Day 1 Travel. We were on the unlucky side of the airplane – our personal tv's were broken for some reason. After about hour 6 with no “distraction” the 15 hour flight slowed....way...down. Thankfully our team was social because our seats became the last place any of us wanted to be, so we gathered around different people at different times, sharing funny stories and just getting to know one another. When you are 12 years old, though, it's much harder to “do nothing” for 15 hours – especially when you live in a country with iEverything and On Demand everything else. My pre-teen “travel buddy”, however, was a trooper and barely complained at all. She knew where she was headed and how much “nothing” kids she was about to meet did every single day of their lives.
Day 2 Baby Cottage. I'm not a baby person anymore, but babies are cute. Seeing a dozen of them laying in tiny box-cribs one on top of the other, on top of the other, in a room us Westerners would barely consider big enough to be called a nursery for one, was far from cute. The walking children, those anywhere from 18 months to 4 years old, all shared one room that housed two tiny picnic tables and one double mattress which laid on the floor. This room served at their dining room, their bedroom, their living room and their play room. In all, 34 children called this place home. The orphanage director has an incredibly powerful testimony and bucked the system, so to speak, as she grew up in Uganda. It seemed that God had a calling on a young Ugandan woman long before she even knew what a calling meant. Her motto, her mission, is to love the children from now until they have a family or go to heaven to be with Jesus – whichever comes first.
The staff at this orphanage is what makes this otherwise dreary place to live more than bearable, though. These women, day after day, hold these children, play with these children, and feed these children three times a day. They also bathe them and change their clothes every....single...day. In their free time, they are washing bottles and dishes and laundry. And oh, how much laundry they wash....in buckets....outside....by hand...in the hot sun....every single day.
Our team arrived one morning to help with bath time. There were 18 of us and despite our well-oiled, well-planned out process for getting children through the line, it took more than a couple of hours, and several trips to dump out and re-fill the make-shift bath tubs (buckets, really), before all of the children were laying down in their cribs or on the mattress.
Day 3 – Sole Hope Outreach Clinic. Today was tough – especially for my 12 year old. I knew it would be, but what I didn't know was how well she would handle what she saw and push through it anyway. Despite being given the choice to step away from watching jiggers being removed from the feet of children younger than her, all the while “note taking” for the Sole Hope worker removing them, she chose to stay...and watch...and help. I know not everyone has the stomach to do this, and not everyone can handle watching this process unfold before their very eyes. I get it. I do. But at the same time, everyone needs to see what we saw – what my daughter was brave enough to push through – because it's not fair. It's not fair for children to collect jiggers on their feet just because they don't have shoes or parents or a loved one who knows what to do about preventing them. It's not fair that kids with jiggers are considered “cursed” because of these tiny worms that crawl into their skin as they walk, sit and sleep on the red dirt that is Uganda.
Equally importantly, however, is that it's not fair that I have a choice to pretend things like this don't happen and have a choice to “change the channel” when something I come across is too disgusting or too tough to stomach. It's not fair that I can Google anything I want to entertain myself instead of first having to Google something that could change me; cause me to do something to improve the life of someone else. In a world that revolves around the internet, T.V., video conferencing and face-time, why do we spend so little time learning about the world outside our little, safe, comfortable bubble? Why do we make ourselves feel better first....and then, if time or money allows...then maybe....someday....we will do something...that might change the world.
Day 4 Sole Hope goes to school. Today the Sole Hope land rovers loaded up and drove to a school where more than 300 kids attended – barefoot kids. We followed, as our job was to be the extra hands their team needed to get as many kids' feet checked out as possible. The make-shift, portable, jigger-removal clinic runs like a well-oiled machine, but no matter how fast and efficiently they work, they can't possible get all the kids they visit through the line by the end of the day.
To be continued.....going to Sole Hope...to spend time with kids...in real Face Time
No comments:
Post a Comment