candeo: August 2007

Reflection on A Day: What Now?

We arrived at the village of Inganga after a rollercoaster of a matatu ride one afternoon. This was one of the two sites of Message of Hope Ministries, founded and led by Pastors Innocent Isaac and Irene. They took us on a tour of the grounds, bought with money they raised from the selling of their own land.

In the orphanage were neatly lined triple bunk beds draped by mosquito nets in hues of candy pink and green. As guests, the children greeted us in kneeling position. They greeted Isaac and Irene like that as well.

As we held hands with and heard the stories of the children who are doubly burdened by their status as orphans and bearers of HIV, we learned that many of them also battle malaria. My skin was still crawling from having recently read a National Geographic feature on malaria which explained in almost intolerable detail, how the parasite takes over the body. Bill Gates was quoted as saying that malaria is the worst thing on earth.

Some combination of fear and anger caused me to snap when I heard that the children were getting sick because their mosquito nets had holes in them. The nets were several years old, and cost about 15,000 Ugandan shillings (less than 10 USD) to replace. If I were on Scrubs, my face in that moment, would have been replaced by the head of a raging bull ready to impale whoever was responsible for allowing such a thing to go on.

Vanessa, our team’s nurse and public health trainer, practically forced me to listen to this song on one of our rest days in Kampala. After everything we had seen and done up to that point, it was a potent reflective tool: what will you do now that you found me?

What Now? Steven Curtis Chapman

I saw the face of Jesus in a little orphan girl
She was standing in the corner on the other side of the world
And I heard the voice of Jesus gently whisper to my heart
Didn't you say you wanted to find me?
Well here I am, here you are

So, What now?
What will you do now that you found Me?
What now?
What will you do with this treasure you've found?
I know I may not look like what you expected
But if you remember this is right where I said I would be
You've found me
What now?

What will you do now that you found me? We found Him that day, in that orphanage with the holey mosquito nets. He was there among the children who were able to forget about fevers and hunger for a while when Alex placed her gift of a soccer ball down on the grass. Their deliriously delighted shrieks made it impossible for the rest of us to concentrate on training the orphan’s teachers. Fifty children went nuts with joy chasing that ball around. He was there too in the little girl named Esther, dressed in ragged blue, who did not join the others because she was weakened by “the sickness”. He is there, What Now?

I know the saving of the world has been finished ultimately. But I know too that we have a responsibility to help ease the present suffering faced by Esther and the children of Inganga. For wisdom to know how to move forward with faithfulness and courage.

mid summer resolution

I have decided to train for a half marathon. I used to run three to four times a week but then I got lazy. Actually, I blame the laziness on the fact that I was dealing with too many life transitions all at once; I stopped running regularly around the same time I got married, relocated to New York and started an extremely frustrating job search.

Since I decided to train for the half marathon, (Note: I haven’t actually signed up or committed to an actual race yet, I am just enamored with the idea of how fit I’ll be after the fact) I have had the pleasure of downloading a whole bunch of oldies onto my ipod. Oh the memories! Madonna, Janet Jackson, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Depeche Mode and more…it was like Christmas day at my very own record shop!

Of course now I also need (and this is a legitimate need) new running shoes. I spent a happy thirty minutes checking out the selection on Zappos, mostly focusing on whether or not the color combinations were pretty since the technical terms are way over my head still. Pronate? That sounds important, must get new shoes that deal with the pronate problem. But really, what can compare to the bliss that is running in a brand new pair of shoes? It’s like being Mario bouncing around on mushrooms and clouds.

Browsing the Runners World site informed me that real runners do not run in cotton—which is all I have been running in. Another new thing to buy: dry fit tanks with racer backs and matching shorts! Tech-Wick outfits that wick moisture away from the body! What a word, wick!

Runners World also told me all about the groceries I will be needing as a runner in training: all-natural peanut butter, whole grain breads, a variety of fruits and vegetables (carrots and celery just won’t cut it), and of course the Power Bars and similar nutrient-dense products. More shopping! At Whole Foods and Trader Joes!

Am I wrong to worry that I’m getting more fun out of buying things for my mid-summer resolution than actually carrying that resolution out? Do my rock-climbing, scrap-booking, amateur photographing friends feel the same way?

A mom I know flippantly confessed once that she would only consider having a second child because of all the stuff she could buy. For someone who is (here’s hoping) years away from having her own child, I have to say that visiting Babies ‘R Us recently put things in a bit of a different light. The quilted diaper bags! The ultra-soft lavender fleece pajamas! The blankets and ergo bottles and cribs and stylish car seats! I still don’t want a child, but all my married girlfriends should feel free. Ultra-soft lavender fleece pajamas for all!

On the other hand, while there is fun in buying new stuff I cannot ignore the confusion and the stress. The options I have as a consumer of athletic and fitness related goods are dizzying. All that choice can lead me to feel green (which ASICS Gel shoe is the best for my specific arch height and running style?!!), anxious (what if I’m not getting the absolute best deal on these ASICS Gel shoes?!!), and jealous (hey!! her ASICS and dry-fit racer back tank look so much better on her!!!).

Here’s an addendum to my mid-summer resolution: I resolve to not break a sweat over buying the ultimate best product at the rock-bottomest price, but to train hard because my body needs the exercise and just run and run because I have fun doing it.

On the Highs

I’ve put off writing about Uganda till now from the fear that whatever I muster up will never be good enough. But that’s an awfully sorry excuse not to at least try and say something to all of you who have supported me. So here goes.

Foreign places can be scary. Foreign places where you are instantly identified as a foreigner with money can be scarier. And foreign places can be extremely scary for a morbidly imaginative hypochondriac such as me.

Uganda is plagued by erratic electricity, ongoing civil conflict in the north and suicidal two-way traffic on pot-holey roads (I use “pot holey” here only in an attempt to soften the fact that they were really death traps). And of course, there's the rampant malaria, yellow fever and the much less worrisome but highly unpleasant traveler’s diarrhea. Let’s just say, I was very uncomfortable for most of this trip.

This is a piece on the highs of my travels, and I’m getting there right now. Just about the only time I wasn’t completely uncomfortable in Uganda was when I was doing what I went there to do: train teachers who work with orphans and vulnerable children.

We sat on benches under impossibly leafy trees (trees that are clearly a blessing for the people who toil under the fierce gaze of the equatorial sun) and taught. We walked past hills of stinking garbage, which when burned smells almost exactly like pot, and taught. We tried to keep our faces neutral as we walked over cloudy rivers of more garbage and human waste to schools in the unlikeliest places, and taught. We rode in jam-packed mini-buses with live chickens tied upside down in the back row to villages of forgotten people, and we taught.

My fellow teachers and I had zealously prepared stacks of notes and handouts. I myself contributed pages and pages of grad-school seminar worthy stuff on everything from Bloom’s Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences to teaching ESL strategies. We just barely used those notes. What these teachers needed most were real life strategies—-how to help students stay focused in classrooms of 80+ students, how to discipline without resorting to the rod, how to make do with one ancient textbook and no teaching aides...

The Ugandan teachers we met with were unfailingly polite and always told us that our workshops were helpful. But we could tell when something was truly helpful because that’s when faces lit up, applause burst out and the words, “This is something new! God bless you! Bless you! We will try it!” flew out of their mouths.

Their students would linger in the doorways, creep up to our benches, climb up barred windows to catch glimpses of us mzungus, the strange “white people”. These students live in slums, live with HIV, are recovering from malaria or recovering from a former life on the street. Realizing that we were, in our own small small way, helping them by helping their teachers brought each of us on the team, at one point or another, to tears.

Yes, teaching, doing something that I love to do for children whose lives are unimaginably difficult was the high of this trip.