One thousand shillings. That’s about 30 cents. Not much to us. Not much to a lot of people. But at the same time, it is very much.
A few days ago I sent a boda driver to do some shopping while I stayed on the compound. We have been doing this since lockdown began in March, using the same driver every time. We give him a list and enough money for the shopping, he does his best to find everything, and then he returns with our shopping and the change, at which point we also pay him for the service. Actually, if we had known about this even before lockdown it would have been a good alternative to going into Mukono every week for grocery shopping.
This day, the shopping was simple and nearby, so I planned to pay him less than usual. When he came back with my fruit, I gave him a five thousand shilling note and started to explain why I was paying him less and that next time he did more shopping it would be the normal amount. Quite honestly, I expected him to argue and demand more. He did shake his head, but with a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“You give me four thousand,” he said. I thought he meant four thousand more than the five thousand I was offering.
“Four thousand?” I asked.
“It is only four thousand today,” he said, smiling.
I gave him four thousand with a bit of relief and a lot of appreciation. I smiled. “Thank you for being honest.”
It was not about the money. I would not have missed the thousand shillings. What I so deeply appreciated was the fact that even though he knows I have money to spare, he did not accept a price that would have been unfair to me. He treated me as an equal, and not as a foreign stranger.
There is a custom in Uganda that if you hold a baby for the first time, you have to give the baby money. I don’t know where or when it originated, how far the custom reaches or what the purpose is exactly. I didn’t even know about it until we brought Patricia back to Noah’s Ark when she was a few months old and some teachers who came to see her put money in her tiny little pockets. Not everyone does it, and certainly not everyone does it to foreigners.
Today we saw an old friend—and when I say old, I mean it both in the sense that we have known him for six years and that he is a very old man. We call him Mzee, a term of respect for a grown man.
In our sponsorship program, the sponsors from outside Uganda pay the bulk of the cost of school for each student. The student and his or her family, however, are still required to pay for the uniform. It is a small price in comparison to the total cost of school fees, but it is still more money than what many families have. Therefore, several parents of students come to Noah’s Ark once a week to chop firewood for the kitchen to pay off the uniform. Mzee was one of those parents.
Mzee began chopping firewood before I ever came to Uganda, when his daughter was in primary school. He chopped enough firewood to pay for her uniform. He chopped enough firewood to pay for several other students’ uniforms. And still he came. He chopped. He smiled. He went home and did it all again. He was a fixture here at Noah’s Ark.
Mzee has one crippled hand. The fingers are not fully grown and he cannot hold anything in that hand. The work he does, he does with one good hand. The work he does, he does well.
I got used to seeing Mzee when he came almost every day for firewood. We would smile as we passed each other on the hill. We shook hands and greeted one another, and inevitably he would ask me something in Luganda which I did not understand and we would eventually smile again and go our separate ways. It was familiar, albeit limited. He knew I didn’t know more than a few phrases in Luganda and he spoke to me every time anyway.
As he grew older, his health declined. He started coming less often. When he came, he moved more slowly. He was always pushing an old bike that he used to carry his things—I don’t know if I ever saw him riding it. He fell ill a few times, but pushed through.
One time after he fell sick, he stopped coming altogether. His house is about two miles from Noah’s Ark and he used to walk the whole distance, and probably bike part of it. But that became too far. I used to run past his house sometimes, but lockdown put an end to that as well.
Today at our Christmas concert was the first time I had seen Mzee in over a year. He is a bit more stooped and held someone’s arm while he walked. Our headmaster had picked him up in the car because he would not have managed the whole way on foot. But he was the same Mzee.
After the concert, Christian, Patricia, Elliot and I went to greet him. Even with Patricia on my hip, I knelt down in front of him, because that is what women are supposed to do and this man has sure earned a lot of respect. We exchanged the most basic of greetings in Luganda and then Christian introduced him to Elliot, whom he had never seen. Mzee motioned for Chrsitian to give Elliot to him and then the old man sat happily with a chubby white baby balanced on his lap. The old man gave the young boy a kiss on his head. It was a beautiful sight.
After a minute he started fumbling with his good hand in his shirt pocket, and I immediately knew what he was doing. It was unnecessary, and for a moment it made me uncomfortable. If there is one thing I don’t need, it is this grandfather’s money.
But this discomfort also gave way to a deep appreciation. As we laughed while we watched him try to pry open Elliot’s fist to give the baby the money, we were a community. We were equals. We were not white or black, young or old, educated or uneducated. He accepted us to the point of welcoming us into his culture, even when it cost him something.
It was not about the money. Not for me. It was about friendship. Acceptance. Love. Family. Community. Fellowship. Unity. It made me feel at home.
That’s a pretty powerful 30 cents, if you ask me.
PC: my amazing husband
