The Untold Day

Unfortunately, one day last week I was quite ill after not being as careful as I ought to have been about the food I ate while in Africa. Therefore, a recap of one of our days in Uganda is missing from this blog.

Also unfortunately, my memories of that particular day are tainted by the discomfort and pain I endured in the midst of heat, humidity, and children hanging on me while I tried not to yak on them. Thankfully, I succeeded in keeping all the contents of my stomach in place.

The day began with a long bus ride, complete with a couple wrong turns. At one point we turned around so often that we passed the same lady on the roadside no less than three times in a span of about eight minutes. The look on her face was priceless: a mixture of incredulity, confusion and amusement.

When we finally turned off the main road to enter the rural village that was our destination, we experienced dirt roads in Africa after a night of heavy rain.

Being in the second bus, I witnessed the first bus swerving, veering, losing control and ultimately getting stuck in the mud. That is why we are all walking in this picture. We decided we could brave the thick red mud and walk the ten minutes to the village church rather than continue on and get the second bus stuck in the mud as well.

(Some local men used ashes to put in front of the tires to get our bus unstuck, and by the end of the afternoon the mud had dried sufficiently to safely drive the buses back out of the village.)

So, what with all the wrong turns and getting stuck in the mud, we were later than usual to the Compassion project. While we visited the bore hole that Compassion helped build for the village to have a source of clean water, we did not get to hike out to the old water source for comparison and contrast. While I did get to go on a home visit, our project staff person who was translating was not so fluent in English so many of our questions went unanswered.

Compassion has special programs available to help their projects supply clean water for communities, to provide mosquito nets for young children since malaria is the biggest preventable killer of small children in Uganda, and to make sure that Compassion children and their family members have access to medications for HIV/AIDS.

What most stuck out to me at this particular project was the involvement of the sponsored children’s families.

Moms and caregivers came together to cook lunch for us.

The rooms that are being built as an addition for the center are being constructed with the help of family members.

The kids and families have helped dig a large vegetable garden for the project to use.

We were told that the Compassion families were even the ones who erected the latrine (which came in so handy for me that day!).

Compassion not only helps out the children we sponsor, but it offers great assistance to the children’s family members as well. The caregivers, siblings, and parents of the Compassion children could not have been more grateful for the medication, mosquito nets, water, housing and food assistance they receive. These complimentary interventions are yet another way Compassion is making a difference in Uganda.

After trekking through all that mud all day, we returned back to our hotel and threw our shoes out on the balcony, not sure we would even have the energy or determination to clean them off enough to repack and take back with us to the U.S.

To our utter astonishment, when we arrived in our room the following afternoon, John spotted our shoes (the very ones that were caked with mud, weeds, and who knows what all) spotless, sparkling, and almost as good as new, sitting in our room by the luggage! Apparently the housekeepers took it upon themselves to scrub our disgusting shoes. Obviously, the level of service at the resort we stayed at was top notch. I wish I had a before-and-after picture, but who thinks to take pictures of their dirty shoes after a long day of being sick and hot and tired?

Whew. What a day it was!