Life as a Rollercoaster

This week has been up and down, full of joy and sorrow.  It makes you realize how precious life truly is and how quickly it can change with a snap of the fingers. 

Some of the many moments of the week:

This Tuesday, we celebrated Callie’s nineteenth birthday by bringing cake to class to share with all of our lovely classmates.   The tradition in Uganda is to dump water on someone on their birthday.  Naturally, I wanted to see this one happen and schemed with some of my Ugandan friends to swarm Callie.  (Ok, I am not that evil.  I knew ahead of time that Callie was expecting to get wet and was so prepared as to bring a change of clothes).  I contemplated doing the Canadian tradition of birthday bumps but decided against it.  Anyway, we had a sweet morning celebrating Callie’s birthday.

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That Tuesday afternoon, each group went back to visit their family living in the slums.  We hadn’t been back to see our families for almost two weeks so we were all looking forward to spending more time with them.  Upon our arrival, we find out that the oldest daughter, who is thirteen years old, has been missing from their home for nearly two weeks.  The day after we last visited them, Finah went out around 10pm and has not been seen or heard from since then.  Finah took with her the books, school supplies, and sandals that we purchased for the family.  Her mother, Harriet, shared with us that she has no idea where Finah might be and that she contacted the police and searched everywhere.  She thinks that Finah was either taken to become a house girl for someone or might be in contact with someone who she met somewhere.  Finah is a beautiful 13 year old girl who loves math and science.  She is her mother’s right-hand girl as she looks after her younger sisters and runs to the store to purchase things for the family.  She was supposed to start Primary 7 right after she went missing. I was absolutely overwhelmed by it all as I realized I really do not know anything about this family.  I really do not know the entire situation in which Finah was in.  Did she escape something or now is she in a worse situation?  I can never truly understand the life of living in an African slum.  I will forever be foreign.  The best I could ever do is to love compassionately and share life with them the best I can.  It was a very hard and painful day for me but I am so thankful that out of all the possible families I could have adopted, this was the one that I was meant to spend time with.  I ask that you pray for Finah’s safety wherever she is right now.

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On Thursday, our whole class changed into our grungy clothes, the internationals lathered on the sunscreen and we all bussed out to a farm to help with the harvest.  Watoto is working towards becoming self-sustainable and so this farm provides food for the Watoto villages.  We helped out harvesting pumpkins, tomatoes, and rice.  The media team shot clips of us working for the welcome message at church for next week.  By the end of the day, us internationals had nice dark tans… well actually… we were filthy dirty!  It was a fun day working alongside my classmates and getting to know them all better.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting out of the city away from the boda bodas, and busy streets of Kampala, into the serene and peaceful country.  (This is the small town kid talking here).  We finished off the day, under cover from the rainstorm eating rice, beans and chapati with our hands, with exhausted bodies from the long day. 

On Saturday, we headed to Bbira village for our weekly sports days with the children.  There is organized soccer, volleyball, and basketball for us all to get involved in and for the children from the village to partake in or watch.  I did play volleyball with some of my classmates and the teens in Bbira, however my top priority was to spend time with my sponsor child.  I walked over to his home and was kindly greeted by his whole family.  Polar showed me the new playground behind his home that was built by a team from Texas last week.  We played on the slides, and monkey bars with many of the other kids in that cluster.  (To give you a clear picture, the cluster that Polar lives in is heavily concentrated with young children.  The playground was spilling over with children!)   His shyness began to break as we took goofy pictures and joined a soccer game.  I LOVE that kid!  Once the sports day came to a close, I was invited to my awesome friends, Gloria and Lillian’s, home for lunch.  Lillian showed me how to make real passion fruit juice.  We then changed out of our sports clothes and into our church clothes for the evening service. 

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One group made a pit stop at the hospital before going to church.  During the week, they found out that the woman in their slum family was taken to the hospital as she has been quite ill, malnourished, and is suffering from HIV and tuberculosis.  As we waited for the church service to begin, we were given the news that upon the team’s arrival to the hospital, they were rudely informed that this woman had passed away.  This lady faced many hardships in her life.  Even though it has been so painful for many of my classmates as they mourn over her loss, I am so thankful that this woman was cared for and loved in her final days by these incredible individuals.

Life is tough.  My hope is that the tough stuff that I see and experience will forever be real or in Hannah’s words, “raw and real”.  Never will be the day in which I get used to the daily sufferings around me.   A life lost is a life that shall be mourned over, and never ignored. 

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