Thomas

He had round cheeks that got a little bit rounder when he smiled. I remember that. 

Four-year-old Thomas sat on a volunteer’s lap in the nursery school hut. School was out and the rest of the children had gone home. I was new to Noah’s Ark and Ineke and I were talking about… well, I don’t remember. She squeezed Thomas tight. 

“This one is special to me,” she said. “Last year when I was here, we were sitting at school just like this when he started convulsing. His eyes rolled back and it looked like he was unconscious. So I picked him up and ran with him as fast as I could to the clinic.” I think she mentioned that it was malaria, but that part is blurry to me. “But in the end he turned out fine, and he is still here with us!” 

That was the day I learned who Thomas was. 

There may have been times after that where I forgot—in the early days of volunteering, with hundreds of new faces and everyone expecting you to remember their name, and everyone shouting your name, lots of faces blend into each other—but after time, and especially after I moved to Uganda, the faces became clearer. Thomas was definitely one of those. 

I won’t pretend I did anything special. The truth is, Thomas loves volunteers. There are some children who gravitate to the volunteers and missionaries, who make themselves known and who set the stage for those people to have fun and personal stories of the children to share with friends, families and churches when they go back home. They like the attention (and the candy). 

In the beginning, I’m sure that is how our relationship started. To me, it was personal. I felt like I had done something really special to deserve his love and that surely I was the only one know, really know, this poor orphan child. 

To him, it was just another opportunity to temporarily bond with someone who could give him the attention he craved. 

I am not complaining or blaming. Just reflecting, eight years later, on how it must have been in those first months of getting to know him versus how I saw it at the time. Retrospect can be interesting. 

Toward the end of my first three months in Uganda, I read through the children’s files. I had come to know and love these children, who are all in the same situation now. But where did they come from? Each of them took a different path to get here. They don’t all have one story. 

Thomas’s story, for instance, began in August 2009. The short story says that he was found lying before someone’s gate and taken to the police station. 

The long story is exactly the same. We don’t know any more about his beginnings than that. From there, he was brought to Noah’s Ark and has been there ever since. He was estimated to be four weeks old when he came, so he was given the birthday of August 1. 

Two weeks ago, Thomas celebrated his twelfth birthday. I am so blessed to have known this goofy boy for eight of those twelve years. So blessed. 

Thomas’s second name (there are not really surnames in Uganda) is Mukwano, meaning friend. That he is, to so many. Like I already mentioned, Thomas makes friends with every volunteer who comes, wether for a few days or a few years. After the initial novelty of our relationship, a real friendship began to develop. Every single day, I would find Thomas at my door, wanting to play or read books or help with whatever I was doing—even if I was doing nothing. He loved to be with me, and I loved it too. His presence was, more often than not, hilarious. 

When Thomas was about six years old, he told me he had a girlfriend. Jaelle was her name. She was a very cute, sweet girl in his class who also lived in the children’s home. I have no idea where the boyfriend-girlfriend idea came from, but they both told me the rumor was true—they were a couple. 

A few weeks later when Thomas was playing at my house, I mentioned something about Jaelle being his girlfriend. The way he snapped his head up reminded me of when a student is excited to finally know the answer to a question posed by his teacher. 

“I KNEW that!” he said proudly. 

That was the last time I heard about him having a girlfriend. 

Thomas loves to help with chores. Every single time I am cooking when he shows up at my door, he asks if he can help. Without fail. Every. Single. Time. When he was young, I used eight tablespoons of butter in biscuits as an opportunity to teach him counting. Later, we rolled oranges on the counter to make them soft enough for orange juice and we talked about healthy food. After I got burned, I made sure he knew how to be safe when cooking with oil. We made bread, biscuits, cookies, sauce, pasta, rice, chapatis, and much more. Sometimes he has more patience for cutting vegetables than I do. 

Something amazing about this kid is that even after helping me make a whole meal, he doesn’t expect he is going to share it. Sometimes he stays and we eat together, but it is also unfair for me to invite him to eat with me every night. The moment I tell him it is time to go home for supper, he washes his hands, says thank you (a miracle, compared to most kids his age!), gathers his things and runs home. 

If there is nothing to cook, he is just as happy to wash the dishes. I’m not kidding. 

When Christian and I married, we wanted all the children to be in the wedding—that meant about fifty flower girls and fifty peg boys, which is the Ugandan boy equivalent of a flower girl. Even thought all the children would be involved, we chose a handful who were especially dear to us to be a bit more involved. Two teenage bridesmaids, two young bridesmaids, two young flower girls, and two young peg boys. We bought them matching outfits in America and the Netherlands, and Thomas walked down the aisle in front of us as we wed for the third time. 

Thomas used to come to our house every day to play. I wondered how that would change once Patricia was born and he had some competition. 

As it turned out, I was the one who had competition. 

Thomas rolled so naturally into the role of big brother I can’t imagine our family without him. He held Patricia as a baby (which was no small feat, since she was big), learned to change her diaper, read books with her, taught her to play cards (“Okay, now you put your card on the couch… no, this is the couch… not on the floor!… yes, there… look,  you won! Clap your hands!”), taught her some of her first words, and loved her better than I ever could have asked of someone. Patricia cheers when Thomas comes to the door and cries when he leaves, even though we know we are going to see him the next day. 

I remember the first time Thomas took Patricia to the playground at the children’s home without us. My eyes brimmed with tears as I stood in the doorway and watched them walk hand-in-hand, Patricia’s tiny ponytail bouncing atop her head. That was one of the first moments I really felt like she was growing up. It wasn’t all about mama and papa anymore. We had to share.

When I was pregnant with Elliot, I asked Thomas who was going to be his best friend—Patricia or the new baby. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and went back to his game. 

Thomas was one of the first people at our house the day after Elliot was born, and a few days later he was the first child we let hold our precious newborn. He did it with such care and confidence, it is obvious he grew up with babies around. 

Sometime last year, Thomas and a group of boys his age moved into their family unit. Moving into a family unit is a sort of coming-of-age mile marker in the lives of Noah’s Ark children. Instead of living in one big house with a hundred other children, with only a bed and a cubby to call their own (but to which everyone, even the toddlers, has access), all of a sudden they sleep with three or four people to a room (not eight or ten), they eat meals with their family of nine (not one hundred), they do their own dishes and wash their own clothes, and they have a few things in their possession. Most children are thrilled to hear they are next in line to enter a family unit. Thomas was no exception. 

I was another story. The children’s home is a stone’s throw away from my house. From my verandah, I could see Thomas playing on the playground outside in the mornings and he could call Patricia without even leaving his own home. In the family units, he was only twice as far away, but there was a small forest in between that inhibited me from seeing him so easily. I knew it would be different. He would be excited about his new home and would find things to do there. With one auntie for him and his brothers he wouldn’t need to visit us everyday to get individual attention. Things were going to change. 

I cried. 

I was happy for him, but I was not prepared for that change. 

Thomas no longer comes everyday, but he comes. Sometimes he takes Patricia to his family unit for lunch. Sometimes he joins us for a family outing to visit the goats at the farm. I have heard he can be stubborn at home, refusing to do chores, but at my house he still offers to wash the dishes and help cook. He listens when I rebuke him and is an undoubtedly positive influence on my two children. He turned twelve a few days after we came to the Netherlands, so we sang happy birthday via video chat and promised to have a sleepover when we come home. 

I can’t wait.