Life is so very good in Uganda, we were able to meet up with two friends from Colorado Springs, and hang out with them for a day, and show them the kids house, and where we live, it was so cool to see old friends in such a different place!
Sue and I have been debating how to email all of you and keep you updated because we have so many amazing experiences in one day that our emails would be novel length if we wrote you about all of it, so we've decided to include a little general information, and something from the week that really touched our hearts, or a special event that we think you all would like to know about. Hope that's ok!
Most of our days are spent at the kids' houses. There are two houses, one for the older kids and one for the little kids. When you arrive at the little kid’s house, you walk down a bumpy dirt hill similar to the one we walk down to get to our house. There's a huge gate that guards the house. Once inside you're on pavement leading to the cement porch at the front of the house. There are kids everywhere, between the little kids house and the big kids house there are 80 kids, so there are kids jumping rope in the front, and sitting on the porch, and running around, and tons more playing in the back, in the living room, and in the bedrooms. As soon as we enter everything stops, and there are screams of excitement, and giggles of joy and just a flock of kids that swarm you, jump on your back, attach themselves to your legs and arms, and grab your hands, and face and hair, until you're about to fall over. We continue walking, now attached to at least three more bodies to greet some of the kids who are in the between being young and old stage. They don't scream and run to us, but rather pound our fists as we seek them out to say hi. It's funny how kids get too cool for school in Uganda as well. There is a living room and a small kitchen. There are four or five other rooms that just contain tons of bunk beds for all the kids that sometimes sleep 3 of them. When you walk into a bedroom you're overwhelmed with the smell of urine, and the way the children seriously live on top of each other. At the back outside of the house is a narrow play area between the main house and the back quarters with about 6 bedrooms filled with more bunk beds. The narrow area has clothes lines with wet clothes on them always, because there is always laundry. Everything is always dirty, and everything is everyone else's and there's not enough space for the kids and their huge personalities, and you're never alone, or not attached to someone and we love every second of it.
On Saturday, we greeted everyone which usually takes ten minutes in itself to move from the front of the house to the back of the house, and after the little girls anxious pleading "Mommy Nicole come dance, Mommy Suzie come dance" we finally move to the back of the house where their favorite cd is playing, and everyone just breaks into dance, and these little girls are the best dancers you've ever seen. They have such internal rhythm, but for some crazy reason they try and copy us. We are used to people laughing at us when we dance, because we're goofy, but they don't laugh at us, because they think we're good. (We hereby apologize to Africa if our dance moves spread outside the gates of that house) We grab and spin the girls, and try and c-walk with the boys, and hold as many hands as we can, because we know three months will be over too shortly already. After about an hour of just playing, and dancing, the house moms exclaim that it is bath time. There are three house moms, and they're between the ages of 15 and 18, and they do everything, anything that you can think of regarding taking care of children, they do with no complaint.
One of the girls takes the cd out, and puts in a Christian hits cd from 1998. (I think both Sue and I have it at home, because we knew almost all the songs...we're not nerds!) Bath time consists of filling two oval shaped, shallow tin buckets with murky water, one contains some kind of soap, or at least something that makes suds, and the other is just water. Linda (one of the house-mom's) sets this up, and the kids all take their clothes off and line up against the main house waiting for their turn. A song called "Who am I" by Point of Grace began to play and Susan and I just sat and observed. Jesca stepped into the bucket of soapy water and Linda with her hands washed Jesca’s malnourished body, first with the suds, and then rinsed her with the water from the other bucket. Jesca after being rinsed wiped her eyes of the water looked up at us and smiled her huge smile, ran grabbed the dress she had been wearing, put it on and found a spot on my lap as Susan and I continued to watch as Linda repeated the process for each child. The song reached the chorus which just repeated the line "who am I to be loved by God" and Linda and some of the older girls sang along as they helped kids get undressed, dry off, and put their clothes back on. I began to cry and Susan and I looked at each other at the same moment with tears dripping from our too easily leaky eyes, and she exclaimed "I've never been so humbled." Jesca looked between the two of us over and over again very confused, but didn't say anything, and eventually buried her head in my chest. But it was true, I've never been so humbled.
Knowing that God loves me when I have my own bed, and real food, and lots of clothes, and parents, is really easy. I have no idea what it really means to have nothing, or to pour out unconditional love on children I don't have to help like Linda does. And right then and there the idea of Susan and I coming to Uganda to teach anything ended. We are here to learn from them, to hear their stories, and try to follow the example of their lead: Love like they love, be thankful the way they are thankful, and be willing to be with and touch and wash those who are truly dirty.
We await all the lessons to be learned here in Uganda, and are so thankful for the people that are guiding us through them. Thanks for letting us be part of your lives still even if it's just by being part of this email list!
You're loved,
Nicole and Sue!!!!
