Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Buyamba and Bethlehem: Blessings from my Second Home

I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been away for a looong weekend in the USA and now I’ve picked up where I left off – it is strange to come to a place that I have only lived in for one year total and greet people, the majority of whom I have known less than a full year – and to feel like I’m coming to a place that is home to me and that I am returning to a people who are my family.

Before I left the US, Barbara and I talked about how big our family is and how fortunate we are to have many places where we feel at home – Brooklyn, Budapest, Connecticut, Ohio, Uganda…When I stepped off the plane I left my seat companion (a lovely gentleman coming to Uganda for the first time for a conference on post-conflict development who didn’t tease me too much about my snoring) with these words, ‘You’ve said that it is such a long flight here, but you will be shocked at what a short flight back it is.’ The distance between here and there, between seemingly disparate worlds is so small, yet the miles are as full of hunger, under education, joblessness, corruption, damaging gender hierarchies, rampant disease and countless orphans as they full of ocean, and land masses, and clouds and blue sky.

When I left Kampala, I collected two women from Iganga (far Eastern Uganda) who run a widow’s group that earns income from a beadsmaking project – they came with me to Kyotera and onto Buyamba to conduct a technical training with the Beadmaking, Schoolbound group of orphans at the school – Glory of Christ – that Barbara and I began the beadmaking project at last April. We were greeted with shouts of joy (eh yi yi yi yi eh) that came from brown faces glowing and pink lips parted to reveal sparkling white smiles as big as the continent. After dancing (yes, I broke out my now-restored Bugandan kabina (big butt) and shook it until the rust of my hip joints wore away and the music brought me home to myself) and the food! Oh, the food! Akusa, Robina and I then got to work. The results of these ladies who took a chance traveling to a place they had never been, with a muzungu (me!) they had never met – cannot be understated. I will be returning home with beaded bags, belts and jewelry each piece as beautiful as the child who handcrafted it. (Please stay tuned for an email about an upcoming Genda Mirembe/Go In Peace fundraising event)

After seeing Akusa and Robina (who insist on coming back in two months, spending their own time and money to check-in on children they referred to as ‘their hungry babies of Buyamba’) off to Kampala and then Iganga, I traveled to Bethlehem. Ahhhhh, bug exhale and joyful smile – I’m going to see my daughters. As my hair blew behind me and my eyes were trained on the horizon, I kept urging the boda boda driver (the ‘taxi’ of most developing countries – a motorcycle or bike (in Luganda – pici pici) with a seat behind the driver) to ‘genda mangu’ or ‘go faster’ because ‘Njja kulabba abawalla bange’ – I’m going to see my girls. He laughed and stepped on it and at the entrance of the orphanage compound ‘my’ girls, along with three hundred other students and teachers, were singing, smiling and stamping the dusty ground, keeping time to the joy and measuring our collective heartbeats.

Now, I’ve never given birth, and held in my arms a child that I created (short of cuddling our dog Ben and pronouncing him ‘my smelly baby boy’ at least once a day) so I don’t have a literal compassion to make, not can I base my findings on fact or logic, but when I met the eyes of my footballers, smiling through tears and touched their outstretched arms and hands – when I was catching little girl bodies – all arms, and legs and heads – as they leapt off the ground to me – I couldn’t have felt a stronger connection to their hearts, their smells, the bumps and scars that map their arms and legs, their blood and sweat, their tears of relief and of happiness and the questions lingering in those droplets and in their little girl minds – than if I had given birth to each of them. I know some folks reading this may disagree, but for these girls, I have the love that a parent has for a child…multiplied by endlessness. In the moments when we were hugging away the pain of the months of separation, I realized that during my time in America, while I re-learned, remembered, and re-created a full and amazing life, I though about these girls, worried over injuries and dentist visits, monitored school and team progress, lost hours of sleep wondering how I was going to send all of them to university in eight years or so (to which Barb would generously and sleepily say ‘Of course we’ll figure it out. Go back to bed you crazy lady.’) – I ached for my girls. And there we were – together singing, dancing (always dancing!), eating and training.

The team has gained a great deal of notoriety from the Federation of Uganda Football Association (FUFA) and when I arrived in Bethlehem, I was also greeted by a member of the Ugandan National Women’s Team, the She Cobs. She had volunteered the last to months and was training the girls, along with their regular coach, Kasekende. My girls are real balers now – through their dedication and efforts and bravery, they are single-handedly changing the way young ladies are thought of in their community and beyond.

As I write this from Kampala, the capital city, awaiting the arrival of my father – I am eager to show him this place and these people and for him to have his own journey towards a larger family and a bigger definition of home. I am ready to put him to work as we have multiple meeting for Genda Mirembe/Go In Peace lined up – his perspective and presence will certainly be welcomed by my colleagues and invaluable to us all. And of course, I can’t wait to introduce him to the children of Buyamba and to his granddaughters in Bethlehem – blessings both.

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