I can’t believe that it’s already August 1st but
that we have only been here 3 weeks. We are so busy every day and time is
flying by and yet it is still passing “slowly by slowly - mpola mpola” as the Ugandans say.
The team has only been home from safari since Sunday night and yet it seems
like ages ago. Kathy left Monday and the container hasn’t arrived (as far as we
know) but our days all still filled with amazing meetings with amazing people.
Monday, after getting up a second time after seeing Kathy up
at 5am and returning to bed, we returned to God’s Grace Orphanage to see how
Maria and the children were doing. Bree introduced me to this orphanage last
year and introduced me to Maria, the amazing young woman who was caring for just over 90
children in 2012 but who has 120 children now. In the past 12 months she has
built a structure for a school, created a more permanent kitchen structure,
opened a bank account for the children for the funds they are raising in the
mushroom project, and she is now building another structure to house the older
children as a two room dormitory. She was registered as an orphanage in
previous years but the registration organization has recommended that she apply to
become an NGO so that she can operate outside of the Kyebando community in
which God’s Grace is currently located. An international volunteer organization
also has discovered her orphanage and so she is now getting volunteers from all over
the world to help her care for the children. She has two jajas
(grandmothers) who help to care for the babies as well.
When we arrived there, the primary aged children were all in
school, most in uniforms, reviewing their lessons for the upcoming term exams.
They all stood to welcome us, “We welcome you dear visitors” but then they sat
and returned to their lessons. There was no running over and mobbing us (as
Corey would have you believe) but a very well organized, calm environment. It’s
hard to believe that so many children live there. The secondary school students
weren’t there but all the little guys were present and during the mid-day school break where they all
received a cup of ‘porridge,’ the olders cared for the youngers. When someone
started crying, someone would go over and pick them up and see if they were okay.
If they needed more care, Mama Maria was fetched and she went to care for them.
Maria relies solely on the donations of others. With so many
children, how can she possibly work to earn any money? She needs help with
school fees and with cement to complete the dormitory. One bag is 30,000
shillings or about $15CDN. She is currently selling jewelry that the children
are making and as they earn money, she buys cement and bricks. When someone
falls sick or needs something for school the children are called together to
use some of the money from their mushroom business to pay for medicine or to
pay for school supplies. The older children are part of the decision making
process. It’s all a very well-oiled machine and seems to run very smoothly. The
children looked happy and healthy and I am amazed at how healthy and calm Maria
seems to be. I think I would go insane.
Tuesday, we met another amazing group of people doing
amazing things. Through our connection with Sunrise Rotary in Kelowna, we
visited Good Shepherd Home and Bethlehem Home that are two orphanages that are run
by the Brothers from Missionaries of the Poor. This Catholic order takes a vow of
poverty and relies solely on the generosity and donations of others to do its
work.
The food budget for these two orphanages is over 30,000,000 shillings a
month. That’s $15,000 that is spent on groceries each and every month. The
orphanages themselves “only” house 400 children and elderly but they also
sponsor children from the neighbouring slum and end up preparing 600 lunches a
day for the children who are attending school. That’s 400+ breakfast,
600+lunches, 400+ dinners. Plus they a free medical clinic. That’s nothing to do
with food but it’s still a cost for them. The amazing thing about this
orphanage is that it takes in the disabled children that are orphaned and
abandoned by their families. Of the 400 children who live there, 56 are either
physically or mentally disabled. But those who are only physically disabled are
sent to school. The abled children from the orphanage take them to and from
school each day.
“This is our poet who has filled 3 notebooks full of
beautiful poems,” beams Father Henry as he rubs the head of a boy in a
wheelchair. “And this one is the composer who has written three songs,” he
boasts of another boy in a wheelchair as the two are pushed by their classmates to
school for their afternoon classes.
The children love Father Henry and cheer when they see him.
The mentally disabled children smile and those who can, run to him for a hug.
The elderly smile and shake his hand as he walks by and he has a kind word for
all of them before moving on with our guided tour.
At Bethlehem Home, there is a series of stairs that lead up to
the roof of the main building which is where Father Henry is building a primary
school. This will be wheelchair accessible and will reduce the costs for the
Order as they will only need to pay the teachers and not the school fees.
Father Henry asked us if we, as ISEE, could fund infrastructure but ISEE doesn’t do that.
However, we said we may have friends who would be interested in sponsoring a
bag of cement or a pile of bricks to build a school for the disabled. He is
going to send me a list of costs.
The Order has been given a 7 acre parcel of land that Father
Henry wants to develop as a farm to reduce the cost of the food for the
children and elderly. Maybe we can work with them there as part of our food
sustainability programs. More details about that to follow.
Those are only the first 2 days of this week and we were amazed yet again by the locals serving their own communities. Tomorrow we are
off to Living Hope, my favourite school in Uganda in the slum of Nateete but I
am thinking it might be my last visit there. That will be for another blog
post.
Time for dinner!
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