Pie in the Sky, Feet on the Ground

Two weeks ago while sitting in my Ugandan living room, I listened to Obama’s highly anticipated speech on Africa. Distinctive of the great orator, the dialogue was uplifting, rhythmic, controlled, but emotive. Setting a blueprint for what the continent should aspire to be, Obama outlined a need for greater investment, financed in part by the West, in Africa’s infrastructure, education and health care. At the same time, Obama warned Africans their success was ultimately dependent upon their leadership and commitment to fair democracy. Africans future is up to Africans.

Watching this a few months ago I would have nodded my head in support not understanding how these goals would be implemented, but that they can and should be, firmly believing that additional U.S. aid was a good thing.

Watching the speech after having lived in Africa for a few months, I found myself nodding at some words, sighing at others, and still not understanding how these ideas would be put to practice. The President’s words and intentions do reflect what ought to happen on this continent, but their fruition feels distant and dim; the development here so lagging at times I feel I have been transported to the medieval.

Obama spoke of the need to end tribalism and conflict, citing mass murder in Darfur and mass rape in the Congo. He also spoke of the necessity to put a stop to corruption, referring to port authorities and heads of state stealing public funds. He speaks the truth; these atrocities and crimes must come to an end for Africa to develop properly. But, unfortunately, these problems are dazzlingly pervasive, as common as the swaying matoke trees in villager’s fields, or the clouds of red dust in the dry season.

Tribalism and conflict aren’t limited to Darfur, Congo and Somalia, the notorious failed states. It is everywhere all the time, just varying in degree. It is evident in local politics, small businesses and community relations, like the mayoral elections I witnessed last month here in Lugazi. Corruption culprits aren’t just presidents, prime ministers, and ministry leaders. It’s also the everyday everybody’s: policemen, doctors, teachers, farmers, even volunteers. Infamous leaders fingered by the international community as instigators of violent conflict, like Mugabe, Kony, and Taylor, are justly demonized and should be pursued and prosecuted. Their crimes, however, are just glaring tips of massive underlying problems plaguing the continent, problems interwoven into underdeveloped cultures, and within underdeveloped minds. You can replace a leader or kill a rebel, but a struggling society saturated with bribery, fraud, poverty and tribalism persists.

I smile softly, a little sadly, at my changing perspective on Africa, my growing nuanced understanding of life here. I think back to my first blog when hospitality was the most striking aspect of African culture, a symptom I suppose of the good Africans looking out for me and my own disposition. My first few weeks here I encountered only the continent’s positive: the deep familial bonds, the kindness to visitors, the sacrifices for the destitute, the shining heart in humbling adversity. Inspiration is here and can be seen daily, but with the passing of time I’ve also become familiar with the continent’s otherness: the witchcraft, polygamy, corruption, and tribalism, all of it pervasive and an accepted part of life.

Africa is at times gorgeous, other moments hideous, but consistently in need. And it is more than just not having enough money to eat or go to school or buy nice things. It is more than poverty, it is poorness. It is a poorness in standards: professional and academic, in the press and government, in the hospitals and schools. It’s more than genocide, rigged elections and dictators that Africa must overcome, it’s also the lack of attention to detail and commitment to excellence in daily pursuits that create the fabric of society. Regularly I hear about professionals’ lack of professionalism, like doctors endangering lives, contractors collapsing buildings, or nurses unwilling to help trauma patients. Regularly I witness shoddy workmanship such as teacher’s notes with terrible grammar, newspaper articles rife with inaccuracies, or expired prescriptions on pharmacy shelves. I also regularly ascend and descend uneven stairs, enter buildings with sloppy paint jobs, ride in taxis crumpled and falling apart from poor maintenance. Regularly I see how poorness in wealth contributes to poorness in standards and back again, creating a cycle.

With all this poverty and the shameful discrepancy between how the West and how the Rest live, intuitively I feel that Western nations should be assisting developing countries in some capacity, but I have conflicting feelings on how this should be done. Obama has pledged $63 billion to Africa, which undoubtedly could go far in alleviating some of the problems relating to infrastructure, health and education. But when you read in magazines, books, and newspapers of the collective waste, greed and stealing that accompanies aid, how the money is used to finance rebel groups and tyrants and dishonest politicians alike; when your Ugandan civil engineering brother tells you of a $100 million Kenyan road that was never built, but the money gone and the road even mapped as if it exists; or when your Ugandan doctor friends confirm that a small fraction of donated medicines makes it to clinic shelves, most of it stolen by the health ministry or physicians and resold on the black market; or when your Ugandan parents tell you it’s no good following up with the official on the economic development project because he might be setting you up for money laundering, not because they know anything about this individual, but because that’s what people in government do; or when your own volunteer work with the local microcredit organization appears awash in incompetence and possible dishonesty by the very people you are working alongside; or all of the other examples of fraud that you can’t even remember, they are just a blur of events that make up life here, it kind of takes away from the U.S.’s promise as you envision billions vanishing into the expansive African sky.

And despite all these problems I regularly encounter here in Africa, and the frustration it inspires in me, I love Africa and deeply appreciate American willingness to offer it assistance. Of course, I also now have a vested interest in the continent beyond just dreaming of better conditions and opportunities for millions of vulnerable lives in a distant land. Having lived, worked, struggled and celebrated with Africans, I have a concern that borders on the familial since becoming a Mama Muzungu to five children here.

Like any parent, for my African children, I want a better future, one that would be low-reaching by American standards, but acceptable, even above African norms. I want my children to not ever worry about having enough to eat, about receiving proper medical treatment, about drinking clean water, about having a roof over their heads, about having a mattress under their bodies, about attending school, or about earning enough to at least make ends meet. I aspire this for them as well as their happiness. And I comforted in knowing that I am able to help them meet their needs and realize their dreams. But for the millions of other desperate Africans, I don’t have any control; I can only leave it to hope. And so I cautiously watch the continent and proceed with the hope that Obama’s warnings are headed and his optimism ultimately realized.

Come Walk With Me

Many evenings at dusk I walk or jog through the rusty trails that cut through the sugar cane on the hillsides surrounding my African home. I step out the door to maybe cows, chickens or small families of goats, four-legged babies hopping around their pregnant mother’s bulging sides, and always, inevitably, there are many, many Ugandan children. There is a school immediately to my building’s left, another a little further past, and three on the paved street to our right, some children still walk in their uniforms, others changed into dirty clothes, most fetching water from nearby wells and tanks.

I am constantly greeted…

Hi mzungu! Good evening mzungu! Bye-bye mzungu! How are you mzungu!

The toddler in the home across the grass clearing still cries uncontrollably when she sees me; it’s been over three months and still not accustomed to my pallor. Her older siblings laugh when I pass and she runs for them, arms spread out, tears streaming down her face, wanting protection from the white monster.

I cross the road that to the right leads to town and to the left climbs further into the sugar company’s property; I start off on the dirt path that descends into the cane crawling past the factory, the pungent smell from the distillery wafting over the walls of willowy green to my sides; children staring at me with jugs, or jercans, of water on their heads, or clutched in their hands, men passing on bicycles and boda bodas, occasionally a storm of dust from a passing factory truck, loading or unloading a sea of product.

The further into the fields, the fewer the prying eyes, a welcomed retreat.

I walk up and down slopes, past patches of sugar already cut and burned, through a valley intersected by a stream of dirty irrigation, by the greenhouse of tiny, bright roses. A few kilometers pass and I am back on the main road connecting the plantation’s back fields and homes to the rest of Lugazi, this portion of the road not paved, winding up a hill where the tank rests with calm water beckoning fetching children, and a paltry fence encircles mulling cows, then down the hill along the golf course by the strong, colorful homes of the management staff decorated by thick walls, security guards and heaping gardens. And still children, children all around.

Sometimes they run up to me, and stop when they are close, I put my hand out to welcome them, they grab it elated, then more come, a swarm of little faces smiling and arms reaching out to grab me, wiping at my forearms and legs to see maybe if the color changed, or if it felt different, maybe softer or slimy or rougher, who knows, sometimes they lift up the back of my shirt and point; tatooie. Sometimes they grab my hands and run with me, both arms occupied, I jog awkwardly and they chant and cheer.

They stop following when the road descends sharply and is again paved; yellow light flooding between the clouds above the hills to the right, the only spot to witness an unobstructed Ugandan sunset, the setting sun penetrating the gathering evening mist, cascading the greenery in an enigmatic atmosphere that speaks to me, Africa.

I wind down and around the bend, past the central gated entrance to the golf course and back onto the central company property with staff and passersby waving and staring at me; night closing in, I pass into my little neighborhood, New Colony, and say sura burungi, to the children as they play on the neat clearing in the fading light.

Lake of Fire

Richard was admitted to the pediatric ward the day before his surgery. The room was maybe fifty feet square with nine beds, only three of which were full singles, the rest sized for toddlers and babies. Richard took a larger one since he was the oldest child. Ester and I sat with him on it, no chairs in African hospitals.

On the bed across from us sat a boy of maybe four with his mother; to our right, a six year old girl and her caretaker; a baby to our left with her young attractive mother; on the other side of them beneath a window, a playful toddler who laughed and squinted his face at me for hours, his jah jah at his side.

Recall family members serve as nurses in African hospitals. You need to bring your own nurse, your own food, your own drinking water, your own clothes, your own bed sheets, your own basin, your own soap, your own toilet paper for the latrine outside; besides medicine, only a plain room, mattress and unclean water are provided.

The continent of death abundant, it was not remarkable that three of the five children in the ward were without their birth mothers, and Ester maintained the woman across from us to be the stepmom. She says it’s her first born, but it’s a lie. I watched the boy sit vacantly and tensely that day and the next, not wanting to be touched, never smiling at me or the Hungarian doctor trying for a laugh, not amused by the silly, funny-looking mzungus.

The continent of poverty prolific, Africa is diaperless, the young pissing and defecating wherever. The woman suddenly grabbed the boy and pulled him to the ground, stood him over their basin, grabbed his penis and made him finish peeing in the tub. I stared at the deep thin welts running across his butt discoloring the dark skin. She set him back on the bed, threw the cloth he had soiled that lined the bed into the basin and walked out the door to clean it in the grass area next to the small buildings that comprised the hospital; the place where family members of the sick cleaned, cooked and rested.



Ester’s eyes followed her out the door.

“Hmm. She can’t be the one. He really fears her. The nurse told her to lay him down and she just ignored her.”

He hadn’t eaten all day in prep for surgery, and it was well past two in the afternoon. I felt sorry for him. Sitting down on the little bed, I put my arm around his tiny frame, but his face turned and he cried. He stopped when the mother returned several minutes later and resumed sitting next to her stiffly, the same anxiousness returning to his face.

Richard sat on the bed with Ester listening to my IPod. I looked at Ester.

“Where are you going to sleep?” The only beds left were for the very young.

“We aren’t admitting anymore,” a nurse lounging on a bed volunteered, as if the problem were not having any beds at all, rather than only very small ones. Ester didn’t seem to mind the prospect of sleeping in discomfort; this was Africa.

I talked to the sweet girl next to me. Veronica was behind in school, still in baby class, because of ongoing problems with the foot, but she seemed bright and knew some English despite her disrupted schooling. The woman attending to the girl talked to Ester in Swahili; they had come all the way from Kenya.



The woman wasn’t her mother; the mother had died after donating her bone to the girl who still wasn’t better. The story didn’t quite make sense, maybe something was lost in translation, maybe the caretaker didn’t understand what happened. But the girl was an orphan and had been sick for a while.

I told Veronica her dress was pretty. It was periwinkle decorated with delicate pink and white flowers and ruffled at the bottom. It reminded me of a dress I had as a child. I told her so, and asked her if she took it from me and demanded it back. She smiled a lot, quickly and sincerely, but shyly.



I sat with the women and their little patients in the light room passing the hours staring at the nicely painted walls, a novelty in Africa, making small talk, a television in an African hospital room unthinkable. Bored, I went outside to pace.

I came back and Veronica sat with headphones at her ears and the IPod gently in her lap; Richard had let her use it. I eyed the toddler under the window as he covered and uncovered his face over and again squealing at me. I started to read a book, just a few pages. I looked up and Veronica was smiling hard.

“She really likes it,” Ester said laughing referring to the song that just came on. I picked up the IPod to see what she enjoyed so much, thinking it was an R&B artist much beloved by Africans: Alicia, Beyonce, Mariah. I was shocked.

Lake of Fire, Nirvana

“Okaaaay! My little rock and roll girl!” I exclaimed to her. She couldn’t control her pleasure, her face and eyes wild with excitement.



We were discharged the day after surgery, but have made the journey back each day since to have the wound checked and redressed. We ride the bodas and taxis through the dusty red roads into the village of Buikwe, Richard hobbling to and from transport on one crutch.

The day after surgery I looked for the Hungarian doctor that attended to us. It was Saturday and he was off, but was staying in the large home for staff behind the hospital on top of the slope; upon hearing of our arrival he donned the green scrubs.

He greeted us with usual cheerfulness, funny and slightly goofy, peering through syrupy glasses and speaking with a bulky accent. We sat on the bench outside the dressing room, which he entered to prep for us, but reemerged irritated and stressed. He looked down at me.

“I do it myself. Sorry, you wait.” I looked through the door; a Ugandan doctor attending to a wound.

He walked away with another Eastern European doctor, the two gesturing fervently. They weren’t happy about something. To my side a small crowd gathered, Richard stood to join them. Something of interest to pass the time, I stood up too to spectate.

A few men stood on a small grass area in front of one of the wards inspecting and fidgeting with a circular bundle of thin pieces of hard wood. I was disinterested. Who cares about construction? Then I noticed the purple and indigo cloth sticking out from the middle of the stack. There was a shape beneath it. Oh. A head.

I hadn’t seen a body yet in Africa, but I heard about them quite a bit. Ester would tell me sometimes, They found a body today. They found a body here. They found a body there. There were two bodies in town today; two people killed by cars. They took the body back to the village. And so on.

I knew there not to be hearses and proper funeral homes here, bodies transported on the backs of boda bodas and maybe in a car if the deceased was lucky then stuffed into a wooden coffin and finally into the soft rusty soil next to an ancestral home.

Here was my first; wrapped in a cloth, then secured in bound thatch work. It sat there for several minute and was then carried away by five men. The frame was hard to see, but seemed small, like that of a slight woman.

The Hungarian doctor returned.

“These African doctors are killers,” he proclaimed as he motioned us into the dressing room that was being cleaned by a nurse.

“I’ve been here for four weeks and have had enough. I go back to my clinic in Nairobi, but first I have to go to Sudan,” he explained to me.

“Oh. You live in Nairobi?”

“Yes, I have a family there. I came here for a friend.”

“Well, you and the staff are doing a great job. The community would not have these services otherwise. I have been to other clinics and they are awful. The doctors tell people to leave for no reason. They won’t take care of them because they don’t care.”

He looked at me over his glasses as he pulled at the bandage.

“Yes, I know. These African doctors,” he said shaking his head.



I didn’t ask him why they were killers; if it was related to the body I had seen, or if it was prompted by the Ugandan staff in the room earlier; or maybe it was both and probably more. I just let it go. You do that a lot here, accept the shameful and bizarre, the toil and demise; the continent of desperation lavish.

People cry, people moan
Look for a dry to place to call their home
Try to find some place to rest their bones
All the angles and the devils try to make ‘em their own

Worth a Thousand

Below is a slideshow I put together that captures the children’s lives over the past few weeks. Most pictures were taken the first three days we had them; their improvement occurring remarkably quickly with love and care. Please take a few minutes to watch it. The pictures tell their story much better than I can write in words.

…And Up and Up

Stephen had heard through his church that an orthopedic surgeon from the Czech Republic was to operate on patients at a nearby clinic for a few days. Postponing the boy’s surgery with the Kampala doctor, we went to see the foreign one earlier this week. He looked at the boy and recognized the problem instantly, even identifying the duration of the boy’s suffering. This doctor’s been here a lot, I thought; western doctors I imagine not being so comfortable with infections generally exotic to clean, modernized environments.

“You bring him on Wednesday,” he said quickly, glancing at me with piercing blue eyes; light ones I haven’t seen for months.

“Should he not eat or drink that morning?”

He paused. “Let’s do the surgery that afternoon. No food or water that day. You bring him in the morning.”

The hospital is in the Buikwe sub-county, about 15 kilometers from Lugazi, situated half between us and the banks of Lake Victoria. It rests on a plateau next to a dirt road, and like most hospitals it’s gated, but with an unusually neat lawn and freshly painted buildings. Most rural or town hospitals are no good, but this one is different.



Erected a few years ago by Czechs, the hospital is clean, and the staff professional, helpful and organized, unlike what I have witnessed in the Lugazi clinic and what I hear about most clinics in Uganda. It seems a few Eastern European doctors work there regularly, providing quality care and ensuring a higher standard of service hospital wide. It is wonderful to see Western aid working so efficiently and positively. There are many misguided foreign aid endeavors and completely corrupt charity schemes by Ugandans, the latter of which being especially disheartening; however, projects such as this hospital and the orphanage I visited several weeks ago, which focus on serving a relatively small population exceptionally well, are absolutely inspiring.

In addition to more Western style care at this hospital, the services are also highly subsidized by the Catholic Church. Medications are from Europe, rather than cheap Asian versions found in the majority of Ugandan pharmacies, and are at a fraction of the typical costs. Most doctor visits are free, and more complicated procedures or treatment, such as birth, surgery or post-operative care, are inexpensive even by Ugandan standards. I saw a sign for rabies vaccines totaling about $15; I believe it’s around $900 in the States.

As another example, Richard was selected for surgery and his entire treatment, including the hospital stay, mediations, etc., was only about USh 35,000, or about $17! We are overjoyed!!

In the hospital the night before surgery


The surgery actually happened yesterday (Thursday) and he is doing well, although his pain management hasn’t been exemplary. Ester stayed the night with him and I came this morning to bring them food. About an hour after I arrived the surgeon surrounded by a team of other mzungu and Ugandan doctors brought us to a separate room and unwrapped the dressing, digging into the boy’s large gaping wound that went all the way to the bone, pulling out gauze soaked in iodine stuck between the open flesh and fat; the gash not yet sutured so medicine could be inserted into the tissue.

If they had given Richard pain medication it was pathetically small. The boy who had the strength to hobble on a leg filled with puss and dead bone for over a year not flinching, denying he hurt, was clenching and moaning, tears pouring down his face. Ester eyes became wet witnessing his excruciation. We tried to hold and soothe him.

“Can I start him on the pain medication now?”

“Yes,” answered the Ugandan doctor standing next to me as they finished wrapping the leg.

We went back to the pediatric ward, which was one small room with a handful of beds holding a few small, bandaged patients, sitting next to them their caretakers. I gave Richard another pink pill and his antibiotic. The boy was still crying. I went to look for the Ugandan doctor.

“Sebo. Sorry to disturb you, but the boy is in so much pain. Can I get another prescription?” The doctor looked up from his desk.

“You can give him two of the pink pills.”

“That is just Ibuprofen, right?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think that is enough.”

“Each is 200 mg.”

“What?” I asked shocked. “You were only giving him 200 mgs for that pain? Even 400 is not enough. I take 600 to 800 when I have a headache or back pain.”

“That is too much.”

“Whatever. The boy has a gaping hole in his leg. He needs something else.”

The man wrote another prescription for me to have filled outside of the hospital and I ran back to give the boy the other measly 200 mgs of Ibuprofen. I felt horrible for not intervening before, ensuring that he had enough pain medication. I can’t imagine the torture of a person sticking their fingers through my layers of tissue down to my tibia with little to no medication.

I had to quickly leave after giving him the second tablet; Sylvia and Rachel were about to get of nursery with nowhere to go. As I was waiting for a taxi on the dirt road a boda boda driver drove up and offered me and an old woman standing next to me a ride. He spoke to her in Lugandan and she smirked and looked at me.

“He wants 40,000.”

“What?” I asked assuming I misunderstood her.

“He wants 40,000.”

“To Lugazi?”

She nodded. I turned to the young man on the motorbike.

“You want 40 to Lugazi,” I said gesturing the number with my hand.

“Hmmmm.”

I repeated the question and he nodded a second time.

“You’re always trying to rip off a mzungu. Gen da! (Go!)” The other boda boda drivers sitting next to us starting laughing.

A boda boda to Lugazi from Buikwe is only 3,000; he was trying to charge me about 13 times the typical cost. As an aside, I am trying not to, but can’t help but tire of the constant, more than daily, attempts to outrageously overcharge me as well as the incessant asking for money or any item I might have in my hand in any given moment: water, headphones, maize, cell phone. And they never ask actually. They tell you, which is even more maddening. Mzungu! You give me... You give me money… You buy me chipati. You give me pineapple. I know that my irritation is slightly callous considering that compared to those around me I am ridiculously wealthy, but the persistence is frustrating as well as somewhat dehumanizing that so many don’t see me as a person, but just a walking money sign.

Okay, so my rant is over; most people treat me very well. Focusing on the good, Richard was discharged in the early afternoon, is back in the house and seems to be in less pain. We will have to go to the hospital almost daily to have the wound checked and redressed, and they tell us another surgery will probably be required in October; but in the meantime I am excited about his recovery and even more thrilled about what this will do for his dismally low confidence. Beatrice and Agnes I know already have friends at school, which is just across the street; I see my girls and their schoolmates walking around together, but not Richard. Ester tells me that the other children make fun of him because of his leg. I can’t wait for early next year when his second operation is over, he has fully recovered, is in school full time and running around with other boys his age.

Resting the morning after surgery


For those of you that have donated so far, thank you, thank you, thank you! Your interest and support means a great deal to me and certainly to the children! I am so touched! The money is obviously not critical at this point for the boy’s treatment, but I still want to build the children a home, create a sustainable project for them, most likely piggery, buy and plant crops to feed them and in the meantime I need to pay for their food, medicine, school fees, and other living expenses until they are self-sustaining; although it’s not nearly as expensive as in America, it’s quickly adding up. I promise to have more information on my total costs in the next couple of weeks, but this project will most likely be several thousand.

Thank you again!!!!

Coming Up

Emma, the Balaza’s youngest son, stopped by the house yesterday and asked how I had been since last seeing me several weeks before. Fine, I was, but did you hear about the children? He had heard.

“It’s great, but exhausting. I didn’t have children, and then woke up one day and had five.” Emma smiled and I heard laughter from the kitchen and bedroom, Margaret and Stephen overhearing me, amused by my quick lesson in the hardships of childrearing, a way of life for Africans who conceive many at young ages, but not so much for mzungus, especially this mzungu. It’s a good lesson, they all agreed.

To say that I have been raising them the last two weeks on my own would be a lie. The Balazas and Ester have been working hard to provide for them, but since I am usually the only one in the house, Ester and Margaret at work and Stephen running errands to the village and Kampala, I am around the kids all day, cleaning wounds; administering medication; giving amaazi for dry mouths; handing food for empty tummies; getting tired heads to rest; wiping the muddied floor; telling dirty bodies off the couch; reminding no hitting, ask before you take, tell me where you are going, say thank you; asking where are your clean clothes, books, pencils?; teaching numbers, letters and words; filling the toilet with water over and again when the taps are dry only to have another child use it and leave a mess.

It’s the usual caretaking made more difficult by a language barrier, lack of most modern conveniences as well as the children’s poor education and wildness; they are generally polite and listen, and give me parental respect, including the customary kneeling when greeting me, but their previous free life in the village is somewhat at odds to their new, more sophisticated one of cleanliness, learning and adult supervision. And there is still lingering sickness; their former existence of unclean water, unwashed food, insufficient bathing and filthy beds still affecting their bodies. The coughs persist, strange blisters with puss appearing out of nowhere on knees, fungal patches silently emerging on forearms, and I suspect worms still residing in stomachs. And of course there is the infected leg.

The two youngest are home from school at midday; time to eat, and do homework with Sylvia, the seven year-old still in nursery, although she should be in her second year of primary school. She’s behind by a few years, as are all the others. Agnes was placed in P5 and Richard and Beatrice in P2, and these assignments were generous on behalf of the schools. Only Agnes spelled her name properly on the entrance exams. Richard got every answer incorrect taking the P2 test, a level for someone five years younger. On the name line he wrote: Watuh Out AIDS! On the level line below, he wrote: RVDGY, his version of Richard.

Beatrice taking entrance exam

“He saw it on the sign,” Ester said laughing. The schools here have painted signs on the buildings encouraging the children to do things like Avoid Bad Peer Groups, Keep Our Latrine Clean, Be a God Fearing and All Round Child, Speak English All [Of] The Time and my favorite, Wet Dreams Are Okay. I looked across the lawn. There was the AIDS sign.

“He didn’t even copy it right,” I said joining her in laughter, both of us shaking our heads. The boy claimed to have had some schooling. “What do they teach them in those village schools? How do you not teach a child to write his name?”

Ester told me that they mostly just play and sing songs in the village schools. Later, I would lament to Stephen the village teachers’ apparent total lack of professionalism. He would explain that teachers are paid next to nothing and the children are too undisciplined to learn much of anything anyway so they don’t even try. No excuse, I say. How can this country properly develop without at least a partially educated public?

My kids are doing their best to catch up with their peers, excited to have paper and pencils in the house to practice their letters and numbers, grateful to have someone looking over them, instructing them, guiding them, encouraging them in their learning. Rachel is indescribably excited to finally be in nursery and have a real uniform. I have never seen a child as genuinely happy as the day we enrolled her and she received her school dress. Ever since she has been laughing, smiling, dancing, just overjoyed.

“I can’t imagine them still being there,” I said to Ester the other day, referring to their old home. She shook her head. “I couldn’t even sleep that night we first saw them knowing they would have to be there another day.” She agreed. “Do you really think they would still be there if it wasn’t for us?”

“Yeah,” she said, “no one would take them.”

Traditionally it is the mother’s side of the family that is responsible for the children upon her passing. At the funeral, or more often, at the final funeral rites sometimes weeks or months later, the mother’s side of the family assesses the welfare of the children and decides if they need to intervene, either remove them from the father, or provide another woman to be the mother. Margaret tells me that usually the father will take advantage of the woman stepping in as the children’s caretaker especially if she is young, forcing her to become one of his wives. So now more often suffering children are simply taken and spread out among the relatives.

But nobody did anything at the mother’s funeral. All of the relatives scattered after the ceremony unable to take care of the children.

“You know there are many children like them,” Margaret tells me solemnly.

“What would happen to them if I wasn’t here?” I ask her. She sighed at the thought; fate’s mystifying turns leading to an American visit coinciding with their desperate need.

“I don’t know. Especially the little one. She was so sick. I just don’t know. We didn’t know how bad their situation was. It appeared very grave.” She paused. “You see we can’t do this [care for all of the children]. It’s too much. Maybe we give them some money, try to help a little, but that is all.”

“But they were worse than most. They weren’t being cared for.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “That man is very careless. You know. He didn’t like girls. So Agnes and the girls really felt it when the mother passed. He separated the boy from them, but he didn’t even care for his leg.”

The father actually came to the house a couple of days after we took the children. I was at the hospital with Richard, the other children at the house with Stephen. Stephen tells me he was in the back room when he suddenly heard talking from the other side of the wall. He stepped into the main room and saw the father standing there.

“He asked me why I took the children. I said, ‘You can’t manage them. Look how much better they are in just two days.’ I asked the children if they wanted to go back with him, and they said No.”

I laughed at the thought of all of them seated on the floor like good Buganda children looking up at their father shaking their heads that they wouldn’t go with him.

The man couldn’t believe they were all in school, especially Agnes. Why would Agnes be in school? Stephen also told him that because the children were no longer under his care that didn’t obviate his responsibilities as their father. “You bring them food,” he directed the man. The man stalled, saying that a storm had killed all of his crops.

“Uggg! There is no way!” I exclaimed when retold the story. “We were just there the other day. He has so many crops!”

A week later a slovenly drunk showed up at the door saying that the father had fallen ill and needed the children to come look after him. We told the man to tell the father to go to the hospital if he was sick. The man came back a second day in the same dirty clothes with the same story. We all agreed that the father wanted the children to tend the fields. The third day the father himself came with tomatoes and maize in hand. No, he hadn’t sent that man the two days before. That man was a drunk and came on his own, and he didn’t know why. Here is some food for the children. Could they come back, so he can show the two youngest their plots? They haven’t received them yet, and surely he will die soon.

“If you want to leave them land, then you and I draft a will,” Stephen said to him.

Margaret scoffed to me, “That man. How are young children ever to remember which plot is theirs?”

“Ahh. He is lying,” Ester told me later. “He did the same thing when the mother was sick. She would stay here and Mummy and Daddy would care for her, and he would come pretending to be nice.”

Certainly none of us trust the act. We know his true self and we are enjoying watching the children very quickly take to their new lives without him; lives with shoes, underwear, mattresses, blankets, medicine, regular meals and school. I wish I could capture their sincere gratitude and joy when Ester and I took them to the open air market to purchase each of them school shoes and flip flops, and small book bags for the eldest three; or Richard’s reaction when I gave him one of my shirts since he only had one; it was a long sleeved top I got from a Father Joe Turkey Trot. His entire face changed, muscles moving and teeth showing that before I hadn’t seen. You would have thought I gave him the moon.

Sylvia practicing her letters

What the children have responded to most though is love. They needed it so badly. They yearned for it, deprivation etched on their little face, especially the youngest two. Stephen told them to call me mama the second day and they took to it like a butterfly floats. After his suggestion, they looked at each other smiling, wide-eyed and speaking to each other in Lugandan punctuated by the word mama. Not a few minutes later they were calling for me; mama. At first I was apprehensive, not wanting them to think I was now their mama only to eventually lose me as well, but Ester explained the word as a sign of respect for caretakers; a name not reserved exclusively for one’s mother like in America. They had called Ester mama when she helped them while their mother was sick, making me realize they had been without a mother long before she passed, her illness preventing her from caring for them.

Ester tells me that when the mother was lying in the hospital bed in her final moments she was crying “My children. My children,” knowing they would suffer under the father’s control. I wish I knew her then. I wish I could have given her some comfort as she died, promising her that the children would be okay.