Uganda Perspective

A Hand Up Not a Hand-Out

      

I want to tell you about Obadiah Monday. Isn’t that a great name?  I will surely use it in one of my novels.

I have paid this young man’s school fees since 2004 when I met Ob while visiting a secondary school on Bwama Island in LakeBunyonyi with some other Americans.  In this indescribably beautiful place, we were greeted by several young men who told us they were orphan boys working their way through school. 

Ob was 20 years of age and a junior, certainly older than one would expect, but we learned that if you don’t have school fees, you don’t go to school.  Secondary school here is a boarding school.  It costs the equivalent of $250.00 for a year of room, board, tuition, books and uniform.  But Ob and his friends are orphans –  no one takes care of them.  And for them to go to school, they have to earn school fees.  Between terms, the boys would break rocks, haul water, sell things on the street – anything to earn school fees.  Sometimes they don’t make it and they would skip school until they saved enough to return.

This broke our hearts and that day, four of us each agreed to help one student stay in school.  Once the burden of earning shillings was lifted from their shoulders, these four started to blossom.  They are immensely motivated.  Within a year, Ob was 19^th in his class of 64 students. “I want to be a doctor,” he said.

I continued supporting his tuition after secondary school.  He had a hard time in junior college but after some extra studies, he graduated.  Then he went to work in his home village where he realized he had a talent for organizing people in community development.  In one summer, he taught people in three villages how to launch successful beekeeping enterprises.  Last year when I met him in Uganda. He said, “Mzee, I want to go to veterinary school to learn animal husbandry.  I hate to ask you for more school fees, but will you support me this one last time?”  Looking into his eyes, seeing the fire of desire was still blazing, I said I would.

Ob is now 27 years old with one more year of education.  So far, his grad school has set me back $800.00 including a lab coat.  But I plan to be there when he graduates because, with his winning smile, gentle manner and solid education, this young man will be an outstanding leader, a practicing doctor of social improvement if you will.  I’m proud to have helped launch Obadiah.  I'm glad he calls me Dad.

Missionaries Find Muslim Neighbors Changed by Love

When Matt and Crystal, two young American Christian missionaries working with Juna Amagara Ministries, decided to build their home in Mbarara, they knew the neighbors were Muslim.  They assumed life would be a challenge.  They were not disappointed.

Matt worked alongside the Ugandan construction crew laying bricks, hoisting rafters, oiling the wood, roofing the house.  All the while, the neighbors peeked at them from around corners, scowling.  Matt adopted a yellow dog - the one breed in town, known as the African Retriever.  The dog appointed himself security chief for the Children's Home where Matt worked and kept strangers at bay.  But when the dog strayed into the neighbors' yards, they would beat him with sticks.  When Matt tried to arrange for electricity to be brought to his house, he discovered it was very expensive.  He needed to get his neighbors to participate.  But they would not.

Matt and Crystal prayed for their neighbors.  Crystal gave birth to a baby boy.  Prayer fellowships were held for ministry kids in their home.  The neighbors stole fruit from the missionaries' garden.  During one long dry spell, the neighbors ran out of water.  Matt said, "Please, help yourself to the water in my tank.  I have plenty.  He had caught rain from his roof in a large tank, plenty for bathing, washing and drinking.  The neighbors humbly accepted his offer.  It has taken more than three years, but the neighbors are coming around.  One woman approached Crystal during the day when no one was around... "Tell me about this Jesus of yours," she said.  The neighbors have now chipped in on the electricity and on Christmas eve 2008, in an Edison moment, the lights began to glow.

When Matt and Crystal adopted an abandoned infant infected with HIV/AIDS, something one can do only if they have lived in Uganda for more than two years, the neighbors began to go out of their way to interact in a positive way.  They no longer stole fruit.  They no longer beat the dog.  Matt says it's because of the love of Jesus.  Crystal says it's because she and Matt clearly aren't going anywhere.

The Reality of AIDS – Part 7 – One Family’s Story

When you talk to people in Uganda about AIDS, you get used to hearing the words, “They died.” I lost three sisters. They died. The person who was paying my school fees. He died. The people I knew in that town. They died. The man who was her boyfriend, he died, she died.  You hear it so much, the words lose meaning. Yet every one of these deaths was preceded by long and painful suffering, a withering of the body and the spirit into oblivion. The anguish extends to the caregivers and the relatives, the friends, the villagers, the loved ones not just as a relationally shared pain for the disease but also for the anxiety of ‘who else is carrying the virus and am I next?’ For those who have lost multiple family members or multiple neighbors in a village, the anguish is numbing. Dying is taken for granted. It is less tragic. It happens too often. The true tragedy, however, falls on the innocents, those people left behind, often children who have no means to support themselves.

On one visit to Uganda, I stayed with Amos and Mabel Twinamasiko in their home in Mbarara. The house could have been a modest home in suburban Florida, built of concrete-block-and-stucco painted pastel with a tile roof surrounded by a sedgy lawn and fruit trees. Dr. Amos is an ophthalmologist in the local hospital and over breakfast one morning, I asked about his family. “Well,” he began. “I came from a family of 10 of which only four of us are left. Mabel comes from family of nine of which only three are left. And for those who died, each left multiple children behind. We just buried a niece who had been recently married and left four kids.”

“What happens to these children,” I asked

“We try to take care of them,” Dr. Amos said. I had heard this time and time again about Uganda: A million parents dead. A million and a half children cut off from their only means of food, shelter and care in a nation without a public welfare system.  Some 700,000 of these had been taken up by family, friends or caring people in the village. Ben had told me of the children he had supported through University including his nephew Herbert and this on a miniscule missionary’s income. A woman known as Aunt Jocelyn, somewhat prosperous with shops and a farm, cares for multiple children in her home and employs them in her businesses. A prominent local women’s rights consultant named Jolly Bibarikamu and her husband Erik reported raising and educating some 19 children to date through university level. “We ourselves currently support five kids with school fees,” she told me. “The number varies, but there are always four.”

“And what of the rest of the children,” I asked over tea.

“The rest,” Dr. Amos said. Mabel turned her head to hide the tear welling in her eye. “The rest we pray for.”

The Coffin Maker of Lyantonde

We were zooming down the Mbarara road artfully skirting potholes, bicyclists and goats when we passed a roadside display of coffins. I begged Naris, our driver, to stop. “No, no, Mzee, we don’t want to look at coffins,” he said

“But I want to see how they are made.”

"But Mzee, they put dead people in there. It is bad luck.” All it took was one remember-who’s-bought-the-gas for this trip look and Naris reluctantly pulled over to the shoulder and backed up a quarter mile to the town of Lyantonde.

Before HIV/AIDS, the word “coffin” was rarely spoken. Coffins were made by furniture makers far from public view. Children never saw them even at funerals, since children did not attend burials. In the 1990s, coffin building was a growth industry. Business was so good there was competition. Consumers could shop for price and quality at stalls by the side of the road. On this day, in this place, children scampered over, on and around the display models set around the yard like so much furniture at a garage sale.

No simple pine box, these containers were shaped wide in the shoulders and narrow at the feet. The lids held small, framed windows, possibly to offer an eternal view to the outside world, but more likely to make it easy to identify the occupant when loaded coffins are shipped from town to town. They were stained in various tones. The varnish gleamed in the afternoon light. They came in sizes from infant to adult.

I asked the coffin maker, a tall lean fellow who was busy at work with his hand tools under a tin roof, “How’s business.”

“Oh, suh,” he said. “People are dying to see me.” He laughed.

“Old joke,” I said. He shrugged

“So your children are not afraid while they are playing around the coffins?”

 “No,” he said. “They don’t know what people use these boxes for. These are just boxes to them. Sometimes when people come to buy they are so sad, they have lost someone. They see the children here and they feel a little better.”

“Do you think you would sell as many coffins if you were not here by the side of the road?”

“Oh no. There is too much competition. I must be here by the side of the road.”

“Are you selling as many coffins as you did five years ago?”

“No I’m not,” he confessed. “There used to be five coffin makers on this road and we all sold four or five a day. But I tell you de troot, I hope for us coffin makers we are in a dying business.” He roared at his own joke once again, head back and white teeth gleaming, clever fellow. Recovering himself, he added “I make more money off of furniture these days anyway.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes, suh. That’s very good. I am happy to be wukking.” 

I took a picture of one young boy in a raggedy red shirt making a funny face through the window of a coffin lid. Naris was glad to go.