Can you keep up??

In the past four days I have gone from the Ugandan McDonald’s dollar menu of 4 samosas for 1,000 shillings, to the best cheeseburger in the world (who would have ever thought you could find that in Uganda?!?), to the exquisite and delectable hippie organic food found on the one and only Hairy Lemon Island, to traditional katogo (matooke and ground nut sauce) eaten in the darkness of a 2 roomed house with a new friend, and then to some pancakes and french toast that I’m pretty sure I’ll be having when I get to heaven and get to eat breakfast with Jesus. I just now, looked at Katie as we are both lying in bed, finally showered, exhausted, and thankful, and I realized that she is blogging too. The irony of that is that we both rarely blog. 

I’d been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. Scratch that - this week, not just this weekend. Not only do I love the hippie island, but we got to go with friends. 

We’ve had all 11 boys home for the week on school holiday. It was good - one broken window, 2 cases of measles, not a lot of sleep, and many, many laughs. This weekend has been circled in red on our calendar for a long time. Our boys are at camp. It’s a beautiful break. We are EXCITED to rest, and that rest started on Friday. The boys walked us down to catch a taxi to meet up with our friends, lecturing us not to get jiggers as we lectured them not to break anything before they left for camp. One very confused taxi conductor watched as Katie and I climbed into a taxi and 7 of our boys stood there sadly waving us off. 4 samosas later, we met up with our friends and headed to Jinja and got there, slowly but surely, as always in Ugandan taxis. Our first stop was obviously lunch, that’s where the beautiful cheeseburger happened.

There’s nothing like sitting in a restaurant and having a hungry and homeless child stand in the doorway and stare at you while you enjoy your sandwich. Usually when kids ask me for money while I’m walking on the streets, I say hi but ignore them when they ask for money. I hate being the bad guy, but I have my reasons. One of them is that I have 11 kids that used to do the same thing, and I know their tactics. However, Friday as our friends shopped around for some crafts and Ugandan goodies, I made friends with the 5 kids that had been staring at me while I chomped down on my cheeseburger. I sat in a dirty alley way and hung out with them. I refused to buy them food, no matter how many times they asked. Harsh. I know. Especially after they watched me devour a cheeseburger. I wanted to be their friend, not just the mzungu that buys them lunch. Plus, I’d already seen another mzungu buy them lunch, so they weren’t going to pull that one on me. We sat in the alley and laughed and I practiced my luganda, and I made 5 new friends - Joen, Joel, Emma, Ali, and the last boy told me a different name every time I asked, so unnameable. I wish I had better words than this - but it was awesome. That’s where my heart is, with those mischievous, tender hearted but act like they are tough, absolutely hilarious, abandoned, treasured in the Father’s eyes, kids who weasel 5 lunches out of mzungus every day. It was hard to leave my new friends and climb into the back of a truck to go galavanting off to hippie island for a weekend with our friends...but I managed. 

Hippie Island was quite the adventure. I’m thankful for friends. Friends are sometimes hard to come by here, especially our aged friends, because most of them are here for a few months and then gone. It’s hard for my heart to accept that sometimes or to even want to get close to people that I know are going to be leaving soon, but it’s needed and worth it. We left hippie island and it’s monkeys and delicious food and waterfalls and water volleyball and hours of time to relax and headed back to Jinja. Katie, Sydney, and I headed on out to Bugembe - a village outside of Jinja, where we were going to do medical work. It was certainly an experience. Katie has hired me as a second nurse, and so as Aunt Sydney played with a crowd of 30 village children, Katie got the complicated clinical cases, and I got the TEETH. You heard me, teeth. I hate mouths, I don’t like reaching in other people’s mouths. BUT for 2 hours I sat there rubbing clove oil on people’s rotting, decayed, and missing teeth, no other injury, all for YOUR glory Papa! Katie was cracking up, because she knows that’s my least favorite injury. But even through her laughter, we were both shocked on the second day when I had a kid that had a gushing wound and I said, “Yes! a bloody one!” I used to be the kid that passed out when I saw blood. So much has changed in the past years of my life, particularly in the past 6 months. My heart broke for the girl that we stayed with. Her name is Joan. She is in a senior year 4. Her dad left many years ago and her mom just died recently. The pastor that we are connected with, now cares for her as much as he can. Joan sleeps in a 2 roomed house, by herself. She is struggling to get school fees, she is alone, and she wants to start an orphanage when she gets out of school because  ‘kids shouldn’t have to suffer like I do.’ Needless to say, we were both moved and quickly spoke to Joan about beginning to learn how to make jewelry for us and we will help her with her school fees. Done and done. I feel like I have a new younger Ugandan sister, who is coming to visit us next weekend! Today’s medical was slammed with ringworm, babies with worms, and gonorrhea. My heart breaks as I ask 5 year olds to bring their mom to me so I can give her medicine for her baby, and the 5 year old brings back a brother or sister that’s about 2 years older than them and takes care of them. 

After the village, we headed back to Jinja where we sat down to eat lunch, and just as I was finishing my lunch a familiar face popped up in the window. I went outside to talk to my new friend Emma. 

“OH! Auntie Mallory, I thought you were a mzungu!” I sat down and started talking to my buddy. “Auntie Mallory - do you work with street kids in Kampala?” 

“Yes I do.” 

“Do you have a home for street kids?” My heart dropped when he asked me this question. I could have sworn that I knew what question was next, that dreaded question, that I hate to answer because I have to be the bad guy that has to say “yes but you can’t come to it.” BUT I couldn’t lie. 

“Yes I do.” I answered and held my breath.

“Thank you. Thank you for being our friend.” 

That was all. My sweet friend Emma - who was surprised to see me again, laughed when I told him I wouldn’t buy him lunch, thanked me for helping children that he didn’t know, told me where he slept the night before, and told me that the next time i’m in Jinja I better come find him. 

Love covers ALL. 

There are 100,000,000 street children across the world. God tells us to have the faith of a child. Most of us reading this define that by summer swim team meets, cookouts in the backyard, Christmas mornings, family pillow fights, and wearing itchy and uncomfortable clothes to church on Sunday. Most of the kids in this world would define that by hunger, being abandoned, being neglected, being abused, being lost and alone, BUT still believing in love.