The Gathering of the Clouds

Despite the fact that I’ve been living in a country where the majority of the population still lives in ramshackle buildings or mud huts with grass roofs, despite the fact that most of the kids run around wearing what can only be described as glorified rags and no shoes, and despite the fact that families of 10 are surviving on the equivalent of a couple of dollars a day, despite all these really eye opening, mind blowing things I’ve experienced, my time here has been…well…fun. Really fun, inspiring and uplifting…
I can’t help but to have fun while surrounded by all these incredibly warm, welcoming, boisterous, laughing, gracious people (and let’s not forget the kids, y’all). But really, should this be fun? I didn’t come here for a vacation. I came here to follow my heart and what God has planned for it. I was ready and willing for some shock and awe, to look injustice in the face, pop my Wolverine claws and cut it up (yes, in this scenario I’m an X-man).
Apparently I got lost along the way and ended up at Woodstock. The summer of LOVE (minus the rampant sex and hallucinogenic drug use) and my heart melted. And that’s cool, this is the way Jesus wants to use me here, to be the hands and voice of love and support to a bunch of really deserving people. The angry super hero inside me decided to take a little nap and Jesus took his place. My days were filled with sunshine, smiling ladies, phenomenal hang out time, glorious scenery, gardening, beautiful Suubi beads, and soccer. The thing is, that part of me that was screaming “THIS ISN’T RIGHT!” was only dormant. I was still really aware of the poverty around me, but I was choosing to bypass worrying about all that to focus on the good. Which is good- to an extent. But you can only ignore crappy situations for so long (and as my mother can tell you, I’m pretty awesome at it)…and I began to feel a little uneasy that this was so easy…
And then, a visit to the children’s hospital in Jinja rocked me back down to earth. We found out that one of the Suubi women, Rachel, was there with one of the two surviving members of her triplets-and he was pretty sick. So we all went down there to show her and little John (nice choice of name right?) a little love and support. There’s nothing that can drain your happy shiny outlook on life quite like seeing sick (really sick) children, and these were the sickest I’ve seen in real life. You’ve all seen those “help the starving children” commercials on TV. The ones that show kids pretty much lying there lifeless, emotionless, skin and bones, with eyes that burn a hole straight through you. I saw those eyes in person, and it broke my heart. Seriously the babies that had the strength to cry were crying, and those who didn’t were sort of just lying there too tired to move around and too miserable to sleep. Seeing that really gets into your heart and starts trashing the place. And you begin to realize, these aren’t kids who caught the flu from little Billy down the street or kids with a peanut allergy who accidentally ate some peanut butter M&Ms. These kids are lying here suffering because they don’t have clean water to drink and parasites in that water are allowed to thrive in their bodies. These kids don’t have enough food with nutritional value, so their bodies are wasting away. These kids don’t have malaria meds, so one mosquito bite could potentially end in disaster. Some have AIDS because, in order to provide for her family, their mother turned to prostitution to make ends meet. The hallways of the hospital were lined with posters warning parents to be aware of the empty promises of child traffickers, and the devastation that occurs when a child is forced into marriage and raising children when she’s only a child herself. Prostition, sexual abuse, malnutrition, and death from treatable sickness have become the norm. Men who know they’re HIV positive are out there sleeping around because they know how easy it is to pack up and leave town when those women show up pregnant on their doorstep. Not to mention that there are countless shrines in the area where people still offer sacrifices to call upon evil spirits to curse their enemies. The scary truth is that satan is just as real as God, and just as hungry for us. It’s easy to forget that, and the enemy is really REALLY good at keeping us unaware. Just look at all the available distractions in our lives. Distractions away from God. Think those are coincidence?
All of this is going on while happy John is playing soccer in the field and thinking “Ain’t life grand?”
So I find myself here. Out there in the sunshine is everything I love about Uganda, and in the shadows is everything I’ve learned to hate. There’s a battle going on here that we’re so ill equipped to fight on our own. Thankfully, we’re not alone. And thank God for showing me that life is AWESOME…but there are people suffering and dying all around us. I like to think He shows us things like that because He believes He can use us to help. He’s calling us all to be super heroes.
It’s easy to get fired up again and want to get my claws back out, and now that I’ve seen just how shady things are (and things are bad everywhere, not just 3rd world countries) it’s impossible for me to forget it, and shame on me if I do. I ask God for the strength to do what I can when I can, and I think you should all join me. Why not? You’ve already come this far.