Hi Again!
Hi everyone, I hope this finds you well and enjoying some
warm weather for a change! I am back in Kisoro, back “home”! The month of May
flew by. There was no yoga classes and no hospital volunteering. Those might
have been used to entice me to get me to Kabale. Very “African” of them, but it worked! It was a good experience and
nice to get out and see what else is happening in the world. Kabale is a bigger
town than Kisoro, yet they had many more power outages and much slower
internet, 'tis the reason you haven’t heard from me!
This time when the rats came to my bed, I actually was
awoken by it bumping into my arm. I sat straight up from a dead sleep with a
huge gasp and heard it scamper off. I set about tucking the mosquito net so
tight under the mattress so that if he came back he would bounce off of it like
a trampoline. I was awoken again by the sound of it scurrying around the bedroom
a little while later. I just can’t decide which I like better, having rats in
my bed or having bed bugs?! I mean, at least the rats don’t make me itch and
leave me with red spots all over my body.
I spent the month at
Kerungi Children's Village in Kabale. The meaning of "Kerungi" is
"something beautiful". And that is is, a beautiful home with 19
beautiful children living in it. They are very lucky kids to be here.
About half of them have been abandoned by their parents, many of them
alongside
the road near the border. The other half have been orphaned. And still I
consider them lucky to have found their way here. Kerungi is owned by
Shawn and Primrose.
Shawn’s an American from Colorado and Prim is a local woman, they’ve
been
married for about 17 years and they started the Orphanage almost four
years
ago. The main caretakers are the two
“house mothers”, one for the boys and one for the girls. There’s also an
assistant
house mother, Dennick, who is 18 and still in school. Her payment for
working here is that Kerungi pays her school fee's. There’s the nursery
school teacher, Caleb, who’s also the Manager of the orphanage. He and
his wife
just had their first baby. Then there’s the woman who comes in to do the
laundry six days a week. As you can imagine, 19 kids create an awful lot
of
laundry. Of course they don’t wear diapers here, so every time one of
the
little one’s wet themselves, it’s a change of clothes, or maybe every
other
time they wet themselves. They often just hang out in wet pants and it’s
always
a surprise when you pick them up! Poor Auntie Mildred, when she’s
finished with all that laundry, she goes to dig in the field with the
other gardeners. There are
two men that are gardeners/security watchmen at night. There’s one woman
who
comes to dig and that way she can also see her daughter, Shalom. Shalom
is the
youngest child here. She’s about a year old and her mother brought her
to
Keyrungi, knowing she couldn’t provide for her. Shalom doesn’t recognize
her
own mother and she’s very attached to Joan, the housemother for the
girls. She
thinks Joan is her mother and every time Joan walks out of the room
Shalom
screams. Namara is the 19th child, who just arrived while I
was
there. The only thing we know about Namara is that he’s spent the past
month
sleeping on the floor of the police station, until they called us and
Caleb
went and picked him up. When Caleb took him to school, to enroll him, he
wouldn’t go inside. Caleb had to drag him in, then he refused to speak.
When
Caleb brought him back, he said, “He did very bad at everything, he
wouldn’t
talk, wouldn’t answer their questions.” I asked if he’d still be able to
go to
school, and he told me yes, that he’d still be able to go. There’s
Determine
with his twinkling eyes who sticks his fingers in his ears and sings,
"you can't catch me, you can't catch me" when I walk in the room. Who
knew all those songs I learned from Early Childhood classes would come
in so handy? They love "ram-sam-sam". Even the ones who can't talk do
the actions and sing the rhythm of the song over and over and over
again. Then there's Alex with his dueling personalities. He can be the
sweetest five-year-old, walking around with a hanky wiping all the snotty noses
(yes…it’s a shared hankie!), the very next moment you might find him twisting a
two-year-old's arm behind his back just to hear him scream. There’s
sweet, little Night, with the most beautiful, big smile. There are two
sets of twins, the boys are Odongo and Opio, the girls are Kato and Kakuru,
whom I still can’t tell apart. There’s Friday, also about a year old. With this
many kids, it’s often the older one’s taking care of the younger ones. So, the
three-year-old's are washing the faces of
the one-year-old's after lunch. The four-year-old's are often changing the wet pants of
the two-year-old's. After naptime it is
one of the bigger boys who takes little Friday, to the potty chair and sits him
down on it. After that bigger boy gets
him there, he walks away and doesn’t give Friday another thought. I’ve found
Friday more than once sitting there, screaming, waiting for someone to come and
clean him up. Or sometimes he doesn’t make it to the potty chair and when I go
to pick him up after nap, something plops on my toe. I don’t look down, I just kiss
Friday’s snotty face and carry him to the bathroom, where I turn on the cold
tap water and give my foot and Friday’s bottom half a bird bath. The trickiest
part after that is finding Friday some clean clothes. They have clothes for 11 boys in four duffle
bags and/or suitcases. As Friday stands there shivering, I’m searching for some
pants that won’t fall off of him when he walks.
During naptime I play Go-Fish with the bigger kids, I wash dishes, or I
sit in the shade while Mildred stacks dry laundry in a heap next to me. The
walkways are lined with low bushes, they are all draped with clothes, every
inch of grass has blankets and sheets spread out to dry on it. She piles the
mountain of laundry next to me and I sit for an hour or two and fold and fold
and fold. My last week there, the bigger kids went back to school. Gift,
Namara, Blessing and Nunu are all in 1st grade. They came running
home for lunch and when they found me there folding clothes they ran into my
arms and I spun each one of them around in a circle. Even big Namara, who
hasn’t spoken to me in the three weeks he’s been here. While Nunu is still
laughing and spinning she says, “Where are the cards?” I tell her she has to go
eat first. My last Sunday we celebrated the May birthdays, there are three of
them. Caleb tells me that many of the kids were “assigned” birthdays according
to how they behaved; they guessed at the age of the child and gave them a
birthdate. Then I asked him how they knew their names. He explains that many of
them knew their own names, but they had to name a few of them who were too
young to remember their own names. Alex,
Deo, Antony and Evelyn were all given names when they arrived. That means that Blessing and Gift were named
at birth, a Blessing and a Gift that were later abandoned alongside the road.
All 19 of them have been blessed; they found their way to
Kerungi. Here they get two hot meals each day, hot porridge and snacks, toys
to play with, clean clothes to wear and a clean, safe bed of their own to sleep
in. It is a beautiful thing!
If I've
learned anything, other than gratitude the past few months, it is to
laugh at myself. When I go running in the morning people laugh and
point. I hear mothers yelling for their children to look, as if a
Muzungu isn't interesting enough, put her in a pair of shorts and watch
her run! Whooo Hoooo! Good times! Sometimes I don't even know why
they're laughing. When I was biking home with Caleb, I asked him if they
were laughing because I was a muzungu on a bike, or if it was because I
was wearing a helmet? He said, "No, it's because you are a woman on a
bike! They think it's a man's sport and you are very strong!" So I laugh
also and wave as I go past. Having a bicycle was a treat, after
getting used to the crazy traffic and the fear of being run over, I
really enjoyed it. The first week there I walked back and forth to the
orphanage, which took almost an hour and a half each way. Other than
almost hitting a pig I had no incidents! Because I was wearing a helmet
(which is very unusual here) people thought I was just learning to
ride. They would say things like, "you're a very quick learner" or "you
are learning very good to ride your bike!" It turns out riding a bike is
like swimming, only a lucky few have had the opportunity to learn.
Every man, woman and child stood and watched me ride away from the
orphanage the first day, just to see if I could actually ride a bike,
like a said I could. They cheered and waved as I rode away.
While I was gone
there was a water crisis in Kisoro, it is truly the dry season now.
Guess who had water?!! That's right, Amazing Grace had 10,000 liters of
water to tie them over for the week while the rest of the town suffered
without water. There were even people going there to fill their
jerri-cans!
It feels good to
be back in Kisoro and Amazing Grace, I’m
looking forward to seeing all those kids. The little one's have been
asking, "Where is our Muzungu?" Apparently, I now belong to them! Today
was a public holiday, so the post office was closed. First thing in the
morning I'll be backing up a truck to the post office doors, I know
there are a few packages waiting for us there!
Thanks for all the Love,
Bonnie
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