Hi again!
I hope you are all feeling good and spreading happy! A quick
Hello and a fast farewell! I’m leaving
Kisoro again…but just temporarily…again! The little town at the headwaters of
the Nile calls, you remember the one, with monkeys hanging from the trees and
Kayakers paddling down the river? Jinja,
is where I met Carly six months ago when
I arrived and where I’ll be heading for the month of September while I
patiently count the days until my sister Brittney arrives!
Always a quick stop in Kabale on my way through to visit my
friends there and all those happy little faces that greet me at Kerungi Children's Village. Then, I’ll spend the rest of
September in an Orphanage in Jinja, which is just an hour from the airport (compared to ten hours away, like I am in Kisoro).
Brittney arrives on Oct. 3rd, I’m incredibly excited to show her around, explore the North
and see the wild animals with her! We’ll have a whole month so she’ll even get
to stay with my family in Kisoro and work at Amazing Grace with me for a couple of weeks.
The progress at school has been rewarding and at times even amazing.
My dear new friend Liz, an English woman who was visiting Kisoro, taught me
some awesome tricks for teaching these challenged learners. She identified a few of them as being dyslexic
and one as autistic, which adds a whole new dimension of ‘fun’ for me! The
opportunities are pretty limited here for a kid like Collins. He’s as bright as
the day is long, but he’s socially awkward and if I might be honest, for
once…slightly annoying! It was really good to work with her and she even left me
her bag of tricks to use, including wooden cut- outs of the alphabet, a very
useful tool! I never realized how much I miss fellow-muzungu’s until I meet someone like Liz, who’s from a world similar to mine! We have great conversations about the oddities
around us, trying to understand some of it. Like why do you pay for a full month’s electricity bill when the power was
off for two full weeks in the middle of the month? And, why do we process and
pasteurize the cow out of our milk, when all we need to do is boil it? Or how
can a four-year-old die and everyone says, “we don’t know what she died from”?
How can this be normal?
Working with the sign language interpreter and her class
teacher alone has given Bridget more vocabulary than she’s ever had. She can
make almost every sound in the alphabet, she has a long way to go before saying
two-syllable words, but she is on her way. They are on holiday again for a few
weeks, so things will resume with the teacher and hopefully with a speech therapist
when they return. As much as Peninah, our deaf friend who was teaching Bridget,
enjoys staying at the school and working with Bridget, I don’t think we need
her. A bittersweet fact, a blessing for Bridget, but not for Peninah.
There’s nothing like a reminder that you’re in Africa, I went
into a shop and asked for a couple liters of the ubushera drink to take home for
dinner and it is handed to me in a blue jug that reads, “Diesel Oil” across the
front label. My engine should prrrrrrrr good tonight!
We have blessed the school in Ntungu with the first 5,000 bricks for their new
classrooms. They are the same school we treated to the posho flour and the
water tank. They study on the dirt floor on mats. We have broken ground for a
four classroom block. It sits on top a beautiful mountain overlooking banana
plantations and village paths up and down the sides of the mountains, the same
paths that bring the kids to school. The construction will be done in phases, as donor money comes
in they will build up the walls, the roof and eventually the iron sheets for
the roof will complete the building and they'll be studying in a proper classroom. “Slowly by slowly”, which is how
things are done in Africa.
Last night’s village visit was more than I had bargained
for. I saw one of the most
disturbing things I’ve seen since being here. Through donor support, my
friend Mark sponsors many
children to attend school by paying their school fees and sometimes he
provides
them with blankets, school books, or other necessities. We visited six
homes of these families and
met so many amazing and incredibly friendly people. We asked the parents
what
they hoped for in the future, what they wanted for their children and
everyone’s answer was the same, as they stood barefoot, leaning against
their simple mud homes they all told us “for my child to be educated, to
be able to
get a job.” While visiting with two little boys who Mark supports and
enables
to attend primary school we noticed an old man sitting across the
compound. He
was sitting against a shack made of sticks and dried branches; I assumed
the
building was the pen where the goats were kept at night. He was happy to
talk
to us, happy to have his photo taken and happy to share his story with
us. His
face looked strong and healthy, his body looked thin and frail, but what
alarmed me was the condition of his feet. As he sat, leaning against
his home he tells us he is alone, his wife has died, his brother has
died and
these people living on his property in decent structures are the family
of his
late brother’s wife. He is seventy years old and he is starving because
he can
no longer walk to his fields to harvest his crops or fetch water. Why
these people living around him allow this to happen I can't figure out
and neither of my interpreters were willing to ask. The jiggers
have eaten away at his feet, living in the dirt it is impossible to stop
them from burrowing into his toes, under his nails, and into the
bottoms of his feet. He shakily stood and showed us inside his home. I
was appalled at what I saw.
My friends, I’m asking again. If you have it in your hearts
and in your wallets, please spread it. For less than $1,000 USD we can build
this man a one-room home with a cement floor and cement walls. The jiggers will never go away,
he will not be able to walk or work in the fields to provide himself food if we
don’t get him out of the dirt. This is a seventy-year-old man who is living in conditions suitable for an animal.
Live Simply, so others may Simply Live.
Top 10 Words of Wisdom By Gandhi
1. Be the Change you wish to see in the world
2. What you think you become
3. Where there is love there is life
4. Learn as if you'll live forever
5. Your health is your real wealth
6. Have a sense of humor
7. Your life is your message
8. Action expresses priorities
9. Our greatness is being able to remake ourselves
10. Find yourself in the service of others
Love and Gratitude to all,
Bonnie
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