Kindness

 

It’s another one of those amazingly frustrating days in Uganda.  There was no power last night and I fear this is a precursor to more of the same now that dry season is here.  It means attempting to sleep in the heat with no relief of fans and reading by candle light. To all of you who have sent candles: thank you and know that they will be used!  And little battery operated fans.  YES!  Last night – without the white noise of the fan to mask the background noises, everything that happened near my house sounded like it was AT on IN my house – little cracklings outside my window, doors opening, gates that sound like the one in the old Hitchcock thriller “The Creaking Door,” persisted until I drifted in and out of a fitful, hot, dripping-sweat, tossing “sleep.” 

Often when this happens, power comes back at 7AM, but not so today.  We have not had electricity at the office since returning last week.  We were supposed to be out of this building by November as it is to be demolished.  Although that has been delayed, apparently, the District neglected to pay the power bill, saying it was unreasonable.   My supervisor is leaving for another area and the Director has assigned me as Acting Regional Team Leader with no authority to handle petty cash or money transactions. (Peace Corps doesn’t want us handling funds – a policy for which I am grateful).  Everyone here knows more about implementation of LABE’s programs than I do, so it’s a conundrum.  One staff member is about to go on maternity leave for several months, leaving me and one other in the office for an indeterminate amount of time.  Looks like this might be a good opportunity to organize the community library where the children's collection is tossed in among the books on war and abuse.  That'll be fun however.

These are not big issues in the scheme of things, but they take on gargantuan proportions when they are life on a daily basis.  Projects continue in the face of no fuel, shortage of vehicles, personnel musical chairs, lack of communication, etc.  I will never again complain about things not moving swiftly when I get back home.  It will probably feel like a runaway train.

There seems to be a malaise that has settled around those of us who are now the seniors of the Volunteer group  – at least after the group before us leaves in April.  Having come back physically exhausted, but mentally energized from traveling and a break, it seems many of us are in a funk.  This is probably a "dip" on morale on one of the charts we received during training – mid-service slump after the euphoria of realizing we’re half way through.    It’s a mixture of:  wonderful to know home is less than a year away, the realization that we can’t get everything done, the daily awareness that we will be leaving Ugandans and PCV with whom we have grown close and will never see again and the frustrations of realizing that development is an excruciatingly slow and tedious process!

Some are wondering if things in Uganda are unraveling to the point that we may not be here the entire time.  Land disputes are increasing, not decreasing.  Museveni threatens to turn the parliament over to the army.   Etc. etc. 

And life goes on at home - and that’s both the good news and the bad.   My sons continue to be happy and wonderfully productive and motivated, moving forward in ways that renew my pride in who they are. My sister and sweet friends send e-mails and goodies, all god-sends here. But dear friends are transitioning, aging parents of PCV’s are requiring their presence at home, houses need to be sold, etc.   So, while it has been good to be out of the day-to-day fray, reality knocks at the door periodically and demands to be granted entry.

The "newbies" (a new group of PCVs assigned to schools) are in town and meeting some of that group and having them near is a bit of a shot in the arm.    There’s a gaggle of little kids who’ve been staying at the compound with their mom who lives in the small quarters behind my house.  Her family lives in the village a day’s travel away and she sees her school age children (ages 8,  11 and 13 or so) rarely.  They are dear and well behaved but I'm not accustomed to kids sitting at my back door, on my front porch and generally being literally "in" my space.  All outdoor space is communal here so it's a challenge to get any privacy unless you hunker down inside with the curtain drawn and the front door nor just closed but locked.  Although these kiddos don't, it's not unusual to have someone come to visit and just come in with no invitation!  I gave them some of the books that you all so generously shared and they were thrilled.  Somehow in the translation when I offered them a box and said pick one book each, it translated into four books each.  I was a bit flummoxed, but figured if they were that excited to have books, that's a good thing and there was nothing dishonest in their taking more than offered - just one of those strange miscommunications that don't translate.   Parents in the village (and even this mother who works as a nurse) can’t afford to buy books for their kids – so it’s been lovely to pass on our Mom's passion for reading.

On an up-beat note, Florence, my Home-Stay host is on the road to starting the first ever library in Wakiso!  She is turning over part of her small house for use as a community library, using the books you all have donated and others I’ve accumulated since I’ve been here.  Since the city has no structure for a library, she’s handling it as membership program to guarantee some accountability.  So far she has six people signed up and paid membership fees (minimal).  When she gets fifteen she will open the doors!  

The imaginative ways people are creating services and helping others here are amazing.    

A young man I know from the streets used to be a street kid himself and despite not having school fees to go beyond the 6^th grade, considers himself fortunate.  He’s put together an organization to try to help other street kids and has convinced GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organization) to let  him use a house to shelter 50 street boys.  He’s now looking for funding for basic food (beans, rice and posho) and hoping for ways to get them back in school at some later point.  

There’s a poem my friend Karla sent me that speaks to the kindness I see here everyday in some form.  I think it speaks to what people here have experienced and what their response has been.  The author (Naomi Shihab Nye interviewed on The Daily Good:    (http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=373) wrote it after she and her husband were robbed of everything while riding a night bus in Columbia.  When her husband left to get help after the bus driver was murdered she had no food, shelter, money, etc. and was on the street.  She ended up being befriended by a gang of street kids who shared their food with her and kept her safe until she reconnected with her husband.  Her poem is an outgrowth of that experience.  I hope it’s not true that we MUST lose everything to offer up kindness and that, as sentient beings, we have that capacity, empathy and compassion to act without having to be brought to our knees first.  Hopefully, loss is teacher of the last resort!  Here’s the poem: 

 

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

     purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.

                                         Naomi Shihab Nye

                                         From:  The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

Those are the thoughts of the day.  Power is back.  I've found a place to teach classes along with another PCV and time and possibilities move forward.  Once again - it's the roller coaster of emotion of Peace Corps.  

Be blessed and Dong maber (Remain well)