Twawebwa Mukama

Last weekend at the project!

Friday,

We are visiting families today. At least, that’s what is on the program, but Africa wouldn’t be Africa if programs were stuck to. Pastor Israel had to first conduct some meetings with parents of students from the secondary school, which should have been finished by the afternoon. Not. At least not until four o’clock. Well, never mind: it wasn’t dark yet, so we could carry on with our program. We set off on foot. For those who have never experienced them, these visits are a confrontation. 60 to 70% of the Ugandan population lives in similar circumstances to the families that we went to see – pretty average conditions therefore. But to us it seems like sheer poverty.  When we reached our second family – a mother and some children – we had to stop for a while to replace our camera battery. During the brief wait, the reality of the situation crept up on us and became momentarily too much. A tear running down a white nose speaks for itself. It just doesn’t seem possible that you can’t do anything. We continued our walk and arrived at another family. Radiantly happy, the family members came outside one by one to welcome us, enormously gratified that we have honoured them with a visit, as they see it. As if the king had come to call. We brought some sugar and soap etc for the families, which we presented to them as we leave. But then something surprising happened: the father had also got something for us. “That’s really not necessary” we thought, but couldn’t refuse. And we were given a sheep, tethered on a rope. We were at a loss for what we could or should say. The bible says that it’s better to give than to receive, which we could totally confirm at that moment. It was not a great feeling, being given something by people who live at the bottom of society. We talked it over on our way back to the project. With sheep. Saturday is a day off. Which means sleeping in and everyone breakfasting when it suits him or her. In the afternoon there was some shopping and football. In the evening Pastor Israel conducted the close of the day service. He talked about giving and receiving or breathing in and out. Contented, we went to bed.

Sunday,

Today we took our leave of the congregation. We sang a song, “This is the day”, twice: once in Dutch and once in English. After the service, which had included a collection for us, we went home with pineapples, potatoes and lots of other things…… and 100,000 shillings. Once again, not a good feeling. Fortunately it will all flow back into the project again.