What, are they out chasing down the chicken?

Alright enough of the downer posts. It’s time for a funny post. I’ve got a great story that I hope you’ll enjoy. 

I mentioned that I went to Karamoja a few weeks ago. It’s a region in the northeast and is entirely different from the rest of the country. While most of Uganda has gone fairly Western by now, the Karamajong take great pride in their cultural heritage, and have held on strongly to their ways of life. They’re a pastoral people, and make their livelihood mostly from cattle-herding. The area is very rural, very tribal. 

So one night, we went for dinner at a hotel that supposedly had good food. We sat there for about 2 hours before the food was served. I’ve traveled enough to not let long serving times bother me, but the next night we still attempted to have a better experience than that. 

We went to a different hotel at 6:00 and ordered dinner to arrive at 7:30, thinking we could order it then go off to freshen up or whatever and come back and it would be ready. They didn’t have a menu, but verbally told us the options for the evening. We all happened to order chicken and various sides to go with it. 

So we arrived at 7:30 with foolish hopes that our food might actually be ready. Food was served at 9:00. 3 hours after we ordered it! 

The next day we found out what had happened. We made some comment about the long wait to one of the employees, and she burst into apologies. “Oh, I’m so sorry for last night! You know, chicken was over!” (Meaning they were out of chicken) “We didn’t want to disappoint you because you had ordered chicken, so we had to go out and seek for chicken, that’s why it took so long.” 

Oy. Seriously? 

There are so many subtleties in African culture, and saying “no” is a very complicated thing. They never want to disappoint you or tell you “no.” They felt like they would have disappointed us greatly by telling us there was no chicken, so they had to find a way to get it. Really they were disappointing us by making us wait 3 hours! (And really why did they tell us they had chicken in the first place when they didn’t?) I would have been fine changing my order to whatever they had ready! But this is the culture, and in spite of having to wait so long for dinner, I can’t help but just laugh about it all.

Ok, you know how when you go to a restaurant and the food is taking a long time, you joke, “Are they out chasing down the chicken?” 

This time, THEY ACTUALLY WERE OUT CHASING DOWN THE CHICKEN!!

May We Not Become Weary

So. The last post I wrote was the first one I had been able to write in over a month. The last month or so has been tough. I knew coming to Uganda that I would experience difficult things. I knew I would grow and change. But I didn’t anticipate the extent to which my heart would break and how it would be sewn back together with love, joy, and hope. I’ve experienced darkness and challenges in many different ways since I’ve been here, but about a month ago, it all came rolling in at once. Day after day there was one thing after another. 

That day that I saw the girl in the slums that I talked about in my last post, I had just come for an outreach with my friend Davy and the organization she works with here. They do weekly outreaches to some boys who live in the slums, teaching them a little because they’re not in school, and then teaching them Bible stories and songs. I thought it was odd that they only reached out to boys. Where were the girls? I learned that the boys tried to get them to come, but they refused. Most of them were too stuck in their ways and preferred a life of prostitution, and didn’t want anyone trying to tell them to change.

So the boys came, and with them came the overwhelming smell of glue, which they sniffed to get high. Several of the boys were just passed out on the benches and most of the rest had a glazed over look in their eyes. 

It rained all afternoon, and a walk through the slums after a rain is enough to break anyone’s heart. Little wooden shacks don’t do much at all to protect against heavy rains. 

We left the outreach and headed to the clinic to see a boy they knew who had been in a fight and had been in the hospital for a couple of days. 

Then I ran into those girls who had run away from the home, and my entire world was turned upside down, my entire reaction to poverty changed forever in an instant.

Are you getting the gist? This was a 3-hour span of one day. The next few weeks continued with things like this happening just about every day. In this time I visited Karamoja, a region of Uganda that is severely looked down upon by other Ugandans. I saw appalling living conditions and more importantly heard countless stories from my friends of warfare and hardships. I learned about how poorly the Karamajong people can be treated by other Ugandans, as though they’re dogs, as though they’re garbage. I visited the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, a place of no hope, no self-betterment, a place of high HIV/ AIDS statistics, darkness, and witchcraft.

I wanted to keep up with my blog, but try to process this into a presentable post? Not happening. Instead I went into a sort of comatose phase for a few days, letting the darkness just engulf me. It was too much. Small things like challenges at work were even too much to think about. Instead I would find myself just sort of glazing over and checking out, feeling like there were too many problems in the world and there was no hope to try to improve any of them. 

Then, like it always does, hope came. Do you know what? It was actually from a Facebook post that someone made on the Dwelling Places page. Facebook is getting really weird and ick, but it turns out good things can still come from it. I’m not sure who it was-- maybe our UK Administrator?-- posted this on the DP page, from the book of Habakkuk, and it was just what I needed:

Habakkuk’s Complaint

 2 How long, LORD, must I call for help, 

   but you do not listen? 

Or cry out to you, “Violence!” 

   but you do not save? 

3 Why do you make me look at injustice? 

   Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? 

Destruction and violence are before me; 

   there is strife, and conflict abounds. 

4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, 

   and justice never prevails. 

The wicked hem in the righteous, 

   so that justice is perverted.

The LORD’s Answer

 5 “Look at the nations and watch— 

   and be utterly amazed. 

For I am going to do something in your days 

   that you would not believe, 

   even if you were told. 


I was also encouraged by Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” 

Violence, injustice, conflict, strife, and darkness with always be there as long as we’re on this side of heaven. But God’s response to Habakkuk was “I am going to do something in your days.” If we wait and trust, God always brings light out of the darkness. I had to be reminded that this isn’t the end of the story. It’s not the whole picture. This is just one piece of it. And God is doing something with it. 

The Face of Poverty

It had rained heavily that day, so as we worked our way through the alleys of the slum, we had to concentrate hard to negotiate our way around puddles, slippery muddy spots (hoping that it’s only mud), bodas, cars, and thick crowds of people. A hand reached out to me, and I touched the hand, but didn’t look up and said “Sirina ssente.” I don’t have any money. 

As I kept walking, I heard, “Aunt Caro!” My breath stopped. I turned around to see the face that belonged to the hand that had reached out to me. It was one of our girls who had run away from the children’s home around July. I went to her in disbelief and just embraced her. My mind was racing. I didn’t know what to do. 

She was very high on drugs, and was with another girl who had also run away from the home some time back. I didn’t know the other girl because she had run off before I came to Uganda. This other girl said she had run away because she got pregnant and wanted to abort the baby. I wasn’t sure if my heart could break any more. 

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just bring the girls back. They would have to come on their own, if they wanted to come. I begged them to come back and told them how much we love them and wanted them to come back. They told me yes, that they were coming on Monday. I found that a little strange that they seemed to have planned that out, but I later learned that they had actually run into some of our other social workers a week before, and had talked to them about coming back. When we ran into these girls, a friend I was with turned to me and said, “God wanted you to be here right now.” She had no idea how right she was. I had no faith at all that those girls would come back, but I was shocked to find that they came on Monday like they said! God had planted those other social workers there the week before, and had planted me there to reinforce the idea of coming back and to remind them of how they were cared for at DP compared to life in the slums. 

Praise God that they came back, but unfortunately the other girl (the one I didn’t know) ran off again a few days later because she found out she was pregnant again. DP talked with her, assuring her that they would care for the baby, but she refused and ran away so she could abort the baby again. I was concerned that the other girl would then run off to be with her friend, but thankfully she has been at the home for a few weeks now. She was tough as nails when she came back, and she’s still very resilient, but is softening some. She is less aggressive now, she’s doing some work making crafts that DP sells, and I caught her flipping through a Bible a couple of times today. I can just pray that God will keep her there and that she will continue to soften and grow. 

I almost never give to people who beg for money on the street. You want to help, but when you learn more about what’s behind the begging, you just can’t give to people in those situations. Especially in Kampala, behind kids who beg on the street, there is usually a person making a fortune at their expense. You can’t encourage that kind of system by giving money. And besides, giving money to beggars just encourages them to live on the street. So if I give money or time or effort, it’s to a place like Dwelling Places that is working to get the kids off the street and empower families to be self-sustainable, not to hands that reach out to me on the street asking for a coin.

But that day that I saw her there in the slums, my entire life changed in an instant. I left there feeling shocked, hollow, and numb as I made my way through the town center to run some errands and passed a multitude of street beggars, some disabled, many of them small children. This time, I actually looked at their faces. I didn’t know any of them, but I wondered what their stories were.

I was reminded of a quote I heard from someone at DP. "Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they are not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes." -David Platt

I learned the truth of this quote in an all-too-real way that day. It’s easy to pass a street beggar when you don’t know them. It’s easy to turn your back to poverty when it’s not personal. But when poverty has a face and a name, a favorite bedtime story, a favorite color, when you’ve heard her laughter as you bounced him on your knee, when you’ve held her when she cries... 

you simply cannot turn your back anymore. 

Mary and Martha

As some of you know, one of the many roles I play at DP is that of a teacher. I teach English every morning, between 2 different classes. One of the “classes” actually only consists of 2 girls, and I laughed when I heard the names of the girls who had been assigned to my class: Mary and Martha. 

If you’re not familiar with the Bible, there is a story in it where Jesus goes to visit 2 sisters, and their names happen to be none other than Mary and Martha (though these girls I teach are not related). Sometimes if there is time left over at the end of class, I’ll get one of the children’s Bibles and we’ll read a story. The first one I was dying to share with them was the story of Mary and Martha. 

The girls loved it. They weren’t familiar with the story, and their eyes lit up when I told them there was a story in the Bible with their very names. 

Love Instead

This kid, I swear, is sometimes the reason I get up in the morning. His name is Baby Silas, although he’s not much of a baby anymore, as you can clearly see! I’m not sure about his exact age, but he’s somewhere around a year and a half. 

Every time I walk through the gate, he comes running up to me and dives into my arms. The way he runs is the cutest thing ever. It’s almost like he doesn’t have knees, and he really waddles and swings his arms side to side to get momentum.

Well here’s a story about Baby Silas that started with a ring. 

Whenever I wear this ring, the kids at the home are all mesmerized by it. They have great teachers who clearly inspire them, because they’re constantly pointing out letters and numbers on anything they see. So when I wear this ring, I usually have several little hands grabbing at the ring and pointing to each letter, saying “Letter L. Letter O...” I've taught them that it says “love” and we'll talk about what love means, and how I love them and God loves them. One of the many sweet moments that are peppered through my days at work. 

Well one day a month or 2 ago, I was holding Silas and talking about love with the kids. Silas started mimicking the sounds of the word “love!” So immediately that became my new project: get Silas to really say the word.

Now, I can’t count it as a first word for him—he says a few other little words—but it’s still one of the first and it makes me insanely happy to have taught it to him. I also taught him to say “I love you.” 

Now every time he sees me, he grabs my hand, looking for the ring. If I’m not wearing it, he looks a little confused. It’s so cute, I can’t stand it. 

I finally was able to get him on video saying “love” and “I love you.” Check it out, it’s so sweet. I had to add a segment at the beginning of him running up to me so you can see the run-waddle. 

I’d like to get to share a little bit about Silas’ story, although I’m not sure how much of any of these kids’ stories I should share on my blog, for confidentiality’s sake. So I will just keep it confidential and only let you know that Silas was referred to us when he was about 4 months old. His parents were unable to take care of him for various reasons, and essentially this sweet baby was dying. I’ve been to his home and met some of his family, I’ve seen where he comes from and what could have been his fate. 

And instead, the first phrase he learned to say is "I love you."

Reasons Why

Well it’s almost 11 am and I still haven’t been able to leave for work yet. Why? Well it’s been pouring down rain all morning, and since I take a boda boda (motorbike taxi) to work, I can’t leave until it stops raining. 

Don’t you wish America operated like this? :)

Well since I’m stranded because of the rain, I think it’s the perfect opportunity to go ahead and take the time to polish a blog post I’ve been working on for awhile. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact that different cultures measure time differently. In the West, it’s “If you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; if you’re late, you’re replaced.” On “African time,” however, things happen when they happen. Time is centered around the event, not necessarily the numbers on the clock. 

But a big contributing factor to “African time” is just that everything is so interconnected here. There are so many variables to everything, and it’s all interdependent. 

When we were in Zanzibar, we had gone to the little fishing village that was just off the beach from our hotel to get chips-my-eye (no idea why it’s called that), a tasty snack of an omelet with French fries in it. We were directed to a place that makes them, but they told us they didn’t have any that day. The reason? Someone in the village had died, so the guy who normally brings the fries had been involved in the funeral arrangements for the person who had died. 

Another morning at the hotel in Zanzibar, we were awaiting milk to come for our tea and coffee. They couldn’t get it to us yet because the guy who keeps the key to the milk fridge hadn’t arrived yet. 

A few weeks ago, I went to the store to get paint, but I was unsuccessful in my trip. Why? The store (a very big, Western shopping center) didn’t have power. It was running on a generator, but the generator wasn’t powerful enough to support the paint mixer. 

My friends Tony and Lizzy invited me to Tony’s uncle’s house for lunch on Uganda’s Independence Day, October 9^th. Tony had told me to meet them at 10, which had me a little confused, really. Honestly, any time I’ve been invited for lunch at a Ugandan’s, we end up eating around dinner time. Food takes a long time to prepare here, so that’s just the way it is. I’m not complaining or anything. Really if anything, I appreciate the hard work that goes into preparing food here. It just means that we’re not going to eat at an American’s idea of “lunch time,” so by now if I’m ever invited for lunch, I expect to eat at 4 or 5 at the earliest. 

So when Tony told me 10 am, I was skeptical. I started calculating how late I should be in African time, but the rain actually made that decision for me. Right when I was thinking of leaving my house, it started pouring down rain, and didn’t stop for hours. So I was stuck at home. 

Finally the rain stopped around 1 or so, and I got in touch with Lizzy and Tony. They told me that they were just heading off to get the chicken, so I could meet them any time. 

Haha, so I finally left the house another hour or so later, giving them enough time to go get the chicken and to meet them at his uncle’s house. I was actually surprised that when we got there, there was rice and beans prepared, so we ate that as a late lunch, then enjoyed each other’s company as the chicken was cooked, then we ate that for dinner. 

I showed up to teach the kids at DP one morning last week, but we couldn’t get in the building because the person who had the key hadn’t come yet. Normally someone else keeps the key, but the staff was away at a planning retreat all week, so someone else had taken the key, and he didn’t show up until later. 

That’s just life here. Everything is interconnected. Everything relies on something else, and if there’s a missing link, it’s like a domino effect. Sometimes you can’t get paint because the power is out. Sometimes you have to wait until the rain stops before you can go get the chicken from the market to cook it for lunch. Sometimes there’s a variable with the DP van driver who is unable to pick up the employees who have the key to where you need to be. It’s aaaallll dominoes, and that’s just how it is here! You’ve just gotta go with the flow!

Laying it Down at His Feet

About 6 months ago, I got on a plane to Africa. It was at this point that my boyfriend Jeremy moved into my computer. He is this... thing... on Skype or Facebook chat, and I’m not sure anymore if he is a real person or if he is some robot who lives in my computer. A few months after I left for Africa, this robot person got on a plane to Iraq where he’s serving with the US Army. 

It’s actually been amazing how well we’ve been able to keep in touch. Even with the time difference, when he was still in Murrica and I was in Africa, we managed to Skype on his lunch breaks, which was evening time for me. We’re now in the same time zone, and he works the midnight-8 am shift, then sleeps in the day, which still works out for us to get to Skype in the evenings. I am so grateful for having been able to keep in touch so well. I don’t take it for granted. I don’t envy the way communication was for those at war, or for those on the mission field, hundreds of years ago, or even 20 years ago. Technology is an amazing thing. 

The problem, though, with this robot who lives in my computer who resembles Talley, is that I rely on getting to see him every night. Iraq is pretty uneventful these days, so he’s relatively safe compared to other deployments in the past, and on most days he’s just around the base being bored out of his mind. But there are times when they go on missions around, and I don’t hear from him for a day or so. I try not to worry, but it’s impossible not to at least be a little concerned, and it’s difficult not to let my imagination run away. All I can do in these times is pray and trust that God will take care of him. 

On Monday morning of this week, I arrived at the children’s home to teach English, to find that one of my students was not there. My stomach dropped as I was told that she had run away from the home with 3 other girls. They had run off during church the day before. 

I couldn’t understand it. These girls were good girls. One of them especially, who was in my English class, was so bright, was such a leader to the other kids at the home, and she was so strong spiritually! She was always asking to read the children’s Bibles, she knew her memory verses and Bible stories, and was always helping out at fellowship time. 

Then one day she was gone. They all had just run off. Dwelling Places is not a prison. If the children want to run away, that’s their choice. But like the prodigal’s son, there is much grieving when a child runs away. Not only are there the feelings of worry for the children and that they would just be safe and come back, but anyone who had any part in the kids’ lives is feeling a jumble of other emotions. There’s the sense of failure, that we could have done something to prevent it. There’s the feeling of futility, that we’re putting in all this effort to alleviate the problem of street children in Uganda, but what’s the point when they just run away back to the life they came from? There’s hurt, regret, betrayal, misunderstanding, among so many other things. 

So I cried and prayed with some of the other teachers and social workers. Thankfully those girls did actually come back later that day. Unfortunately it was with the police. They had found them... of all places... at the airport!!!  The airport is about 35 kilometers outside of Kampala! Apparently they had begged for money until they had enough to get on public transportation to the airport. I got mixed stories, that they were going to a beach party on Lake Victoria, or that they had gone to the airport thinking they could get on a plane somewhere, and another story that one of the girls was looking for her brother. Who knows, but the fact is that they didn’t come back by their own will, so please pray that they will not choose to run away again. 

The same day that these girls ran away, Talley didn’t appear online for a couple of days. 

I had no choice but to rely on God and to trust him to take care of all of them. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet you heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6: 26-27). 

God is definitely teaching me about relying on him. There's no denial that so many things are beyond our control, so what's the point of stressing over it or worrying? It's always easier said than done, but God has never let me down. That doesn't mean everything is always easy. God doesn't just take away the hardships in life; rather he equips his children with the resilience to handle the trials. And he asks us to lay down our worries at his feet, because he is in control.  

A typical evening-- Slyping with Jeremy by lantern light because the power is often out at my place

Africa... does something to you

Africa fills your heart with such joy and such sorrow like no other place on earth can.

You spend time with the children at the children’s home, ones who have been rescued from living on the street or in a bad situation with their families. You teach them in the interim school, you lead fellowship time with them, sharing songs, stories, and prayers, you are bombarded by 20 pairs of arms hugging you every time you walk in the gate. You leave after time spent with them and find that you’re smiling the whole way home and you didn’t even realize it.

Then one day you arrive and discover that 4 of the girls have run away from the home. You cry and pray with the other teachers and women who take care of the children. You worry not only for the safety of those girls and pray that they will return, but you hurt for the women who take care of those children. You know all they are feeling is failure, misunderstanding and discouragement, and you feel the sting of it too. You feel as though there should have been something you could have done to prevent it, even though it’s beyond your control, and you also feel the futility of all the work you’ve done for all the children, for it to only be met with ingratitude and the children returning to the life from which they came. 

You are invited over to a friend’s house for lunch, and spend all day in great company as food is slowly and laboriously prepared. You appreciate the time and work that goes into preparing food, and enjoy the relational nature of this culture, that it’s about time spent together, not about the task at hand. 

You leave with a full belly and a full heart from the relationships you’ve been building, but on your way home, you see children sitting on the street in the dark with their hands held outstretched, and there the sorrow comes. What can be done? You can’t give to these children once you know what happens with the money they collect. It goes to someone who is making a fortune off of these street children, charging them for a place on the floor in a shack in the slums to sleep. You can’t encourage that system by giving them money, but you can’t just leave the kid there, cold, hungry, and alone. You work with an organization that is doing something about it, sure, but there are still so many kids out there.

You go for a nice trip to Tanzania, you learn a lot at a conference and network with other missionaries, you spend a few days relaxing on the beach and come back refreshed and happy to see your friends. 

You see your boda driver, happy to see him after a few weeks, and ask how things have been in Kampala. He gives you news that his brother died. That he was on his way to buy a plot of land, and since Uganda still pretty much runs on cash, not credit, he was carrying a lot of cash on him to buy the land. Some people found out what he was up to, and stopped his boda under some false pretense that the boda was stolen, then beat him to death and took his money. 

You get to interact with these kids and see their growth one-on-one. You watch the 180 degree turn some of them make from when they first arrive at the home. You see one girl turn from the loudest, most stubborn girl, to one who is a real leader to the others. She has her moments of defiance still, but she is also always keeping all the other kids on their toes, making sure they’re behaving and doing their chores. You even get to teach her, and she writes you sweet letters that brighten your day. 

Then she goes back to her home for the school holidays, and asks you to accompany her there. You see where she came from, suddenly you understand. This girl ran away from home to live on the streets. You know it must have been something bad to make her choose a life on the streets over life at home, but until you see it, you have no idea. You meet her mother, drunk beyond her senses at midday, you walk through the filthy house with dirty clothes and dishes covering the floor, with nothing but a wet mattress on the floor for the kids to sleep on, and anger and sorrow swells inside you. 

Shortly after I had arrived in Uganda, another American here was asking me how I like it here and that sort of thing. We were talking about how great our experiences have been, and I remember her saying, “Africa… does something to you.” And I remember thinking, “Yeah, that’s the only way I can put it. It definitely does something to you. Something amazing. I can’t put it into words, but that’s it.” 

I think now I may know a little something of what it does to you. It fills your heart with joy and sorrow to such depths that you never even knew were there, in a way that I’m not sure any other place on earth can do.