Incomplete thoughts on experiencing poverty, part 4: the Paradox

Year two in Uganda was living the paradox.  My teammate, Leslie and I would often comment how we never got the honeymoon of living in a foreign country.  We experienced deep culture shock on the drive from the airport to our adopted home and didn't quite shake it until year three.  For each of these segments, I am not rushing past to the lesson learned.  I truly want to sit in the moment as best I can and to express the sentiment of each year and experience. If year one was an undoing, than year two was embracing the paradox.  We began to know people and they began to know us.  We got a rhythm and structure to life.  We began to appreciate the beauty in the midst of the challenges.  

These are our friends, Johnson and Medard.  Ugandan men hold hands and that was a beautiful intimacy that we lack with men in the U.S.  We tried to be bare bones with house help and as much as I tried to be kind and hire for temporary purposes, I learned that no worker ever wants to move on!  So, we had two gardeners and we did welcome and need the help with much more than the garden and yard! Once, I asked Johnson to tell the kids about Rwanda because we were about to visit to renew our visas.  I was thinking he would tell them sights or things he saw.  He told them how he fled the genocide.  Great.  I constantly felt like Mrs. Olsen from Little House on the Prairie... In other words, we are so spoiled and naive about the world.  Children, never mind, we are gonna have fun?!. Terrible and funny.  I will never forget their faces when they came and told me about Rwanda.  Paradox. 

This was our garden!  A great encouragement.  Medard used to work for a woman from South Africa and could do anything with plants.  One day, he said we could get plants from his former boss.  It was a little stretching b/c turns out she was no longer there and we basically paid off the security guard to let us pinch plants from her house.  That was embarrassing, but I was grateful!

Here is a shot of our nursery that Medard developed for our vegetables. This is also a picture of Precious and Christian.  Christian was also supposed to be temporary, but stayed.  So yes, we did build an empire while we were there.  We were fortunate to have an outdoor water tank that had a tap for rainwater and where we did laundry.  Sometimes we did dishes here when water was off in the house.  We found ourselves part of an economic system so very different than what we were used to.  It was a paradox of being an employer but paying wages so low they would be shameful in the U.S.  However in Uganda, we found ourselves often overpaying, sometimes by accident, sometimes we could not help ourselves! Paradox.

This is Liz from Scotland.  She was our language teacher, in part.  She also had lived there for ages and was giving me a tour of the hill.  She was a teacher at this school during the Idi Amin regime.  She has many stories of miracles, perseverance and was an incredible model of being a gracious Westerner giving and receiving in Uganda.  We had the privilege of meeting many folks like her coming and going from Europe and the U.S., that was a huge gift to us and our children.

Each year we were there, we had an office Christmas party.  We did not do much entertaining with the hospital because it was busy and people are working so hard. Christmas was a more relaxed time in Uganda.  Everything shuts down and people go back to their home villages for up to a month or so.  It is the one time of year that most people get to eat meat, and they tend to buy household improvement items and fix up their homesteads.  It's the equivalent of the U.S. tax refund idea that you might do something big on your house with that saved up money.  So, we played games (Apples to Apples, spoons and Catch Phrase) and served Texas chili and really enjoyed each other.

One of the gifts for me because I like change and surprises was how fun it was to find random things at the grocery store.  It was like a scavenger hunt and to this day, those skills I honed have paid off!  Here is another Christmas shot and we found spray snow.  That was fun.

Another gift of living in Kabale is that it is bordering Rwanda and the Congo.  We got to meet students from all over and even Burundi and Tanzania.  That was a treat because we might not ever get to go to those countries. This is my friend Denise and her son Joshua.  Her husband was a seminary student and in the time she was there, she taught herself English and learned several skills that she could take back to rural Congo.  She is a business woman and wife and mother and a lovely person.  She spoke French, so I practiced occasionally.  Mallory is very interested in Joshua here....

The gift of quality time.  There are not a lot of pesky distractions in rural Uganda like malls, Chuck E. Cheese or such.  So, the children had hours of play time.  They have good imaginations and we knew and recognized at the time what a gift it was to be in Uganda. I missed libraries the most, but we were fortunate to bring a lot of books with us and have more sent.

There was a gift of international friendships.  Here is Mallory, my youngest with her German friend, Tabea and her Ugandan friend Merab.

Then there was the paradox of school.  I am not a homeschooler and we never could find a person to come and teach the children on an American system.  It remains our greatest place of weakness and regret that we could not help our children more.  It was very challenging because the Ugandan school system and philosophy was so different.  Think Catholic boarding school from the 1950's--all the good and bad bits of it.  Lots of rigor and shame based motivation and loads of memorizing information.  It was so very different than what they were used to and at times wonderful, at time endlessly painful .  We had to navigate the system and it made us in no man's land much of the time.  For example, the school ended at 5pm, but we brought out kids home early.  So, they missed many things and stood out even more than they already did.  I love this photo on the first day of school.

This was at the drop off.  Not quite as sure of themselves.

I love this photo too, because it shows the culture shock so well.  I have many pictures of them smiling and happy, but I love this moment of shock caught on film.

The next three photos are taken when I was waiting to pick them up from school.  I loved looking out and seeing what there was to see.  That was the fun part when I didn't have to be responsible for anyone and I could just enjoy the view.There was always something beautiful and terrible to look at.  Paradox.

These two photos are of the towns mentally ill and homeless.  In every town, they had the same look and red color of dirt on their clothes.  This remains one of the saddest sights to me.  I cried every time I saw them and I never got over that.  It was so hard and I felt so helpless.  What do they do and where do they go?  In Uganda, so many foster children and take care of people through natural connections, so it was almost unbearable for me to see the mentally ill and people who drop through the cracks here.  Is that possible?  Yes, even in Uganda, it is possible. 

Ugandans know how to celebrate.  Weddings are an elaborate and two part plus event.  This was at a giving away ceremony that is more traditional before the western church wedding that would happen the next day.  At this place, the two families are in separate tents and I think bride price is paid.  Gifts are exchanges, dances are danced and food is eaten with so much joy and celebration.  Many people go into debt over these ceremonies, but in place where funerals are the other social event, the weddings are glorious!  Many of the performers are from Rwanda, so we got to experience other tribes while we were there.

Here is another friend at her church and western wedding.  Grace.  She was our teammates neighbor and eventually also worked for us.  The empire.

I will never get over the paradox of volcanic formed lakes and islands and the beauty and often poverty of such places.  Of course, people are the real treasure, but also the natural beauty of Uganda is unrivaled.  Some Ugandans get to travel around, some don't.  Johnson once mentioned he has never been to a Ugandan game park but would like to go.  Ouch. It is either free or greatly reduced for Ugandans, but they don't get to go or they have other time commitments like weddings and funerals!  Paradox. This photo is my middle daughter, Emma Shae on a boat cruise in a safari park.  I love that they got to see all this.

 I could show you a million safari pictures, but come on, elephants are the best and baby elephants rule.

Crested cranes are the national birds and they nested right outside our gate!!! So, we got to watch them all the time.  Gift.

The weather.  I LOVED Ugandan weather, especially because we were in the hills and it was perfect.  We got to watch so many beautiful storms.  Shortly after this, we were leaving the village for home and driving on mud and down the mountain full of hairpin turns and treacherous cliffs.  That was the longest drive of my life. It was stormy. Driving on mud is like driving on ice.  Terrible and beautiful. Paradox.

I always thought if I see whales in their natural habitat, I could die.  I had the same feeling when I saw papyrus. What?? Papyrus and then I got some FOR MY YARD!!! Take me home, Jesus.  This was the year my son broke his arm and had to evacuate for emergency surgery, but this was the year I saw papyrus.  Paradox.