So……we’re getting ready to change up this blog. Previously we have been discussing things we have done, activities completed, people met, all after the fact. But now we’re changing focus. We’re switching from things in the past to things in the future. This is rather frightening for me; it’s a huge leap of faith. But let me share something with you. This is something I wrote a week after being back state-side, typing it up with the idea of seeing fruition five, ten years down the road.
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We prepared to walk out the door and take the red dirt road, a twenty minute walk to the nearest place to catch public transportation. The equatorial heat was already in full swing and, being dry season, the dust was almost unbearable. Chris and I slipped on our sandals, locked the door, and set off through the gate, waving goodbye to Robert, our compound’s guard. We plodded up the steep hill and unexpectedly intersected paths with a woman coming out of the framework of a new construction project.
“Ah! I heard there were mzungos as my neighbors!” she smiled broadly and fell into step alongside us, using the Ugandan vernacular term for white people. We smiled politely and inquired in which house of the compound she resided. There was small talk, introductions, and then the phone rang. I answered it while Chris continued the conversation. When I hung up, he said, “She works in a slum area with kids. I thought we might be interested,” as my eyes lit up. At this point, our schedules were still tentative and we had extra time and energy for another project.
“We would love to come see your work one day,” I smiled.
And that was how it started. Our love affair with the kids in Naguru. Like any great love story worth telling, it did not come without trials; there was a time when the love remained obstinately unrequited. It was painful and we considered giving up, tossing in that old proverbial towel. “What’s the point?” we would ask ourselves. But slowly, “pola empola” as those from the Buganda tribe say, the angst turned into joy, the heartache into beauty, and the apathy to love.
Claire is the name of the woman we met, one of our greatest friends and one of our heroes. She has a rather heartbreaking story herself and has used her past to propel herself into loving others, rather than dwelling in bitterness as many would consider a perfectly normal response. One day she was walking through Naguru, a small impoverished area between two very affluent neighborhoods, and saw child after child on the streets. The kids were violent, dirty, half-dressed. When she broke up a fight, she pulled one over and asked why he wasn’t in school. They couldn’t afford school fees. Claire, being the woman she is, was not ok with this. In fact, out of the seemingly innumerable kids in this slum, hardly any attended school. That very week, she returned, calling children to follow her in a parody of the Pied Piper, but rather than kidnapping all the kids, she led them to the shade of a mango tree, and began teaching them their ABCs. Her small group grew as she continued coming day after day.
Eventually, people took notice. And they kicked her out from under the tree. By the time we met her, five years later, she was in the fourth location and they were trying to kick her out of there as well. The school was now more organized. There were two teachers, Teacher Grace, a svelte and shy woman, and a Sudanese refugee whom I always called Teacher Mama as she always had a child on her breast or hip. The 12x20 room was partitioned into three classrooms by planks of wood. There were 45 kids, some in uniforms, all with tragic stories.
The majority of these kids are refugees, fleeing either the genocide in Sudan or the atrocities of the civil war in northern Uganda. Not a single kid has both parents alive, with the majority having neither. About a third of these kids are HIV+, and none of them trusted us.
The first time Chris and I accompanied Claire to her school she called Feed My Lambs (ironically shortened to FML), we were met with complete wariness. Uganda is a very friendly country, and the children are generally overly so. They sing songs about the white people as they pass, they run up to hug you, and even the more bashful ones, wave and smile. These kids barely looked at us. That was our first indication that we needed to make this project a part of our weekly program. Chris and I tried to interact with a couple kids, but they either glared at us or turned away, ignoring us entirely. As Claire learned that Chris is a musician, she clapped her hands.
“Will you come each week and teach music to these kids? They need an outlet, and this would be so good!”
And we began coming each week. I had the idea of hosting a Christmas concert for the parents and guardians of the children so we tried instructing them in some carols. It was a disaster. They couldn’t care less what we were doing. We tried singing silly songs, acting outrageously and foolishly to tempt a smile, but the typical response remained apathy.
We walked with Claire through the slums, taking photos of the children’s residences and collecting their stories, trying to gain sponsors for them. Education really is the only way to help these kids in a lifelong way, and while what Claire is doing is wonderful, it’s not a governmentally recognized institution. Basically, she is instructing them on the basics in case one day they do get the opportunity to go to a real school. Plus, it provides some structure to their day, keeping them off the streets and instructing them in love. Even her punishments are wrapped in love; in a country where teachers beat or switch the misbehaving, Claire leads a chorus of a happy song, singling out the child in question and emphatically claiming that he or she doesn’t get the chance to ride on Jesus’s bicycle. It is quite effective in a society that fears being the center of attention.
Christmas came and went with our “concert” going off better than I had anticipated but by no means spectacular. The school holidays were upon us, and Chris and I enjoyed the time off. It was exhausting going week after week, pouring our our energy and still facing nothing in return. “Is it worth it? Could we be making a difference somewhere else?” But we were devoted to Claire if not the kids, and as the school term began again, we went. Same thing at first. Ignoring, mistrust, nothing.
But then something happened.
It wasn’t a slow, gradual transformation; it was overnight. One morning, nothing particularly special signaling the change in the universe, we trudged up the hill to the school and they ran to us. They came careening down the hill, laughing and smiling and hugging us. We were astounded. I clearly remember looking at Chris who looked as shocked as I. But as they grabbed our hands, three kids to each, and led us up the hill, I began grinning. And that was it. For whatever reason, they now trusted us. After six months of consistency, they knew we were there for them. And they loved us. We used some money to take them to a local pool, a first experience for all 45 of them. My brother gave money to build new, sturdy desks for them. We danced, we sang, we hugged, we loved. And as we said goodbye to them, after a solid year of coming twice a week, we cried. They cried. They told us that both Jesus and Allah would protect us. They wrote us letters saying they loved us. They asked us to never forget them.
How could we forget? These kids who have lived in ditches who now translate for us. These refugees who have a permanent home in our hearts. These Muslims and Christians coming together to pray for peace. These kids who have no future after Primary 3 Class if we don’t find sponsors which we tried to do. But we want to do something better than that. Something far grander.
We want to build a school for them, a boarding school with land enough to garden their own food. We want it out of the dust and squalor of the city and have it in the beautiful land of Fort Portal, where land is cheaper, the water is purer, and the air is cleaner. We want to hire good teachers and a counselor to help some of the kids deal with the severe trauma they have faced. We want to have this school include the first grade level to the very last, teaching them how to learn from the start and graduating competent leaders. We want to equip them. We want them to change Uganda and the world.
And it’s possible. The love they have shown us, the love we have for them, makes it possible.
Would you consider partnering with us in prayer, in funds, or in love? I have never before seen the physical consequences of love. But I have with these kids. And you will love them, too.
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And this is where the exciting part comes. Before we had shared any of our idea, we had people coming up to us, offering pledges of money, offering their time and services in making a school for these Naguru kids possible. We have so much support, unsolicited support mind you, that it seems possible that this is going to happen. Soon. As in, next year. As in, Chris and I are trying to reorganize our lives to figure out how we will be spending more time in Uganda, purchasing land, overseeing construction, transporting the kids from the squalor of Naguru to the purity of Fort Portal. And we want you in on this.
We need prayer. We need encouragement. We need people who are willing to spend two, three, four weeks in Ugandan constructing a school and boarding arrangements. We need donations. We need people to come and be a part of this. We need electricians and architects and teachers and counselors and administrative-minded people. We don’t care if you are in junior high school, high school, college, a career, or retirement. We don’t care if you align yourself with Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or atheistic beliefs. Pretty much our only qualification is willingness and a working out of the concept of ubuntu. I have been amazed at the individuals who have been impacted by these kids already.
Here’s our vision: We want this school to begin with four grades and add on a new one each consecutive year so that Chandiru, Baba, Brenda, Hadijah, Brian, Juliet, and their classmates will be the matriculating class. We want to purchase enough land to have a mini-plantation of tea plants where we can employ individuals from the community to harvest black, green, and oolong tea. We want to market this tea, this organic, fair-trade tea whose sales empower a community and run a school for refugeed, orphaned, and traumatized kids, to independently-owned coffee shops and individuals online around the world. We want this school to be self-sufficient so rather on depending upon donors each term, the sales from the tea will bring the revenue to run it. We want to teach these kids the love of God. We want these kids to have a life filled with hope, suubi.
We are not under the impression that we are smart enough to do this by ourselves. We recognize our ignorance of so many things surrounding this vast project, so we are collaborating with Ugandans and Westerners, businessmen and architects, not-for-profits and corporations, pastors and bankers, with people who have already successfully set up similar institutions. We are not going about this blindly. We want this to happen and succeed more than anything. So as of now, we are in the process of forming a 501(c)(3). We don’t want the donations to come to us for accountability purposes as well as providing tax deductions for you. So hold off on that, but speak to us about participating in other ways. We haven’t a timeline set in stone yet but are tentatively thinking about July 2013.
So…….whatcha think?!?!
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