Destitution

one of the children reading a book sent by LIA
all of the children with their books from LIA!
Fridah with the mother of Shakila in her lap. Lydia the nurse is to the right in the blue dress.
The burial
The burial meeting place
Lydia, Fridah, and I

As I was taking an evening walk last week after a long day at Rapha, one of the villagers approached me. “My back is hurting and I need some medication for free,” he said to me. Taken aback at the fact he had just asked for free meds, I replied, “No, you can go to Rapha just like everyone else to be checked out by the doctor and then YOU can pay for the meds you need.” His response was, “No, you are American so I EXPECT you to give me them for free.”

We in America can often times (wrongly) view Africans as destitute. After all, the only things we really learn about them in school and in the media are they are super poor, often times without shoes and without decent (at least in our view) clothes, and living in grass-thatched huts with large families and big bellied children. We think the answer is to pour billions of dollars of relief into these people's lives because these people are in our eyes destitute. We think the answer is providing FREE medical outreaches, school fees for children who have healthy, capable parents, and FREE food in areas where people are able to farm. Just because these people don't have the ipods, the computers, the nice houses, the cars, and other modern conveniences doesn't make them destitute. Many families living in villages have other types of material possessions: LAND on which to farm, cows, goats, sheep, and chickens. It's all just a matter of where they choose to spend their income. Many families around Rapha do not see the importance of education, so they choose not to spend their money on schooling for their children. Many families around Rapha practice polygamy, so men can have as many as 30 children. 30 children can be VERY difficult to nutritiously feed and clothe, but families refuse family planning because of some untrue myths circulating through the village. Many families around Rapha can afford to take their children to the hospital when they're sick, they just choose to seek help from a local witchdoctor until the child becomes deathly sick, then they come to the hospital when it's too late. Many families around Rapha have men who refuse to work and spend the income generated by the wife (through farming) gambling and drinking.

See, the answer to all of these problems is not relief, it is education. The answer is not providing free handouts to everyone because all it does is create expectations (ex. The man quoted above) and a reliance on relief organizations. Imagine what life would be like if you relied on the US government for your livelihood...how would you feel? While it would be kinda nice having everything provided for me, at the same time I know it would NOT motivate me to study and work hard at whatever I was doing, because they'll be putting the food on the table regardless at the end of the day.

All of these thoughts have been whirling through my head as we begin drawing up a project proposal for the Shalom Nutritional Project (yes that's the name!). Our main goal with this project is to understand exactly WHY these children are becoming malnourished(and the answer is normally not because of lack of food) and then based on what we've learned about the roots of malnourishment in the area, educate the families on the realities of malnourishment and proper feeding while also rehabilitating those who are moderately to severely malnourished. We are not looking at this project as a way to help those who are destitute, but instead as a way to collaborate with the completely capable, surrounding communities to stamp out malnourishment. We expect the community to come together and provide land for demonstration gardens and also to maintain them, so when the project does outreaches there, all we have to bring are the nurses to teach and examine the patients. We want the communities to feel ownership over this project and to provide inputs on how we can improve it. We want this project to work WITH the communities to educate, and improve the overall livelihood and success of the communities.

Okay, enough about Shalom and misconceptions about Africa and onto what I've been doing the last week. Last Sunday when I arrived back to Rapha after a weekend in Kampala, I found out that one of the patients on the ward, a young lady named Shakila, had finally died after a horrible battle with HIV. She had had HIV for about 5 years, but refused to tell ANYONE about her condition because of the negative stigma against it. She gave birth to a child about a year ago, but after just a few months the baby died. This caused much stress to her, and combined with the battle with HIV, caused her to go into a coma. That's when her family brought her to Rapha. She was only at the hospital for about 4 days before she died. So, on Monday afternoon, I along with 4 Rapha staff went to the burial in a village about a 45 minutes motorcycle ride from the hospital. When we arrived at the house everyone was meeting at, I was amazed at the amount of people gathered. With the amount of people in attendance, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire village had come for her burial. Because her father is a Muslim, it was a traditional Muslim burial in which the women were not allowed to go and actually bury her, so when the body was carried to the burial place, we had to stay behind. The ceremony involved the men doing their prayers about 3 times, and then a short Islamic service, and lastly burying the body. Most of my time was spent with the nurses consoling the mother. Her heart was absolutely broken because of the loss of her daughter. She would grab my hand and moan and cry uncontrollably, to the point I thought she was going to pass out.

When it was time to leave, I heard one of the nurse's telling Shakila's boyfriend(he didn't have HIV) to make sure and go back to Kampala that very night and to not delay staying at the family's house any longer. Hearing that conversation, I was intrigued as to why she was telling him that so I asked her when we got back to Rapha. Turns out, because the boyfriend was very good looking and rich, the family had already offered him another one of their daughters to marry and the nurse feared that if he stayed overnight at their house, they may try and give him some witchdoctor concoction that would make him fall in love with another of the daughters. It still amazes me how real and commonly accepted witchcraft is here...

On Wednesday, I took the books to school that Ladies in Aiding sent all the way from America! It was so exciting to see them being opened by the P2 and P3 classes and read. Each student stood up and read a sentence out of the book they were given, and then both teachers in the class read a book each as well. After they each read a book, I got up and read a book to them about Christmas, American style. It was hilarious trying to explain gingerbread houses, Santa Claus, snow, Stockings, and Presents to children who know nothing about those traditions. Christmas for the few Christian students in the room was simply going to church on Christmas day and eating a big feast afterward. After we finished reading the books, I went through each book individually and sorted them based on difficulty, stamped them, and left them for the headmaster to put in the library. Thank you so much LIA for those books! They are going to be such an awesome teaching aid! (I'm even using some of the books myself to help one of the staff at Rapha's sons learn how to read!) THANKS!

On Thursday evening, I traveled back to Kampala. When I arrived back, there was no water in the taps and apparently there had been none for the past week but PRAISE THE LORD the water came back on just an hour after I arrived back. The electricity hasn't been so friendly lately, though. Because the electricity company is replacing electricity poles, the past couple of days they've been turning the current off at around 8 AM and not turning it back on until about 8 PM.

On Friday, I visited a couple of banks to compare costs for getting a US dollar account, went to church to visit with everyone, and then unknowingly decided it was time to pick a fight with gravity. As I was crossing a street, I tripped over a short brick wall that separated the road and the sidewalk, and fell face forward on my hands and knees, tearing a ligament in my left ankle and badly spraining my right foot. My right hand is a little scuffed up as well, and both knees are left with scrapes as well. Because of these injuries, the doctor suggested that I stay around Kampala for a week to give my various wounds time to heal and also so I won't use my feet as much as I would if I were at Rapha. So, since Friday I've just mostly been resting at home. On Monday I went to the local mall to possibly see a movie because electricity was off at home, but watching a movie there cost $8, a price I sure as heck wasn't going to pay! The guys at home have been begging me to make some American food for them, so this morning I made french toast and tomorrow I'll probably make pancakes. I'm also going to try my luck at making smoothies. Even though I really hate having to spend so much time at home just chilling, I'm thankful because this is God's way of MAKING me rest my ankles so they'll heal. I've also slept in till about noon the past two mornings which is pretty much unheard of here!

Allrighty, that's all for now! On a side note, four Chattanooga Student Venture students got saved during Getaway praise the Lord! I've been told that two of them are from Howard and Brainerd (the schools I work with) and I'm super excited about hearing that awesome news! It's crazy to think that in just 5 weeks I'll be back in America. So much to do, so little time!