Wow, wow, wow,
So I’m back in America… I got back on Monday to my Dad’s house in New Hampshire. And I guess I wanted to get out one more email about Africa to close this last trip... I really haven't even been able to constructively think about my massive to do list until I wrote this, because I've self-imposed its importance. So many things have happened these last three weeks that I feel like I could write a whole book about it, but bear with me, I need this for closure.
Since I had gotten to Uganda in May, we'd been planning an event called “Worship Night 08” that we, as an organization, were putting on with the church we work with (Light the World) for October 24th... Worship Night 07 had brought 2000 people, various Ugandan artists, and Euzoa (an American praise and worship team from Steamboat) to a church in Nansana, Uganda to pray and worship from 6pm to 6am...
This year, Wilson (the pastor and now ultra famous Ugandan gospel artist... Susan and I were in one of his music videos last year) and the other pastors at Light the World Church wanted to make this year’s event huge... renting out the soccer stadium in the center of Kampala, and having a line-up that entailed all the biggest gospel artists from Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda, the African Children’s Choir, the most prominent African pastors, and inviting back the Euzoa band. I can’t even describe the planning that goes into a twelve hour event like this, and I sat in candlelight meetings in the electricity-less church in the swamp since mid-July discussing each and everything that needed to get done… As the night got closer the preparations became more intense, the Euzoa band flew in, advertisements were everywhere, Wilson was promoting on every tv and radio station, and the Monday before the Friday night event we got last minute funding to do concessions… Being the only person with concession experience (I'm sure everyone's heard stories of all my Dippin Dots shenanigans) I was appointed to orchestrating the whole ordeal for an expected 20,000 person event, and less than a week to figure it out.
We decided to hire all our sew shop women, and a few of the ladies from the Katanga slums that we've started micro-businesses with so they could make some extra money for a night of work, and that all the profits would be recycled into their programs. I was frantically running around Kampala buying materials, making orders, having meetings, for 4 long days… And finally the 24th arrived. At 11am I went to the stadium and it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be to keep up my spirits throughout the very long, but amazing night. A record-breaking 53,000 people crowded into the stadium, and were still standing after 12 hours of singing and dancing. The band and the rest of the CLD team had left just after 3am, and Julie, and Dan, (one of my new closest friends… he was a huge part of founding CLD, but is now in school in South Africa, and flew up for 10 days to play bass with the band for worship night) graciously stayed with me to finish up the night. We huddled together as it got quite chilly and watched from one of the top bleachers as the crowds welcomed the sunrise with songs of hope and restoration, it was truly breathtaking.
I made my way down to the concessions tent to close up, clean-up, pay everyone, and do the calculations. I had been doing the math in my head all night long, as I collected each money drop, and figured out that we were going to lose money, and I was sick to my stomach over it… because losing money takes on a different role in Africa, it means empty stomachs, and no school fees. . I received huge hugs from all the women who were all too thankful for the opportunity to work, and grateful that they were able to attend the event, as they got a special-hire taxi back to the slums. Julie and Dan loaded all the materials into CLD's truck, and then we stood there at 7:30am looking onto the absolutely devastated and littered stadium that just hours previous held 53,000 people. Now all that was left were a few ushers, the sound/stage crew, us, a whole lot of garbage, and marabou storks, which are the ugliest birds I've ever seen. Standing they come up to my chest, and are like overgrown, long-legged vultures. They have this red growth that looks like a veiny brain where their long skinny neck meets their body, a brownish sharp beak, gray frayed hairs on their bald heads, consistently malting dirty black and white feathers, and a deformed face. They eat garbage, and are carnivores if they can find meat, I mean we're talking seriously huge and disgusting. (google image it if you have the chance). Anyway, the Coke truck was coming to pick up their left-over crates of soda, and the empty bottles… they said they'd be there just before 9am, so Julie, Dan, and I stood around having the kind of scattered, non-sensical conversation that you're supposed to have when you've been up for over 24 hours.
We all wondered how the stadium was going to get cleaned up, and Dan laughed at Julie and me, as we talked about how during months of meetings, not one time had we ever discussed what was going to happen after worship night, it was miraculous enough that we had even made it to October 25th… At 8am a group of about twenty street kids, between the ages of 10 and 14, all lacking shoes and wearing tattered, dirty clothing, came in with a Fagin-like man who was carrying armfuls of large empty canvas bags. The three of us watched wide-eyed at the scene unfolding before us. Julie dubbed him the slum lord, and he gathered all the boys around him in the center of the stadium yelling and swatting at them when necessary, as the boys were super rowdy. He shouted one last thing in Luganda, and then threw all the bags in the air, chuckling to himself as he walked away. It was chaos, the boys ran after the floating canvas, and began punching and kicking each other for an empty bag because there wasn't enough for all of them. The boys that got a bag began picking up, and fighting the storks for all the trash in the stadium, and for each full bag they would be compensated a very small amount for their efforts. The ones that didn't get a bag, or had one stripped from them made mental notes to kick harder next time, and miserably left the stadium.
Our jaws dropped as our meaningless, tired conversation turned to questions of moral dilemma. Should we help them clean? Should we tell the slum lord not to hit them? Should we stop them from working, because children shouldn't be working? What should we do? We discussed our possibilities and realized that anything we tried to do would make things worse, for us and them, so we just stood there and watched, disappointed, exhausted, and helpless.
9am rolled around, and there was still no truck, I got a phone call from the driver, saying it was going to be at least another 45 minutes. I hung up annoyed, and one of the street kids started walking over to us. He stood staring at us with his empty trash bag draped over his shoulder. He must have been around 12, a few heads shorter than me, he was severely thin, with a long face, and sunken in eyes, but as he half-way smiled his gapped pre-teen teeth and one dimple let what was left of his innocence shine through. He reeked of paraffin and garbage, and put out his hand rambling slurred and incomplete words, of which the only ones we understood were "mzungu" and "500." (500 shillings is a bit more than twenty cents) His inability to communicate and his glazed-over eyes spoke volumes to how high he was, and his pleading ominously chorused with the almost audible shattering of our three hearts.
Julie grabbed a granola bar from her back pack and offered it to him, which he took, and ate gratefully while he tried to further communicate with us even though his brain activity was slowed to dismal speeds. Through a few words, but mostly gestures, grunts, and pointing we figured out his name was Moses, his father was dead, his mom was in a distant village, he had no way of going to school, he was hungry, and heavily addicted to huffing paraffin. The last part we discovered because he couldn't go more than a minute without deeply inhaling a plastic water bottle an eighth full of paraffin with a long bundled and tangled string inside. Dan listened to Moses' every rambling lovingly looking him in the eye while removing the grass, and dirt from his hair. With each inhalation his communication dwindled even more, he became more disoriented, and dizzy, and I felt like crying. Every time he asked us for money we would tell him we'd give him the money if he gave us the bottle, but he was very protective of it, and would hide it back in his shirt every time we motioned for it.
I excused myself for another phone call to the truck that extended its ETA another 45 minutes, and I returned to Julie's astonished and worried face. "What happened?" I asked. "I kept telling Moses that I'd give him the money if he gave me the bottle, and he really started to get angry, like he really needed the money but couldn't physically give up the bottle, and he was about to give it to me, but at last second he drank the paraffin, and started sucking on the string… Do you think he's going to be ok?" Julie asked concerned. Dan grabbed the bottle and chucked it, as Moses braced himself against me, because he was about to fall over. Julie laid out the garbage bag on the concrete next to the field, and the four of us went over and sat down on it. I got him a left-over bottle of coke to get something else in his stomach. Moses was reduced to grunts as he incoherently looked and pointed at each of us. "Why don't you lay down and rest?" Julie suggested, Moses nodded and she helped him lay down softly, and we all followed suit. We intertwined ourselves in a make-shift square on the trash bag, and I watched Moses curl up in a ball, his body all too familiar with sleeping on the hard ground. I examined his boniness, his customary tremble, the scars on his arms and legs, the dirt that had become a part of him, the way his feet were severely ripped and worn, and the spasms of his big closed eyes.
Julie placed her hand on him and rubbed his head, his arms, his back, and almost instantaneously he stopped trembling, and his eyes stopped their spasm, his breathing became heavy, and he fell into a deep sleep. I wondered about the last time he had felt a consoling touch like that, or if he ever had. I wondered how many times he had curled up in the same position scared and alone. I wondered how many times he huffed enough paraffin so he wouldn't feel so cold, so he could fall asleep in dirt, so the hunger didn't hurt so bad. My tearful eyes became too heavy to keep open, as did Julie's and Dan's and the four of us napped the most remarkable nap of my life on a garbage bag in the dirt with Moses. I have no idea how long we all slept there, it could have been minutes or an hour, our chests rising and falling together, sighing different types of exhaustion, breathing the air of very different lives.
Some amount of time later, Dan, Julie, and I woke up with a start, surprised that we all fell asleep so deeply… It was Dan's last day so he was running out of time to go home and pack, and spend time with his parents, and with no sign of this ever late Coke truck, I told them just to go, and that I'd get public transport home. They asked me 5 million "are you sure's" and after assuring them and reassuring them they got in the truck and took off… I reclaimed sitting on my spot on the trash bag, next to sleeping Moses, and let myself absorb the situation and circumstance.
Moses eventually woke up, and yawned embarrassed that I was still sitting next to him. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and we both stood up. He asked me for money three more times, but I refused because I feared he was just going to go buy more paraffin. I grabbed and held his hand, as he put it out for the last time and looked in his eyes, shook my head, and hoped he understood that if I knew how to save him I would have. He broke the stare and pulled his hand away, picked up his trash bag, mumbled "bye mzungu" and stumbled out of the stadium, he looked back a few times, and each time he did we waved at each other. And then he was gone.
I sat alone on a crate of empty soda bottles, feeling completely empty myself. It was almost noon, and I had now been at the stadium for over 24 hours. I had run a concessions stand for 12 of those hours, trying to earn money for a program in the slums, but I failed, and ended up losing money instead. The night had been awesome, but the overflow indirectly exploited street children. Julie, Dan, and I had shared life defining, intimate moments with Moses, and each other, but we didn't change anything about his situation… So what was it worth? What did any of it mean? The redundant phrases "you can't help everyone" and "you can't save the world" sprinted through my brain. Those words become harder to swallow staring into the face of that ambiguous term "everyone" and finding out his name is Moses… when the world that I can't save takes the form of a twelve-year-old little boy with shriveled feet and a hunger I know I'll never have to feel. The Coke truck pulled in three hours late, and I was pissed, I made sure they knew it too… They laughed in my face, because I was so flustered, and began making their inventory counts. I got over it and laughed at myself too, and as I went over the deposit and sell-back calculations with the Coke rep, I realized I had done something wrong, and he gave me way more money than I thought we were getting… I quickly ran some more numbers through my head, and realized that after everything, we were going to break totally and completely even. It was great news since I was heavily anticipating failure and losses I couldn't make up for.
The last few days I spent in Uganda entailed yet another robbery, and the most heart-wrenching goodbyes I've ever had to say, and it wasn't because I'm not going back, because I am, and it's not because I'm not going to see my Ugandan/American family again, because I will… but my Dad has reminded me of Heraclitus "you can't step in the same river twice"… and that's the source of the pain… it's not really the goodbye, it's mourning the loss, and acknowledging the nostalgia of playing, dancing, swimming, splashing, and nearly drowning in this particular spot of the ever changing river.
I am now sitting in one of my many "homes" that I'm fortunate enough to have across the world, amongst the fallen leaves of what used to be autumn, in a beautiful New England town. I replay the last 6 months in my head on fast forward repeat to an acoustic playlist consisting mostly of Ben Harper and Iron and Wine. I think about Moses, and I think about dancing at the kid's house… I think about Recheal, and I think about laughing with my best friends… I think about everything I have to get figured out, and everything I left behind… And I don't know how to reconcile the contrasts of this world, or even just my life… So here I sit, broken even… Not knowing if I did more good than harm, not knowing if I'm better or worse than when I left… To be completely honest, at this moment, I have nothing… no money, no phone, no compassion, no computer, no health insurance, no energy, no formal education, no license, no car, no great success, no official home… and sometimes no emotional stability… But I have everything I could ever want at the same exact time… I'm consistently surrounded by people that love me, the most incredible friends that span across the universe, and innumerable memories that mean more to me than any thing possibly could… It's uncomfortable, but it's addicting, this emptiness… and tomorrow I have the opportunity to start building it back, so I can give it all away again…
Nicole
