Live (well, almost) from Uganda....

demonstration

I live in a small grandmother’s house behind our main house. Outside my door is a tall cement wall topped with loops of barbed wire separating our peaceful compound oasis from the rest of the noisy neighborhood.

I don’t know my neighbors. I know that they have a cow (that wakes me up mooing most mornings), I know that they have a baby (that cries loudly most nights), I know that they like music (that plays from the radio almost all the time), I know that they use a fire to cook (that wafts smoke over the wall and makes me sneeze), I know that they are a part of a community (that is interactive and talkative judging by the conversations in Luganda that I hear but can’t understand); I know these things about them, but I don’t know them.

I’ve been reading a book called “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families,” a book that chronicles stories from survivors of the Rwandan genocide. I’ve always been interested in these types of books, yet somehow it is easier to read them now, being in Africa. It’s as if saying, “Hey, this happened in the country that I could drive to in a matters of hours” makes it more real than when I was half a world away.

As I read, even though I know it happened, I can’t quite believe that so much death and destruction in places like Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan…occurred during my own lifetime. Shouldn’t such devastation register in my mind, even if I was only a child? Shouldn’t I have a memory of a newspaper headline, a TV news report, or a voice on the radio that spoke of the existence of the decimation of so many lives? I was alive, but I don’t remember, because these things never even entered into the consciousness of my life or the world, as it mattered to me.

The author of this book talks about actually physically being in Rwanda:

 

“I had never been among the dead before. What to do? Look? Yes. I wanted to see them, I suppose; I had come to see them – the dead had been left unburied at Nyarubuye for memorial purposes – and there they were, so intimately exposed. I didn’t need to see them. I already knew, and believed, what had happened in Rwanda. Yet looking at the buildings and the bodies and hearing the silence of the place, with the grand Italianate basilica standing there deserted, and beds of exquisite, decadent, death-fertilized flowers blooming over the corpses, it was still strangely unimaginable. I mean one still had to imagine it.”

(“We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda” (1998) by Philip Gourevitch (p16,pp1))

 

Even though the evidence stared him in the face, even though he could see it, touch it, smell it, the reality of it was not something his mind could actually grasp – He had to imagine it.

We express this sort of dilemma in everyday life:

“It’s too good to be true.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Why do we say these things? When reality threatens to shatter what we have previously known, believe to be true, or want to be true. 

I wonder how much it is possible to really relate to someone, to really understand them without having lived a day in their shoes. My American self reads statistics about poverty, AIDS, and war and sees pictures of bright-eyed children living in filth and my mind immediately jumps to the solution without really stopping to examine the individual fibers that make up a complex problem. What does it feel like to go hungry most days? What does it sound like to fall asleep next to your 5 siblings and 3 cousins in your house in the slums? What do you dream about for your future?  If the aim is to affect lives for the better in the future, mustn’t we understand what it means to live as things are now?

I find this frustrating. I can live in Uganda. I can see poverty on a daily basis. I can touch those who are suffering. I can smell the work of hard labor with little profit. I can eat the same food, walk the same roads, breathe the same air, but at the end of the day I will still be, somehow, separate.  No amount of time, language fluency, or relationship will change the fact that I cannot wake up one day and be Ugandan and know how that feels.  Imagination will only take me so far.

I know of only one case in which one was able to dissolve all distinctions so as to perfectly relate, perfectly understand, and perfectly love those who were impoverished, sick, suffering, dirty, captive, and disenfranchised.

It happened when God became man and lived with us.

I’ve been puzzling over this. God created man and man ensued to get himself into a hopeless situation. Sin…war, sickness, death, disease…

 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26a)

It’s bewildering enough to think that God would still love us, but why choose to intervene in the way he did? I mean, if we are talking about all-mighty God, why not just say a few words to fix the whole problem? But that’s not what happened. Instead God chose to enter into the fray. The unfathomable continues. God didn’t choose to say the magic words and fix the problem of sin; instead, He sent his son to earth.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14a)

The crazy part is that when Jesus came he didn’t just wave a magic wand around to fix the problem. Here is what we cannot quite understand – 

Jesus didn’t just COME, he BECAME.

 “(Jesus) Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8)

He was God, He was qualified to fix the problem of sin, but he chose to become 100% human, like us, so that he could know what it means to live in a dirty, broken, hurting, and sinful world.

 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin.” (Hebrews 4: 15)

God (as God) could have chosen to fix the problem of sin from afar. Instead he chose to KNOW us, to the detail of breathing, eating, walking, crying, loving, DYING…

“But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

So, the only message I can give to those around me, whether they earn $1/day or $1000/day is this: “I will put myself on the line to understand you, to walk in your shoes, to know your story. But I may fail and almost give up because it feels like a hopeless cause of being “too different” or “too hard.” So I want to introduce you the ONE who walked with me when I was dirty, destitute, and hopeless. His name is Jesus and he already KNOWS you because he made you. He already KNOWS your every fear and pain because he suffered them for you.”

This has been long. I hope you will read through these lyrics to a song called “We Come to You,” by Derek Webb, as my parting thought.

 

As you came to us, so we come to you

Fragile as a baby hopeful and new             

But learning fast that to walk is to fall

Soon we’ve done it all

 

We come broken and we come undone

We come trying hard to love everyone

But we come up short in all that we do

Because we do

So we come to you

 

As you came to us, so we come to you

Dirty and hurting then dead in the tomb

But raised redeemed to show off the scars

‘cause you’ve brought us this far

 

You came to show the way not around but through

So through it all we come to you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday Club at Hope Alive! Kampala

Porridge for breakfast

Team building games with the secondary students...

Can they all cross the rope at exactly the same time?

Little wanderers....

Reading time with the visiting sponsors

Lunch time...

These two guys thought they were sooooo funny pretending to be pregnant...I thought so too :)

Feeding mind and body...at the same time

threads

My sister makes beautiful cross-stitch art; tiny and neatly placed “x’s” coming together to complete a unified picture or pattern. Colors are chosen specifically for the piece, each adding a new dimension to the final product. If you’re not an embroidery aficionado, however, you may not know that the backside of a finished project is nothing particularly nice to look at. In fact, it can actually look quite messy – unorganized knots and lines are not in any sort of pattern. The same threads with the same colors are still there, but they just don’t make any sense when viewed from the backside.

Today marks one month that I’ve been living in Uganda and I’ve been exposed to many of the “colors” here…. Ideas about money, family, health, relationships, music, transportation, dress, education, occupation, GOD…all blend together to make up this unique UGANDAN culture.

 When these things are viewed in the context of Uganda’s history and current situation, the picture takes on new dimensions. I recently heard a Ugandan leader share some statistics about this country:

·       Uganda is home to about 65 DIFFERENT TRIBES, each with its own language and dialect

·       Uganda’s population is approximately 32 million people

·       Of these people, 51% are CHILDREN under the age of 14

·       19% of Ugandans are MALNOURISHED

·       38% still live on less than $1/DAY

·       80% are subsistence farmers striving to live in a cash economy…leading to persistent famines in a rich land

·       In 2007, Uganda was home to 235,800 REFUGEES from Sudan, DRC, Rwanda, Somalia, and Burundi

·       While education is seen as an escape from the cycle of poverty, most families cannot afford to send more than 1 child to school for an elementary level education

·       When looking at the people of Uganda, there is visible gap between those who HAVE and those who DON’T

As if these statistics along were not enough to burden my heart, the speaker then made this comment to the “bazungus” (white people):

“YOU REPRESENT THE AMERICAN DOLLAR.”

Great. Now I feel like I’m swimming in my own guilt, the guilt of being born as a “HAVE” of this world. Not only do I live “in but not of” those who “don’t have,” but they see me as the visage of the dollar sign. Do I have a life response for what this means? A visible reaction or response I should make? Should I feel proud or ashamed? Besides feeling overwhelmed, I haven’t come up with an answer.

I am (as one person put it), like “a firefighter standing in front of a raging forest fire with only a cup of water.”

I look around me and see the hungry, the needy, the sick, the disenfranchised.  On the other end of the spectrum, I see people (both nationals and expatriates) who have committed their ALL to helping to alleviate the pain of Ugandans – people I could only aspire to be like. I feel, all at once, both lavishly rich in heritage and position and grossly poor in my qualifications.

It’s quite possible that moving to Uganda only brought a magnifying lens to what was already present in my life, even as I lived in America – if we open our eyes and really SEE what is around us, we will always find those who need in a way we feel unqualified to help. I’m going to include you, my reader, in this “we” as I say this – We excuse ourselves from responsibility far too often because we believe we could never affect change in such a hopelessly large predicament.

I heard this story once:

"Many starfish washed up on shore.  A young boy started picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean.  Someone saw what he was doing and told him that it was pointless, that there were too many to save, that it wouldn't make a difference.  Throwing another starfish into the sea, the little boy responded, "It makes a difference to this one."

 While I like this little tale of inspiration, I still not sure it moves me to action because it is still “I” who must provide the power and motivation to make even a small something happen.

So, one more quote, if I may, WorldVenture’s Africa director in response to this very predicament:

“we didn’t choose our origins or where we would be born – GOD chose these things for His benefit.”

A sigh in relief. As it turns out, I don’t have to feel guilty for being born who I am – a white American from a middle class family with a college education and a well-paying, respected profession. I do not have to feel guilty, but I must feel and act responsibly with what I’ve been given.

I do not have to feel pressured or under-qualified because I am not the whole picture – I am merely one thread, one color in the whole masterpiece God is weaving in the story of history – past, present, and future. My view of the state of people and this world looks pretty messy from where I stand, but that is because I am not able to see it from the Creator’s perspective…not yet, anyway.

 

 

“we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Ephesians 4:14-16 

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” 1 Corinthians 13:11a