His Hope Uganda

BATS and Toilets - November 5, 2010

Merry Christmas!!

Am I early? It’s hard to tell in Uganda with no eggnog or snow or holly and tinsel and I want to be sure I don’t miss it.

Yes, instead of snow we are finding ourselves living in agonizing heat and drenched in our own sweat every day. There was a time when I would be complaining, and I have to admit that there are moments when I still do, but things have changed over the past few years. I now openly welcome the sun as opposed to hating it like I used to. It wasn’t long ago that we saw it so rarely that I wondered if I was living in Uganda or just in Canada with lots of Ugandans. I wore slippers and a sweater almost every day. I don’t know how I will survive December and January in Canada if I can’t even handle 20 degrees here.

I think my adaption to the weather is just one of many signs that prove that despite my skin colour and love for ice hockey, I have actually almost become Ugandan. Other signs include my “Ugandan English” which people are always so impressed with and I don’t quite get. I mean, it may sound Ugandan but it’s still English, right? I grew up ignorantly knowing only one language and it was English, so I would hope that I’ve mastered it by now. Anyway, other evidence of my Ugandan status includes my actual like (not just tolerance) of posho, my ability to be in the same room as a cockroach without wanting to cry, my love of Mexican soap operas, and my unwrinkled skirt wearing addiction.

As far as Ugandan ailments go, I have had several bacterial infections and ringworm at least four times but up until October I had never been able to check the “big sickness”, the one that really matters, off the list.

However, after feeling really bad for a couple of days in October, I decided to go to the doctor for a “just in case” check, convinced it was nothing but a bad flu or another bacterial infection. The doctor seemed as shocked as I was when he told me that I had malaria. And at that moment I knew I could really call myself a Ugandan. It was like he handed me my rite of passage.

I realize malaria is nothing to joke about but I am able to praise God for three reasons. One, I didn’t have to get the dreaded super huge and painful needle in the butt that I’ve had to witness (and hear) so many kids getting (between you and me, the thing that terrifies me is not the needle but the thought that someone would have to see my very white bum which I could never forgive myself for). Two, the malaria was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Ugandans credited this to the fact that I was on preventative antimalarial meds when I got it but I disagree. I give God the credit and thank you all for your prayers, which I know helped.  And reason three for my praise is simply the fact that I have to stay positive and I never have a reason to NOT be thankful. Also, this may mean that I’m not a hypochondriac after all and that’s great news.

I hate mosquitoes. They suck.

In other news, the entire HHU bat community spent the month of October in mourning after losing hundreds of friends and family when a large sweaty black man with a pig-like nose entered the ceiling with a stick and intent to kill. A sad day for bats but a victorious day for Auntie Kimi and Auntie Christine.

Although he didn’t kill them all and I now live in fear of an uprising, Uncle Eman very bravely (and stupidly to be honest) entered our bat and bat poop infested ceiling several times to clean it out and kill as many bats as possible. On two separate days, he killed well over a hundred bats and cleared out unimaginable amounts of poop and dust. He wore rubber boots, a little mask over his nose (that made him look like a pig), a pair of old prescription glasses that he got from a free eye clinic years ago even though he doesn’t need glasses, and some gardening gloves. I have no problem saying that he looked absolutely ridiculous.

People say I’m stubborn (which I am) but Uncle Eman is worse. He refused to let me hire professionals to do the job and insisted on tackling it himself. It must have been at least 40 degrees in the ceiling and at one point he was chasing a bat and his leg broke through the ceiling but he somehow managed to not fall to his death. Auntie Christine and I felt like we were dying from the fumes and poop dust that we inhaled from the dining room floor and that was nothing compared to what he was breathing in.

We took him out for pork the night after his first day in the ceiling because we were convinced that he would be dead within the week and it was the least we could do. But praise God! He’s alive and well. And I’m sure we’re all healthier because of his courage (and stupidity). Thank you Uncle Eman. And thank you Lord.

We had a cat for a day and a half. We found her (him?) in our kitchen one day and she was the smallest and dirtiest kitten I’ve ever seen. But I had compassion and we made her a bed and gave her fish and milk and she lived in kitty heaven for a day and a night. We named her Georgie and she drove Clooney absolutely crazy. The next day she walked around the house like she owned it and pooped EVERYWHERE. Uncle Eman hates cats and refused to let us keep her (told you he was stubborn).

Maybe I still felt like I owed him for the bat thing or maybe I really didn’t want to deal with a dirty and diarrhoea-plagued cat and no litter box or maybe I just felt bad for Clooney, but I didn’t argue when he said she was leaving. We dropped her off about two kilometres down the road and haven’t seen her since. Sorry Georgie, it just wasn’t meant to be.

And so, our Ugandan family does not (yet) include a cat but it continues to grow. With the end of the school year in sight and next year not far off, we’ve been adding more kids to the program over the past month and a bit.

We had to make some really tough decisions recently that included not continuing to support four of our current kids in the future. They are all from families that were chosen before HHU began and that had two children in the program. We felt that the families were not needy enough to be getting support for two kids so we will continue to support only one of their children starting next year. Although it was really difficult, we don’t think we will regret it and we all think it was the right thing to do. We hope to still build a relationship with the kids who are ‘dropped’ and will continue to monitor their progress in the future.

We are sad but also looking forward to filling their spots with children that are truly in need. Choosing new kids for the program is always exciting but difficult because the space in the program never comes close to being enough for all the children and families in need. With only fifteen spots available for next year, we have been very careful about who we include in the program. Our guidelines have changed slightly in that we are not looking for families in need as much as we are looking for children in need.

In the past, we’ve based decisions on the family’s situation in hopes that we can help families who are struggling. This year, we are focusing more on just the kids. We have found so many families who seem to do okay but who have children that aren’t in school or are mistreated because of laziness or because they are step children or step grandchildren. It’s hard to see families who struggle so hard to provide for their children but it’s even harder to see families that don’t. Those are the kids that we think are most in need of a relationship and who need to know that someone loves them. They are also the ones that need a break.

For example, Kasim is around fourteen years old. He lives with his mother and two siblings. Auntie Annet brought him here one day and told us his story. Kasim has been schooling on and off because his mother can’t manage to pay all of his school fees and it is Kasim’s responsibility to pay the remainder of the fees as well as buy all of his supplies. So when he gets kicked out of school because he hasn’t paid, Kasim works as a Ugandan garbage man. He takes people’s garbage from their homes to a large dump at the bottom of his road.

It may not sound too bad but you have to remember that Ugandan’s don’t use bags or trucks. Instead, Kasim uses his bare hands and a wheelbarrow to carry piles of people’s garbage from one place to another. The day that Auntie Annet brought him to our house, she said that people from her complex had refused to pay him because they were mad at their landlord. So he had been working for free.

We went to Kasim’s house in the middle of the day and found his mother sleeping. His young, able bodied mother, was sleeping while he was handling people’s garbage in order to go to school. I know there could be a hundred reasons why his mother was sleeping that day but to a North American like myself, this doesn’t seem right and it doesn’t make any sense. Sadly, stories like this are too common here. Eight year old girls are forced to be mothers and fourteen year old boys are forced to be garbage men.

Today I woke up at four in the morning and I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days. I lay in bed for two hours and I couldn’t sleep because I was so hungry. For two hours I had all sorts of thoughts run through my head and I finally got up and decided to write some of them down. My first and most eye opening thought was this: How many times in my life have I gone to bed hungry?

Well, I can remember nights that I’ve eaten chips and cookies for supper but I don’t think that constitutes as “hungry”. Okay, let’s try an easier question. Can you ever remember a time in your life, over 27 years, that you have gone a day, an entire 24 hours, without eating? That isn’t one that takes a lot of thought.

Now consider this. Six million children die every year from starvation and malnutrition. That doesn’t mean they go a day without eating or two days without eating. That means they go long enough that their bodies can no longer function and they die. Six million innocent lives. And that doesn’t include the number that die from treatable or preventable diseases or dirty water or who are neglected, abandoned, and abused.

I sit here and think about how I would rather be eating pizza for lunch than posho and beans again. Even writing about the 16,000 children that die every day because they have nothing to eat doesn’t do enough to shake my thoughts from pizza for more than a few minutes. Why? Because it doesn’t seem real. The number is too big, the problem too insurmountable, and the thought too devastating and sickening to ever comprehend.

I live here. I live among it, maybe not starvation but hunger and sickness and injustice. I am surrounded by poverty but most days I don’t see it and on the days that I do I can’t stand to think about it because it’s too overwhelming. Give me my comfortable life, this is too painful to think about. My heart is hardened to it most of the time and maybe that’s how it has to be but most days I wake up and I want to feel more compassion.

I pray for God’s eyes and His heart so that I might see what He wants me to see, which is that the life in Uganda that I’ve gotten so used to seeing isn’t the way He intended it to be. It isn’t normal that some children don’t have any opportunity to get an education, or that 80 year old grandmothers dig all day in the hot sun to provide for their orphaned grandchildren, or that so many children die because their guardians can’t afford a ten dollar treatment. It’s not normal and it’s certainly not right.

I think if God answered my prayer everyday I wouldn’t be able to handle it. But on the days that He does, it is a blessing. Two weeks ago, He did.

Until then, I hadn’t been moved to tears because of poverty in a long time, since last year when I met a paralyzed and heartbroken grandmother. But we had two kids show up at the door asking for help a couple of weeks ago that led us to a village that broke my heart into pieces.

They are 17 year old twins and we had met them last year when we considered helping them but never did. They came here with huge, beautiful smiles on their faces and I honestly considered brushing them off because they seemed far too happy to really be needy.

The year we met them they had been sleeping at a school with no mattresses or supplies because they had nowhere to live. This year they have done better because they’ve been working in people’s gardens to make money and have managed to rent a small room in a mud house. They have only a small table and chairs and they sleep on beds made of bricks and woven mats because they have nothing else.

They haven’t paid their school fees in two terms and their rent is also two months behind but I can’t remember one moment in the three hours we spent with them that they stopped smiling. They have been working to pay their own school fees and to provide for themselves for over four years. They have been homeless several times but never defeated.

When they asked if we could take them to their village which was “very near” (an hour away) I couldn’t say no even though inside I was opposed to the idea. I was tired and I wasn’t in the mood to drive two hours. On the way we asked about their history and they said their mother lives in the village taking care of their eleven siblings. Their father had passed away in 2005 and their mother has lung cancer. Because they had no money, they couldn’t remember the last time they had seen their family but it sounded like it had been a year or more. We could tell by the anticipation in their voices that it had been too long.

We reached the village and pulled up to a mud house and A LOT of children. When they realized that their big brother and sister had come home, their eyes lit up and excited hugs were exchanged. Their mother came running out to greet them, filled with joy. In a culture where people don’t usually show emotion, it was a beautiful thing to see. The twins gave us a tour of their house.

It wasn’t much and I noticed three things.

First, it was cold. And it was dark except for the beams of light that shone through the many holes in the rotting iron door.

Second, apart from the third thing I noticed, it was completely empty. No beds. No mattresses. No chairs. No table. No sheets or blankets. The only thing we saw was some old clothes that the twins explained were used as bedding for their siblings and their mother.

The third thing I noticed, that really hit me, was that the only thing inside the house was a wall hanging. It said: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Thinking about it now, I am guessing that wall hanging is there for one of two reasons. It is either there as a reminder or as a statement. Either they need to be reminded and convinced that God is for them because they have a hard time believing it, or they want to make a statement to anyone who enters their house that God IS for them, no matter how dire it may seem.

From what I know of the twins and their obvious joy and special bond they share, that verse on the wall is a statement.

I can think of way too many moments in life when I’ve thought God was against me because I’d missed my favourite TV show or my car had broken down or Visa had denied my transaction again and caused me some embarrassment. But how embarrassed and humbled am I to think about it now. And how ashamed I am to think that I almost missed such an important lesson because I was thinking of my own wants rather than someone else’s.

I was visiting my kids at boarding school on Sunday and something came up that I really wish hadn’t. We got into some personal subjects and I asked why they were so curious and they told me about some things that they were happening at school that offend me and I am very opposed to. I can’t say more than that but I can say that I came home outraged that such a thing would happen at school. I was ready to pull them out of school and ship them to Canada. After I had calmed down and prayed a lot, I thought it would be best to ask my Ugandan support team what they thought.

They weren’t shocked at all and said very simply that it was a cultural thing that has always been done and taught at school. I argued till my face was blue about how wrong it was but I got nowhere. Then I went to my room in tears and told God that I was done here. I told Him that I could not continue to raise Ugandan children when their culture was so important and it seemed that so much of it teaches what is contrary to God’s teachings. I asked Him to please replace my eight children with dogs to protect me from the heartbreak and worry that lies ahead. I would rather pick up poop than fight a culture that I don’t understand. I told Him that I can’t fight the traditions in this culture and I don’t know why He brought me here because I was sure to fail.

Then I listened.

He reminded me that although Ugandan culture is very different, it isn’t wrong. When I thought about it, I could easily find just as many faults in our culture, if not more (I apologized to my staff later for my culture bashing). He also reminded me that it’s not easy to raise kids in any culture and I’m sure that if I had had Canadian children in Canada I would struggle just as much. And that I am not called to fight the messed up world, thinking that I can come out on top. I am called to stand out and be in it but not of it. And I’m called to teach the right ways to my children, and all the children we are involved with, the best I can and leave the rest to God. I believe that is why I’m here. And as much as it kills me to think of all the wrong choices my kids might make, I can’t do anything to stop them except pray and trust God.

Alright God, I heard. But seriously, dogs are great too . . . . . . . . .

Speaking of dogs, I want to end (yes, the end is in sight!) with a lesson from my lastborn, Clooney.

I love Clooney (the dog, not just the man). The best thing about dogs is that no matter what, they are always happy to see you. Anytime you need a pick me up, all you have to do is leave the house for five minutes and come back and you will no doubt feel loved by your dog. But yesterday when I was letting Clooney out of her room, I realized something very important: I need to be more like Clooney.

Clooney has her own room because she’s spoiled (she even got an entire cow’s head for her birthday last month). Every day, she can’t wait until someone comes and lets her out of her room in the morning. She can’t wait to see the people she loves (and make them dirty and bleeding with her scarily long nails). She is so excited every day just for the opportunity to be alive and be loved. Shouldn’t we all be more like that?

It got me thinking about the last time that I was that excited to get out of bed and start my day. Uh . . . . . nothing is coming to mind. I find that I am so often living in memories from the past or only looking forward to something in the future that I completely miss the opportunities and blessings that today offers. I rarely jump out of bed in the morning and say “I am so excited to see what today will bring”.

Every day is an opportunity to serve God and to serve others. Every day is an opportunity to learn and grow. Every day is an opportunity to laugh. Every day, especially today.

Praise God for toilets. Really, we should. Imagine living without a toilet, which is how so many Ugandan families live. We are starting a new program called “Toilet Building” and it’s pretty self explanatory (we build toilets for families who need them). We built our first toilet and bathroom for our neighbours last week and it was a great success and a lot of fun.

Ezra is a sweet little boy in the family that we built the toilet for. He’s five years old but because of HIV, he looks and behaves like a two or three year old. He ate too much food a few days ago and his mother took him to the toilet. Apparently while he was doing his business, he sighed and said to his mother, “I’m so thankful that they came and built us a toilet.”

When I say “toilet” I actually mean an outhouse. It is a forty foot deep outhouse covered by a brick building that also has a room for bathing. No flushing in Uganda. The need for toilets in Uganda is much greater than the need for houses and much cheaper. I can easily estimate that over 60% of the children in our program don’t have sanitary toilets.

I found out after we built our neighbour’s toilet that the Health Inspectors had been visiting the grandmother regularly and telling her that if she didn’t build a proper toilet they were going to put her in prison. It is illegal to not have a sanitary, up to standard, toilet on your property here and people do actually get put in prison if they cannot afford to build one. On one hand, it makes sense but on the other hand it is really unfair. An HHU built toilet costs about $380 to build.

We’ve put together a Christmas Gift List that’s up on our website (www.hishope.org) if anyone is interested in donating something meaningful and useful to a family in need through our organization this year. The list includes all sorts of stuff. Please check it out if you find time. The website also has our new students who need sponsors if you know anyone who is interested.

Please pray that God would continue to provide for us in the coming year. Pray that we will have guidance about programs and the finances to fund them. Pray for sponsors as well. God has been so amazing at providing in the past, through ways that only point to Him, and we know that He will continue to be faithful.

The thing I love most about my job is building relationships with so many wonderful and beautiful people. Our house is rarely empty and we love feeding and entertaining any kids who come to visit (especially ones who come with food). Please pray for us as we’ve recently started a girl’s Bible study on the weekends. We have ten girls coming who are either in our program or sisters of someone in our program. Pray not only that we would be able to build relationships with these girls, but especially that we will be able to help them build relationships with their Creator.

Please continue to pray for Eliasa, our little boy with hydrocephalus. He has now undergone three treatment surgeries and is doing very well. Pray that God will continue to heal and work. Also pray for two other young boys that we’ve gotten to know who have a very serious sun allergy and have recently been diagnosed with skin cancer. They need healing and they need Jesus.

Pray for all the children in our program as they start final exams soon. They need peace, wisdom, and confidence.

We are so thankful and happy to be hosting Kristy Hurrell again. She arrives in Uganda on November 11^th and will come back to Canada with me on December 10^th. Please pray for strength for her and wisdom about the programs she will run while she’s here. Pray that God will protect her while she’s here and that her time here will be a time of rest and incredible blessing.

Pray for our NGO status and praise God that it finally got submitted. Also, my Visa is very expired and I’ve been told there is absolutely nothing I can do about it until we get our new certificate. We will be going to Kenya next week so that I can hopefully get a new Visa and prevent any problems that might come up at the airport in December. Please pray all goes well and for safe travel.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support. I hope to see a lot of you over the holidays but if I don’t get a chance I wish you all the best and pray that you enjoy Christmas  and that you feel God’s incredible blessings wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Thanks again and God bless. Much much love and Merry Merry Christmas,

Kimi