Birth Story :: Elliot Mukisa

The doctor was sitting outside in the waiting area for the clinic. Perfect, I thought. I wanted to talk with her without making a big deal out of it. No one was around, so I entered and pulled up a chair next to her. After making the usual greetings, I got straight to the point. “I would like to buy a pregnancy test to do at home,” I whispered. The whispering was not because I was embarrassed, only that I didn’t want any passersby to hear what I was saying. I had not even told Christian I suspected I was pregnant, and I would hate for rumors to start from a child who overheard my request. 

“You think you might be pregnant?” she asked kindly and curiously. 

“Maybe,” I admitted. I told her how lately I had been feeling especially tired, and how my stomach had felt a little off for two or three weeks. There were no big signs, but once the seed of possibility entered my mind, it grew until I knew I needed to take a test just to be sure. 

“It’s probably nothing,” I said, “but I just want to double check. And please don’t say anything to Christian about it.”

The doctor raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t know you are taking a test?” I shook my head. She seemed amused, or perhaps honored that she was literally the first person I had told about my suspicion. She gave me a pregnancy test to take home. I hid it in the back pocket of my jeans, then pulled my shirt down over it, just to be sure nothing could be seen. When I reached home, I hid it in the bathroom until I was ready to take it that evening. 

I would not have been surprised with a negative result, but I was also not surprised when the two lines grew dark on that tiny stick. I would even say there was a twinge of happiness. 

Christian, on the other hand, was shocked. After I told him, he just stared at me and I swear I could hear the gears in his head turning. We had not planned this. In fact, we had planned not to have this happen. I had an IUD. On top of that, I was still breastfeeding Patricia, who was two weeks shy of a year old, three or four times a day. When I wasn’t breastfeeding her but still had milk, I was pumping for two babies in the children’s home. When we told my parents two weeks later, my mom’s first reaction was, “How can you be pregnant? You’re constantly breastfeeding!”

Take note, women: Breastfeeding is not birth control. 

That is how we came to know about Little Peanut, as we affectionately called our surprise baby. After a few weeks the shock wore off and we were able to joyfully adjust our plans for the year (and beyond) to accommodate this new little life. 

Fast forward to August, and we were all prepared for the arrival of Little Peanut. I cut back on work when I was 37 weeks pregnant to give us time to organize the house, get the last supplies we needed, and spend some quality time with Patricia while she was still an only child. In the last weeks of my pregnancy with Patricia we were impatient to have her with us. We would have gladly welcomed her before her due date so we could meet our first child. 

We did not experience that with Little Peanut. For one, we were both working a lot and simply didn’t have time to sit down and think, We can’t wait for something to come and make our lives even busier! But more than that, we enjoy Patricia so much—and she takes so much energy—that we were very happy to have a few more weeks where we could give her our complete attention. 

Or so we thought. 

Like the pregnancy, the delivery caught us a little bit off guard. 

Monday, August 24, started like our other Mondays: Christian and I dropped Patricia off at daycare, grabbed our Bibles and went to staff devotions. After devotions I went down to the library for a couple hours to organize some of the mess I had left when the lockdown program ended a week before. That day I finally felt like I had made enough progress that it looked like a library again, not a storeroom. Or a pigsty. 

Once in a while I felt something—not exactly a pain; more of a small pressure—in my pelvis, but as I had been walking around the whole morning, carrying boxes back and forth between the library and the storage room, and I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with what looked to be a huge baby, I assumed it was just from the activity and nothing with which to concern myself. I was also very tired, to the point where I wanted to take a nap, but that was not uncommon considering work, the one-year-old, and the pregnancy. It did cross my mind that I hoped the baby would not come that day because I didn’t feel like I had enough energy for labor, but the thought was fleeting as I went about my business. 

The three of us had lunch at home and then I grabbed my Bible and journal to do devotions. Since Christian was busy with something in the living room, I sat down on our bed to read. I read one page, and then rested my head on my arm… and closed my eyes… 

I woke up about half an hour later with a dull pain in my abdomen. It lasted about thirty seconds and then subsided. That’s a bit strange, I thought, sitting up again and closing my Bible and journal. I surrendered to fatigue, lying down properly on my pillow and actually giving myself permission to close my eyes. Twenty minutes later, I woke up again with the same pain. And again twenty minutes later. And then once more. 

I was not yet convinced this was real labor, but since the pains had been at regular intervals I got out of bed and told Christian the baby might be on the way. We agreed to time the possible-contractions for the next hour and then call the midwife if they stayed consistent. 

They did not stay consistent. 

By the end of the hour, contractions—and by then we knew they were contractions, whether it was real labor or not—were five minutes apart and lasted a minute. Christian went to get the midwife while I got Patricia, who had been napping, out of bed and into her high chair for a snack. I sat in front of her on the coffee table and breathed through the steadily-growing contractions. Once I closed my eyes to focus on my breathing. When the contraction ended and I opened my eyes to see Patricia again, she was also breathing loudly and slowly, her mouth in a perfect circle and eyes on me. That girl copies everything!

The midwife came and did an exam. “You are in labor,” she told us matter-of-factly. “You are dilated five centimeters. You can stay here and take care of Patricia for now. Call me when your water breaks or when you feel like pushing and I will come back.”

When she left I looked at Christian. “When I feel like pushing? Won’t that be too late to go to the clinic?” With Patricia we did a “home” birth in the Netherlands, but here that was impractical. Our bedroom is so small that the bed takes almost all the space. It would be difficult for anyone to get to different sides of the bed quickly. Not only that, but the foot board on our bed would make it impossible to deliver the baby in that direction because no one could stand there to catch it. The clinic is less than a minute’s walk from our house, and we knew if we delivered in the clinic we wouldn’t have to deal with the mess in the same way we would in our own home. So even though this delivery was in Uganda, it would end up being in more of a medical facility than what we had in the Netherlands. 

We had arranged for Irene, a teenager from the family units, to be our on-call baby-sitter for Patricia when I went into labor. Since we needed something to do to pass the time and the contractions, the three of us put on our shoes and wandered down to the family units to let her know she should come to our house later in the evening. 

Our hope was to put Patricia to bed at 8:00 and then let Irene take over while we went to the clinic for what would likely be the whole night. We tried not to make a big deal of it as we smiled and told her (with eight other girls from the family unit eavesdropping behind her) that the baby was on the way and Patricia would need her services in a few hours. 

It was dark by the time we reached home again at 7:00. The contractions were no closer together and no worse, but it was still early in labor. I sat on the floor and finally got a hold of my mom, whom I had called multiple times on multiple numbers but had failed to find until then. Sitting on the floor was because my water had not yet broken and I was in no mood to figure out how to clean amniotic fluid off our couch. Turns out sitting on the floor was a wise move because a few minutes later I felt a warm bubbling between my legs and knew without a doubt (in contrast to labor with Patricia) that my water had just broken. Christian whisked Patricia into her high chair to keep her from skating on the slippery floor and called the midwife again. 

The midwife returned and said I was now dilated six centimeters but that after water breaking labor tends to speed up, so it was time for me to come down with her to the clinic. I grabbed my phone, kissed Patricia good night, and left her screaming in her high chair when I closed the door behind me. Christian would join me in half an hour after giving her supper and getting her in bed. 

One blessing, for which I had not thought to wish ahead of time, was that Little Peanut decided to make his entrance in the evening when the clinic was closed. That meant that I had the freedom to walk around the waiting area without weaving in and out of patients’ outstretched legs and without wearing a mask, and there was only the occasional person who walked by and was clued in as to what was going on. 

For the next hour, I paced. 

I like rhythm when I am in labor. With Patricia, I had a rhythm of breathing while I was waiting for the green light to push. This time, I made my own little track, always following the same route around the chairs, down the hall, and back. I did it backwards once or twice and it felt weird. For distraction, I held my phone in my hand and listened to a Friends episode on Netflix. I remember it was the one where Phoebe, Monica and Rachel all wear their wedding dresses and Rachel scares Joshua away and though I haven’t watched that one since then, I am sure for the rest of my life it will always remind me of that night. 

“Are they increasing?” the midwife asked through the window of her office as I passed. I breathed out a “yes” and kept walking. 

By the time Christian came with our things, I was having trouble staying composed while I moved. I tried sitting a couple of times, because on a normal day if I have pain while moving then sitting brings relief, but sitting only brought me the expectation of relief and no less pain, which turned out to be worse. 

I followed him to what I guess would be called the labor suite, a room with two beds and a bucket we brought for a toilet since there are only pit latrines in the clinic and the midwife understandably did not want me to accidentally deliver my baby into a pit full of poop. (I did not actually have to use the bucket, which made me happy.) My tolerance for the pain did not increase at the same rate as the pain itself. I sat on the floor and rested my head on a chair, rocking back and forth until the midwife told me to sit on the bed because “they do come and clean the floor… but it’s the floor, so you never know.” 

Back to pacing. 

There is a short hallway with a seam down the middle of the flooring. Concentrating all my efforts on that seam, I walked the line like someone taking a DUI test. Over and over, back and forth, trying to think only of that line. (Friends was way behind me at that point.) When even that became too much, I succumbed to the bed. Christian brought me some juice and a granola bar and every contraction I put my head between my arms and rocked back and forth on my knees until the two-second pause before the next one. 

I could hear the midwife preparing the delivery room next door. Finally, I whispered to Christian, “Tell her I want to push.” 

Compared to our bed where I delivered Patricia in the Netherlands, the bed in the delivery room felt like plywood. A doctor told me later it is to encourage mothers to deliver quickly. The clock hung on the wall in front of me. I started pushing at 9:00 pm. 

After the very first push, the midwife said, “There it is,” and pointed between my legs at the bed. I didn’t really think the baby had come out already, but what else could she be talking about? Then she picked up the IUD I had just delivered and put it on a table for safekeeping.

The delivery room is full of windows. It is full of windows with no curtains. Two of those windows directly face the main road on the compound, about ten feet away from the side of the building. It was dark outside, and we had the light on in the room. I would have felt entirely on display if it were not for the fact that I had on countless occasions walked that road and glanced at those windows and I know from experience that you can see absolutely nothing from the road. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did make me feel better. 

Our midwife here was the opposite of our midwife in the Netherlands. For Patricia’s birth, during push after push, the midwife was by my side almost shouting, “C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon!” to encourage me. This time, she was calmly arranging things in the room while Christian stayed by my side, occasionally coming over to check progress and then going back to her other business. 

Labor is like a trail full of switchbacks. When you walk switchbacks in the forest, you have no idea how many still lie ahead of you. You can only see a short section of trail in front of you and every time you switch back you wonder if you’re going to get the view that time… or the next time… or the next. Once in a while you think to yourself, This MUST be it!, only to see more trail. Do you need to save your energy for twenty more, or can you power through these last few to reach the top? Are you allowed to be tired yet, or would that be foolishly premature?

Pushing a baby out is like that. 

“You need to give the next one more effort.” 

I did. No baby. 

A bit later: “If you push harder on the next one, it might be your last.” 

I gently (at least it was intended to be gentle, but was likely not) clutched the front of Christian’s shirt and said with closed eyes, “Pray that this is the last one.” 

“I already did,” he answered. What a guy. 

Then—finally—I heard, “It’s out.” Not wanting to relax too soon, with my chin still to my chest I shouted in one breath, “Just-the-head-or-the-whole-baby!?”

“Just the head—one more push!” 

The last switchback. 

And there he was. Our bloody, big, screaming, gray, slimy treasure. 

The midwife laid him on my chest for just a minute or two before taking him away to get cleaned up and warm. I just kept looking at his gross head and whispering in a mixture of joy and relief, “You’re here. You’re here.” 

After a while, Christian wanted to send a message to our families. We had recently narrowed it down to two names, but each of us slightly preferred a different one. The good thing about being half naked and bloody and sweaty on a delivery bed that felt like a plank was that Christian said we could use the one I preferred. Then he asked how to spell it. 

For all of you who see Elliot’s name and think it should be spelled with double t—yes, it should. But we were eager to tell people about him. So we guessed. And we stuck with it. 

Elliot comes from the name Elijah and means “the Lord is my God.” Mukisa, his middle name, is the Luganda word for blessing. Elliot Mukisa Berkman was born at 9:30 pm on August 24, 2020, after a mere six hours of labor. (To sum up the difference between delivering a first and second child—the intensity of the pain is the same, but it doesn’t last as long.) It was a good thing he came two weeks early, because at 3.9 kilograms I would not have wanted to grow him any bigger on the inside! 

We thank God he gave us this blessing even when we didn’t know we wanted it.

One Thousand Shillings

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

My Lockdown

IT IS THE end of March and it is 4:30 on a Wednesday morning. The insects buzz outside; the birds not yet awake. It is never silent here. If I look out the window, I can see a few gleaming spots on the horizon, like stars that have sunk too low and stuck to the morning dew of the earth. The few houses across the valley that keep an outside light on all night. There is a faint light glowing where I know the compound gate stands, hidden from my view by some nursery school classrooms. 

I sit in the corner of the library closest to the door, not by choice, but because that is where the working outlet is. It is also the darkest corner of the library, as that is where the only non-working ceiling light is. Unlucky combination I guess. I sit on the floor, also not exactly by choice, but because all the desks are piled with stacks of books and there is not enough space on them to fit the piles of homework I am preparing. 

At four months pregnant, my belly is just starting to emerge over the hem of my jeans, especially when I sit cross-legged on the concrete floor. Those who know me well recognized it before we made the announcement a couple of weeks ago; other, less-perceptive people, were surprised with the news like we were in the beginning. I haven’t yet felt the baby move or heard the heartbeat, so my visibly growing stomach is finally some physical evidence of the life we have been told is growing inside. I sit comfortably and welcome the knowledge of the little life’s company this early morning. 

Ignoring the hum of insects that have entered through the pane-less windows, I survey the scene around me. Thirteen Pringles cans are scattered across the library floor, each with a label on the side: P.1 A, P.1 B, P.2 A, and so forth, up to P.6 B. Each can holds an eraser, a pencil sharpener, one pen for each member of that group, and as many colored pencils as can fit. We have close to 200 children on the compound and we want to keep them busy and educated while schools are closed, but the government has recently made a new coronavirus rule that people should not gather in groups of more than five. 

Two hundred children divided into groups of five. Okay. 

We are doing our best. We have divided the nursery and primary school children into small groups according to class, so at most they have activities with seven people. Every day they have two activities that last for two hours each. During that time, one hour is spent on homework and the other is an activity such as art, PE, zumba, card games or music, led by a teenager or adult. It will suffice for the one month school is closed. 

I prepare the homework, which is proving to be more time consuming than I had originally thought. For one, it turns out I don’t really know what the different ages should know. When school is in session, I work with children who are behind in reading and math compared to their classmates, but I almost never work with children who are at the level they should be. How many numbers has a six-year-old learned, and does she know what she can do with them? If I tell a fifth grader to write a short story, should I expect correct punctuation? 

I pore through library books and activity books, writing on sticky notes how many copies to make of each one. I check the work that came back the day before to assess whether the work was the right level. With non-teachers as the teachers, sometimes it is hard to know if the work was beyond the level of the children or the instructions were beyond the level of the teacher. A first grade group was supposed to copy a card with some words and write the rhyming words on their papers. Instead, they all traced and colored their hands. I shake my head and move on. Eventually I will get all caught up, right?

One group is doing homework. 

Puzzles is a weekly activity.

This is how I sometimes manage to organize the homework.

This is how I usually manage to organize the homework.

IT IS THE end of May and it is 4:30 on a Saturday morning. My husband sleeps peacefully in one bedroom; my daughter in the other. Once in a while I can hear a lonesome snore or the sound of someone shifting position—with Patricia that is usually accompanied by a thunk as either she or her cup hits the wooden slats on her bed—and I find comfort in the company within my own home. 

I was always naturally an early riser. However, 4:30 on a Saturday morning is pushing it, even for me. It is not my first choice to get up before the roosters and the Muslims in the mosque, but during the week my workdays are so long that I miss my family. My time with Patricia has been relegated mostly to getting her ready in the morning, making her lunch, making her supper and getting her ready for bed in the evening. We can make quality time of it, but it takes effort. If I want to spend non-working time with her this weekend, I need to get work done before she opens her eyes and calls my name. Hence 4:30 a.m.

I see many Facebook posts of friends in America—and even people here—with photos of them and their children, saying that one benefit of lockdown everywhere is that they get more quality time with their children. I try not to be jealous, but I envy them nonetheless. I miss my child. On Sunday mornings when I need to go to school to prepare homework for all the groups, Patricia stands in the doorway and cries, shouting “Mama!” over and over again as I walk away, and it breaks my heart. 

Schools did not open after one month. There are rumors they will open soon, but no one knows the truth. We all wait, watch on TV when the president speaks, and shake our heads in disappointment when he announces more restrictions that people will likely not follow. And we do our best. What else can we do? 

Our lockdown program has not changed much. I asked a teacher to help prepare homework, dividing the groups between the two of us, and she has been a lifesaver. I no longer have to go to the library before the break of dawn five days a week, though I do still bring homework to prepare from home in the evenings after Patricia has gone to bed. I have not had a day off in nine weeks, but as soon as school starts again I will leave the libraries in the hands of others and take a week-long vacation. That should happen sometime in the next few weeks, surely.

I adjust the papers on the table so I can see all the lists I am using—the empty grid for the program next week, the children who are in band and cannot attend morning activities, the types of activities the teenagers are willing to lead, which day and time each auntie from the children’s home is available, the teenagers who are in a Friday afternoon Bible study and cannot lead activities at that time… I need a bigger table. Because the leaders in this program are from different departments and their schedules change week by week, I need to make a new schedule for the 17 groups of children every week. I have timed it, and from start to finish it takes about nine hours to put together the schedule. That is usually the whole of my Saturday. If I want family time on the weekend, it means a late Friday night or an early Saturday morning, but it is worth it. I don’t mind the work. In the beginning, the first day of lockdown when we were brainstorming what to have the children do in the one month without school, I offered to make the timetable because I do the same sort of thing in the holidays and have experience putting together those types of programs. I have yet to meet anyone here who actually likes doing it, so it was also an offer to spare others the headache of doing it themselves. I did not imagine at the time that nine weeks later I would still be doing it, with no visible end in sight. 

Christian would like me to be home more often. He says I am working too much, too hard. He is probably right, but what choice is there? Everyone is putting in extra time and effort. 

“I am not doing this out of bitterness or just a sense of responsibility,” I tell him one evening when we are having that conversation again. I am tired and in tears. “I am doing this because I love the children and I really think this structure and having a program like this is the best thing for them right now. They might not see it that way, but I am being honest when I say the main motivation behind the early mornings and late nights is love.”

At six months pregnant, my belly bumps the table every time I stand up to make another cup of tea or go to the bathroom because I have been drinking too many cups of tea. It is getting to the point where I need to consciously make space for the extra area I occupy. I still find it interesting that a few extra inches in the front makes such a big difference when navigating through doorways or between desks in a classroom. Our baby boy is growing fast, and now he contributes to my early morning work with kicks and punches and somersaults. He is a welcome companion while my other favorite people are sleeping. 

Saturday morning, 4:30 a.m.

Saturday morning, 7:30 a.m.

The timetable after one hour of work. 

After four hours...

After eight hours...

After nine hours and finished. This is the schedule for half a day.

IT IS THE end of July and it is 3:13 on a Thursday afternoon. Though it has been raining most afternoons in the last two weeks, today the sun shines bright and cheerful, a contrast to how I am feeling at this particular moment. 

Schools are still closed. There are rumors that they will not open at all this year. With each passing day and no word from the government, I believe the rumors more. It would take too much time and effort to adjust the curriculum to account for only half a year of school. In February, the beginning of the school year, would students move on to the next class or stay in the one they started this year? It can be beneficial for students to still go to school for the sake of learning even without being promoted to the next class, but no parent is going to pay school fees for a “wasted” year such as that.

Our program is continuing, but people are growing tired. I do my best to not be one of them, or at least to not show it on the outside. There is an ever-widening gap between teenagers who love leading activities, filling in where others cannot make it or volunteering to lead more activities per week than is required of them, and the ones who are uninterested, sometimes refusing to come when they are scheduled and even, on occasion, hiding from the children so they cannot be found and forced to lead. Something needs to change, and I do my best to be patient as I wait for answers and help from our management team. 

In the meantime, I am in the library. Of course I am in the library. I think I live in the library. Probably the children also think I live in the library. 

My plan for the afternoon was to prepare the homework for tomorrow so that tomorrow I can start working on the timetable for next week and hopefully, hopefully, not need to see 3:30 on a Saturday morning this weekend. But my plan started falling apart an hour ago when one leader brought a discipline case to me that he could not handle, and it has been continuing to fall apart with each leader who has come with another child who is disrupting the activity and the group and who needs to be handled by an adult, not a teenager. I have had a conversation with Robin about how to be a good friend and now he is sitting on the floor writing three ways he can be a good friend to others in his group. I have heard from Innocent about what happened with his group, talked with his leader and sent him back for his activity. Now Auntie Maggie is outside talking with a whole group of fifth grade students, and I can tell by the way she has been glancing through the window periodically for the last 15 minutes that she has been waiting for me to finish with Robin to bring this case to me as well. 

I take a deep breath and go outside to hear what the issue is now, doing my best to muster up a patient smile on the way.

“Auntie Katie, we have a real problem,” Auntie Maggie begins. That is never a good start. “Aaron has beaten Tessa because she put his homework paper next to Hasifa’s, and he is refusing to apologize.”

It sounds like a stupid reason to beat someone, so I try to confirm with Aaron. “Is that true?” I ask him. 

“Yes!” Tessa chimes in without invitation. “He doesn’t want anything of his to touch Hasifa. Even if she opens a door before him, he uses a paper to touch the door handle so he doesn’t have to touch it after her, and he won’t sit next to her in class.” 

I repeat the question to Aaron. “Is it true, what they have said?” He nods. 

“Tessa, are you okay?” I ask. She nods her head. I send the rest of the group back to class with their leader and Aaron and I find a place to sit and talk. 

“Why do you do that?” I ask point blank. 

“Auntie Katie, when Hasifa first came at the beginning of lockdown I knew she needed help. She cannot read very well and she is not good in maths, so I wanted to help her so she could do what we were doing. But every time I tried to help her she abused me or told me she didn’t want it, so I stopped.” 

I had not been expecting such an honest answer right away. He was making it easy for me. 

“How did it feel when you tried to help and she abused you?” I ask. (In context: “abuse” here means to call someone bad names.) 

“Bad,” he answered, hanging his head.

“So she made you feel bad, and now you want to make her feel bad, right?” 

Silence. After a minute, he nods his head. 

“Aaron, I know you know your Bible stories very well. Think about what happened before Jesus was crucified. What kinds of bad things did people do to him?”

“They beat him. They used a whip on him. They made him carry the cross. They spit on him and abused him.” 

“Yes, they did all those things, and even more. Do you remember what they put on his head?”

“A crown of thorns.”

“And what did Jesus do to all those people when they did the bad things to him?”

Aaron doesn’t skip a beat. “He forgave them.”

“Precisely,” I say. “And did he forgive them after they all came to him and said sorry and started being nice again?” 

“No.”

“Right again. When did he forgive them?” 

“When he was hanging on the cross.”

“Yes. He forgave them while they were still doing the things that needed forgiving. He didn’t wait for them to change or apologize. He did the right thing even when they were not.” Aaron is looking pretty humble at this point, not full of anger like he was in the beginning. “I know you are not Jesus, but he does call us to follow his example. Do you think there is any way you can be nice to Hasifa, be her friend, and show her the love of Jesus even if she keeps abusing you and refusing your help?” He nods. “It doesn’t mean that you two have to be best friends or spend all your time together. But it does mean that you need to do what you can to be nice to her, even if she is not nice back. You two are in the same group, after all, so you need to find a way to be around each other every day.”

I tell him that before he goes back to his group, I want to pray with him. He prays for forgiveness for how he has been treating Hasifa and for help in being nice to her from now on. I thank God for Jesus’ sacrifice for us and that he forgives us, and I thank him for Aaron and the lesson he has learned today. 

“Aaron,” I say before he leaves, “I know it will not always be easy. But if you find it too hard to be nice to Hasifa and to forgive her, please come talk to me. I want to help you with this, okay?”

“Okay.”

That conversation is, by far, the best part of my day. Probably the best part of my week. I rub my enormous, eight-month-pregnant belly and hope that my son will be as teachable as Aaron has been this afternoon. I do not finish preparing homework this afternoon and I do not get an early start on the timetable the next day, but it is okay. 

IT IS THE end of September and it is 4:29 on a Friday afternoon. Schools are not open. Lockdown is still in place. 

Has anything changed in the last six months? 

Well, yes. Yes it has. 

The program I was organizing (however unintentional it was that I ended up running it for 22 weeks) came to an end. I gave my bosses a date for the beginning of my maternity leave, saying I could still help where needed but would not be organizing the whole thing from that date forward, and that became the last day of said program. The children had two weeks free—a sort of mid-lockdown holiday—and then began a new program put together by the management team. They are still getting used to the new rhythm, but it sounds like it is going well and there have been some good changes. I have not been involved in a single aspect of it, which is simultaneously unsettling and refreshing. 

It was good that Christian made me set the date for maternity leave because it gave us exactly one week to prepare the house and ourselves for the arrival of our little Elliot, who surprised us by coming two weeks early. 

So now it is the end of September. I have left the compound exactly five times in the last six months. It is a big compound, but it can be stifling at times. By the time Patricia was three months old, she had traveled to three continents. By the time Elliot is three months old, I am wondering if he will have even seen the road outside the compound. But it’s okay. We are all still doing the best we can, right?

Time Travel

When I look at my newborn 

my little Elliot Mukisa

I see his 54 centimeters

and his 4.9 kilograms,

his head of growing hair

and his expanding waistline,

his perfect little bellybutton

and his skinny little legs.

I see dark eyes

that cannot focus

but look searchingly nonetheless.

I see ten fingers

that people keep saying are long

even though I don’t notice it myself.

I see him alert, and sleeping,

and crying—sometimes howling--

when food comes ten seconds too late.

But I also see

a toddler

running around behind his big sister

blonde hair, blue eyes

energy that adults envy.

I see him in a school uniform

walking down the hill

with his friends.

Friends he does not yet know

walking to their teachers

who have not yet been hired.

I see a young man

with compassion

attitude

humor

understanding.

When I look at my newborn

my little Elliot Mukisa

I see who he is

but I also see who he is becoming,

who he can become,

who he might be.

I see him now

and I see him in the future.

It is a sort of time travel, I guess.

____________________

When I look at my grandmother

Grandma Pat

Big Mommy

Patty

Pat

Patricia

(my daughter’s namesake)

I see her kind eyes

and beautifully landscaped hands.

I see her Iowa State sweatshirt

and her matching earrings.

I hear her delight

in her children

and grandchildren

and great-grandchildren

and her comical frustration

when the Cyclones make

what she considers

a stupid mistake.

I see her slow walk

though she hides the pain well

and I never hear her complaints

because in all the time I have known her

she has never offered one.

But I also see

a bride

tiny little thing

in what I think is

a hoop skirt

standing beside my grandfather

behind the cake

on their wedding day

in a cherished

family video.

Someone speaks to her

and she shakes her

finger at them

in the same way she does today

if we dare to challenge her.

I see her in her office

at the university

where every summer she would take us

to show off to her coworkers

(or maybe former coworkers;

I guess I never knew then

if she was retired

or not).

I see her on the beach

in St. Croix

basking in the triumph

of a well-executed family trip,

finding joy in

each person there,

kissing my grandfather

Big Daddy

under a palm tree in the sand,

blissfully content in

the family they have made.

I see her in the memory ward

Grandpa’s final home

(on earth, anyway)

spooning mashed potatoes into his mouth

slowly, patiently

lovingly

and I think,

I hope I can live my life

with the same kind of

care

devotion

love

patience

service

integrity

grace

that she does.

When I look at my grandmother

Grandma Pat

Big Mommy

Patty

Pat

Patricia

I see who she is

but I also see who she was

in the process of becoming

the her I know now.

I see her now

and I see her in the past.

It is also a sort of time travel, I guess.

____________________

Imagine

seeing what God sees.

He does not have to time travel;

He lives outside of time

itself.

He looks at us

and He sees who we were

before we were anyone.

He looks at Elliot

and He knows exactly

what kind of boy

and man

my son—His son—

is going to become.

He looks at my grandmother

and He knows

the parts of her life

that even she

has forgotten.

What a perspective

What an adventure

to know people in that way.

What an adventure

What an honor

to be known in that way.