A Lesson in Perspective

Thursday morning at 8:45 am, I went for my first field visit with a trained counselor named Pasco. Pasco is a Ugandan student majoring in the sciences and he is finishing his third and final year at a university in Kampala. He has been doing these field visits for five years as a volunteer through Meeting Point. A field visit involves going to visit sick patients and clients of Meeting Point, and these people are either in the local hospitals, if things have gotten very bad, or in their homes, which for the most part are in the slums of Kampala. Many of the children who are students at the Learning Center or live in the foster home come from the slum just below the school in the Namuwongo district.

The city of Kampala spreads out over six or more green hills. Very nice and posh houses can be found, especially near the top of each of these hills, with large tiled rooves and sweeping views. My cousin lives in Muyenga which is on the top of one such hill, and as you progress down the hill, the poverty becomes more and more apparent. The area where Meeting Point’s main office and Learning Center is located is on a stretch of dirt road with shabby houses and goats, sheep, and even cattles wandering the streets. When I first saw the area, I was struck by the poverty I saw, such poverty has I had never seen before. And now, after my visit today, those same houses look not half bad afterall. As you progress just down the hill from the Learning Center towards the swamp that is formed by the channel of water that cuts into Kampala just over the railroad tracks, there is a distinct shift from orange tiled rooves to shanty tin rooves that perch on crumbling brick and mud houses—huts really.

Pasco (who probably had to endure some taunts for walking with a muzungu!) walked me through the tiny alley way and twisting caked dirt paths, over rivets of trickling purple-brown sludgy water, past rotting wood doors covered with filthy faded colored cloths, past the tiniest of children playing in the red dust. Each and every child and almost as many adults looked towards me as I walked with Pasco. Muzungu, hello, muzungu, how are you, muzungu, muzungu, muzungu was all I heard over and over again. The little children would crawl after me with their tiny palm outstretched, thinking that as a white person, I had money to give, Pasco explained. Never had I felt the eyes of so many upon me (except maybe the NYC marathon but then I was too delirious to appreciate it fully). The surprising thing is the tones in which it is said, somewhere along the lines of teasing, mocking, curiosity, and reverence depending on who is saying it, or often all of those at once! I felt like the oddest kind of celebrity, as (white) foreigners rarely if ever venture into these areas. I’m so used to living in New York City, where my cashier at Zabar’s would manage to ring up all my groceries and have me pay without so much as a greeting my way, where people rarely smile at each other as they hustle down the sidewalk, where real celebrities wander the streets relatively unbothered. Here in Uganda I must rewire my brain to handle all the attention shown my way. The little children on the walk home smile and giggle when I reply to their “Hello, how are you?”, they reach for my hand, they gaze up at me wide-eyed. In NYC I couldn’t have been less noticed, and here I couldn’t attract more attention if I tried.

The first housevisit was to a woman named Judith. She is HIV+ and has three children. She lives in a small shack located in a small dusty clearing from the winding alleyways of the slum. Meeting Point has helped pay for two of her chidren to attends local schools, as well as granting her a small loan with which she started a tiny business selling tomatos. She repeated again (via Pasco’s Lugandan interpretation) that she was very happy to see me and very grateful for all that Meeting Point had done for her and her family. She thanked me for coming. A little girl sitting near by, who must have just learned to walk, wobbled over and reached up for my hand as her mother watched and than kneeled down. Pasco said that is what they have been taught to do with a muzunga. Such a strange feeling.

Next, we visited a man, Frank, who spoke very good English. He is one of MP’s few educated, literate clients who got sick, could not longer work, and came to meeting point to ask for asistance. He was bedridden not so long ago, but now thanks to medication and food provided by MP he is well. He thanked me for coming into his home (a small, dark, cramped hut that was about 8x8 feet with low ceilings, and objects piled high to it) and told me he loved Americans (“America is like my mommy and daddy, they take care of me.”) which was refreshing to hear when so few people seem to feel positively towards Americans these days! He was so jublilant really just to be feeling well, even though he was still dirt poor and unwell.

Among many others, I met a young mother who had almost died before MP intervened with a doctor visit and provided proper medication and the food to make such strong drugs palatable. There was a woman, Maria, who was given a small loan to start a sewing business, in addition to training classes. There was a man who was abandoned by his family when he had a stroke and his leg was paralyzed so that he could not walk. MP provides food for him, and took his soon into the foster home and learning center where he is in P-2. I met another young mother whose daughter, Noelina, is in P-3. I will be doing art with her class on Monday. To see where these kids come from is a real revelation and makes you appreciate their ability to be “carefree” and happy and loud and energetic at school despite the lack of almost nothing, no running water, small broken down homes.

I returned to school around 11 am to find that the Nursery teacher was missing and two volunteers, Judy and Medde, were trying to handle the class. I stepped in to try and help, and all the kids drew a picture of a house with some crayons. But in general they conquered us, running around the classroom, in and out the front door, hitting each other, and fighting over crayons. It was clearly “substitute teacher day” and we had no authority. We were trying to conserve crayons (because I wasn’t sure I’d get them all back, and the supplies are limited to what I brought and just a few other markers and crayons lying around) and so each set of 4 students on a bench row were given one red, one green, one blue, and one yellow crayon. But they didn’t know how to share. Correction: they didn’t know what sharing was! And I realized it was for the exact opposite reason that many American children do not know how to share beause they have oddles of their own toys and do not think they should have to. These children, however, have nothing at all. No toys, no possessions really save their clothes, and so they’ve never had anything to share. Judy and I did a (quite pathetic) demonstration of how to share (“Judy, would you like this crayon? Because I would like to use your crayon.” “Yes, Laura, that sounds great. I would like to use your crayong.”) There was a glimmer of progress made on this account, but add this to the To Do List.

At 1 pm the baby class was dismissed for the day (thank goodness!), and I went to lunch at the local cafeteria that is run by graduates of MP’s vocation school. In the afternoon, I finally finished rainbows with P-1. I’m going to hang the many pages of rainbows up in the Nursery and P-1 classrooms next week and then not look at a rainbow for a good long time!

This morning, Friday, I’m off with Kim & family, and some of their friends to Murchison Falls for boat rides and safaris! First a six hour drive through the African bush awaits…