Thinking my time in Africa is coming to a halt absolutely
boggles my mind! Where did time go? Time truly does fly when you lose yourself
in your fellow beings. I am beginning to hand out all of my clothes and tonight
when and blew bubbles and played jump rope with our neighborhood kids. It was
so much fun and not getting greeted by them every day will be something I will
surely miss.
Today I threw a health outreach in a little village called
Najjembe. At health outreaches we go into villages and call on the village
intercoms or use megaphones to announce that a health outreach will be held
that day and slowly but surely people walk at the local health clinic. After a
good amount of people arrive, we begin! We de-wormed 860 children! The most I
have de-wormed before was 500 so this was huge! Then through a translator we
educate on malaria, hand out mosquito nets to pregnant women, educate on proper
sanitation, dental hygiene, other important health topics, and teach them how
to make “Tippy-Taps” (convenient sinks for them out of their jerry-cans. Help
reduce germs)
In Najjembe, no one speaks English because due to their
low-incomes, most are very ill-educated. In Uganda, anyone who is educated
speaks English. Thirty-three percent of that nation speaks it absolutely
fluently! It is so convenient. Anyways, during the health outreach I met a girl
named Betty. Betty spoke perfect English so we asked her where she was from.
She told us she was from Gulu, which is up North where a lot of the Kony and
LRA happenings went down. After asking her some questions about Gulu I was
holding back tears in my eyes listening to her devastating story…
One day when Betty was walking home from school she was
abducted by the LRA. She was held hostage for 4 years. While telling us this
story she was sobbing uncontrollably. She told us terrible things happened to
her there that she could not repeat or tell us. We learned that her husband was
killed in front of her eyes and she put her daughter in an orphanage in Gulu at
the age of 1 to protect her. After escaping the LRA, her mother brought Betty
back to their village. Betty’s neighbors felt like her mother was putting them
in danger by having Betty in their village so they poisoned and killed Betty’s
mom. Betty was now completely alone. With a friend, she traveled all the way to
Najemmbe, which is approximately 11 hours away from Gulu. After learning that
Betty had escaped the LRA, her friend abandoned her as well fearing they were
going to still find it. Now Betty has a son Derek that is 1 and her daughter is
11 and still in the orphanage in Gulu. Derek’s father works in Entebbe (3 hours
away) and she sees him only two times a year. I asked how often she saw her
daughter in Gulu and she started bawling and told us she can’t afford the taxi
ride all the way up there to visit. After hearing the fare price of the taxi, I
talked to Maren, Elise, Taylor and Karli and we all agreed to pay her round
trip way to Gulu to be able to visit her daughter in the oprhanage. When we pulled
her aside and told her she was so grateful and wrote down all of her contact
information so we could keep in touch and communicate with her about her trip
to Gulu.
Hearing this story put a lot in perspective for me. It made
me realize how real all of this African devastation is. How blessed I am. How I
will never have to go through a sliver of the pain Betty goes through. How
Africa changed my life.
It’s the little conversations with people like Betty that
have changed me. Realizing how different our lives are to everyone else and how
I will never ever take for granted the smallest things, or perhaps the biggest
things, in my life. Life is beautiful. For you to even have a computer, phone,
or iPad to read this blog makes you more fortunate than millions and millions
of people around the world. Make the most of each day. You are one the most
blessed people on this planet Earth. How neat is that?
Betty, Derek and I
