Saturday, September 25, 2010

I turned twenty this week.

I am greeted every morning by children singing and the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen.
I sleep right after a hot meal around a campfire and singing and dancing with people I adore, a few mzungus but mostly kind Ugandans who give amazing hugs and patiently teach us about everything from the history of the war to how to wash clothes properly.
I am seeing the joy and purpose found in discipline, and how much more meaningful a life lived in it becomes.
I am learning that taking hours to make a meal or clean a load of laundry is much more relational and fun than rushing through these activities as we do back home. I have had most of my amazing conversations, realizations, and joyful moments sitting with a bunch of women sorting rocks out of rice and chopping tomatoes.
I am learning that kids who never get to play with markers, jump ropes, and beads are much more respectful of each other and the materials than kids who have unlimited supplies at home. They share, put caps back on, and compliment each other. It blows us all away.

I am surrounded by folks dedicated to the message and work of the Gospel of Jesus, who not only think it novel and beautiful, but powerful and demanding.
I am inspired by them to really examine my existence and it’s central purpose, and to face the fact that materialism is not only sin, but proof of the harsh reality that you really don’t know God.
I am learning to give both love and truth, and to be patient with people (okay, this is coming slowly).
I am learning people don’t respond to harshness, but to the joy that comes from being free from the love of stuff.
I am learning that our lives are really supposed to be living sacrifices, and in the truth that because we have Jesus we shouldn’t care about or desire the things we fill our lives with.

I am learning that idealism is good, and one person dedicated to changing the world can.
I spend my days with kids who have come from unimaginably hard places. They have been completely unloved, abducted, beaten, shot, forced to kill, hungry, thirsty, sick.
I see them now, here, playing and laughing.
I dance with them, put antibiotic ointment on their cuts and give them big hugs before they go to sleep.
I pray with them, learn their stories, names, and language.
I fall in love with them.
I know this beautiful transformation of their lives is because they have been given a chance to go to school, live in community, be loved.
I know it is because one woman saw injustice and hated it so much she wanted to do something about it, and even though no one got behind her she fought hard enough to change the circumstance of these children.
I am learning that when you do something for God’s glory, He shows up and does crazy amazing things.

I am learning that I don’t really matter, not in a self-deprecating way, just in light of how many people die of a disease it takes $1 to treat. Or how many little orphaned girls grow up getting sexually abused by their uncle or grandpa without anyone caring enough to stop it. I am completely useless if I don’t spend my existence radiating the love of God, helping widows and orphans in their distress, and being set apart. And there is nothing more liberating than knowing life is simply that.

I had the best birthday of my life thus far! I got a nurse practitioner to teach me how to properly and effectively take care of the kids when they are sick. I got to carry baby Esther on my back and take a pretty stroll through the field. I got to take a refreshing prayer walk with Leilah. I got to eat chocolate pudding with my family of friends, and dance around a campfire to Erin playing covers of “I Will Survive” and “Single Ladies”. I got tons of people praying for me from half the world away. I got people to talk things out with, love me when I am whiny and sassy and completely undeserving of love.

I am entirely blessed and taken care of. I really could not ask for more.

Which brings me to my concluding point:


26,000 children will die today from starvation or preventable disease. Most of them without any idea that there is something greater than this life.

I would love if you would help me do something about it.
World Vision, Compassion, Kiva, International Justice Mission, and endless other solid organizations are dedicated to making poverty history. Sponsor a kid, give a loan to someone trying to provide for his or her family, help a well get built. Change is possible and happening. Be part of it. Go out to eat less, go on fewer shopping sprees, use cheaper shampoo. That really is all it takes to make the life of a child exponentially better. There are hundreds of places in the bible that talk about taking care of the poor (read James). I know a lot of people (including myself) are drawn to certain places and people groups, but we are biblically all responsible for this world.

I love you all! If you got through this entire ramble you probably love me too. Thanks for your time.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Masindi!

We have arrived at last on the land. Three months to spend walking through cassava fields, playing football in the wide open, praying in the freezing African rain, and learning bee keeping from Mike (our friendly neighborhood Indiana Jones). Today makes a month, by the way. We have been in Uganda for a full four weeks, and it is hard to fathom leaving. We have only been at the village for a week, but have already made such amazing friends and begun really exciting work. Gulu certainly has lots of perks (coffee shops, running water, electricity). However, it is really nice to live in a grass hut and run to the well to get our water. We are in Africa, after all.

As most of you know, I was coming here hoping to help some babies be born. In the airport hopping from Chicago to London, I got a call from the founder of Earth Birth, a women’s health collective 20km north of Gulu. She offered that if I came up for as little as two weeks and as much as I was here, she would pay for my housing and food if I served as their doula. Knowing I was dedicated to be with Village of Hope for the majority of the time, I was a little devastated as I declined. It was a definite die to self, serve whoever is in front of you moment. I really let go of my hope of doing births, and plunged into playing with the refugee kids, learning Acholi, and reading like a mad woman. And it has been wonderful. I could have been content doing that for four months.

But God had more (as He always seems to when we trade our dreams for His). As soon as we arrived, I met the nurse, Maureen. She has been told about my background and was excited to have a fellow nurse around to help. I explained to her that I was a doula and had not even begun nursing school yet, but there is something about being white that convinces anyone you are prepared for anything. I immediately began studying every antibiotic, antifungal, analgesic, and antihistamine in the office for intended use, warnings, and dosage. In the past few days I have preformed tons of simple medical procedures. And it has been so amazing. I love being a nurse! (This is good news).

On top of that, Leilah is working with Ronance, the social worker (as she is a social work major), Erin is teaching the kids guitar and painting designs on things (as she is an amazing musician/graphic designer), Tom is helping the men build things (as he is a rectangle), Collin is fixing computers and putting on programs (as he is a nerd), and Brynn is running around filming it all!

We are teaching English twice a week, doing crafts, teaching health, and I am having a weekly women’s health class (this is your cervix! Etc…) We play sports every night, well, I watch and get to know Africans, but everyone else does. We help cook, do laundry, get to know the kids. We are BUSY. And it is wonderful.

We google things like “How to make a documentary” and “Teaching health class”. We are completely aware that we are in over our heads, and it is beautiful. It means that we are completely incapable of helping anyone or doing any good unless we (I miss my pastor and his tired but true catch phrases) let go and let God.

So now that all that is explained, I will give you a typical day in Masindi:

We wake up at 6:20 AM, light is barely starting to fill the sky and we drag our yoga mats (we got them for $2 and they RULE, although they are nothing like traditional ‘yoga’ mats) onto the football field. We stretch, talk, pray, laugh our way through down dogs and intense leg lifts. The kids stop on their way to class and stare at us (the idea of working out in pretty foreign). We scoot over to breakfast where the entire team, Mike and Janelle (awesome married ex-pats who oversee things at VOH), and the construction crew come together. Breakfast is white bread and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” (Hi, Mom and Dad, please bring peanut butter). We read for a bit and split up. I head over to the clinic, where there are usually a line of kids waiting to get their cuts and headaches tended to. Maureen, her baby, Kevin (in Uganda, Kevin is the name for girls and our imaginarily seventh team member/ scapegoat), and I scoot around the clinic and put iodine and band aids on wounds (even kids who have shoes don’t wear them so we see about five foot gashes a day) pass out ibuprofen, and rub anti-itch cream on bites. I usually take a break and go over to the cooks, some of us help them sort rice and peel potatoes, and we learn some Acholi. Lunch comes; rice and beans, we get together and talk about what we are doing. Lillian (she is teaching Acholi to us mzungus) and her daughter Esther, (the cutest, cutest child I have ever come across) laugh and play. Sometimes we make trips to pick up sand or supplies with Mike. We all ride in the back of a dump truck. We bounce around as we go drive over the bumpy dirt road. We hear stories about the war, adventures with snakes, bees, and hippos, but mostly stories of families. We go back to work, whatever that happens to be (picking potatoes, painting the church, playing soccer) and keep at it until the sun starts to set. We eat dinner like a big happy family around the campfire. We sing songs with Erin’s guitar and our adungus and there is so much joy. Lights out by ten, with some prayer, group time and reading before then. And we all sleep well to the peaceful sound of thunder and rain.

Monday, September 6, 2010

In the midst of begging babies and people with 10 chickens on their bicyles...

There is Coffee Hut, and Kope Cafe, and Sankofa. Little homes away from home. Refuges that offer muffins and pizza and Heinz ketchup. We are planning to go two hours South in a week or so, and stay there living on the land with the kids until December, but we first must get some stuff done here in Gulu. Interviewing kids, taking their pictures, and imputing info to the computer can only happen after about 3pm, so our mornings are free lately. This is a nice break from the nonstop moving we were doing for the first two weeks. We spend them writing in our journals and reading and well, this. So blog, I am utilizing this free wifi to say hello! I am alive and very happy. Read Half the Sky, Radical, Just Do Something, and The Ragamuffin Gospel. But mostly, your bible. All these books have been shaping me and certainly having an impact on what I am doing here.

Amaro,
Suz

Thursday, September 2, 2010

A Day in the Life!

Every morning, we wake up at 8:04 Erin’s alarm clock. We groggily walk to breakfast at the porch of our hotel, looking out into a busy street, where we see Tom, Collin, Brynn and Leilah already waiting for us. Our omelets come, we make toast, tea, and take our malaria meds. Gideon, a photo journalist from Tanzania, and Fred, a Kenyan writer ask us about our plans for the day and try to convince us girls to come home with them or at least “let them take a white lady on a walk”. We decline. We thank God for Col and Tom. We devour our food. We take our Nalgenes and filter the swamp water and wave our magic wands in them. We hold our nose and drink. Charles, our kind Acholi driver, picks us up and takes us to the safehouse. Sometimes he tells stories about when the LRA was operating in Uganda, how they burnt down his hut, how they killed his best friend, he smiles because death is different here, much less serious because it’s much more common. We drive past markets, broken down restaurants, women with water jugs on their heads and babies on their backs, bodabodas (mopeds) holding six people, and George (a twenty something carpenter we met when our van broke down) waving us by.
We get to the safehouse, Bright, the most adorable, helpful four year old you will ever meet, Colleen, a sassy ten year old who relishes in any opportunity to laugh at us, and Clinton, a brilliant pre-teen who has a huge crush on Leilah greet us at the gate. They give us huge hugs and practice their English. The neighborhood kids gather around us and ask our names. Sheila, a two year old terrified on Mzungus (white people) cries and tries to run. When we get too close to her she points her finger in our face and shouts her favorite English word: MEAN!!!! We go inside, and Richard, a gawky painter directs us what to do with our brushes. We paint for hours, getting to know each other and sweating buckets in the heat. Julie calls us in for lunch, a feast of rice, beans, cabbage, and nasinasi (pineapple). We eat, play with the kids, and go back at it again. Sometimes we do laundry, we are all learning to do it by hand and we are pretty laughable. Our wrists are not as tough as the locals so they bleed. We sing Black Eyed Peas and laugh anyway. Sometimes Adam (my first self-found Loveland friend) comes by and we talk about life plans and how to best bless people with the talents we’ve been given and how to deal with everything we are seeing here. He is building a medical center twenty kilometers north of Gulu and is a seriously amazing man. He is going to treat my pets when they are sick (he is going to vet school in a few months) and I am going to deliver his wife’s babies. He sticks around and helps us compile bags of rice, beans, and posho (flour). We load them into a van and take off.
Charles smiles and greets us, the safehouse kids and their surrounding neighbors gather to wave goodbye as we go. We set off for a camp. Either Abili, La Roo, Ti-Tuku, or Obiya. We play with the kids, give them a ball, they dance for us, we take their photos and interview them for sponsorship stuff, we pass out the food, hug them, and something as the sun is setting I run off after kids in the fields. The way the light hits the grass makes something more beautiful than I have ever seen. I look at these orphans, in all of their joy, and choose it with them. I tickle them and they hold me tightly. As they run back to their huts I do some yoga gazing at the sky and Tom comes and tells me not to run off by myself. I shrug him off until a man comes up to me and starts to give me an invasive hug. I decide to listen to Tom from now on. We get into the van and wave goodbye.
Then comes dinner, after a long, hard, sweaty dirty day. We pray together, laugh about the miscellaneous events of the day, such as Charles getting a 500 shilling (25 cent) fine for waiting too long for us in the car outside our hotel, or a kid squatting and peeing through her clothes during a dance. All of our germaphobe tendencies have been killed off. It was either them or us. TIA. Nothing is exactly ‘sanitary’. We play cards, I drink a beer, the girls drink Stoney’s (more intense ginger ale) and we laugh until we cry. Sometimes Erin plays her guitar, she sings like an angel and the staff and other residents crowd around the door to hear her. We shower, some of us check email, write blogs. We all end up in someone’s room just talking. We discuss poverty, video games, oppression, America’s greed, what we are reading, how to improve life for the lower 80% of the world, love, marriage, relationships, life histories. We change our opinions. We encourage one another. We really do all love one another. We say thank you for everything (Tom taught us that), we remind each other gently that our purpose lies only in glorifying God, and the rest is details, we point each other to scripture, books, blogs that will help us along our journeys. We tell stories. Everything is surrounded in love and laughter and sometimes tears.
As it gets later, we all shuffle into our rooms, say goodnight to Dennis and Goddy and Mrs. Ocot (our loving staff, eternally ready for a conversation), we read our bibles and books and write in our journals and pass out despite the droning sound of club music coming from nearby.
And there you have it!
P.S. Excuse the repetitive nature, grammatical errors, and lack of eloquence in this blog. I am usually exhausted, hungry, and have just finished sobbing my eyes out. Your patience in this is much appreciated.
P.P.S If you would like to contact me privately, please email me at suzinafrica@gmail.com