way through.  I walk with a foggy head and heart that can't fully engage yet.  Emails from Africa enter my inbox like bursting pineapples while motivation for anything else, like molasses, is thick and slow.  I’m not caring about things that I should.  Yesterday I was staring at a blank document on the screen with eyes wide and glazed when suddenly there was a clunking as my brain tried to activate.  This same thing used to happen when going from 4 wheel drive back to 2 wheel drive in the Izuzu.  It would take some time before the transmission would make an incredible snap and crack into gear.   

Farmers for Children Nutrition Program is up and running

The senses are busy processing the noise of machinery and airplanes, six lanes of Indy 500 traffic, all the cement, sirens, asphalt, curbs, the silky smooth roads, nobody walking along the roadsides, the multitude of instructional street signs, the incredible order of things like neighbourhoods and lawns, the absence of kids everywhere, the absence of red dirt, potholes, insects and sweat.  I got used to having a thin film of Uganda on my skin everyday which alters the way you feel in your body.  Only now I’m realizing how industrially and rigorously clean we keep ourselves.  No more reddish brown water coming off me and circling the shower drain - no more clothes that have changed colour during the day.  I usually ended up giving away my hand sanitizer to causes that seemed more urgent than my own cleanliness - like impromptu minor surgeries.  Here we find sanitizer dispensaries, sinks, soap, first aid kits, and alcohol swabs without even looking.

Brian's hip surgery went well but a long recovery is ahead

We are so tuned in to safety, especially for kids, and we're incredible planners for the future.  I'm struck by just how well insured we are against any eventuality - thefts, fires, floods, lost luggage, injuries, sicknesses, accidents, acts of God, even death.  At work we have so many wet floor signs that they themselves become a safety hazard while I compare that with my experiences with the precariously low hanging clothes lines in Uganda or the electrical current that ran through my shower nozzle.  That said, for all of our uptightness and order here in Canada I felt very proud to be Canadian while away.  We enjoy such a good reputation.  We are trusted as people with expertise, resources, and good hearts.  Some would even want to jokingly claim you saying, 'he's my muzungu go find your own!'  A week in and the sun is starting to burn away the thick fog.   

Coming Home...

I'm riding home on the plane suffering from waves of sadness kind of like nausea.  I'd been forcing through the motions of my last days.  Seeing the kids at loco run after me calling, 'glennie, glennie', for the last time.  Driving through town with a stone in my throat exposed the attachments that have been forming over these months.  I wouldn't trade this sadness because it's what lets me know I am close to a people and a place.  I have been blessed with some beautiful Ugandan friends.  Last night strong lilly was crying on the phone.  Morris lamented that it 'won't be the same'.  Esther says it will be weeks before she recovers. Sarah and Shakeela hung their heads like mourners.  Damali and I will go back to skyping. Morris-same.  Ben will help coordinate our ongoing work in his cordial respectful way. Timothy will let me know how dear Brian is doing if he can figure out how his email works.  Abdu will start the farmers to children program and email me the pictures of his expanding farm and children eating eggs. 

I can't say I know what the answers are for someone like me in Uganda but it has been a sheer gift to have the chance to alleviate some suffering...if only for a little while.  It has been a dream to have this unfettered freedom and the resources to make things happen for people who are crushed by poverty.  Who gets to do that?  I was only able to do these things because people close to me back home were unbelievably generous in allowing me to use their money to best of my abilities.  I really don't know how to thank all of you who funded the work we did.  I will be giving a comprehensive account of all our spending when my head clears.  There is nothing like being present for the tears in the eyes of a father who is overwhelmed with gratitude for his daughter's surgery or the first hand experience of seeing funding support the work of a program that is saving a child from a life sniffing glue on the streets of Lira.  It has made me feel alive in places within that are often fast asleep.

You gave me the chance to provide medicine for the sick one's at the baby home, beds for street kids in Lira, school fees for children with no parents, improving sanitation for the 800 at loco village, clothes for kids with nothing on their backs, a vehicle for ATIN Afrika to do its work of resettlement, a washing machine for Sonrise baby home and their countless diapers,  supplies for young homeless pregnant mothers, surgeries for Sharon, George, and Brian, mobile medical clinics at Nanso, family kits for impoverished families in Wakisi, a new house for an old man living under maize stalks, a loan for a carpenter, the development of the 'Farmers for Children School Nutrition Program' with farmer Abdu and many more day to day opportunities to improve someone's living conditions .    

There's a gap of words and understanding with our friends in Uganda so we relied on the exposure of our hearts to tell each other who we are.  Through a tear we often understood each other much better than we could ever manage with words.  Flying home I feel the ache of having been touched by a people.  Brian's small frame hugging me as he waits for his surgery is one of the purest forms of trust I've ever felt.  His love after the harm done to him crushed me with gentleness.  The other form of communication that felt deeper and purer than words was that of laughter.  Days start and nights end with laughter in Uganda.  I will never turn on a shower knob again without wondering if there's an electrical current running through it. Boda boda drivers transporting anything...fridges, beds, whole families...the ugandan spirit fiercely wants to 'try it'...with everything they've got, they're saying, 'tugende' or 'lets go'.  

man with leprosy

I made it home Friday afternoon.  The long travel, the cold rainy weather here, the sober reality that it’s over, and Uganda swimming through my psyche make me want to curl up and take refuge under a mountain of covers while hitting a steady diet of kraft dinner and moist cake.  But I’m excited to see friends and family who I’ve been away from for three months now and to work at processing the experiences I’ve had. 

Looking out my front window it’s amazing how few people there are on the street.  The odd car passes my house but none of them are breaking down, strapping chickens to their roof racks or tying the fish they’re gonna eat for supper to their front grills.  As I drove along the 401 by my place I saw a fella pulled over relieving himself by the side of the highway.  That’s the closest things to Uganda that I saw today.  Conversely, I was out for lunch and went to the washroom and was overwhelmed by the sheer number of urinals and stalls to choose from.  I was the only one in the there…it felt like a kind of sanitation heaven.  The place sparkled, the mirrors were startlingly accurate, and the blow dry machine was propelled by a jet engine.  I think it’s clear I can stop carrying around my own TP now.  If we happen to be talking grant me some latitude for awhile.  In the process of the tectonic plates of my worlds merging back together I don't doubt that before it's over I'll be slightly different having changed in one way or another.  Also, jet lag has a way of making you look like you're under the influence of a substance.  Working where I do I trust my work mates and the men will distinguish between the two.

Blog Revival...

Dear Friends,

A few weeks back the blog sputtered and died along the roadside as it were.  But it wasn’t for lack of things to write about.  Quite the opposite.  The good news is the blog is being attended to, as if by the Accurate Motor Garage, and is showing some vital signs at least one last time for some concluding messages. 

children fetching water before sundown

Things really sped up over the last two weeks so that I’ve become less expressive and more focused on bringing the things I’ve been involved in to a conclusion.  It was also the case that as my time narrowed the requests for assistance increased.  I have done my best to steer money in the right directions and leave a little reserve for the one’s we’ve been working with.  At times, in this last week I’ve been reminded of things that I didn’t remember promising but it’s hard to argue in the face of poverty. 

stopping for mangoes during the trek

I was once again visiting ATIN Afrika in Lira where I went along with Morris as he did his ‘street visits’ talking to street kids and giving them the option of coming to live at the house.  We went to pay for school fees for several of the kids who were resettled through ATIN.  This visit helped me appreciate the frustrations that Morris lives with as he tries to resettle kids and keep them in school in their villages.  After driving who knows how far outside of civilization we ended up not being able to pay the fees because the headmaster wasn't there that day but meanwhile the child couldn't go to school until the fees were paid.  At one point we had to walk to a boy's home to find him as he wasn't at the school when we arrived and the road to his house was impassable.  I learned then and there that when a villager from northern uganda says that a distance is 'not far' to walk it has next to no bearing on any definition of 'far' that I know.

Dennis removed 4 'Jiggers' from a street boy's toe with a safety pin

While in Lira we also ended up interceding for two 16 year old girls from Moroto who were stranded in Lira after coming with a singing group three months ago.  They didn’t get back home because their vehicle broke down and while the rest of the group had money to pay for transportation they ended up stuck in Lira and staying with a single man twice their age whose intentions were less than clear.  We went to the police station to report their situation so that they could safely stay at ATIN for the night before putting them on a bus the next morning back to Moroto.  While Morris and the other ATIN staff thought nothing of the police visit I was as nervous as the two girls thinking that at anytime we’d all be locked up for some fabricated charge and spend the rest of our days in a Ugandan jail digging ditches in the blazing heat.  Morris and the girls would probably be fine...me on the other hand...I'm sure I wouldn't make it past lunch before inquiring about an infirmary.

After Lira, I spent time developing our loan agreement with Abdu and the program that we've called, 'Farmers for Children School Nutrition Program'.  The funds for this loan came through the Source Bead Women of Kitchener Waterloo.  Their only criterion for the use of the money was that it have something to do with improving nutrition for children in Uganda.  With the loan Abdu is expanding the dairy capacity of his farm with fencing off another couple of acres and developing his system that pumps water for the cows.  

In exchange Abdu will repay the loan by delivering eggs to a school that we've chosen near his farm.  The school will receive 10 flats of eggs per week to enhance the nutrition of the children.  In addition, Abdu will be saving a portion of his farms profits which will become the loan for a second farmer who will take over once Abdu has repaid his loan.  Abdu and his wife Betty became good friends and advisers to me over the last month or so.  He is easily the most conscientious and determined ugandan business owner that I've met.

area Abdu will fence to expand his farm

Children are already starting to enjoy eggs with their posho at school and Abdu's fencing is going up even as I am writing.  He and his family are thrilled with the benefit that will come through the use of this loan and for how it helps them improve the lives of Uganda's school children.  This sizable chunk of money has been made possible through sale of beads by a handful of concerned women in the K-W area.  

      

New House...

Here's a shot of the new house for the 'Old Man' that we spoke of earlier in the blog.  

Old House...

This man lives with a great deal of bone pain after a life of working in the sugarcane fields.  He is from Rwandan and has no family.  The local chairman and his family take care of him.  It will be much easier for them to help him now that his new home is closer to the chairman's home and they can keep a better watch on him.

Also, in the last weeks we finished off the latrine project at the 'Railways'.  We're very happy with the way they turned out and for the enthusiasm of the people to use the toilets as opposed to the nearest shrub.  The first lady who used the freshly painted and renovated latrine near her block remarked, 'it's like a hospital!' which translates, 'it's clean!'.  She was so inspired she offered me her little boy to hold and then to 'take with me back to Canada'.  

my 'Railways' friends

There are 10 blocks of row houses and each block has its own toilet with their block number on the door.  Each door has a padlock.  The key is left with the 'health representative' for their block and, as it is in their own interests, the block members police their own toilet for any unsanitary practices.  Keep in mind that some in the community are still not convinced that they should be using a latrine.  Some still believe that it causes infertility amongst women.  Many from the east called 'Karamajong' were never raised with latrines and don't trust the health advisories.  Others think that it is a place to put garbage.  Some use the stall to bathe themselves.  All in all the latrines look good, people are starting to contribute their maintenance fees, and on more than one occasion I received very gratifying grins from the locals after they'd relieved themselves.      

new 5 stance latrine serving 5 blocks of 20 households

renovated 6 stance latrine

untimely death of the foreman's cow

On one of the last days of construction one of our builders' cows (he lives in the railways) got sick and died and had to be skinned and butchered immediately.  It put a halt to my painting program for that day and we chalked it up to another 'unforeseeable' delay.   

surgical unit at Jinja Main before Brian's surgery

 

One of the things I did on my last day was go to the Jinja Main Hospital to attend to 4 year old Brian whose hip surgery was set for 9:00 that morning.  I went to pay part of the bill and found that they were waiting on extra blood in case of emergencies.  Despite all of the cruelty Brian has endured he is a beautifully affectionate and gentle little guy.  These kids become the embodiment of trust and have had a melting effect on me.  Of course they are scared of what's to come with their surgeries, especially coming from the villages, but somehow find it in themselves warm up to a strange muzungu.  I've learned that Brian came through the surgery well and has woken up.  He will be in a pelvic cast for a month at home.  He will then come back to Jinja and stay at our friend Damali's children's home while he undergoes at least a month of physiotherapy.  If all goes well he will be able to walk and play like a normal little boy and ultimately grow up with a better chance at living.     

'railway's kids

'One more?'

'Grasshoppers for a chewy snack?'

my friend Michael and his undying efforts to get from me some, 'little money'