Uganda Part 2
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Side note: Don’t get me wrong…I love going on mission trips. That is more about the community that comes together – memories and experiences shared. As sweet as summer camp or a retreat. It’s any of those times we pull away from the day to day with others for renewal, for shared adventure, for something that inevitably intense. But of course, this is not the reason we should do mission trips. Short-term missions, I will boldly say, are almost completely about us, the participants, rather than the those we aim to help
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Anyway. Back to Uganda.
I can still hear the children running alongside our van shouting “Muzungu! Muzungu!” It was apparently a community event when the white people arrived. We were nothing special and yet, to me, it felt like there was a hope for something we couldn’t provide. But perhaps I was reading into it too much. Were we just the first Caucasians ever seen or touched? We entertained children for days playing Red Rover and Ring Around the Rosy and the games Ugandan children play. We brought stickers – a bit naively. There were stickers all over their faces and arms because they had no paper to adhere anything to. Honestly, we wore ourselves out pretty quickly, refusing to draw any boundary of personal space with the kids. We also hauled bricks and helped build a new and wider foundation for the church and helped prepare for Sunday’s service.
Women came to the church to receive the sewing machines; there was a small ceremony. We went out into a field (I saw a “shepherd” herding the cattle along the road to the ceremony) where there was a presentation of sorts of the cattle to people in the community (how were recipients determined?). After this, we, the mission participants, while sitting comfortably under a tent looking out at the audience, were served huge plates of rice and goat meat. It became uncomfortable. But then there was dancing and such joy over God’s provision!
I wish I could follow the trajectory of those gifts. What was carefully stitched together by the machines and were those products sold or used to clothe only the immediate families? How long did the livestock live and did they provide anything of value? Handouts. We want people to have things, to have what we have and yes, what they need. But does a handout solve the problem of poverty? Does it create a new system in which people can thrive with dignity? No it doesn’t. A handout makes someone dependent on the handout. And when the handout is gone, what then? How are lives “better” because of the handout in any meaningful way? I do think we did the best we knew how. But we only do that until we know how to do better (Maya Angelou) and then we do better. But what is better? That is a topic of ongoing debate.
There were many other moments on that trip that still stand out so vividly to me but I want to share two. The first was tagging along with one of the children and a leader from the school/orphanage into the surrounding neighborhood. The child led a couple of us into this home as if she (I can’t remember now if it was a boy or a girl) belonged there. It turns out this child lives there with her parents – I met the mother and I could see the father passed out in the other room. I was so confused by the terminology of “orphanage.” Many of these children have families. I felt like I was led to believe they were orphans. But after walking a mile or so in wet and thick mud, we stood in a darken hut watching the mother work and wondering what was going on. The pastor explained that most families are unable to feed their children. The church/school often feeds and nurtures them. Maybe we all misunderstood that it never was considered an orphanage. But it was still surprising. And that is not to even mention the shock of being inside a home and realizing there is no food at all.
The second moment I recall from that trip, I use as a teaching point of sorts about the realities of poverty in a developing nation (I am not talking about poverty in the U.S.). I was standing next to the pastor and head of this whole operation and as we were talking, he took the mobile minutes “card” and scraped off the silver stuff to reveal the code for additional minutes. When he finished adding the minutes to his phone and while we were still talking (*read that with the disapproval I felt in the moment*) he threw the card on the ground. Just littered. And then a moment after my snap judgement, I thought to myself, “So if he puts it in a trash can, who is coming to collect the garbage?” My thoughts tumbled down this line of thought quickly. No one was coming. There was no waste management truck or company or system. And how will that ever happen based on the current state of things? Ugandans were a very long way from having a garbage truck pick up trash bins weekly.
I had to play out for myself that small scenario for the reality of poverty to sink in. Sure, there are a million ways to witness poverty (as I already had been doing) but this was my “aha” moment. People are not just poor (as I have thought of “poor”) there are no systems in place. The problem of sanitation has no quick fix and certainly handouts won’t fix the problem. So, how do handouts really help? How do the goats and cows and sewing machines and stickers and Ring Around the Rosy even begin to help? It was almost laughable to me.
So, the short-term mission idea continues to crumble in the deep recesses of my soul. This isn’t going to work. Not like this. But then…..what? What are we doing?
Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more. Luke 12:48