The Heartache of Home

Well, I did it.  I left.  Somehow.

My last half an hour at Noah's Ark was one of my favorites in the last three months. While my bags were packed and I was waiting for my ride to the airport, I was able to just be with some of the kids. It started with Leah venturing out after lunch. Then a few more joined. More children kept trickling out of the home until we had quite a large—and loud—group. There was the normal shouting and singing and secret-telling that accompanies a group of children anywhere in the world and it was wonderful.

When I finally had to get in the van to leave, it was surrounded by half a dozen volunteers and twenty children. Naturally it took me quite some time to actually get into the vehicle, what with last hugs and last last hugs and the fact that I was reluctant to be going anyway.

Closing the door and pulling away from the group of beautiful Ugandan children all yelling, “Goodbye, Auntie Katie!” seems like it would have been a surreal moment. Indeed, it would have been… if I hadn’t known them. But it wasn’t just any group of beautiful Ugandan children. It was Andrew who nearly got his fingers slammed in the door. It was Betty who quietly hung out toward the back like she tends to do. It was Lydia who continued knitting while she walked with the crowd. It was Margaret (or Mary or Gladys) singing a song about how much she loves me. In three months, what started out as surreal has become very REAL.

I have been back for a week, and it has been hard. It’s not just hard that I left a place and a people I have come to know and love. It’s hard because I now realize that no matter where I am or where I go, it will always require leaving a place and a people I love.

Sometimes I think God has given me too many homes. When I am in Wisconsin, I miss my family in Washington. When I was in Uganda, I missed my family in America. Now I am on my way from Washington to Wisconsin and I miss my Uganda family something terrible. Does it ever end?

No. As long as God’s family is all over the world, so mine will be too. But I’m beginning to realize that’s not such a bad thing. Because no matter where I go, I know God will give me family.

I have spent the last week at home in Morton with my parents and Annie. It was a whirlwind week of inviting family to our house, catching up with high school friends, and visiting PLU and the small handful of people still there from when I was a student. We decorated the house for Christmas and I played the piano and we ran with the dogs. More than any other time I have been back in the last two years, it felt like home.

Now I am sitting at the Portland airport waiting for someone to change the tires on my plane so I can go home to Wisconsin and see my family there. It will be another few crazy days full of dates with my boyfriend, catching up with his family, handing out gifts from my trip and settling back into my apartment. Then on to Iowa for Christmas to celebrate the birth of Christ with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and any other family I am blessed to see in that short time.

Family overload? Never. It’s better to always be missing someone than to never have someone to miss. Home to Washington. Home to Wisconsin. Someday, I hope to return home to Uganda as well. I don’t know when and I don’t know for how long, but it will happen. I’m almost sure of it.

Sometimes I ask God why all the people I love can’t be in one place. The problem is that He keeps giving me more people to love.  And someday—someday—we will all be in heaven together. Irene and Angel and Rebecca can meet my grandmother and my sister can hold little Florence and my cousin John can play music with Augustine and Vanessa and we will all be one family. Just one. What a family reunion that will be!

And for now I will stop crying over the people I miss and remember that I am blessed to have so many people to love regardless of what state, country, or continent in which I find myself. God has given me one more home this fall, and I praise Him for that gift.

p.s. This is theoretically my last blog, now that I am home (the America one, that is) and back to normal life. Thanks for reading, especially since I know I can be rather long-winded! Please keep the children and staff at Noah’s Ark and New Horizon in your prayers and search your bookshelves over the holidays to find something to donate to the secondary school library. If that didn’t make sense, read my last post. God bless you this Christmas!

My Own Calcutta

One evening, I posed a question to Auntie Marilyn: If you had no connection to Noah’s Ark and came to Uganda with the purpose of improving the education system in some way, where would you start? I expected her to say making sure English is taught everywhere at an early age, or making libraries for all the schools, or building school buildings for the poorest ones.

Instead she told me, “I would start wherever I was.” She paused, then continued, “At first, that would probably mean taking a few children into my home and teaching them the best I could. Then I’m sure it would grow, and it would be a huge task as things got bigger, but I would try to meet the needs in front of me.”

That’s all God asks of us, isn’t it? To meet the needs he places in front of us? For some, like Aaron, that means the needs that are literally right there, a part of his life. For others, like me, God places something on our hearts and it is always in front of us no matter where we are.

Even Katie Davis didn’t set out to change the face of Africa. She saw a need in her village and eventually what started as 40 kids turned into 600.

During her lifetime, many people asked Mother Theresa how they could change the world like she changed the world for so many people who lived in her Indian community of Calcutta. How does it start? What should they do? Where should they go? What was her secret?

Her answer to them was plain and simple: “Find your own Calcutta.”

Funny how you can follow in someone’s footsteps without ever going where they have gone. I wonder if people thought she would invite them to join her in Calcutta and take place in the ministry she was doing. Instead, she basically said, “Look around you. Open your eyes and see the need God has placed right in front of you. Focus on one person at a time. That is how you change the world.”

My three months in Uganda is rapidly drawing to a close. In less than 48 hours I will board a plane that will take me away from the red dirt and different constellations and bright white smiles set in soft brown faces of Uganda and my time here will be over.

As if.

I may be boarding a plane on Wednesday, but I am taking Uganda with me. I have photos. I have more than three journals full of memories. I have souvenirs and gifts. I have sweet notes from some of my students. I have a stack of coloring book pages from the kids who fill my room on the weekends. I have email addresses and phone numbers.

But more than that, I have a love for the children of Noah’s Ark and New Horizon and the surrounding community. Those people won’t be on the airplane, but they won’t be left behind either. It amazes me when children tell me not to forget them. I am not surprised they don’t want to be forgotten; I am surprised they think they are that forgettable.

The last three months have given me the opportunity to do hands-on service for these children. I have hugged them. I have read with them. I have laughed with them. I have wiped their tears and bandaged their wounds and whispered in their ears that God loves them and that I do too. And even though those things will by necessity stop when I leave, the need here will always be right in front of me, and I will always be looking for a way to meet it.

I would love to provide quality education to every single child in Uganda. I would love for every Ugandan to know the gospel and love their neighbor as themselves. I would love to abolish corruption in this country, from the head of the government to the lowest worker. But even though I know all things are possible with God, I don’t see these big dreams being possible through me. My Calcutta is much smaller.

I want to start a library for New Horizon Secondary and Vocational School, the secondary school run by Noah’s Ark.

The primary school library has been my second home here. I have spent hours upon hours helping students learn to read better and serving as the substitute librarian on occasion. The more I work with individual students and the more I learn about Uganda at large, the more I am convinced that after choosing to follow Christ, the key to change in one life and the key to change in a nation lies in education. In order to get the most out of their education, students need to be able to read well, and in order to read well, they need lots of practice. In a country where most families don’t own many—or any—books, this can be quite a challenge.

I have wrestled a lot with the dilemma of whether it is better to improve the good schools in Uganda so that a few students get a high quality education or whether it is better to start more schools in Uganda so everyone can get at least a minimal education. The answer is yes. They are both better. They are both necessary. But things don’t start on a large scale. They start with a need right in front of you. For me right now, that need is in one ministry, in one school, in one task of providing a library for less than one hundred students.

It sounds small, but small things tend to grow.

I would love your help. In fact, I plead for your help. I don’t have the resources to do this on my own, and what fun would that be anyway? For the next six months (and possibly for the rest of my life) I will be collecting new and gently used books and money (the money doesn’t have to be new) to provide for the beginning of a secondary school library. We can use fiction, non-fiction, religious books, encyclopedias, research materials… really, anything with words is gold. I know you all have at least one book lying around your house that some teenager would find interesting and that you won’t miss at all. Many of you probably have an entire bookshelf that fits that category. If you work in a library, do you ever cycle books out? What happens to them? Students, what about holding a book drive at your school and giving more people a chance to get in on this?

One library won’t change the world. I understand that. But my goal is not a world of change. This is one simple way in which we as a western community can help provide the opportunity for a better future to a handful of students whom God has placed on my heart. Pray about it… and then please join me. At least in the near future, this is my Calcutta.

This is the primary school library--my second home here. 

The kids love coming to my room and reading books on the weekends. 

Some of the secondary students who currently don't have a library. 

Sharifa, one of my reading students.

More secondary students.

I spend half our reading time teaching kids how to turn the page without wrinkling the paper. It has been quite a process, but now the kids teach each other, which is always entertaining to watch. 

A Taste of Uganda

Here is a little taste (pun fully intended) of what I have been eating for the last few months. Of course, coming to Africa and only eating at Noah’s Ark is like coming to America and only eating at camp, but I have also had chances to eat some very traditional Ugandan foods from time to time and there are some things I am certainly going to miss.

Chapattis are one of my top three favorite Ugandan foods. A chapatti is like a thick, greasy tortilla. (Sounds delicious, right?) Okay, I may be biased because tortillas are one of my favorite foods back home, but chapattis are so popular here they must be loved by nearly everyone. They are made from dough and then fried in oil on a small cooking stove while someone continually pushes out the edges to make sure it doesn’t get too thick.

One of the great things about chapattis is the sheer versatility of this food group. You can eat them with beans. You can eat them with soup. You can eat them with boiled cabbage. You can eat them plain. You can eat them rolled up with an egg. You can eat them with guacamole. I’m starting to sound like Dr. Seuss… can you imagine if he wrote a book about chapattis?!

Our Sunday lunch is an egg sandwich. The cooks fry a bazillion eggs with shredded vegetables in them—most commonly tomatoes, carrots, and onions I think. It is one of two meals a week in which we get bread, so I am a fan.

Sunday supper is the most popular meal of the week: chips and sausage! It only took two weeks for me to come to terms with the fact that French fries can be a meal all on their own.  They are served with “salad,” which is basically coleslaw and quite tasty. The only problem is you have to eat the salad very quickly before it can get all the chips soggy.

On weekdays, the lunch served is posho and beans. Posho is made from some type of grain mixed with water and cooked in a pot. It is like a very dry tofu. It is made from a grain that is ground up and mixed with water, then cooked until it makes a solid-ish mass that can be broken apart into pieces, kind of like really thick and dry powdered mashed potatoes. It barely absorbs the flavor of whatever you eat with it. This is the most common meal in all of Uganda—many families and schools eat this for every meal everyday. I ate it everyday for the first half of my time here, but now I buy more of my own food and usually stick to some combination of bread and fruit for lunch.

Here is one meal I have learned to like: matoke. It is made from cooked green bananas. Apparently you can’t make it with ripe, yellow bananas or it doesn’t work. I have been corrected when I asked someone if we were eating banana: “No, these are green bananas.” Apparently they’re not even in the same category.

Traditionally, when matoke is prepared it is wrapped in banana fibers and cooked in a pot. Here at Noah’s Ark, my guess is they don’t go to such lengths since they have to feed about 200 people, but I will admit I have never watched them make this green banana concoction. They serve it with some sort of sauce that usually includes meat and vegetables. As long as the ratio of sauce to matoke is heavier on the sauce side, a bowlful of this tastes fairly decent.

Guess what everyone—I eat bananas now! I don’t exactly enjoy them, but they are a) easy to come by, unlike apples or grapes, b) easy to prepare, unlike a mango, and c) I can eat a whole one or more by myself, unlike a pineapple or watermelon. It usually takes me about a week to get through a bunch of small bananas like this. But please, don’t automatically assume I will continue this habit when I get home. I won’t mind if there are no bananas of any size or color waiting for me.

Saturday lunch: my favorite lunch of the week! This is a bowl of cassava and beans. When I asked a worker here what cassava was made out of, he gave me a long questioning look and I thought maybe I had said the name wrong and he didn’t understand me. Then understanding dawned on his face and he patiently explained to me that cassava is a plant, so it’s made up of… you know, plant things. Apparently not many Ugandans like this meal because it is an odd combination or the cassava is cooked weirdly or something, but I look forward to it every week. When it’s all cooked together, the chunks of cassava are surrounded by a sort of sticky bean mush, which sounds disgusting but tastes wonderful.

Here is a poor picture of something called rolex. The name came from the words “roll eggs” because it is simply a friend egg with shredded vegetables rolled up in a chapatti. We don’t have the capacity to serve them at Noah’s Ark, but just up the road is the Rolex Man, who makes these in a tiny wooden hut and sells them for the equivalent of about 60 cents apiece. If I am ever not in the mood for whatever the kitchen is serving, it is only a ten-minute walk to our beloved Rolex Man.

Our Saturday suppers are regularly soup and bread. Sometimes the soup has meat and sometimes it has rice, but it always has vegetables.

Another regular supper here is rice and sauce. The sauce is different every time, but often looks similar to what we put on spaghetti when we have that, with vegetables and scrambled egg.

You have to admit, the dollar meal in Uganda trumps the dollar meal from McDonalds. There is a small restaurant in Mukono where I can get four meat samosas and a chapatti for the equivalent of one US dollar. I treat myself to this once a week when I go into town to go to the supermarket. Samosas can be either vegetarian or filled with meat, and both are tasty. I can buy them at Noah’s Ark as well, but sometimes they run out before eleven in the morning if students are quick to the kitchen during break. The ones here are filled with potato and vegetables and the ones I get at the restaurant are filled with ground hamburger, which here is called mincemeat. They are also one of my three favorite Ugandan foods.

Have I mentioned how much I love the avocados here? Look at the size of this one! There is a very kind woman who sells fruit outside the supermarket and picks me the best avocado every week when I go… and she knows how to pick a good avocado! This is the third of my favorite three Ugandan foods.

Slow Down

ONE DAY while I was teaching the P7 students, I had a short worksheet for each of them to complete. Before starting, I gave them the instructions: “I want each of you to write one sentence for each homophone you have on your paper. Then put all the words from each sentence in alphabetical order so we can practice what we learned this week. When you are finished, you may sit quietly while the rest of the class finishes as well. All right?”

I was met with blank stares from all ten students sitting in front of me. “Do you understand what you need to do?” I asked again. Confused faces all around. As I opened my mouth to repeat the directions, Veronica piped in, “You need to talk slower.”

So that was it. Not that they couldn’t understand the directions themselves—they just couldn’t understand me! That day, I learned to slow down when I speak to Ugandans. Tonight during my Luganda lesson with Uncle Daniel, he told me I pronounce everything correctly, but I need to say it all slower. “You’ve probably noticed,” he said, “that Ugandans don’t speak fast… ever. So in order for these words to sound right you need to slow down.”

Slow down. You all know me. When was the last time I heeded that command?

LAST WEEK, I wanted to make a quick trip to Mukono during lunch. After leaving Noah’s Ark, there is about a half-mile walk up a hill to the main road where I can catch a boda or taxi into town. Just outside the compound gate, I heard three sets of footsteps running in my direction and turned around to see three young students from a nearby school rushing toward me. They were on their way home and wanted to walk with me. One grabbed my hand and the others talked and smiled and we went on our way.

It was agonizingly slow. I could have crawled. Or slept for a while and then crawled. If I tried to hurry them a little bit by walking faster, it would only put distance between us, not encourage them to pick up the pace. It reminded me of my grandpa, who can take five minutes to dance a sort of shuffle down the driveway, sometimes for his own amusement and sometimes to infuriate the person with whom he is walking.

Everyone from the western world walks faster than Ugandans. I pass people all the time when I am walking around Noah’s Ark, especially as I plow my way up the big hill between the school and my house. But if I want to walk with them, I have to slow down.

Slow down. It can be agonizing. Think of all the things I could have accomplished in the time it took me to get from Point A to Point B!

I ARRIVED at Noah’s Ark in the late morning on a Saturday, way back in September the day after landing at Entebbe. Immediately upon arrival, I brought my things to my new room and Daniel gave me a tour of the compound. At the end of the tour, he brought me back to my room, told me what time to come to lunch, and turned to leave.

“Wait!” I said. “What am I supposed to do this afternoon? Is there a program for me yet?”

He laughed. “No, no, not yet. For the first three days, we just want volunteers to relax and settle in, and then we’ll figure everything out.”

Three days? To relax? That was not what I came here for! However, I was emotional, and I was homesick, and I was a little bit scared, so instead of immediately leaving to explore, I did just what he told me to… I relaxed. I napped. I read. I played cards with the Canadian volunteers across the way.

And you know what? Even after getting involved with several programs with the church and school and teenagers, I am finding time to relax. A testament to this is that I have read 14 books since I left home. I love reading, but I don’t make time for it at home like I have been able to here. I am busy, but I’m not busy all the time. I have slowed down.

Slow down. I can’t say I am very good at it yet, but I am learning. It is a skill that comes naturally to some and must be learned by others. I think in America it is too criticized and in Uganda it is too normal. A happy medium would do both countries well and I am gradually learning what that looks like for me, although it comes with a fair amount of frustration and impatience. Slow down.

And then God tells me to be still and know that He is God.

Have you ever tried that? Literally tried to be still and simply know that God is God? Not just slow down. Not think about what is happening for the rest of the day. Not pray to Him. Not open your mouth in worship. Just know that God is who He says He is.

I challenge you to try it. I can almost guarantee you will fail miserably. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be worthwhile.

This is possibly one of the most difficult things He expects of us. Following the commands, sure—do this, don’t do that—but wiping away your mind of everything except the fact that God is God? Wow. Good luck.

The point is not to congratulate yourself for thinking of nothing but God for a minute, five minutes, an hour. The point is not to get really good at meditation. The point is that when we are busily going about our everyday lives, whether in America or Uganda, we get so distracted by ourselves and other people and we start to take control. It’s amazing how our minds so easily trick us into making us think we are our own gods. We have power. We have control. We are not needy… right?

Can we know that God is God while we live life? Of course we can. Brother Lawrence, in the book The Practice of the Presence of God, said that he felt closer to God while he was in the kitchen peeling potatoes for the monks than when he sat down for his devotional time everyday. He learned the art of living not only for God, but with God, the skill of remembering God in every moment of every day, in every activity and conversation and service. He knew that God was God all the time.

But we are a society who is constantly running out the door and in the scramble for keys and purses and grocery lists, how would we ever remember to bring God with us too? Be still and know that I am God. He is not asking us to slow down—He is telling us to stop. Stop moving. Stop making noise. Stop trying to plan a future that is in His hands anyway. Stop fiddling with your phone when you are pretending to spend time with Him. Stop running out the door on your way to the next thing. Just stop. Be still. And know.

God is God, and as simple as that may seem, it holds a million mysteries and promises. I am not God. You are not God. He is God. It is perhaps the most baffling and comforting and powerful knowledge your brain will ever hold… if you are still enough to know.