Today we visited Serving his Children. It was started by a young lady named Renee a
few years ago. They serve severely malnourished
children in a village named Massesse.
When i say severely malnourished children, I mean SEVERELY malnourished
children.
As we travel to their location, we drive through a village
that has the worst poverty we have seen so far.
Shacks made of sticks, mud, manure, metal, and anything else they can
find to cover themselves. Kids are
running around, many of which are not very well clothed, if at all- but you can
be guarantee when they see you they will come running and waving and yelling
"Mazungoo" which I guess is the local word for "here comes a
bunch of white people". We pull through the gates and are immediately
greeted by the staff, Renee and her assistant Danielle. They give us a tour of their grounds and we
meet some of the people who maintain the place..and of course the 2 goats- one
of which is 4 weeks overdue on delivery a baby goat. Her location is a great irony in what absolute
beauty Uganda has to see which is contrasted by absolute pain and heart ache
that is caused by extreme poverty. Off
in the distance is a spectacular view of Lake Victoria but in your much closer
view is severe poverty and the chaos of life that is Massesse village.
As we go inside it is nice to see how organized she was and
well thought out her program is. She has
baby beds, a triage area, and mattresses for the mothers to sleep on. It’s very clean- and not just Africa
clean. It is clean even by American
standards.
Shortly after we arrive it is lunch time and we get to see
the small children that are there as well as their mothers. Many of these children look like what I
remember seeing long ago on the cover of National Geographic. Extremely malnourished children, and I mean
extremely malnourished. Their legs are
literally just the size of their bone.
Faces are sunken in, eyes pretty much just glossy and staring. They would blink very slowly and their moves
were slow and deliberate. Many had severe
sores on their bodies and many had ring worm.
One child was suffering from measles and malaria on top of their issues
related to malnourished.
Renee and her staff does a great job. Her role here is to rehabilitate the children
and teach their parents skills to take care of their children. The problems normally arise when a child
stops breast feeding. Parents here do
not know how to feed their children properly once that happens. They go from nutrient rich milk, to a heavy
carbohydrate diet and they get smaller and smaller. Add on top of that severe disease such as
malaria, or chronic diarrhea and you have a recipe for disaster for small kids.
After the tours are over, we get our tasks for the day. We are to help with some projects around the
house while the ladies do some health training with the women. Our two tasks are painting a new gate, and
repairing the outdoor kitchen that had blown over.
As we start on the fence, it is apparent that Mazungoo
working outside the gates is worthy of an audience of small African
children. In the spirit of "if you
can't beat 'em join 'em" we tore up our sandpaper and put them to work
sanding the gate. They loved it. They didn’t know what they were doing or why
they were doing it…but they did whatever they were doing with enthusiasm. As their arms were up sanding, I’d sneak by
and tickle them under their arms and they'd laugh. I'd cover up their eyes and their friend
would laugh and chatter off something that I didn't understand but you can
guess it had one word… “Mazungoo”. Once
done with sanding, I taught them an important American lesson passed down from
generation to generation....the high five.
They caught on quickly and were soon pro's.
The other project ended up being mainly masonry work as the
new outdoor kitchen was going to be better constructed as the old one. We were helping to start on the
foundation. Not much to tell there
except that Jeff, Paul, Brett, Jason and I will be sore tomorrow. We got a lot done but the local staff will
need to finish the foundation... along with the entire rest of the project :)
In between trips to back and forth to the areas we were
getting sand I noticed a small movement in the corner of the yard. As I looked closer, I realized the goat which
they have been waiting 4 weeks to give birth had delivered her baby goat. Of course being a bunch of city folk, that
completely distracted us as we watched for its first steps, tried to come up
with a name, and figured out what college the baby goat was going to go to when
it grew up (j/k). It was pretty fun and
a good break from moving sand and finishing up the finally touches on the gate.
As the day continued, somewhere in between discussing baby
goat names and mixing concrete we heard some heart breaking news from Renee about
Moses, one of the young kids that used to be in the habitation center. Moses was a boy with a great story that my
wife Stacey got to meet when she was here in July. Moses was literally found in a basket on the
Nile abandoned by his mother. Sound
familiar? Well Moses had gotten better
and went home with his family. I forget
the exact specifics but his family had dropped him off at a children's
home. While he was there he had
contracted Meningitis and passed away.
The group had tracked his story while he was there for quite some time
and felt connected to this little boy, although most of us had not met
him. It took us a few minutes to recover
from that news. It’s a tragic reality of
Uganda, and Africa, and much of the rest of the planet.
In between tasks, and goat, and spending time with the
mothers and children, I got to play outside the gates with the kids. They learned high-fives, “give me” fives, and
fist bumps. Play got rougher and rougher
as boy do and fist bumps turned to playful punches, “give me” fives turned into
hand slapping and new game emerged
called pile-up on the Mazungoo.
Eventually game time was over, we said our final good-byes,
wished Renee and Danielle and all the babies and mothers good luck, and we were
heading back home. Serving his children
is a great program that could use some assistance. Check 'em out. They have amazing story and is another
inspiring story of another young lady going off on her own and serving the
people of Uganda…. All at the ripe age of 20-something.
Tomorrow we go to church and some of us will speak in front
of over 300 people......nervous much?
Say a prayer. We’ll need it.
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