Street Ministry

As promised, here is a post on this week’s assignment of finding a family living in the slums, building a friendship with them, assessing their needs, and meeting those needs as best as we could.  It was a very emotionally draining week for all of us 360 students.  I encourage you to read the other internationals blog posts on their experiences in the slums as each group found a family with very different struggles and needs.

Tuesday: In the afternoon, each group was bussed out to different slums within the greater Kampala area.  My group was placed in Bwaise (spelling?) and had discussed prior to that we wanted to find a family with young children.  We headed down a street with many shop fronts trying to find a way into the slum behind.  Eventually we found a small path where we dodged trenches filled with murky stagnant water into the area.  Immediately, we see a four-year-old girl taking a bath outside her home shouting “MZUNGU MZUNGU!” (aka white person… meaning me).  My friend Rosemary goes up to the little girl and starts speaking to her in Luganda and finds her mother inside the home.  The mother, Harriet, invites us into her home and introduces us to her four daughters ages 13, 7, 4, and 2.  The doorway has a big cement block that we needed to step over to get into the house which is there to prevent the house from flooding when it rains.  The home was a million times hotter than outside and had a curtain to divide the living space from where the family sleeps.  In the living space, there were two couch chairs and a bookshelf.  My friends chat with Harriet in Luganda and translate the conversation over to me.  We find out that Harriet is a Christian woman and her husband and children are Muslim.  Her husband works at a meat packing plant and she sells cosmetics, Vaseline, and toothpaste on the street in the evenings.  She shared with us that she purchases her products in the city’s cheap market and only sells her products in the evenings so that tax-collectors won’t bother her.  Harriet was so welcoming and shared with us how her four year old daughter just loves mzungus, which was pretty easy to tell as she continued to stare at me with a big beautiful smile.

Wednesday:  Again we went back to Harriet’s home in the afternoon to first find her daughters there watching the television in which they wire the electricity from one of the shops in the area.  As soon as Harriet came home, she sent her oldest daughter to go get us guests some pop.  As we visit the family, some children from the area see me in their house and become quite curious.  The children squeeze into the already crowded home as Harriet shows us photos of the family and the girls when they were younger.  Being the teacher, I get Rosemary to ask Harriet about the girls’ schooling.  We find out the oldest is in primary 6 (gr.6), the seven year old is in primary 2 but a year behind because they were unable to pay the school fees one year, and the four year old in Kindergarten.  We find out that the school is not too far away from their home and Harriet, the girls and the mob of neighborhood children decide to take us there.  We walk past flooded abandoned homes on again narrow congested pathways until we reach a large wooden and worn building with a small office made of iron sheets.  A teacher greets us and shows us two of the classrooms in the school.  The school is one of the poorest in the area with grades K to primary 7 and the best mark on the primary 7 national exam ranking at a grade 2 level. 

Thursday:  During class time, our group developed a needs assessment based on our conversations with the family and our observations around their home.  We are assigned 50,000 Ugandan shillings (equivalent to about $23US) to budget and prioritize the needs of the family.  Once our shopping list was approved, we headed out to a large, congested market in the middle of Kampala.  We gave my backpack to one of the guys in our group to carry all our supplies, and our money was split and hidden between each of us.  My friend Lillian held my hand as we moved through the market.  It was the craziest thing I have ever seen with so many people shouting at me to buy things and big trucks trying to get past the herds of shoppers and pick-pockets.  My team bargained down the many vendors in Luganda as I checked off our items on our list.  We then moved to a different area to get some cheaper sandals for the family.  As we were debating whether or not the sandals were good quality, a woman quickly and sneakily tells us that she overheard some guys across the street targeting  to pickpocket us.  Praise the Lord for that woman! We immediately give our money to Emmanuel to head to another market to get the rest of our supplies as the rest of us turn around and head back to church with our bag.  Why were we a target?  I assume it is because of my backpack with the Canadian flag and because of my skin color.  As we were walking back, this huge bus gets in the way of our path and Rosemary and I lose Lillian and Hakim.  Needless to say, I held Rosemary’s hand for the majority of the way back to the church so that I wouldn’t lose her too.  Anyway, we all ended up safely back at the church sweaty and with all our gifts for our families.

Gifts for the family:

After conversations with Harriet, we discovered that the girls were soon to go back to school but the father has yet to give Harriet money to buy school supplies.  We felt like the most immediate need that we could help with was buying school supplies for the girls.  We also purchased new sandals for the four girls, some shoe polish, Vaseline, a brush, and some plastic plates.  Since we were so blessed to have Harriet show us her photos, we decided to get a photo album to put them all in.  We hope to purchase new mosquito nets, clothes for the girls, a bag of sugar and some sort of covering for their floor over the next five months.

Friday:  We gather up our materials and head out to visit our family.  When we get to their home, Harriet is washing clothes and chatting with her neighbor.  She tells us she was just talking about us and invites us inside to introduce us to her sister-in-law.   The little four-year-old greets me with a smile and proceeds to stand behind me and pet my hair as we chat with her mother.  We give Harriet the gifts and she expresses gratitude as she opens each of the bags.  She tells us how she was thankful to get this school supplies as she would have had to get it all the day before school started on Sunday. The oldest girl couldn’t help but smile and the younger ones had a difficult time expressing their emotions.  We prayed together all in a circle holding hands before we had to leave.

All in all, I am so thankful to get to be a part of this loving family for the next five months.  It was totally God’s doing to direct us to this particular home.  On another note for this week, I met my sponsor child!!  He was quite shy but was very warm to me as he showed me his cartwheels, singing, around his house, introduced me to his housemother and brothers and sisters, put his hand on my shoulder as we took funny pictures and played tag around the yard.  I would have never thought I would have had the chance to visit him let alone get to share life with him and his beautiful family for the next five months when I began sponsoring him.  Again this week has been a whirlwind of emotions!

Peace and love