Hey Everyone,
I never thought I’d have to write an email like this... an update that rocks everything in me, everything that Come Let’s Dance is, everything I thought I was, everything I thought I wanted to do. It is terrible, and horrifying and long, and I wouldn’t recommend reading it, but I’d rather have you read it, than have to explain it over and over again... and if you’ve already read Shane’s email/note I apologize for repeating this story... and I apologize that I’m still not as put together as she is, and that I am not as full of hope... To warn you, I let loose on details, and the sheer drama, and am brutally honest to the point of worrying about the vulnerability of my feelings... ok, you’ve been warned, read at your own discretion...
To understand this story, you have to know Recheal Tendo... Recheal was one of the first kids at our kid’s house. Her father abandoned her, her mother, and her siblings (Matthew and Ritah) when she was around seven. Her mother (Cissy) wasn’t able to take care of them so Recheal began begging and living on the street to feed her family, taking responsibility for her brother and sister… She approached Wilson Bugembe everyday for food, and eventually became one of the reasons Wilson and his best friend Wilfred started taking in all the kids. Recheal was one of the first kids they took in, and the connection to other kids who were in a similar situation, and now we get to call them ours... Some of our kids literally owe her their lives, because of the way she fought for them, getting them food, a home, and an education.
Last year when Susan and I were here, she got really sick in March, and started staying with us a few times a week... we had fashion shows, did each other’s hair, and she always intently watched as we put on our make-up in the mornings, so we ended up always putting make-up on her too... Her little sister Ritah is my undisclosed favorite, and I always made sure to tell Recheal to take good care of her... but I never really needed to tell her, she always took good care of everyone, because that’s just how Recheal was... At the end of our stay last year, Cissy started coming around again after years of absence, now, HIV positive, and with another baby, Cathy. Recheal acceptingly let them into her life, and began advocating for them too... helping Cissy get rent money, and ARV drugs, making sure Cathy was being properly taken care of...
Last April, Recheal was also diagnosed with HIV and ever since then she’s been living at our house on the weekends. She gets really sick pretty consistently so she wasn’t able to go to boarding school like our other kids her age. So she stays at the kid’s house during the week, and then stays with us on the weekends to make sure she gets her medicine and rest… Being the only older kid left behind made her take on a lot of responsibility, but she thrived, and didn’t want it any other way. She was the house-mom’s special assistant, understanding and knowing the kids better than anyone. No one can rally all the kids for bath time, dinner, singing, games, or crafts like Recheal could... no one can lead songs that the kids actually sing, and no one copies my ridiculous dance moves the way that Recheal did... She has more friends than anyone I know, she stole every heart of every person that has ever worked with CLD, she effortlessly worked her way into deep friendships with all our twenty-something girls in our Girlz Ministry, she’s Jesca’s bunkmate, and closest friend, and has become like a sister to every long-term volunteer...
Last Wednesday morning, we were rushing around at 6am, trying to get our backpacks together for the CLD retreat. Recheal was a part of the chaos, helping get everything packed, and as she was going over my checklist with me, she commented on some hair ties I had, and how much she liked them. “Ooohh these are so pretty, can I borrow them while you are gone?” I looked at her anxious thirteen year old pleading, and replied “No, you won’t ever give them back.” she grinned one of her Recheal grins, because she knew she was never planning on giving them back anyway, and simply said “It’s ok.”
We hurriedly said our goodbyes, because we were already running late, everyone exclaiming apologies for not being able to come to Cathy’s birthday party on Saturday, telling her to do well in school her first week back, that her new hair-do looks beautiful, that we’ll miss her, and we’ll see her next weekend... our running lateness gave me an excuse for a quick side hug instead of fully embracing her like I should have and I grabbed my seat in the far too crowded van... We all waved and screamed thank-you as she closed our gate... and that was it...
Nine hours later we were at beautiful Lake Bunyoni, the deepest lake in Uganda. It was our American core, the people I live with, the people I share every joy and frustration with, the people who have seen me at my worst, the people who have become my family… Shane and her seven-year-old daughter Jesca, Julie, Jeremy, Susan, Mike, Laura, Deirdre and Torrie... We had an amazing time relaxing, taking our first break since the summer rush... It was incredible to experience life outside the Kampala chaos with the people who have become so close in such a short period of time. We swam, played volleyball, prayed, and sang. Coming together and honestly sharing our thoughts, opinions, dreams, and fears, as individuals, and as part of Come Let’s Dance.
On Sunday morning, Shane had scoped out an amazing spot for us on top of a mountain with a great view of the lake to have devotions, and we ended up sitting in a circle sharing our biggest worries, the things that hinder us from becoming the leaders we all know we could be, and tearfully praying for each other... all of those worries, and even the lake seem so shallow now... We finished just after noon, and got in the van. I didn’t really notice as Jeremy lingered outside reading a text message, starting to make phone calls. In the backseat, we continued talking about how great our time had been, when Julie quietly turns around, and explains that we just got a text message from Julius saying “Recheal died in an accident, hard to believe.”
You could visibly see everyone’s mind start racing with thoughts and questions... which Rachel? Wait what’s going on? This can’t really be happening... Jeremy couldn’t get a hold of anyone, and Shane was exploding, telling me if he didn’t hurry up, she was going to rip the phone out of his hands, while I sit there cruelly ranking the importance of every Rachel we know. The suspended questioning left us all shocked and emotionless for the few minutes before we got our answers.
Julie starts driving, because no matter who it was, we were going home. Jeremy finally gets a hold of Wilfred, “which Recheal?” he asks... and we all hold our breath, but I think we all already knew... “Tendo” Jeremy repeats, apologizes profusely, and hangs up... We scream, and I swallow the vomit that rises up, Jesca looks so scared and confused, and Julie brakes, her tears too much for her to see, so Jeremy switches her spots to drive... we pull into our camp, everyone completely shattered and sobbing, rushing to our tents to pack our stuff... We walk past tourists with questioning stares, and I am so pissed that the world hasn’t stopped yet, that everything kept going, and that no one understands that a major tragedy is happening. I don’t get why the universe doesn’t make exceptions for situations like this and just slow down for a while... but it didn’t, so we finished packing, and loaded into the van. Julie and Shane look at each other through open windows on opposite sides, and Julie whispers a hopeless, helpless, questioning “Shane” and Shane’s response is “I know” before we all burst into tears again... Jesca chaotically looks from face to face, Jeremy’s head remains in his hands, Deirdre is aimlessly staring, Torrie’s eyes shift avoiding prolonged focus on anyone or anything, Susan can’t stop the flood of tears, Laura’s head hangs low, and I just bite my lip to keep me in the present, and whimper...
Julie pulls away, I don’t know how she managed to drive us all... but she did, and strongly endured hours of inconsistent crying, dodging pothole after pothole, truck after truck, person after person... In the backseat, we began talking through the situation in the simplest way for Jesca to understand, voicing our favorite memories... thoughts of her overflowed and overwhelmed my mind... The time she helped Susan and me wash all the little girls, because they all wet the bed during the sleepover from hell... When she would tell a story in an excited gust of mispronounced words that I didn’t understand except the punch-line... “and then she said “oh crack...”” and it would be hilarious even if I had no clue what was going on... Getting so mad when she’d try to brush or braid my hair, because I have curly hair, and when fingers run through it, it gets really frizzy... And as fleeting, and overwhelming as my emotions are I watch Jesca physically go through every single one of them in those nine hours... acting out her sadness, fear, anger, restlessness, and confusion...
We get home at almost 2am, and still don’t even know the whole story. I couldn’t sleep, and was extremely thankful that the morning finally came so we could go be with everyone. The morning started out slow, but as plans were made, everything started moving in fast forward... we come to find out that because of the nature of the accident, the family is insisting on doing the burial that day. After various stops and errands we arrive at the church, where everyone will gather and then proceed to the burial site. James the Man opens my door and I fall into his arms, he rubs my back and calmly shushes my wails... and I ask him to tell me exactly what happened, but he won’t until I calm myself down and convince him that I am strong enough to hear it...
She was coming home from church with Ritah on a boda (like a motorcycle) she fell off the back of it, and then got hit by a taxi so hard that it became a gruesome horrifying scene. She was immediately knocked unconscious, the boda driver unsympathetically bailed on Ritah, who witnessed the whole thing, and drove off, as did the taxi. Someone pulled her from the middle of the road, and another recognized her from our kid’s house and called Wilfred. Then, like I’ve seen done before, a multitude of people surrounded and gathered to watch her die. Except for the phone call, no one even tried to help. Everyone said that she was gone within minutes, no screaming, no noticeable suffering, it was just quick...Wilfred, Ben, Phillip, and James the Man arrive shortly after, and have to take her body to the mortuary and begin notifying everyone. Apparently it took four men to hold Cissy down so she wouldn’t throw herself into oncoming traffic when she found out... (her Luganda screams consist of “and me God, take me too” and “I have no more reason to live”)
I thank James for being so honest with me, but by now I’ve lost all control over the start and stop of my tears as our entire community starts showing up on the church hill, and I hug, exchanging sobs, and knowing glances with each one of them... Wilfred finally arrives... him and Shane just look at each other; they can’t even speak, because there are no words to say when they both have lost a daughter... Wilfred is just a few years older than me... we’re all still kids, when did we all of a sudden become the grown-ups that are supposed to make the plans, and make sure everyone else is ok? His lip quivers, I’ve never seen pain personified like that before. I had to look away.
We decide to try and meet the procession of taxis filled with our kids from the house, the kids from her school, and the truck carrying the coffin at the top of the hill... but we’re too late, the truck has already made it half way down, and we all pull over as Cissy gets out of the truck Julie is driving and demands that the coffin be removed and opened. There are terrifying, shrill screams, like I have never heard, from the hundred people that have gathered. The wooden box is opened, and everyone shouts, repeating, wailing, “Recheal, Recheal...” the taxi with our kids shows up, and they all rush to see her body. Her closest friends begin hyperventilating, and Shane starts yelling “why are they doing this? Is this cultural? Oh my God, where is Jesca?” Jeremy and I begin frantically looking for Jesca, and Jeremy finds her in the inner circle that has formed around Recheal, staring, traumatized and whimpering, we get her to Shane and Jesca latches on to her neck, “I mean, this is a nightmare right? This is too horrifying to actually be happening right? We’re going to wake up right?” Shane rhetorically asks me.
I become part of the chaos, as my legs almost give out while the reality of the body I just saw invades every inch of me, and I brace myself against a tree, hands on my knees, and focus on breathing because it’s not an involuntary action anymore... The coffin gets put away, and we think it’s time to head out when Ritah and Matthew arrive. I grab Ritah from out of the taxi and immediately take her away from the crowd, stroking the back of her crying head. I guess it’s part of the culture thing, but they pull the coffin back out, and I watch from a distance as Jeremy strongly, and lovingly holds a convulsing and screaming eleven-year-old Matthew as the extended family forces him to look at his sister’s body...
Things eventually settle down again, and everyone loads into the vehicles for the three hour drive to the burial spot in the village where Recheal was born... A completely checked out Matthew sits on mine and Susan’s lap, he won’t respond to anything, blankly staring out the window... I lose a contact in the flood of tears...We are cramped beyond belief, transporting the hundreds of people who loved Recheal so much that they dropped everything in a moments notice to travel like sardines, three hours away for a funeral service.
The bumpy dirt village road led us past hut after hut amidst banana plantations, and other crops that I didn’t recognize. We finally arrive at the hut Recheal grew up in, and there are tarps and benches set up in the dirt “front-yard” of the house. As soon as we all arrive the dark clouds gather and the sky lets out a tantrum that continued on and off for the rest of the day, and I’m glad. I would have been even more mad at God if the sky hadn’t been empathetic... The downpours turned the entire village into a thick mud pit, and the afternoon was filled with soaking wet embraces, slipping from place to place in the muck trying to be of assistance anywhere I could be, but not really being able to do anything except wait.
At one point Torrie, Susan, Julie, Jeremy and I, were sitting under one of the ripped tarps, still getting wet. Ritah was playing hand clapping games with me on my lap, and a bunch of our kids scattered around underneath it seeking at least some shelter from the storm, and we begin to speak of our favorite memories. I can’t voice mine, but they race through my brain... Trying to entertain our volunteer teams together at the kid’s house this summer, brainstorming songs to sing, and dances to show off, looking at each other for new ideas, and laughing because we didn’t know what to do... Jumping and dancing and shouting with her, because we got covered in mud when the drill team hit water at the kid’s house... Screaming “You are the Music in Me” from high school musical 2 from room to room because she knew every word... I loved sitting there absorbing the other stories, mostly from Jeremy... I love how his face lights up when he talks about her, and how perfectly he imitates her lingo, and accent... I loved how in the midst of trauma and despair Jeremy insisted on telling funny stories, acting them out to make the kids laugh... I can’t help but to hope that one day I’ll be able to love people like Jeremy does, and that one day my strength will be seen even in glistening tears, like I see his... I couldn’t even express my thankfulness to him for doing what everyone needed, but couldn’t do themselves. He’s really become the most incredible guy I’ve ever known.
The rain stops and I continue playing with Ritah under the tarp, Jer comes back to tell me that the grave is almost ready, so we should say our final goodbyes. I ask Ritah if she wants to come with me, but she explains how if she goes to see Recheal she’ll cry, and that she doesn’t like crying, and her Mom and Auntie are in there, and she doesn’t know why, but she’s really angry at them, so she just wants to sit. I don’t know how to explain to a seven-year-old that it’s ok if she cries, and it’s ok that she’s angry. Susan had made her peace already, so she took Ritah from me, and I walked inside the mud house that now held at least a dozen mourning jaja’s (older women in the community). Julie was crying in the opposite doorway, and I knelt down next to Cissy at Recheal’s head and painfully made myself look, and suck deep breaths of reality, being choked by the thick foul air I inhaled... Some of our older kids crowded into the doorway behind me. I stood up to embrace them...
Fourteen year old beautiful Bravery clung to me, sobbing, gripping my arms and back, while I kept her standing, because she just wanted to crumble... she was the perfect height to bury her head in my chest, and for me to rest my head on hers... And as we wept looking at Recheal, letting the reality set in, the horde of mourning jaja’s began to sing Lugandan hymns. I gathered Peggy and Maddie, who were standing behind me, wishing I had more arms to hold them too, and intently looked each of them in the eye. I fought to keep composure long enough to speak louder than the wails, and the songs... “Promise me, promise Recheal that when you remember her, you don’t remember her like this, you don’t ever think back to her in this coffin, this is only to say goodbye... when you remember her, remember how she danced, remember the songs she would sing, remember her smile, and how hard she used to laugh.” They all brokenly nodded, and acknowledged that they heard me, but I hope they understood. I hope I eventually follow my own words... because right now, all I can see every time I close my eyes is her swollen and bandaged lifeless face... I fight it, I fight it so hard, and it must be working, because it’s getting easier to remember the dancing Recheal that I knew, everyday.
The pastors begin speaking, and the people who knew her best share stories, comforting words, and goodbyes... the rain has let up a bit again, so everyone stands in a huge circle outside. James the Man holds my shaking hand through the entire service... We make our way around the back of the house, through the bush, and the mud following the now closed coffin. Another circle forms around the freshly dug grave, and I hummed the tunes of songs that I didn’t know, arms intertwined with Moses, and Mugabi who belted them out... Jeremy and Julie watched arms around each other, Shane held Ann’s hand as they threw dirt in the grave together, and Susan held a confused Jesca, tears streaming. We are a family, and it doesn’t matter anymore where we come from, or what color skin we have, because we’ve been bonded unbreakably by the love we all shared for our Recheal, and the magnified love we discovered we have for each other...
The crowd dwindled leaving just our core, and our closest Ugandan family, singing, and praying as the men from our community finished filling in, and cementing the grave... Shane grabbed a stick and wrote “We love you too” on one of the edges of the wet cement, and wrote Recheal’s name, dates, and dash on the top of it... we heaved our final goodbyes... closing in a hopeful prayer, and we each walked our own way back to the vehicles, for the three hour return journey...
Later that night we all talked about how we never really appreciated those few days before a funeral until now, because the whole thing happened in just over 24 hours and there was absolutely no closure. Instead of the partial closing that funeral’s usually offer it’s become the beginning of the grieving process.
I wake up in the mornings thinking I’m ready to face the day, and realize that I’m wrong, so I go back and curl up in a ball in my bed, thinking that if I could hide just a bit longer, it’ll prepare me, and I’ll be ok... but I’m not ok, and whether we’re ready or not, here it comes... life, new mornings and long evenings... more tears, more people to be strong for, and a group of kids that need us now more than ever.
It just hasn’t sunk in yet that we don’t get to go back to Recheal, we don’t get to go back to how things were... We don’t get to go back to giving her granola bars, and getting her sodas when she would get sick, helping her set-up a movie, because she was too weak to do anything but lie on our couch all day... I don’t get to learn Luganda from her anymore... we don’t get anymore pictures, or anymore smiles...
We’ve been at the kid’s house a few days this week, when we can muster up the strength to go, but it really hurts being there, because every room, the balcony, the porch, the yard, the kitchen and every other part of the compound screams her name, and is stained with her memory... Phantom itches haunt my thoughts, like when we pull away from the kid’s house I want to shout, wait where’s Recheal... when I try to rally the kids to do something, I think, where is Recheal... even though I know she is gone... and I know we can’t go back, because the only thing life cruelly makes us do is move forward at a constant rate, living with the painful memories of our friend and sister whose life was stolen from her all too quickly... and nothing will ever be the same.
I don’t ever want to answer the “how was Africa?” question again, because people don’t want to hear a response that says “part of my family died, and part of me died with her.” Africa has lost all of its innocence, everything is dark, everything is ugly, everything is corrupt... the circle of life from the Lion King does not make any of this ok, what I thought were good intentions, have all turned sour, and has left the most bitter of tastes in my mouth... I wanted to work with dying kids, but I never wanted one of them to actually die.
I wish I would have let her play with my hair more, that I would have just let her take the hair ties she wanted to borrow, that I knew where I put each and every picture she drew me, and every note she wrote me... And I don’t want to get used to the fact that she’s gone, I don’t want to miss her less and less... I don’t want to just continue on with life here, because it’s not right to do it without Recheal...
And a lot of people want to know how all of us are doing, and at least for me, the honest answer is “not good” we watch movies to distract ourselves at night, and I haven’t been able to sleep, but I never want to get out of bed... my mood changes every hour, if not every minute, and it’s a mix between numbness, hysteria, anger, shut down, and sorrow... And I know we’ll move on, and I know “things will be ok” whatever the hell that means, but right now, I’ve decided that I’m ok with giving the situation the misery it deserves... because a thirteen year old little girl, who meant so much to so many people, is gone now, and if anything deserves misery, it’s this...
I’m really sorry to all the people who loved Recheal so much, and I feel ashamed falling apart in front of people whose grief must be so much greater than my own... I’m really sorry to all of you who knew her so well, that don’t get to be here to mourn with us, because you’re part of our family too, and we miss you all like crazy...
Tomorrow will be hard because we have to face it without Recheal, but I know that we’re all in this together (High School Musical pun intended) and even though I have no clue what restoration looks like, or when the days will get easier, this last week has shown us that there’s still so much worth fighting for... So we’ll take a few minutes to sweat and bleed in our corner, absorb the encouragement coaching us through, and muster up enough strength to go another round... for our kids, for our friends, for our family, for Recheal...
With all the love that I have,
Nicole
