It was a cloudy day with intermittent rain, something I’d never seen in Uganda.
We had several children yet to visit and they were very spread out! Our first trip was to find Ssenyange Herbert (New Beginning). He had been sick when we visited his school. He was on his way back to school on Monday. He was extremely appreciative of all we do.
We had received word that Scovia (Gary and Terry) was back at school, so we went to see her. Scovia has been with us since the beginning. At first, she was a small girl who lived across Lake Victoria from her school. She actually had to beg rides with fisherman to and from school each day. As she grew, we moved her to a boarding school and she has done well there. Scovia is dealing with a difficult situation. Her grandmother, who raised her after her parents died of AIDS, wants her back at home. And Scovia is torn between continuing her education and chasing after her dreams or returning to help her grandmother. She is also battling some kind of recurring fever which her grandmother attributes to witches. When she is sick, she contacts the grandmother who brings her home to chase the witches away. Both Grace and Vincent gave her phone numbers and she agreed to call one of them before calling her grandmother if she becomes troubled again. This is a critical time for Scovia. We lost one of our students to this village life last year. Pray that Scovia chooses a different path.
After visiting two more children, Vincent took us to the food court for lunch. I ordered lamb shish kabob and for the first time in my life, I had all the lamb I wanted to eat! It was absolutely delicious. Lisa was not so lucky. She ordered chicken from a Cuban stand and it wasn’t very good at all.
Vincent didn’t tell us what to expect after lunch, so we rode along, half-napping thinking we were going to another school. After a while, we left the main road and turned up a steep hill. We passed a building materials company and came out in the quarry. This time, we had the picture of Stephen Batte that I had printed from the Internet.
Nothing had changed except that the rain made driving even more challenging. The huge ruts in the dirt track were filled with water and Vincent had to be very careful not to slide off the road or to become stuck in the mire. He was constantly balancing going too fast to be safe and going so slow he would become stuck.
Vincent stopped in the last set of hovels before the quarry itself. He showed the picture to a woman who showed it to others. They agreed that the boy was gone, taken into another sponsorship program within a few days of the article’s appearance. “The lady in Chattanooga wanted to sponsor a boy of about nine,” I explained. “Is there a boy like that around?”
The women talked among themselves, but said there were no other boys. There were plenty of orphan girls of that age. A tall, thin woman seemed to be the leader of the pack. She said she would go and find such a girl.
We continued climbing up into the quarry area. Women sat along the path breaking rocks with their make-shift hammers. They sat on piles of rocks in their long, tattered skirts whacking rock after rock. They were very good at their job. They could reduce a softball sized piece of rock into gravels with only a few strokes. One of the women had an infant tied to her back. The baby seemed to be asleep as the woman worked.
Vincent showed Stephen’s picture to a man in the quarry. He and several other men who had come to see what was going on agreed that this boy had been taken into another sponsorship program. As Vincent talked, other young men came by the van. They were very friendly, speaking and asking how we were, but their eyes never stopped moving. They seemed to be trying to see what we had in the van. I finally asked Vincent to leave.
Turning around on the narrow road was a major ordeal when it was dry. With the rain, it was almost impossible. The men who had been talking with Vincent and those who had been talking with us helped talk Vincent through the tedious turns until we were pointed back down the track.
The tall woman was waiting for us at the edge of the quarry. She had a young girl with her, an orphan named Phiona whom she was caring for. Phiona wore a filthy, tattered school uniform. She was ten years old and she had left school after P3 when her parents died. At first, she wouldn’t talk at all, but she soon loosened up. She wanted to return to school more than anything. But there was a problem: Phiona had a younger sister named Rachel and she wouldn’t leave her in this place. If Phiona was to move to a boarding school, Rachel had to go, too. The woman heard all this and talked with the girl a bit, then she asked to go find Rachel. We had only one committed sponsorship here, but I told Vincent to let her find the girl. We would figure out some way to get Rachel a sponsor [CAN YOU HELP??]
While we were waiting, I asked Grace if it would be okay for us to get out of the van and talk to some people. She talked with Vincent and they agreed it would be okay. Lisa and I walked back up the road to a woman breaking rocks. She wore a dark top and a long dark skirt. I don’t see how she could sit on these rocks! They were sharp and uneven, but she didn’t seem to notice. She spoke a bit of English and she let us film her breaking large rocks into large gravel with her hammer thing. She showed us a the pile of finished product she was working on.
“How much will you be paid for that pile of rocks?” I asked.
“120,” said the woman.
“And how long will it take you to break that many rocks?”
“One week,” she said proudly. Apparently this was pretty fast.
I started doing the math and figured out that 120,000 shillings (about $75) for a week’s work wasn’t that bad in Uganda. Granted it took seven days a week to produce this much product and the work day pretty much followed the sun.
I didn’t realize she meant 120 shillings per week. That’s $7.50 for sun up to sun down seven days a week.
As I talked with the lady, she told me she had a daughter who wanted to go to school. She said her father was dead and there was no way she could afford school fees by herself. I told her we would try to find a sponsor. She smiled and held my hand.
We walked back to the van where Vincent and Grace were still waiting on Rachel. Phiona was doing well. She was talking with the women who were still standing around. Each of these women were trying to talk to Vincent or Grace. I watched for a few minutes, then finally asked Grace what was going on. Each of these ladies was trying to convince us that we should also take their daughters.
But we only had one committed sponsor. I had promised Rachel and the daughter of the woman who let us tape her that I would find them sponsors. I told Vincent to promise these people that we would try to find sponsors. That was the best I could do.
We gave race cars to the small boys who came to look at us and bracelets to the girls. These kids were in terrible shape: many had runny noses. Several had protruding stomachs and hernias. No one was overweight, though none seemed to be exceptionally thin.
The woman brought Rachel in a little while. She was smaller than Phiona and she wore a plain dress, not a uniform. She wouldn’t say a word to us and she hardly looked at us. Phiona talked to her, but it didn’t help.
After some negotiating, we agreed we would take both girls into the project. We would find a boarding school for them and they would begin when the next term starts (in about 5 weeks). Thanks to Jon, Lara, and both Hannah’s, we had enough spare money to promise clothing, shoes, a mattress, and other essentials for these girls. Vincent said that the girls would come back home during holidays if they wanted to. If not, someone in the church would take them.
On the way down, I noticed very many younger boys. But as they had said, there were no elementary school boys around. It finally dawned on me that these boys were in the quarry working, just as Stephen had been. And a family with a working boy wasn’t about to give up the revenue he represented. The young girls weren’t able to carry as much or break rocks as quickly as the young boys. That meant the girls needed a place to live and food to eat, yet they were returning no income to the family. Of course they would be glad to part with the girls!
This experience was one of the most emotional for both Lisa and me. With only one sponsorship to offer, we felt like potential puppy owners at a pet store. The idea of having to choose which life to change was overwhelming. And the ladies trying to convince us to take their own daughters so that they wouldn’t grow up to this fate was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
We learned that we will have problems working here. Many of the people are from the Achole tribe which traditionally controls northern Uganda. But some are Bugandans, members of the tribe that currently runs the nation and Kampala. There is a Bugandan leader here and an Achole leader. We didn’t go through them because either of these leaders would give us kids only from their own tribe. Neither would like it that we came in and chose on our own. Vincent will sort this out.
We talked about the quarry as we drove back into town. Grace and Vincent had been as moved as we were. We agreed that they would return to the quarry and ask the tribal leaders for a list of true orphans from their tribes. We’ll add these to our waiting list right away. Then, they will return and work on identifying needy children with only one parent. In fact, I would expect our waiting list to be dominated by these quarry workers in no time.
On the way back, we stopped to visit Zawedde Hilda (Tom and Linda). Her parents had moved her to a boarding school, and they weren’t very cooperative. After a long wait, they said I had to come into the office to sign for the girl. I went to the office and they started looking for the girl. While we were sitting there, Grace realized she had made a mistake. The girl was on another campus of this school. We quietly excused ourselves and returned to the van.
We picked up Joseph and Michael at church. I have a Uganda guide that I bought a few years ago. I had checked it and found several new restaurants. Lisa and I decided on an Indian place downtown. We had eaten at a stall run by the same family at Garden City.
We wove our way through the rush-hour traffic, but we couldn’t find the restaurant. Vincent finally called the number in our guide book and got directions. We were only a block or two off. The restaurant didn’t open until 7:00 and it was only as few minutes after 6:00. We drove around and wasted a few minutes, but when we drove by again there was a parking place right at the door. Vincent took it and we went inside. The restaurant was located on the second floor (first if you’re British!). It was dark but a man came out and invited us in. We sat at a coffee table by the bar. The man came back and took drink orders. We sat there comfortably sipping water until the restaurant officially opened at 7:00.
This restaurant specialized in food from northern India. I ordered an assortment of dishes. The evening was just beginning for the cooks, and our food took a bit longer than I expected, but it was well worth the wait! The food here rivals the restaurant at Garden City.
On the way out, I found the wonderful mixture of seeds and spices that one sees at most Indian places. I spooned up a handful and popped it in my mouth. This mixture was toasted and not as strong as the one used at most Indian places. There was a second bowl beside the seeds. It contained a store of clear, rectangular objects, which I took to be some kind of rock sugar. So I popped one of these in my mouth, too. I’m not sure what this was. When I first bit it, I thought perhaps this was a bowl of beads from the beaded curtain that separated the rooms in the restaurant. But on second try, the thing shattered in my mouth. There was still no taste, so I began wondering if this was some sort of air freshener.
Lisa wasn’t particularly surprised that I’d picked up something with no idea what it might be, but our Ugandan friends found this to be absolutely amazing. Grace, between fits of laughter, kept saying, “Who told you to eat this thing?”
I still think this was some kind of rock sugar candy, though it was absolutely tasteless. The good news it’s been more than 24 hours now. Whatever it was, I seem to have handled it just fine.
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