Protests and Riots

Thanks to everyone who has emailed checking in on us after hearing about the protests in Kampala last week.  We were away most of the week, returning Friday evening.  The protests had died down, but the security was still extremely high.  There were multiple check points on our way home with armed military and tanks blocking most major roads and searching vehicles before allowing them to proceed.   We are still unsure if these were due to the protests or just heightened security due to so many African leaders being in town for the presidential inauguration.  Most likely the combination of the two.

While the protests on Thursday and Friday seem to be worse, these have actually been going on since our 2nd week here.   None of the violence has occurred anywhere near Roxanne's house, and we all feel very safe.  There was a night several weeks ago when protests had gotten bad, power was out, and Roxanne was not home that a truck with a bullhorn and a very angry sounding speaker drove through the neighborhood announcing something over and over again in L'ugandan.  After about the 3rd time and the voice seemingly growing more agitated, we asked the guard what was going on, only to learn that they were announcing free HIV testing for the next day!

It seems that Ugandans take the weekends off from their protests, so we will see what Monday brings - an even worse-than-normal traffic situation is sure to be one effect from last week's trouble.

It does seem that that the people of Uganda are becoming increasingly unsettled with the current presidential administration - especially due to the [perceived] handling of what were planned to be peaceful protests against rapidly rising fuel and food costs.  It is difficult to get the whole story here because the president shuts down media sources and power seems to go out if protests are rumored, and the opposition obviously has it's own agenda in the way news is leaked out from that side.

We have a newfound respect for America's news, government and even our potholes!! Thanks for your concern - feel free to lift up a prayer for our continued safety as the new week approaches!

Our Midweek Weekend

It’s Friday afternoon and we are headed back to Kampala after being away since Tuesday.  It feels a bit like Sunday afternoon after a long weekend, but we’re a little off on our days...

Its been an amazing few days which started with a great visit with World Vision and Busoga Trust America in Nakitoma, and included a water well in progress and some amazing animals.

On Tuesday we met with Emmanuel Erayu, who leads World Vision’s development effort in Nakitoma (Wasswa’s birth village) and Nabiswera about 2 1/2 hours north of Kampala.  This area is very challenged with very hard soil (not much farming), little rainfall (and a low water table) and very poor access to clean water.  There is a health center, but it was closed until earlier this year for over 6 months due to concerns over witchcraft.  As we learned from an earlier meeting in Kampala, World Vision recently came into the village to develop a child sponsorship program, improve healthcare and develop a WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) program.  As it turns out this is one of only three areas world-wide where WV is piloting a new business model that focuses on partnerships!  Let us take a step back for a minute and highlight what we have both observed is something that seems to be sorely lacking - that is, the coordination of investment and development efforts of multiple existing aid organizations in a specific area.  So many organizations seem to be doing wonderful things, but few are working together to leverage each other’s strengths and resources.  Maybe it’s that donor lists are highly protected, or missions are necessarily focused in order to make an impact, but it is all done at the expense of rifle-shot improvements that could be so much more impactful if combined with other efforts.  In the end, when funds run out or organizations change focus, the improvements are not sustained and the village not properly supported for long-term progress.

Beyond the fact that the whole is typically greater than the sum of its parts, no one organization can do all things well.  But, with 4 people on the ground in these two villages, World Vision is in a unique position to facilitate accountability and true village  ownership of the investments and improvements that these partner organizations make, thus allowing focused aid to be more impactful than it would otherwise be.  Full village sponsorship, including vocational training (as Tukutana does), infrastructure development (water wells, schools, medical facilities), and other direct investment, is what World Vision is after and is something that has been particularly heavy on our hearts.  Clean water is necessary and should be a right not a privilege, but what about healthcare and education?  Or the creation of opportunities for people to support their families and improve the future for the next generation?  It is exciting to think about what this new model could lead to and, while we don’t exactly know what our role in all this is, we are sure that God is orchestrating these connections and our steps for a reason.  

Wednesday we met up with Busoga Trust and headed to a well site that has been hand dug for the past week.  It was 20 feet deep, probably more than half the ultimate depth.  I’m not sure if the pictures will do it justice, but you have no idea how impressive it is that these wells are HAND dug.  Picks, axes, shovels.  Its an unbelievable feat to accomplish this.  And, its not by accident.  When we arrived at the site, there were already 30 men from the village that were taking turns being lowered into the floor of the well.  

Busoga intentionally focuses on areas where wells can be hand dug to encourage village involvement, which is a brilliant way to foster skin in the game and ownership of this new asset for the village.  It might be more timely and, depending on volume, even cost effective to use a drill rig, but you lose this critical opportunity to involve the village.  It was awesome to see.  It was equally awesome (but in a different way) seeing each of our boys at the bottom of this well. 

Thanks to Wilburforce, a member of the Busoga Trust team, we now understand that the ride down is free, but the ride up is $10!!  (its refreshing to see some opportunism in a country that could use so much help!!).  In an ironic twist, our digging experience was limited to the boys’ trips to the bottom of the well because there was so much rainfall the prior night that they spent most of the morning lowering men down to bring up the water that had collected at the bottom of the well, preventing further digging and compromising the well walls.

Our trip hasn’t been all work....after our well experience, we drove to Murchison Falls National Park, about 90 km north of Masindi to a lodge on the Nile River.  This part of the trip is much better told in pictures, so we’ll let the photos tell the story.  Suffice it to say, seeing lions mate and then shortly after walk within 5 feet of our car was absolutely indescribable.  We will put the video on youtube, but we’ll have to figure out how to rate it PG-13...

Coffee break at the Albert Nile Delta - the island in back are hippos!

 

This cat wasn't so pleased to see us...

The kids with the Nile in the background

Murchison Falls, the narrowest point of the Nile River

It has been an incredible few days.  We feel there are exciting things ahead that can grow out of World Vision’s new strategy, and potentially even create opportunities for many of our friends at home to support the struggling people of Uganda.  We have some more work to do on this, so stay tuned.

On our way back to Kampala we stopped at Wasswa’s Jjaja’s (grandmother), who lives in Nakitoma.  After our World Vision meeting on Tuesday we stopped to check in on her (she’s in her 60‘s, which is very old for a country with a life expectancy of just over 50) and the village chairman was trying to take her land, which we understand is common practice with widows who cannot defend their property.  Can you imagine?  She has lived in the same place for over 10 years, saved money to build a brick hut that is probably 15 x 15 and partitioned into 4 squares, only one of which she lives in.  She has a small area outside the structure, and in total is probably 20% of the size of the average Larchmont lot (which are small by american standards).  We just learned that she has taken the issue to a higher council in the village, and is hopeful she can defend her land.  It is all she has in this world, but its not all she has.  Despite her circumstances, she is a joyful woman - and an inspiration - who finds her peace not in her circumstance but in the Love of the Lord.

Dentist

So, I heard back from my dentist yesterday afternoon.  Turns out I need to find someone here who can put a temporary filling on my tooth or risk damaging / losing the tooth.  Fortunately, Roxanne has a friend who has been having some dental work done by a 'western type' dentist who is going to see me when we return from Masindi.  A little freaky going to a dentist in Africa!!

Update from Kampala

As I type this, we are again without power.   It’s quite funny how after only 3 1/2 weeks here this is really not a big deal.   The kids are no longer even phased by it and somehow life just continues with only a brief interruption to light candles.  

We have been in Kampala for a week and a half straight now, so actually settled into a bit of a routine.  Rob and Roxanne were able to meet with the World Vision director for the central region of Uganda (including Nakasongola, where Wasswa is from) earlier in the week and talk about the possibility for forming a partnership between WV, the water organization we connected with in NY and visited villages with our first week here and Tukutana.  We are very excited about being a part of making this partnership come to life and are beginning to get a clearer vision about how our family / community could possibly fit into a village sponsorship model more than being just a connection point.

Our family is heading back to the Masindi area on Tuesday to have meetings with World Vision and Busoga Trust on the ground in the area to explore the benefits of partnering across organizations to bring water, child sponsorship and vocational training (through Tukutana) to villages in dire need.  We are also going to have the opportunity to work as a family on hand digging a water well for a village!  Since raising money for water has been a family focus for us for the past year and a half, we are all VERY excited about having the opportunity to actually be a part of this process! 

Just a brief update on other things that have been going on here in Uganda.   We have continued regular visits to the babies’ home.  The kids actually asked to go there instead of playing football (aka soccer)! Isaac, Tyler’s favorite child, was gone last time we were there.  We found out that his mother had been in some type of accident and had been in the hospital, but the police originally thought she had died in the accident.  We are so thankful that she is better and able to care for him.  Two new children arrived the evening before our last visit, one of whom (Eric) was having a very difficult time when we were there.  Eric is probably about 1 1/2 years old.  He was taken to the police station by two young boys who were supposed to be watching Eric for “a few minutes” for his mother.  After most of the day the mother never returned, so the boys took him to the police, who in turn took him to the orphanage.  Eric was, for the most part, inconsolable.  He only wanted either Rob or I to hold him, so the thought is that his mother or father might be ‘mzungu’ (the l’ugandan word for ‘white person’ and the name we are most often called here).   The police are currently investigating, and we are praying that they find a situation similar to Isaac’s and Eric will soon be home with his family, too.  

We have been attending Watoto Church when we are in Kampala on Sundays.  Watoto is home to the famous Watoto Children’s Choir (google them if you have never heard them - they are fabulous, as is the ministry that brings in these children who are living on the streets).   Last week we arrived a few minutes before the 10 a.m. service and had to sit in the overflow section which was an outside area with video screens streaming the service.  This week we arrived 30 minutes early and waited in line to get a seat in the service.  It is simply amazing to us that people are so excited to worship God that they arrive before the doors even open!  The worship there is truly God-ordained and like no other that we have experienced.  Tyler asked tonight if their version of Amazing Grace could be downloaded onto his ipod.  It was such an inspiration to be with people who worship and praise God despite their circumstances and leaders who point all praise and applause to our Savior - and don’t even apologize when it’s time to pass the offering baskets, but rather fully integrate it into the worship! 

Last week Roxanne and I visited the cancer ward at one of the local hospitals.  I am still not able to write details about it - not sure when or if I will be able to - but do ask that you all pray for the people there suffering so much.   At some point, I will try to post a blog only on this subject, but for now it is simply too much for me to completely process on my own, much less write about.  We will hopefully be able to go back after we return from our trip north to see how the patients we visited and prayed with are doing. 

After church yesterday (Mother’s Day), Rob treated all of us to lunch at a restaurant that overlooks Lake Victoria and has a swimming pool! The kids all had so much fun and Mother’s Day in Africa was very special with the kids waking me up this morning with the gifts they had purchased themselves at the market here!   Children truly are a gift from God and it is such an honor and privilege to be a mom to such amazing children!  I hope all of the moms out there had a very special day!  We will (again) be out of email reach for several days for our Masindi trip, but will send an update when we are back. 

If anyone knows my Dr. Frank Madalone in Mamaroneck (my dentist), please tell him to check his email as I lost part of a tooth yesterday and am trying to figure out if I should actually try to find a dentist here or just wait another 3 weeks! Thanks!! 

Perspective

Life has felt kind of rough the last few days.  Christi has hardly slept the past week, and we’re not sure why.  Maybe its because its been hot, and the power has been in and out and when its out, fans go off and the heat is worse. Or the noise - we have a rooster in the yard, that seems to have day / night confusion and crows through the night a few nights a week (so now I know firsthand that its a fallacy that roosters only crow at the crack of dawn).

Food has also been kind of tough.  The power goes out and everything in the fridge goes bad, so we pretty much have to shop for the day each day.  And late last week, the tank with the gas for the stove and oven ran out.  There have been some riots in town which have slowed down deliveries of all sorts of supplies, and the gas for these canisters was one of them.  So, we either went out to eat, ate PB&J, or grilled out on a small charcoal grill.

One other challenge is transportation.  We’re very fortunate that Roxanne has a car- which is a great, mid 1990s Land Rover, literally made for the pothole-ridden Ugandan roads.  We were just talking about how much more convenient it would be to have access to another car so Christi and I could have some more flexibility, when Roxanne pulled out of the driveway and one of the rods that connect the wheel to the axle broke, yielding the car un-drivable.

So, its been a rough few days....    Or, has it?

As I was washing our lunch dishes in cold water (no dishwasher, of course - although after three weeks of being here I just found out there is a hot water button on the wall!!), I was thinking through all these things.  Then, it struck me how ridiculous my perspective about these “unfortunate circumstances” was.

The fact is, the vast  majority of people in this country don’t have power (or fans or refrigerators or stoves).  Or a private room in a house.  Or even a nice comfortable bed.  Or running water.  Indoor plumbing.  A car.  Access to clean drinking water.  The list goes on and on and on.

I’ve always wondered how true the statistic is that half of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day.  It just didn’t seem realistic to me.  But now it does.  Right now, there are three ladies outside our door (with their three babies) who are thrilled to have the opportunity that Roxanne’s ministry has given them to earn 3,000 ugandan shillings per day (about $1.25).  This is a great alternative for them to their previous existence walking around all day in the hot sun (with children clothed to their back) carrying shelves on their heads and, in the best case, selling 2-3 per day (for a profit of about 40c per shelf).  The statistics are real.  And the realities are shocking.

So, the next time one of my conveniences (here in Uganda or especially back in the states) malfunctions, I can only hope and pray to not lose sight of the valuable perspective our visit has provided.

Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs)

Last week we made our first visit to one of the orphanages in Kampala who has children from 0 through 3 years old.  We have heard about and even spoken of orphanages, but neither Rob nor I have ever actually visited one.  This particular orphanage recently started taking in babies who are HIV positive, and we know at least two of the babies are infected - another first for us.  While we are certain many of the people in the villages we have visited are HIV positive, we had no idea who, so no complete certainty of it.   As much as I hate to admit it, it was more than a little uncomfortable at first.  Despite all we now know about HIV and AIDS, holding and having our children play with babies we know are infected at first made us pause.  Thankfully, the orphanage is able to get medical attention for these children and they are able to receive the drugs that will [hopefully] prevent them from developing AIDS.

I choked up almost immediately after we walked in.  On the walls was painted Psalm 68 (above) and ‘He’s Got the Whole World’ (from the children’s song “He’s got the whole world in His Hands”).   It’s difficult to reconcile how there can be so much loss and pain when we have such a loving God.  

We heard from the new director on our way out that the orphanage had run out of milk and formula that day, and the staff had been praying for more because they had no funds to buy it.   Ironically, we had come close to rescheduling our visit because the director had not responded to our request to visit (now we know it was because that director is no longer there), but decided we would just pop by with some donated supplies to find out when a good time was to come back.  Among the supplies - milk and baby formula!  Obviously, God orchestrated our steps to ensure these babies had milk when they needed it.  It was comforting to see how He really does have them in His hands - even when circumstances are far from ideal.  

While we were there, a 3-week old boy was brought in.  I think he probably weighed all of 4 pounds.  Seeing these children who are so innocent and affected by such a devastating situations is difficult.  Yet, they all had such a fun time playing with our children and Roxanne’s son, Wasswa.  Tyler, Brayden and Lila each had a favorite child they really seemed to bond with while we were there (Lila had 2 babies!).  Tyler’s favorite child, Isaac, we learned will soon be returning to his mother.   We don’t know Isaac’s circumstances, but hope and pray that he and the other children will find loving homes with parents who will care for all of their needs and love them well.  

(We returned to the babies’ home today.  The kids each immediately found the children they had bonded with on the previous visit, plus more!  They were so excited to return and as soon as we were in the car wanted to know when they could come again.  Photos below)

Lila and Steven

Tyler and Isaac

Brayden and Martha