STILL TEACHABLE

‘Wow,’ ‘Out of my league,’ ‘Thank you God’ and ‘This place is crazy.’ These are the phrases that dance around my head and seem to fit almost every occasion. This morning I had a meeting with the teachers at JIM Centre and outlined a Learning Aid Poster competition for them. My friend Mike sent me a bunch of marker sets, rulers and crayons(erasers, pens, pencils, toothbrushes, a good man) and this is my creative way of giving them to the teachers without actually giving them to them. The teachers will compete, the winner will receive some money but each team who gets 80 out of 120 possible points on their work will be able to keep all of their poster making supplies as well as receive another poster board to make more classroom aids. Anywho, the meeting goes well. Then I head to the boys dorm to pick up Bosa. Bosa is a 17 year old boy who lives at JIM and studies at a local secondary school. Gavah lets him stay in the boys dorm in exchange for help around the property. Bosa had his tooth extracted a few days back and now has extensive swelling in his mouth. It looks painful. We went to the dentist where the doctor (who seemed kind of legit) took a blade to his mouth to drain the pus from the infection. I had to hold Bosa down, he doesn’t like knifes or injections in his mouth-go figure. Imagine hard-core dental work without the painkillers. Then I get in the taxi (minivan with 20 or so other people, I’m not kidding) and head to Kampala for a staff meeting at Bead for Life. I’m on the phone with Sam, telling him how real life is here and how I might kind of miss it when-wham, another taxi rams into ours. Then I went to the office and found out that my proposal had been rejected but then kind of accepted, under different terms. It’s only 1pm now. This place is crazy!

This is almost a normal day here and I can barely keep up with my own life. I love to analyze everything, pontificate about my realizations relating to my experiences-now things are happening so darn frequently I can’t even keep up with that. But I’m going to give it a try...

Stuart is a little boy from Naggalama. He walks with his shoulders hunched up, one of his eyes is deformed, some of his fingernails and toenails are missing, he breathes laboriously and always stares at the ground. I had no idea Stuart would come to play a role in my life but when I saw him walking by Teopista’s one morning, I knew that I had to do something. So I went with Teopista to his jajja’s house (jajja=grandparent) and asked if I could take him to JIM Centre. He was clearly neglected (his little toes are deformed from all the jiggers that have gotten in and not been removed, jiggers are little worms) and I figured that even though JIM Centre is poor and rugged, there’s lots of love and...I don’t know-I didn’t think about it all that much, I just sort of did it. Stuart, or Stube, as Michelle calls him or Stuart-eeee as the kids call him, arrived about a month ago, very sick. We took him to the local hospital, tested him for everything, addressed the obvious illness. But things looked pretty bleak. He didn’t speak at all, some of the kids mocked him...he’s a little boy that has experienced to much hard living already. But I think this Universe has different plans for Stuart and he’s not giving up yet. I found out the other day that he has fabulous teeth because he smiled at me. He has made a friend called Eric (a street kid who arrived last year and is called Eric because that is his sponsor’s name, they don’t actually know his name) and those two pal around together. Bosa has taken him under his wing and helps him out. It turns out that Stuart is kind of funny and has the kids rolling at playtime. He has the gruff voice of a jajja, the look of a lost soul and the body of a malnourished, neglected 8 year old-what’s not to love. I don’t want to make light of Stuart’s situation, he’s sick and we still cannot determine his illness after numerous hospital trips (all of which are separate blog entries in themselves) but I really think that those JIM kids loved Stuart back into this life. These kids give from poverty, what I understand is giving from a place of abundance. They laugh with each other, they beat each other up, they share sugar with each other for morning porridge, they give each other pens, they wash each other’s clothes... They could’ve kept him separate because he is different but they haven’t and now he’s a regular little JIM kid. Stuart gives me hope, he is our Owen Meaney. Next week we go back to another doctor and Stuart is being fitted for glasses. Stuart in spectacles will be unstoppable.

This place is full of contradictions. Hope sometimes, despair sometimes, acceptance every now and then. In early May, Pelagia died. We visited her on Sunday, she was pretty depleted but we were hopeful, she died the next morning. I sat with the body (as is custom) for a short time the next day and all I could think was that her body looked so tiny underneath the sheet. I wonder if she is now a part of Africa’s statistics on AIDS related deaths or do they (whoever they are) not even know that she lived? Life is quite hard to understand sometimes.

I have hated Uganda and I have loved Uganda. And it keeps teaching me. It makes me think that loving something or someone or some place isn’t about liking it in the good times and hating it in the bad time...maybe loving is about accepting it at all times and doing your best to be a good person through it all.

When I left the States, I would’ve said that I left with an open heart...this place showed me how closed my heart was. Now Africa has slowly worked it’s magic and opened me up. I feel raw, often close to tears and understand that my vision of myself, my place in the world and Africa has changed forever. Maybe not for the better or for the worse, it’s just more honest.

Josh Yoters Scheffdog...the boys thank you for the soccer balls, the girls love their net ball and Michelle and I love the rice crispie treats, granola bars and almonds. P.S. the wet wipes were a stroke of genius.