You may have heard me say that Ugandan’s are extremely hospitable people. They are. They welcome you to their country in very warm, meaningful and genuine ways. They want to share their culture with you and are happy to do so, then do not want to let you go home when it its time to go. A few have asked to be able to confiscate my passport.
One of the surprising things I have seen and one of the things I will reflect on for a long time to come is the deep friendliness of these people. Rich and poor alike they are a people who are gracious perhaps even to a fault. I haven’t yet put my finger on it entirely but there is something that infuses the entire character and personality of Ugandan people that is very unique and it’s something we are losing (or maybe never really had) at home in the Western developed societies. Even Canadians who are seen as friendly people are losing something of this quality.
Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy at home, and will comfortably and happily settle back into the routine of life I know in Canada, and be relieved to be back in the familiar, as well as within range of Tim Horton`s.
Also, every society is made up of people who share the human condition, including Uganda. That means that one cannot be naive to the reality that there are negative and destructive aspects to Ugandan society. When Edreda dropped me off last night after dinner she had her two sons walk me to the door. I was taken aback by this and almost offended. “Don’t you think I can handle myself in a situation?…” was the thought that crossed my mind. But it reflected their care and concern for their guest and so being offended is absurd, and points once again to their kind nature. Also, her son Paul said that two days earlier a couple of thugs robbed him and took his money and cell phone! So much for idealizing these people. Human darkness and ugliness is present in any society including this one that has made me feel very welcome.
But having said that, there is something else going on here that is still different. It’s different from what we are living out even back home in friendly Canada. You may remember I made mention of the driving here and the way in which traffic is a free for all and that it is literally a game of inches at high speeds. Despite this, I saw only courteous interaction even when people cut each other off which it seems here is an art form. No road rage, no flipping the bird, no cussing, etc.
Maybe it is because they are African. That’s partly true. But if you listen to Ugandans it is partly false because they will be the first to tell you how they are more friendly than the people of neighbouring nations which shall remain nameless and of whom Ugandans say that when you visit those nations the only thing that will happen to you is that you will get robbed! Of course, that’s a very obviously partial and subjective belief and delightfully self-serving! It’s no different than us when we say to foreigners that they should come to Canada because we are friendly unlike those greedy Americans who will rob you and send your sons to war as you are forced to wave their flag! These are statements of our truth as best we want to know and shape it. There are some areas where we are entitled to embellish and shape truth to suit our preferences and reflect our appropriate prejudisms, false as they may be.
Whatever this Ugandan personality is and wherever it comes from, it grows on you. If you have a heart at all, being here sets it on fire and causes it to warm your soul.
I don’t quite know what it is, maybe a deep sense of brotherhood, sisterhood, or a deep sense of belongingness to the human family that is characteristically African. Maybe the old African saying that “it takes a village” applies here, but I’m hesitant to use it because when it is mentioned North Americans remember the title of Hillary Clinton’s book and the comments she has made in the past. For me, that turns it cold and shrill and ruins the saying completely. But there is a very civil and loyal connectedness between people here that is evident in so many layers of society. Somebody once said that if you want to measure the goodness of a society you can merely look at how they treat their prisoners. If true, what I observed take place between Prison Guard and prisoner suggests that this is a society with no equals in it’s goodness. I asked a Prison Fellowship board member about this and he explained that the brotherly bond between the prison keeper and the kept partly emerges out of Ugandan’s understanding that here in Uganda anybody can go to prison regardless of guilt or innocence. It’s past is full of political enemies being wrongly accused and avenged by authorities being bribed into jailing the innocent. It is part of the darkness in African society that manifests in political corruption.
But rather than this suggesting that barbarism and hatred marks African society, the presence of corruption and war only emphasizes my point. With the relative ease of corruption happening, it should be a dog eat dog culture with every man for himself, and the law of the jungle ought to prevail. But it doesn’t. These people are reliant on each other and knitted together in a very civil, brotherly way even against the backdrop of a past marked by war and corruption. Much more than we are at home.
I was with my new clan-member and humanitarian partner Catherine to hear about the extent of Childreach’s humanitarian school projects in the East near Busia that I visited and of her heart wrenching work in the North of Uganda in Gulu. This is the war torn part of Uganda where the LRA rebels have torn the society into shreds for the last 20 years. It is where the IDP camps are and basically after you have worked in the most impoverished areas in Africa, when you go to these camps you are stepping down into Dante’s 5th level of hell by comparison.
The discussion was around my being perplexed about the curious situation in Uganda where most people live on less than $1 per day and know only poverty. Yet within this often heartbreaking poverty, people are basically pretty happy, industrious, and have joy. They are not seeking mental health professionals. Why not? How is this possible? She said a very interesting thing. She said the community and neighbours do the therapy for each other in their support for each other and felt experience of being connected, not alone, and having to survive together. Maybe this is the fundamental reason why North Americans are the biggest consumers of mental health services. It is because we are individualist by nature and therefore, logically, we are basically on our own and at the end of the day -alone. That experience of “alone-ness” cannot be compared to Dante’s 5th level of hell because it actually IS Dante’s 5th level of hell. No wonder we are a therapy culture! We cannot NOT be!
Anyway, this discussion did not help my idea and hope that next time I come to Uganda I could bring Lisa as well as friends of ours who are mental health professionals, counsellors and social workers, nurses and just very kind Canadians. Then she talked about one of the biggest and most important things she does when she goes to Gulu. In the midst of the medical care, blankets given, economic empowerment, and restoration of human dignity, she does one other important thing that led her to ask for help with. She deals with “formerly abducted” girls. They are the 14-19 year olds who were abducted by rebel soldiers at the age of 11 and 12 and were forced to watch their parents be burned alive or hacked up with machete’s. Now they are 15, 17 or 19 and have two or three kids (as a result of rape) and trying to cope with crushing poverty, despair, and hopelessness in the midst of the IDP camps which individually can hold as many as 75,000 people. Many people in the camps were born there, they are second generation internally displaced people.
She was working with them and their children in poverty relief when she noticed they were all characteristically unemotional and mechanical in the fulfilling of their duties as mothers and in relating to people. She began to ask what happened to them and what did they witness. At first, the girls would shut down when asked, begin to shake, or simply stop talking. After time spent building trust however, they began to open up and relate the most horrific stories of human rights abuses, murder, rape and torture you can imagine. This is then when they begin to cry (often for the first time) and simply need their hands held, prayed with, empathized with, and allowed to cry. Slowly some of them are beginning to be able to show slight emotion again in their human interaction.
What is needed is for a team of trained counsellors and or psychologists, nurses or caring individuals who can help in this process together with Catherine. It’s not complicated therapy by Western standards although knowledge and training would be enormously helpful. It is mostly human trust, empathy, love and care that can help these girls (and there are a growing number of young boys showing up now that Catherine is known and trusted) connect to an emotional life again since their childhoods were robbed when they were abducted at gunpoint at night and forced to watch their parents die, sometimes at the forced hand of their own siblings. Anyway, food for thought for the next trip and for some friends of mine (you know who you are!)
The last thing that has been a real treat for me is to have the experience of visiting people and places and then just happen to stumble upon situations where I could respond and help. When we were at “Helping Hands” with Edreda and school was over, the kids were playing and saying goodbye to us and preparing to walk home. One young boy was with his parents talking with us but he did not seem to want to play. They told me he has Malaria, a fever, and just recently has quit wanting to play but just sits there weakened by his fever. The parents cannot afford health care. Malaria however, doesn’t just go away like other fevers, it kills you. That he would not receive Malaria drugs seemed to be just accepted by the people as almost inevitable due to no option. I found out that perhaps 15,000 Shillings was what Malaria treatment would cost. That is approximately $11. I had 20,000 Shillings put into Edreda’s hand within the next hour on the way home and asked her to see to it that the child is treated.
Here our money goes so incredibly far. It is a tremendous joy to simply be meeting people within the normal work of the day and then it merely happens. A need presents itself. It’s a need that is simple for a Canadian to meet because here you get a lot of bang for your buck …1,600 shillings to each buck! But even more, the need is personal to you because you happened to be the one to stumble upon it. Grace and compassion simply moves across your mind and you do a quick simple mental math in the moment of need and for the amount of your own child’s allowance, or the price of a movie, you save a kids life. Even if you forget about that personal moment of aid, the child never forgets that some person their parents met helped save his or her life. Some very simple fundraising back home and contribution of my own money put me in a position to be able, in the happenstance of walking a village, make the difference in the life of a child. I was fortunate to be able to do this kind of thing a number of times.
Remember this young girl? She was the one I mentioned we met
together with her family. She is the one with the untreated medical condition of water swelling inside her head. She just sits here on this blanket not even able to chase the flies off her face. Before I left her home, I knelt down to touch her head, bless her, and smile at her. Well, she cracked a big smile back, obviously unafraid of the Mzungu. I could not forget that, or her.I went to the bank today and arranged for 150,000 Shillings because Edreda and Penny (Patrons and leaders of Helping Hands) told me there is a hospital in Mbara that specializes in this condition. They can make the long trip with the girl there, admit her and the mom into a room at the hospital and have her begin treatment. They were going to plan a way to find donors to help cover the girls treatment. I began thinking I would like to be one of those donors.
Since this help is personal because I met this girl I want to contribute to her having treatment begin by the trip to Mbara and this hospital. I gave this financial gift to Edreda and Penny on behalf of the 5 God-children Lisa and I have back home and in their names. I will receive some profile information and updates on the girl as things progress to give to my God-sons, but I want the treatment to get started.
Our 5 God-sons are, Jaimin Vanden Dungen, Graeme Vanden Dungen, Jared Boras, Josiah Cullen, and Javin Vanden Dungen. You each have a new adopted sister who now can begin treatment in your name and will need your thoughts and prayers. My challenge to each of you is to pray for her and write to her.
As well, my own three children are going to meet three kids from Gulu through correspondence and have a chance to make a difference in their lives and hopefully meet them some day.
This is a very satisfying experience to help somebody like this and you would not believe how easy it is to do, and how much fun it is to do when it is personal. I’ve had to use my holiday time to come on this trip and work pretty hard day in and day out while here. But the truth is, I could never pay enough to find the even the best or most luxurious vacation spot that could deliver the kind of restful satisfaction I find in doing this. It’s the human warmth, civility, affection and Ugandan friendliness that recharges the batteries of life that a vacation ought to do.
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