Three month visa is almost expired...

Day eighty-seven. If I was a LGH volunteer, I’d be packing up my things and preparing myself to board an airplane bound for Germany this week.

If I was a volunteer…

I'm not, though. Instead, I really need to remember to renew my visa on Monday. Apparently, not only can you be deported, but you can also be arrested and held unless you bribe the police with a generous sum of money. Oh, Uganda...

I get to continue to bare witness to East Africa life as it plods on, steady and methodical as usual, as if acutely aware of its marathon being run in the stifling heat. I’m one-third of the way finished with this Sub-Saharan adventure. That’s a sobering thought. What have I learned? Have I given this my all? Have I loved well? Am I an asset or a burden to this organization? Am I realigning and reconciling my current world perceptions to the old ones in a way that reflects truth? Have I consistently chosen hope over a myriad of other common mindsets, including (but not limited to) bitterness, apathy, indifference, and pride? What is the nature of my influence on the community in this area? Am I investing enough? Is there more I could be doing? Is that even the point…? And if the answers to any of these questions are anything other than positive, what is it going to take to change things?

The reality of being here is that on a daily basis my answers change drastically. And even the fact that this is true so frequently throws me for a total loop. I’ve always been known as an even-keeled, mellow, steady individual. I may still look like this on the outside, but my thoughts and feelings since arriving in Uganda so much more often seem to have been put on the world’s most ridiculous rollercoaster.

Despite that being the case, there’s a deep sense that feeling cool and calm all the time here would require ignoring issues—insulating myself from a big part of Uganda, so to speak. No, thanks. I prefer being a secretly emotional nutball to being numb. Even if sometimes it is only a slight preference.

Anyway, my emotional equilibrium (or lack thereof) aside, today was a good day. Fridays mean Breakfast Club, and I love Breakfast Club. Typically, when a volunteer goes to visit a Suubi lady, they’ll get treated as an honored guest and served all kinds of (usually) awesome Ugandan food. These women dote on us, honestly, far more than they ever should. Breakfast Club is us turning the tables and serving them food—muzungu style. We’ve divided the five different housing estates where the ladies live into smaller “neighborhood groups” of sorts, so we usually serve between ten and fifteen women at a time. The LGH house wakes up a bit earlier and turns on music and goes to work. We cook about forty pieces of French toast (each person gets seconds). It usually takes us about an hour and a half by the time everything is cooked, we’re packed with additional goods (the women LOVE syrup; Natalina actually poured the leftovers in a cup and DRANK it before we could stop her), and out the door. At ten we arrive and for the next couple hours we eat and lounge in the shade and chat with the ladies about anything from how they’re doing with their necklaces to the weather to their children’s school fees (which they struggle with a lot).

Today’s Breakfast Club was enjoyable because it was a bit quieter (the volunteers hadn’t returned from their trip to Burundi, so it was just staff—Amber, Andrea, and myself), and because the new necklace design that’s being worked on either isn’t as complicated or these women are just picking it up more quickly. Our last design looks cool, but was a bit of a nightmare for some of the women to put together. Amazingly, others did really great at it, and we’re not sure where the discrepancy was. Regardless, not so with this design (knock on wood). They’re picking up on it quick. After most of the ladies left, Amber and Andrea took off to their respective agendas for the day and I remained to help Helen with her necklaces. Two other ladies stayed too and we sat under Helen and Doreen’s tree.

Something I didn’t discover until several weeks into being here: we actually have two co-wives in our Suubi group. Adong Doreen and Acan Helen are both wives to one husband, who I vaguely remember meeting once when dance was temporarily rained out (we sat inside on a couch next to the guy and watched terrible Zimbabwean soap operas in badly-dubbed English). It’s difficult for me not to get indignant and zealous over the topic of co-wives in Uganda, but this is one of those highlighted realities of the disparity between our culture and theirs—polygamy not only exists in this country; it is both common and socially acceptable. In cases like this, when my westernized ideals and concepts of morality are questioned, I find that my first reaction should always be to listen, to remember temperance, patience and understanding as much more effective methods to reconcile the differences on our moral opinions, as opposed to pointing fingers and demanding change outright. Same goes for my opinions on the homosexual bill—but that’s a huge can of worms and this sidebar doesn’t have the time for that right now. I might comment on all that mess later.

So Helen and the women and I sat under the tree and for two and a half hours I listened as they laughed and spoke to each other in Luo (the language of the Acholis). Occasionally, a passerby, sometimes a Suubi lady and sometimes not, stopped to greet us and I noticed their conversation usually shifted to Luganda (the most commonly spoken language here in Uganda). The fact that I can so easily differentiate between the two, even without necessarily knowing what they are saying, is exciting for me. I’ve been able to do this for some time, but I get a mild satisfaction from how certainly I can tell now. I’m learning both languages at the same time, and I haven’t confused the two yet when I’m speaking. Also fun. I think I like the way Luo sounds better, the sounds are softer and a little more guttural; the words seem to flow together like a river whereas Luganda is a little more defined. Not necessarily harsh by itself, but moreso when compared to Luo. I love linguistics. And I absolutely loved sitting silently today, wondering what they were saying and occasionally getting excited when I could actually pick out a word, or even better, a whole phrase. I can also typically distinguish now when a person is talking about me, the muzungu, to the group. That happened a few times today. And when I would recognize it, I would grin and call the perpetrator out on their “gossip”, to giggles of surprise that I actually mildly understood what they were saying. Delightful.

Also, Fridays are new sheet days. New sheet day is always a good day.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Saturday is Suubi buying day. And hopefully dance day, if the women actually come on time, as opposed to three hours late like every Suubi meeting in the last month. Fully accounting for the concept of "African Time" vs "Mzungu Time", ending our meetings at five pm when they start at one is a little ridiculous. Just Sayin. Fingers crossed ladies. Fingers crossed.

On my Day of Rest...

“Uganda has thrown open its wooden doors, heavy and cracked by ages of blazing sun, to usher in the month of February. No end in the near future for sweaty brows and brown stained t-shirts; brown-red dust clings to our perpetually damp clothing, streaking fabric and turning once-presentable mzungus into people that resemble staggering street beggars. I came home from work today looking especially haggard.”

-written on February 2nd, 2010

But it is February 7th, and this morning…

It rained.

Hard.

Today it was cool. Today the breeze was heaven; the heavy tropical moisture of the air didn’t create the suffocating blanket that it so often does. Sure, I’ve got a serious tan (something I don’t think I’ve ever possessed between the months of November and April, come to think of it) and I can thank the sun for it. Still, I’m a Pacific Northwest kid at heart, and I always will be. I clutch at my rainy days like a toddler at his safety blanket. And, hallelujah, oh glorious today—it was pouring.

Also, it is probably noteworthy to say that I had a good chunk of my favorite music on heavy rotation this afternoon: Sigur Rós, Missy Higgins, The Album Leaf, Iron and Wine, Radiohead, Bon Iver, Ray Lamontagne, Decemberists, Jose Gonzales, Meiko, The Weepies, Amos Lee…

(All great dark-day stuff, cause you know, I’m sticking with a theme here.)

I’m drinking amazing hot tea with my favorite grey sweatshirt half-zipped, the hood pulled as far over my eyes as I can manage while still being able to see the computer screen.

Point blank: It’s been a beautiful comfort-zone type of day. I haven’t had one of these yet, actually. And this marks the sixty-first day I’ve been in Uganda, so that’s awhile.

It feels like impeccable timing.

Ps. For those of you interested in more Uganda-specific stories, those are coming. I'll be writing quite a bit tomorrow, so check back in the next couple days.

Two Weeks Down.

Quote of the day:

“So, let go, let go

Just get in

Oh, it's so amazing here

It's all right

'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown.”

-Let Go, by Frou Frou

The Masala Chai Betty makes is strong. From what I can tell, she's dumped in about half a container of ginger (in order to cure a throat that is paining, she says) and other tea spices; it burns as it goes down. This stuff is good.

It's nearly 3:30 PM now, and I'm enjoying Boxing Day like most other Ugandans: by doing next to nothing. This has been a point of amusement just because I’ve always wondered what the “holiday” was even about...I'd never seen it mentioned except for in tiny letters on a calendar. But oh, it is definitely celebrated in Uganda. Here, it translates to the day that everyone lounges about, nursing their hangovers acquired from partying too hard on Christmas. And it’s a little funny, because it really is quieter today. Normally one notices the not-so-muted noise of Jinja blow in with the breeze through the windows. The only real thing I'm hearing right now is Kimbi (Bettys little son). He's having some sort of wild tantrum, which isn't entirely unusual. Fifty percent of the time Kimbi is like any other loveable, rambunctious two year old. The other fifty he's a terror. Currently, his riled, raucous wailing is probably bothering every neighbor within three hundred feet of our house. I love him all the same. And he's about the cutest little guy I've ever seen, which admittedly helps stay my irritation when he acts like he is today.

Two weeks ago yesterday I arrived in Jinja, Uganda. My apologies for not updating on life here sooner. The adjustment process has taken its serious time, and I was sick for about a week up until a couple days ago. I'm still pretty fatigued, but the brunt of my issue is over. I'm still not sure what the cause was, but I'm suspecting it had something to do with taking doxycycline. I've abandoned the pills. No one else in the house are on them, since we all sleep under mosquito nets anyway, and according to studies done in the area, mosquitoes infected with malaria only bite between the hours of midnight and 4 AM. Fascinating, I know.

I'm not completely sure where to start my explanation of life here so far. The effect Uganda has had on me runs too deep; conventional language does not possess the kinds of words that would adequately paint a picture of the wonder that is this place. But in the weeks and months to come, I'll relay as best I can the stories of these people, in this land, and process through on page what I'm seeing, learning, and reconciling to my previous perceptions of what life is--or for that matter, what it should be.

The jagged, eroding roads of red earth and potholed asphalt that crisscross these countrysides seem to me to be metaphors--metaphors for a genuine and absolute beauty that exists within the deep brokenness that hangs over everything here. Uganda is a world of complicated dichotomies—it’s wonderful and also terrible, frightening while wholly awe-inspiring, full of grief but also healing. Life that is twisted and dark and painful is contrasted by the work of a God who has been redeeming, renewing, and restoring a creation in shambles back to Himself. To be sure, it is like this everywhere on the planet—but nowhere have I seen it more blatantly displayed than here.

So right now, I’m scratching my head and wondering what to do with all of this. In two week’s time I’ve experienced so much that I’m altogether overwhelmed by it.

I have seen a young girl slowly wasting away from the preventable (and highly treatable) disease malaria. She was sitting on a dirty towel in the dark corner of her family’s hut. The malaria, having spread to her brain, contorted her body in an unnatural way, and her facial features were confused and tired. They say that once malaria reaches the brain, it’s irreversible. They say that it’s only a matter of time until it takes her completely.

The other night, while driving down a main street in Kampala, I heard the tortured cries of a woman coming from a building we passed. There were people crowded around its door, trying to witness the scene inside. Some empty police cars were sitting close by, lights flashing. I didn’t see what really happened. But I can picture the cold blue steel of the building and the ominous dark of the space behind its doorway. And every day since, I’ve been haunted by the sound of the woman’s voice, her desperate shrieking that carried far above the din of the city in its movement and traffic.

Those experiences and more that I’ve had lead me to frustration, anger, and unending questions. If this is all there is, what am I even doing here? Does me being here make any difference in the grand scheme of things? How am I supposed to react in the face of such poverty? Injustice? How do I respond? And moreover…God—what is all this for?

What the hell…?

But then, I think of Betty. Achiro Betty--who has overcome a lifetime of dire circumstances, of pain and death and suffering—to testify to the immeasurable grace and provision and unending faithfulness of our Creator. One of her favorite things to do is find people who are broken and hopeless and bring them comfort and encouragement. She’s been through everything and now chooses to walk in it with other people so that they know they’re not alone. She is quick to laugh and smile, free with her love, and speaks of Jesus as a tender friend. We have conversations regarding the Lord often. I could listen to her for hours. The thing about Betty is, I’ve only learned part of her story so far; I know there’s a lot left to tell. I know that it speaks of more hardship and broken memories. But every day, in spite of all this, I get to watch as she rises to choose HOPE instead of falling victim to despair. She’s an absolutely incredible girl. I love her dearly.

Also, there’s Andrew. Andrew loves music. Andrew has a grin that brightens my day every time I see him. Andrew is helping me to learn Luganda while I’m here, and the other day we started our lessons. I had a few different ideas for him as to what I’d like to start with. I suggested he teach me how to barter at the market, or maybe how to ask for the time, or how to tell a Ugandan man that I wasn’t actually interested in being his third wife. At this, a funny expression came over his face, and he looked at me as an exasperated schoolteacher might a troublesome fourth grader. Then, without speaking, he started writing vowels and the rest of the alphabet in my notebook. Then he had me pronounce them out loud. I had to laugh. It turns out that Andrew is actually a fairly great teacher. Except he’s going to school with the intent of one day being a news reporter, which by all accounts is a pretty great ambition. What I didn’t yet mention about Andrew, though, is that he is recently an orphan. Over the past few years he’s lost his mother and father, and then his sister, to AIDS. Finally, just a couple months ago, his grandmother passed away. Andrew spends a lot of time with us at our house, because he doesn’t like to be alone at his little place in Walukuba. He’s told me that their familys landlord informed him that he had to buy the house he was living in should he wish to stay there. So he has a little less than five years to come up with five million Ugandan shillings (about 2,600 dollars). Someone has already donated part of the money, so he figures he has about four million (2,000) to come up with, but has no idea how he’s going to do it. Still, Andrew keeps on laughing. He comes to Suubi meetings and he offers his help with whatever needs to be done. He’s a great friend to us at the house, and his commitment to serving people is awesome.

There are more stories I encounter daily that remind me that despite the darkness, there is so much light here and it is both radiant and glorious. The women of Suubi, for example, are living those kinds of stories. Many Ugandans are. I’m going to have to call those things to mind often--remember intentionally what the Lord has done and is always doing here. I still have questions. I really want those answers. And I think in time, some of those questions will have definite resolutions, but many more won’t. So a big lesson is coming to be okay with that, too. I am learning to receive grace in its various forms and love more deeply. All the while, the catalyst to all this growth is the permeating pain I am crashing into, over and over again.

The line of that song is so true. There is, in fact, beauty in the breakdown.

Headed to Africa. Here goes everything.

So, here it is. This is my story. I'm four days out from boarding a plane headed to Uganda, East Africa. Following is the copy of the informational letter I sent out to some family and friends about my trip. I didn't have everyone's address, though, so if you want one I can definitely email it to you.

Thus I find myself at the jump off point to my greatest adventure in life so far.

Here's to the journey...

My dearest friends and family,

Grace and peace to you. I hope this letter finds you all well. The fall now has quickly come and gone. Christmas is around the corner and in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the season, I am finding myself preparing to run full speed into the biggest adventure of my life so far. On December 8^th, I’ll be boarding a plane headed to Uganda, East Africa.

In July of this past summer, I was approached by an organization called Light Gives Heat, and asked to consider a position overseas as their resident volunteer coordinator. After much prayer and deliberation, I accepted the job. At the time, I was still in Colorado as a yearlong property intern at Young Life’s Crooked Creek Ranch. I arrived back in Portland in the last few days of October, and have since been preparing to leave for Uganda. I’ll be living and working in the country for approximately ten months to a year, starting on December 10th.

Let me tell you a little bit about the recent history of Uganda, to understand what has lead me to make this move overseas. As you may or may not know, Uganda has been in a state of civil war for the past two decades. For over twenty-three years, a rebel faction known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has wreaked havoc in the north of the country. The war has resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 people, the displacement of over 2 million people, and the abduction of over 25,000 children by the LRA to serve as child soldiers. Today, the LRA has largely vacated Uganda and has taken refuge in nearby Garamba national forest, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They are still on the move, and continue to kill and abduct civilians in the DRC, Central African Republic (CAR), and southern Sudan. Many organizations have taken up the cause of telling Uganda’s story in hopes that a western world would be inspired to act upon the behalf of the nation to restore peace. Maybe the most well known of these organizations is called Invisible Children, named after the children in northern Ugandan towns who walked many kilometers at night to sleep in safer areas to avoid being abducted by the LRA.

Here is where my story intersects Uganda. My passion for its people and their struggle was birthed as the result of the awareness created by Invisible Children. In 2004, I learned about Invisible Children and their cause through a friend, and afterward spent time researching the war. In the following several years I organized outreach material for events in Portland and Seattle put on by the Invisible Children. My passion for Uganda grew and developed and I tried on a few separate occasions to work in Uganda directly. The Lord closed doors on each of those opportunities, and I felt the need to be patient and wait. I always believed my time to travel to Uganda would come. Then, while I was in Colorado with Young Life (a non-profit organization that works with high school youth) last year, I was told of an organization working with women in Jinja Uganda, called Light Gives Heat (LGH), by a good friend of mine. She urged me to check out what they were doing over there, and I did. From the second I clicked on the LGH website, I knew that this project was special. And it is. My heart soared as I read the stories of the women—stories that told of coming out of places of fear and death to places of hope and redemption and sustainability. It would be safe to say that I was pretty hooked on LGH from the start.

This past May was when the big breakthrough came for me, and the opportunity to pursue traveling to Uganda was again presented. At a local vendor festival in Boulder I happened to run into the Light Gives Heat crew who had a booth set up there. We chatted for a while about my year so far in Colorado, and I spoke with them about the opportunity to work for Light Gives Heat once my internship ended. A few weeks later I received an email from LGH saying a position as the volunteer coordinator for their operations in Africa had opened up. Two weeks after that, I drove to Montrose, Colorado to visit with Morgan and Dave Hansow, the founders of the organization, and Rachel Stroud, their communications director. After three hours of lunch and great conversation, I was offered the job with Light Gives Heat.

So let me clarify a little bit who Light Gives Heat is, what they’re about, and what they do in Uganda. LGH runs a program in Jinja called Suubi, which in the Lugandan language means “hope”. About 125 Ugandan women are part of the Suubi program. The women are from the Acholi tribe in the north. It was the Acholi people who were most brutalized by the LRA. As a result of the war and the ensuing displacement crisis, many displaced Acholis sought refuge further south. Some moved to Jinja with the hope of finding relative safety and also a means to support their families. Unfortunately, most families continued to dwell in extreme poverty, unable to earn any kind of consistent or sustainable income. The women who are part of Suubi make jewelry of brightly colored paper dipped in lacquer, and sell it to people in Jinja. In 2007, when Dave and Morgan moved to Uganda, they were met with a people suffering from twenty years of agony in the face of the civil war. Light Gives Heat was started as a response to their stories. Here is the excerpt from the Light Gives Heat website; their description is beautiful and communicates their purpose well.

“The 125+ women of Suubi (representing 900 immediate family members) are amazing, generous, beautiful, and courageous. They all have a story that will bring tears and inspire the listener with more hope—they are the true heroes. Light Gives Heat is merely a vessel—an agent allowing them to help themselves by the buying and reselling of their beautifully handcrafted paper beaded jewelry here in America. With interns and volunteers on the ground in Uganda we are currently buying over 850 necklaces each week at triple their usual profit—providing a fair and consistent income where there once was none. We also help facilitate weekly literacy and English classes for the women and encourage our volunteers to love on the women and spend time with them doing the daily chores of cooking, washing clothes, or even rolling beads. Whatever form love needs to take, we want to be in the mix of it. And just as important are westerners—not just a means to an end, but an end in themselves. We are in need of an opportunity to look outside ourselves, to see that our neighbors are also the people halfway across the world.

At the end of the day it is not an ‘us over them’ situation, at LGH we truly view our relationship with the Suubi women as level and reciprocal. We can offer them our resources and time, but they offer us love, perspective, and hope! Really, it’s all about hope—we are in need of realizing that hope is a daily choice and our encounters with the women of Suubi have changed us forever. We have been shown a hope that doesn’t make sense, a hope that has changed everything!”

So there it is. The driving point and purpose behind Light Gives Heat is to see hope provided to Africa and the West alike. I’m honored to be part of a movement that seeks to love across cultural, socio-economic, and even religious boundaries. And I’m so excited to finally live out my dream of working among the people of Uganda. Suubi has been expanding since its beginning. Initially, resources available to run the program allowed for 60 women to take part. Now, that number has more than doubled. As the movement grows and more resources become available, more Africans will have a chance at a better life; one where there is enough food to go around, and their kids actually have the means to go to school, for example. This is exactly the kind of movement I’ve been yearning to be part of.

Now for the financials. This kind of trip certainly doesn’t come without a considerable cost. I’m writing to you for two reasons. Number one, I want to give you a glimpse of my heart and the things it beats for: particularly in regards to social justice, and the desire to be in the midst of working towards a solution to the intense suffering experienced by our African family.

Second, this letter comes with a sincere request.

I’m asking you to partner with me in my time in Africa by donating financially. I’m raising money for my airplane travel to and from Africa, my cost of living abroad and the homefront expenses I’ll need to cover while I’m there, travel insurance, medications, etc. All totaled, my expenses will come to around 5,000 dollars. I cannot do this on my own, and so I’m humbly asking for your help to make this dream a reality for me, and for the Suubi women whom I will have the pleasure of serving. Any amount helps!! If we do this together, I deeply and sincerely believe that not only will the lives of some amazing Ugandans change—our hearts will also transform in the process.

Finally—and this is more important than anything I could ask for—I need you to pray. Pray for the continued hope and restoration of the Acholis and their culture. Pray for peace and an end to this devastating war. Pray for the sustained efforts of Light Gives Heat and countless other organizations and NGOs—not only in Uganda, but also in other war-ravaged countries and areas like Darfur in Sudan and the Congo. I fully realize these are big problems. They aren’t going to have solutions overnight. And it’s true that there are forces at work here with the intent to perpetuate hate and violence and division. But there are much more powerful forces, just as present in our world, that are working tirelessly to bring joy and purpose and hope back into peoples lives. But it all requires that people be committed to prayer. And it also means that we have to intentionally choose compassion over complacency.

If you made it to the end of this letter, thanks for reading that far! Also, I need to tell you something else. Thanks for believing in my dreams and walking through them with me. Thanks for your support and encouragement and love over the years. Thank you most of all for your prayers. I’ll never be able to fully express how much they truly mean to me.

Also enclosed in this letter is a sheet of pertinent links to my trip and necessary information, should you wish to contribute financially to this mission. All donations are tax-deductible. I’ll be keeping up a blog so that information on my journey should be (fingers crossed) fairly up to date. I’ll have email while in Uganda and access to the internet, so while my facebook time will be limited, I’ll still be on that, too. J

Thanks again. My prayer is that your holidays bring an incredibly rich time for you and your loved ones. May you know the love of our Maker in increasing ways and experience the joy and true meaning behind this season.

Peace be with you.

Yours,

Marayah