Mr. Wonderful and the mysterious package

The past couple week has proved to be quite eventful. I think I've lived out a Mastercard commercial:

Mosquito net and gear from REI: $100
Four flights from America to Entebbe: over a thousand bucks
Surprising the girl you like in Africa: Priceless

I was waiting for an "alleged" package from the States. Justin (aka Mr. Wonderful) had been planning it as a surprise for over a month, giving me little hints here and there...but still, I really didn't know what was going to be inside it. Treats? Letters from home? Encouragment from afar? He told me it would arrive around the 21st or 22nd... and said once I open it I have to contact him to get the next clue. So during my downtime in Kampala I checked the post office a couple days....I asked the receptionist if anything came from DHL for me...nothing. Hmmmm. I was getting ready to head out to another set of villages for three weeks so I really wanted to get whatever was in that bad boy before I left. Bobby, who works for us, called me and thanked me for coming over to dinner with he and his wife the night before. Then, before hanging up, he said "Today is going to be really good day for you." "Why do you say that?" I asked. "You're just going to have a good day." Maybe he knew what treasures awaited in the mystery package.

Sadly, Tuesday came to an end and still no travel-worn box with scripted font that had traversed the Atlantic waters came for me. Sigh. I went to go read The Last King of Scotland at a nearby cafe. I headed back to the office about 5:30 and the guard opened the gate and said someone was at the guest house for me. A DHL man, I thought? I walked over put something in the kitchen then headed toward my door. I noticed a small envelope entitled "the Package" at my door. Hmmmm.... a bit fishy. This was the package? And how did it get to my door? I turned and went next door to the office to see if anyone knew how it got there. No one there. Then, I came back and in my room appeared gerber daisies on my desk. My heart skipped a beat. Could it be? I ran up the stairs and low and behold, there was Mr. Wonderful, sitting on the stairs, waiting for me. Lots of planning and details behind him, and now there he was. What an incredible surprise. I'll spare the mooshy details but I'm very much quite floored someone would come halfway around the world to come and surprise me.

Priceless. Just like a MasterCard commercial.

Africa in numbers and a toilet story from the Mushroom Lady

Weeks of travel: 8
Most nights spent in one place: 6
Number of parasites: 1 (still pending; he may have left friends)
Most days gone without washing hair or showering: 6
Number of villages visited: 24
Amount of flights traveled on: 10
Number of mosquito bites: definitely more than 20
Number of ant bites: around 101
Pieces of chocolate eaten: 5
Number of books read: 4
Other muzungos I've spoken with: 5
Number of marriage proposals: 3 (and about 50 other lame passes)
Amount of beans consumed: thousands

There's lots more I could add to this list but I'll leave it at that. This past week I visited 4 other rural villages. Bathing was not really a viable option since there was no privacy; the room I stayed in was facing a road...and the latrine, well, what shall I share about my toilet situation. Once I got there the landlord asked if i was going to go "the long haul". I looked at her dumbly. "Number two you mean?" I asked. Then it was her turn to look at me dumbly. Read: Akward cultural miscommunication moment. She said, rather too matter-of-factly, "You can only go the short haul here. You'll have to find somewhere else to go the long haul." Hmmm. Somewhere else. Supposedly the latrines had filled up from the heavy rains and we were not allowed to go number 2. Now I've had many people in my life tell me what I can and can't do.... but whether I could go to the bathroom or not? Not so much. There was only one latrine for the 8 rooms, all interconnected. Doing the long or short haul proved to not really be a problem tho, because the latrine was moonlighting as a mosquito night club and once you opened the door, hundreds scurried all around. You may think I'm exaggerating here for the sake of a good story. But I'm really not. There was no chance I was going to risk getting bitten on my hiney (been there, done that) or any other piece of bare skin. Especially since I was already itching the 101 ant bites on my legs from the ant hill I unknowingly stood on as I brushed my teeth in the dark the other night. Now there are most certainly times when I have those, "get over it and do it, Roseann" moments, most often having to do with entering a wicked latrine, and I'm all for roughing it, but my common sense compass registered that this would not be wise. Since, decidedly, there are two things I am planning NOT to bring back to America with me: Malaria and a Ugandan man. So I proceeded to make the at least 2km trek to our office each night and morning so I could use the latrine there. Thank goodness I had my headlamp (bless your heart, Justin) because flashlights, like bathrooms, are a scarce commodity around here.

On a non-bathroom related note; I received an African name yesterday in one of the villages from the village leader: Namarenge, which means Mushroom. Not sure what the connection is there, but it was supposedly an honor (I assume it was because of the billowing effect my hair was producing after the humid rain). I also spent an afternoon "motivational speaking" to a group of about 100 children on the importance of education, seeking God, and becoming leaders in the community. I then proceeded to answer a handful of questions on anything they wanted to ask me. "How are the people in villages of America?" "Do you have a pet goat?" "Do you grow cassavah in your garden?" and "How does your husband find Africa?" Too cute. Good thing they didn't ask me about latrines. That would've been ugly.

Below: children from Buntabe community come to greet me; Claire and I cooking chipati the real African way and a group of children after a Bible club at the FH Mukono central office.

message in a bottle

I've been reading "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" - stories from the genocide in Rwanda. The author is a master storyteller and shares this insight: "On any given day in post-genocide Rwanda, I could collect stories of fresh ugliness, or also collect stories of remarkable social improvement...quite often I felt like these stories were offered to me the way that shipwrecked people, neither drowned nor saved, send messages in bottles; in the hope that, even if the legends they carry can do the teller no good, they may at some other time be of use to somebody, somewhere else."

I heard a lot of stories during my time in the post-conflict area I traveled through this week. I heard one recently that made me cry. It was a powerful testimony that surfaced like a message in a bottle to me this week. It's of a young man named Omon. He leads worship at the center.... he has a striking voice that resonates in my ears and heart long after I've listened to it. He closes his eyes when he sings and plays his guitar with such passion, like it is his very lifeblood. Our counselor, Wendy, shared his story. He came to our center 3 years ago... an escapee from the bush, an abductee, forced to become a soldier who killed against his will. He had nightmares... horrible dreams, and the only thing he could do to escape them was sing. So he sang so loudly in the middle of the night, with the hopes of scaring those intense memories out of his mind. Wendy taught him how to play guitar and he began to sing worship songs and came to know God through those notes and words; he is now never without his guitar and leads our child-mothers into fellowship with God each morning, with a resounding and transformed voice.

I thought about the essence of stories like these as we were making the nightime drive to Gulu the other night. It was pitch black, and we drove quickly on a well-beaten dirt road through a forest region. The only lights on the road were are own; yet there were still villagers moving and milling about. The staff mused how it was hard to believe that just months ago, this road was totally insecure, riddled with rebels from the LRA, and one would never drive it at night for fear of ambush, nor would any of these people be out - they were in IDP camps. But now they have come back to their land, promised that it is now safe.

As we drove on that same road, I felt a wave of eerieness flood over me as I sat there quietly. It seemed to hang in the air, like the smell of fresh paint, and I could almost feel the newness of the words "peace" and "post-conflict" lining it. Something inside of me, for a moment, wondered if it was still too tacky to mess with. I prayed briefly and my concern passed, as it usually does. As I looked out my window, flashes of thick bush, far-off blinking lights and dark outlines of trees moved before my eyes , and I tried to imagine a reality where gunman lurked and bullets flew....where villagers on bicycles had their legs cut off because of rebel cruelty.. where huts were pillaged and children were stolen in the night. I wondered about the stories that are now exchanged under these newly inhabited straw roofs, stories of escape and hardship; and I wondered how many still sleep with one eye open as their arms wrap tightly around their little ones.

And I wondered how I must have looked at that moment, a striking white face peering into the darkness, pondering all of this out of a passenger back window, to a lone soul sitting out there somewhere, watching... watching me imagine a reality I've read about in books and heard about from the mouths of those who actually lived it, breathed it, in this very place. From people like Omon, whose stories, I pray, will not stay bottled up.

perspective shift

Life is perspective.

I've realized that more here in Africa than ever before. I'm in northern Uganda. The Acholi people have suffered almost two decades of war at the hands of the LRA- systematic torture, kidnapping, displacement… and even as I write the name of these people, spell check doesn’t even recognize it in the dictionary. I wonder how many other places have failed to recognize their existence…failed to acknowledge their reality for the past twenty years?

Life here is [insert any word synonymous with hell]. Emotionally and physically. It's hot and dusty and only one main road runs through this town. Many people are moving out of the IDP camps and trying to find their existance where they once left it, years ago, after abandoning all they knew to escape the raids. I think possibly that life here shouldn't be considered life at all. But really, that is my perspective. Because life to me is something different than what people here know life as- but they know not of my life. Comfort. Convenience. Choice. Relative safety. To them, this is life. Challenge. Hardship. Displacement. Constant fear. Then I wonder… what really is the definition of life and living? Depends on your perspective.

I’m at the New Life Center – a rehabilitation center for young women who were once in captivity and had children with the soldiers they were enslaved by. They are now trying to reintegrate back into the society they were taken from. They’ll stay here for four months, learning skills that will help them as they try to rebuild their lives. Writing. Spiriual truths. Vocational skills. The women here are soft-spoken and rarely look you in the eye. They now spend their days in safe community, dealing with their collaborative pain. It's a beautiful glimmer in a place where hope, like the river beds, ran dry long ago.

The life expectancy for women in Uganda is 49 years old…. I find it ironic that we use those terms in developing nations. I don’t think the words “life” and “expectant” should be used in the same sentence in places like this. Today one of the women went into labor. I went with her and another staff to the Kitgum Hospital. It should not even be called a hospital by definition – maybe more of a pit, a holding place, that some people never make it out, laying around and waiting to die. Some come to get what they need and leave. Lifeless men and women sit around outside the open rooms, passing the days. To have a baby here, you must bring your own flask of hot water and a piece of cloth. If you don’t, you can’t come in. Have your baby on the floor outside for all we care.

The mispelled words “madernity ward” are scribbled over the rusted swinging door. It’s dark inside. I look to my right before heading in- rusted cots line the hall, bodies laying. The heat and flies are intense. We duck through the door. A sign says “stage one” – a waiting place where the women sit on the floor and wait till the stage of labor that they can enter into the “stage two” door and have their baby. Three women are sitting there, laying on the floor, moaning. I’ve been to places like this before in Rwanda. But today, it feels more intense. These are places you know exist but hope don't.

The women barely notice us walk in. There are two cots in there but they have bags of stuff lying on them. Apparently bags of junk are more important than providing a place for these women to at least lay until it’s time to go into labor.

We walk through the next door with our girl. There are two silver tables, bare and rusted, with stirrups at the end. A small bucket is at the end of each. Cob webs hang in the corners of the room. A tattered piece of fabric is hanging over the open window, flapping from the hot air coming in. Bottles and needles litter the counter. She strips down and lays on her shirt, waiting to be examined. She handles her pain with such grace, quietly hurting, but not saying a word. She looks back at me for a brief moment. I push my bottle of water into her hand. The matron comes in, puts on gloves and sees how far she is dilated. I stood at the head of the table and watched the little life inside her move in her bare, bulging belly.

I was hoping to witness the birth but we are informed she won’t be ready until tonight. She’s only two centimeters. She gets off the table, wincing with pain, and hobbles back into the “stage 1” room. She still has her shirt off. She sits back on the dirty floor, and puts her head down. Another woman is lying there with her hand outstretched over her hand, and looks at us briefly. We say our goodbyes, hoping to come back later, and we leave the scene behind.

As we walked out, I felt guilt for getting to leave and for leaving her there. And I felt angry. Can’t they find a chair for these women at least? A mat? I don’t expect the conveniences of the Mayo Clinic out here, but for crying out loud…what happened to decency? To treating people like humans? I am reminded by our national staff as we get in the car that this is much better than they would have in the villages or the bush- a dirt floor, alone. At least they have someone to tend to them here...

Ahh, yes….my perspective rears its head...of what is humane....of what is decent...of how labor is supposed to be. Babies have come into the world in circumstances like these, and less than these, for hundreds of years. No epidorals and reclining beds. No gift shop balloons and flower baskets. No IV’s or pillows. But something inside me, after witnessing it, is quite unsettled that this is the world a new life will be brought into- no jingles will be played over the loudspeakers in sterile, clean hospital hallways signaling that a baby was just born. The first sounds they will hear is the dull squeal of dilapidated wheelchairs being pushed down dirty halls, moaning and coughing, and an abrupt voice calling, “Next.” But somehow, you will never hear a complaint or a desire for anything more. They know not of anything different. This just “life” here.

I started thinking of all the ways I can make this better, what I could do to bring comfort to those women. "Roseann, stop. You can't fix everything...." My heart is so frenzied at times because I see so much injustice and I feel the need to champion every cause. Then I began to pray... I prayed for my heart to know when to accept and when it needs to fight; I prayed to trust that God is in this hell of a place, because I know God is the only thing that can really bring the expectancy of something more into one's life here. And I thanked Him for the small difference the New Life Center is making.

But I just can't help that my heart is full of heaviness for a “better life” for these women...