Re Entry: Becoming a (more) tattooed lady

In all the literature about sabbaticals, there is a good deal of angst spilled around the dreaded Re-Entry—coming back to work with all the same problems and all the same personalities. You feel that you’ve traveled so far, and here you are, back where you started. Surprise! You’re the same person! And treacherous icicles still hang down from the gutters. “Re-Entry” after international travel is another category as well, so I get two.

Still, the point of pilgrimage is to come to see the place you started from for the first time, as the TS Eliot poem goes. You are you, but you can see better. And I’ve been entering the water pretty slowly, with one Sunday visit the day I left for Africa, then back to the office for a week to do the pageant, Advent 4, and Christmas Eve, and then on to family vacation for a week before coming back to a one-day workweek before Sunday (clergy weekend being Friday-Saturday).

So I was back working—really working—for not very many hours before trekking over a week ago to Watertown, for a long-planned tattoo appointment.  I have four other tattoos, mostly simple line drawings—a tree, a tiny snake, a female symbol, and a labyrinth (my most recent one, gotten 8 years ago for my priesthood ordination). I had thought I was finished with that one, but after my kids were born, I still wanted another, and they seemed like a good excuse.

I started thinking of having their names—both Hebrew—incorporated into some kind of design. And maybe some flowers. And I don’t remember when it occurred to me to desire a swallow tattoo—and suddenly it started to get pretty big. Swallows are an old sailor image, when (Wikipedia tells us) they’d get a swallow for each 5000 nautical miles of travel.  My only claim to sailing is that I tend not to get seasick, but I do like birds an awful lot. There’s something compelling about how they manage to be wild but also have a certain domesticity about them. 

Still, names and birds—doesn’t a suburban mom with sailor tattoos kind of scream “desperately aging hipster?” Sure.  But swallows of all kinds are also everywhere—canoeing down the Mystic River to the Boston Harbor last August, my husband Noah and I saw bank swallows swirling around the water on this side of the locks. Earlier, in Sweden while visiting the old megaliths at Alestenar when I was there when my aunt died, swallows.  And they have those adorable crossed tail feathers. 

So I put my reservations aside and thought a little bigger, and a little bigger.  My favorite color is purple, and I love the wild pansies that creep up everywhere and all over.  It’s the flower for Angermanland, where my Swedish grandmother’s family is from, and I thought of linnea flowers, another Swedish one (and her middle name).   Finally I decided it was time when I was on sabbatical. I met with Holly from Always and Forever tattoo shop in Watertown and was talked out of both Hebrew for the names and incorporating my existing tattoo into a new design, and staked out my right arm. I’d thought of sort of a little cap sleeve design. Birds, flowers, names. Compact.

When I met Holly to talk about the tattoo, she had other ideas. I came in last week and saw something that goes almost down to my elbow, including the names which I finally decided to have in English.  The whole process has led to more introspection than I’d ever expected. First, the images I wanted, of course. But the questions along the way as well. Holly first suggested we just cover up my old female symbol tattoo. It’s done with very fine lines which have blurred over the years (it’s 15 years old, almost to the day), and it slants in kind of a funny way. But it’s still my tattoo. You could see it in the pictures from Noah’s and my wedding, when I am holding each of my children for the first time—it’s not perfect, but it’s mine. It reminds me of when I got it, when I was as radical a feminist as anyone at my crazy hippie college was, and reminds me of those radical commitments—always to go to the root, look deeper. So, no, I wasn’t covering it up, dilapidated as it was. Plus my mother drew it for me.

And I wasn’t going to go to a different artist. I’d been internet stalking Holly for months, since she opened her shop. I found her by just looking at bird tattoos online; I loved the way her designs worked with the body, over curves and bones and soft lines.  So this tattoo is my project, but it’s also hers. It’s her artistic vision that gave me the beautifully variegated blue and purple in the flowers and not the almost-black purple I’d thought I wanted. It’s her vision that got the linnea flowers the perfect shade of slate blue instead of the pink that’s actually found in nature. And it will be her vision, combined with mine, when I go back in 7 weeks and finish the shading and coloring. So walking into Always and Forever last Thursday, I knew that I was trusting her a lot, and trusting myself, too, in getting another tattoo that wouldn’t be quite so easily hidden.

I've been going back and forth in my mind: what is the line between what you do to be “you” and what you do to conform.  When I was younger, it was an easy choice: all "me" and no conforming at all (or so it seemed to me...a sixteen year old girl with a shaved head conforms to a certain image of something, for sure). In seminary I remember when I took out some of my earrings (at that time I always wore six on one side and three on the other) and it felt like a cataclysmic shift in identity. Of course it wasn’t, but it was a shift.  Maybe I’m a little behind the curve in still thinking about these things at age 34.  Even being part of an entire book about the reconciliation of feminism to Christian faith (My Red Couch—I wrote the title essay in 2004), I can say that while it doesn’t bother my own conscience to generally be part of the institution of the ur-patriarchs, I still have moments where I wonder about how to walk the line between the counter-cultural impulses I’ve always had and the social conformity that “church” has implied pretty much since the Emperor Constantine. Too political? not political enough?  In any given sermon I could feel like entirely betraying my radical view of the Christian faith or entirely alienating those who come to church just wanting to feel a little better about their already-hard lives, whom I am loath to blame for that desire.  I've met elderly church ladies who are more on fire for the radical  Gospel than any self-styled activist with a nosering.

And then there’s my faith and vocation; as a priest, I’m called to preach the really hard and radical truth of the Gospel. Love everybody, all the time, forgiving them and yourself, and look relentlessly for the presence of Jesus in everyone. Bring greed and corruption to its knees and fight for the peace and justice and wholeness for every person. It’s one thing to fall down and ask for help to do the right thing the next time.  But if I’m silent because I worry about people getting mad and leaving (as has, actually, now happened more than once, mostly about GLBT inclusivity) I might as well get a job selling expensive lawn pesticides.

So here is my tattoo.  It is enormous.  It is a radical change. It is a shift, a before-and-after, of how I get dressed every morning and whether I decide to wear short or long sleeves.  It’s going to be visible. Not like my little labyrinth poking out the bottom of a long skirt once in a while, but really, really all the time, unless I plan to be very hot all summer.  When I saw the huge design Holly had made, and saw her trace out “Isaiah” in huge letters just above my elbow and “Adah” over my shoulder, I felt like I was daring myself to misbehave, daring myself to stop worrying about being so offensive at the same time as I want to rebel so badly.   A month after my Africa trip, it seems like an awfully superficial thing to worry about.  When you live in a village in a mountain-top in Tanzania with no health care, you have much bigger fish to fry. If there are fish at all.  

But here we are.

Having a big tattoo doesn’t make me more or less faithful to the radicalism that Jesus asks of us. Sitting for 3 ½ hours while someone pokes you with needles does not have to be a moral experience (it may be a moral question that the money I spend on it could send two kids to primary school for a year in Uganda).   Still, I hope that it will be a reminder not to be so worried.  As the rector of Christ Church, it’s not my job to please people, it’s my job to love them.  It’s our job together to show each other how God loves.   Now let’s get on with it.

The icicles are still treacherous. I’m still going to space out during announcement time and forget to invite people to coffee hour.   The next time I get up into the pulpit and pray for an end to gun violence or war or any constellation of difficult topics, my palms will still sweat. But we’re here together, and God will be too, no matter what. And you definitely can’t see my tattoo with my chasuble on. 

 The stencil before we put the names on

before the color went in--facebook status: "More is more, friends. More is more."

Baltic Wheel Labyrinth, Ankle

Snake, Monica Irwin, Right foot (1997)

Tree of Life (after G Klimt--also drawn by my mom!)

Pictures (last of them?)

Fauna

Marabou Stork, Entebbe, Uganda

 Kampala, Uganda

 looking episcopal at the kizara center

Tanzania

 More fauna

 Bar/Internet Cafe at the White Parrot 

Korogwe, Tanzania

 Faith, hope, communion at St Barnabas house 

 Korogwe, Tanzania

 Swahili Introductions

Tanzania

Sleepy girl--my favorite picture

Kasese, Uganda

Video: Welcome to St Alban's Parish, Ngombezi, Tanzania

Video: Wow and a Swahili lesson

The view to the sea from the mountains in Tanzania--

more proof of Shadrach's labeling of Americans as "the wow people."

A Swahili lesson with Angelina and Colin

Music from Kuhurio, Tanzania

Video: Choir from Kihurio

Singing from Kihurio

Video: Cathedral Kids 2

Video: Kids at the Cathedral School, Korogwe, Tanzania

Video: Elephants in Queen Elizabeth National Park

We were with Dr. Daniel's six year old, Elisha, on our national park visit and he chose this an opportunity to try out his best English swear words (it's also true that an unnamed adult also muttered  "What the hell" when the driver started to go just as it was getting interesting). Anyway...at about 17 seconds in you may want to mute it if you're with a child.

Video: Kasese Kids

Taken at BMCF Mobile Clinic, Kasese

Video: Sara Blessing the kindergarten

FYI--"hisself" is not a term customarily used in prayer.  oops.

On the way home, being a stranger with candy, and so on

Schipol airport, Amsterdam.

On the way home

I’m sitting in the “library” in the airport—“we invite you to read, download, and explore Dutch culture”—there is also a note that says politely that the sleeping area is upstairs. I’m sitting at a long counter with 20 other people, all of us industriously attached to our devices.  I just drank water from the tap and displayed in front of me sits a book entitled “Dutch Delftware: Vases with Spouts/Three Centuries of Splendor.” What a contrast.

Of our group, Tom is the only one who has been to Africa before (and already has plans to be back in 2013), and I think the remaining four of us are struggling a little to figure out how the last two weeks will assimilate into our “regular” lives of busy-ness and privilege.  We are clear that there is a lot to learn; how the groups we’ve met fit into their wider networks of advocacy and service, how these relationships will be sustained, and how we can best use our resources to help.  And we have fickle hearts. In Tanzania what we were doing seemed so important, and it is, but the level of fundamental need in Uganda was even more staggering.  There are still landmines left in the hills near Kasese, and war and AIDS have decimated the social structure.  There are so many places where it just seems like there are no adults; there just aren’t any.   But I also would love for all those churches not to have dirt floors, and I also have faith that those relationships will deepen.

It’s hard to compare the experiences of each country as well. The Uganda time couldn’t be more different than Tanzania, though each casts light on the other. In Tanzania, our interactions were almost according to ritual; we came, we did church, welcomed, thanked.  It was glorious. But it was mediated in a very distinct way through that structure. Held in the container of shared faith, it was easier to feel connected and to have a kind of narrative thread to hold it all together.   Even though we interpreted the ideas differently, the church provided a common language.  In the Sunday service on our last day, when I was at the altar with the priests there I could feel in my bones that yes, there is all kinds of sin and inequality and injustice, but that there is a unity below it that can transcend everything.  Or at least it feels like it can.  I do, after all, have a BA in gender studies, and am very aware of how power and privilege and difference get in the way of real community.

In Uganda, there’s still plenty of praying (each workday begins with a 30 minute long staff chapel service, where one of the staff offers a short meditation). And of course our shared faith (no matter what the institutional churches say about who’s going to hell) offers a link. And of course everywhere, whatever belief or lack of belief, mediated--or not--through a religious tradition, love and respect and mutuality are always a gift.  For my personal preferences, though, the girl with the incense brings me to my happy place very quickly.

So we all have a lot to learn.  Like any organization founded by a strong leader (and, in this case, named for him) succession and leadership development and institutional growth is a challenge. BMCF, though, is an international organization with an American board as well as a Ugandan one, and all of our time with them was very smooth and strategic.  We had a meeting with “stakeholders” (teachers and students), were intentionally introduced to the present and future focus in the healthcare and children’s programs with personal contact with intentionally representative groups. The BMCF is not a bunch of naïve people singing about Jesus who just want to help.  So I guess the familiar language of the nonprofit world offered some connective tissue, as does the wonder-filed passion of those who are doing the work. And Jesus.

On being a stranger with candy—a lot of candy.

Looking back over these posts, I set out with a fairly nebulous sense of purpose on this trip. I wanted to go. I fretted about what I bringing in my suitcase—candy and bubbles are, in some ways, literally useless (there was also paper and colored pencils, which for sure are more practical).  Being with kids who have very limited opportunity actually to be kids, though, “useless” kids stuff takes on a whole new significance. 

It felt awkward to be the one with all the candy—more on that below—but seeing the kids was delightful. Those kids have so many adult-sized problems, and to see them just having fun and simple pleasure is a big deal.  A lollipop won’t bring back their dead parents and the bubbles pop right away. But to have a few seconds to focus on something else counts for something.  I think one of my landmark moments was seeing a one year old at the clinic waiting for vaccinations with a lollipop in each fist while breastfeeding. Embarrassment of riches!

At first, it felt very awkward to show up as a random stranger with goodies.  I felt so acutely the power dynamic of being the “have-er” in the midst of the “want-ers.”   I decided who had already gotten one and was fibbing about collecting for “my sister,”  and I decided who got one next and when everything got put away. And you know what? Yes, it’s uncomfortable.  I don’t enjoy feeling needy, either, though it happens often enough. I need one of those meme pictures of Willy Wonka with him looking condescending, saying, “I can’t wait, tell me about how your privilege makes you so uncomfortable.” I’m flying home to dressed and healthy children, with whom my greatest complaint is their reluctance to brush their teeth at a sink with running hot and cold water after a meal prepared indoors. Really? Uncomfortable? Do tell. 

Yes, I’m uncomfortable, and that’s important.  I heard a quote from Rabbi Abraham Heschel about inequality recently: “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” I did not create a colonial empire that abused individuals and families, aided and abetted genocide, and continues to hobble emerging economies through its aid and foreign policies.  Send US grown grain to a poor country? Of course! But what happens when all of that “free” food floods the market and the bottom falls out for local growers? Oops. Our entire government didn’t think of that, did they.

So, yes, I did not personally create the market conditions for poverty or the social conditions for an AIDS epidemic. But given the sheer quantity of “getting” that I do, there is a lot more giving to be done. And inviting others into it, and saying, yes, it really does look like the pictures and yes, these are beautiful and funny and smart kids who have just as much a right to flourishing and imagining their future as mine do.  And, by the way, global warming: you can bet that the drought in Tanzania is caused directly by the climate change that our car-driving, single-serve package, new-stuff-buying lifestyle. And I am both guilty and responsible for that.

Grace, anyway

Still, I think of those moments of church in Tanzania, or the 45 minutes I spent with Pree sleeping on my shoulder or Amy surrounded by kids doing the hokey pokey. There have been transcendent moments where time stands still and all of the separation melts away, where holiness pushes aside all of the brokenness and pain and guilt and the sky opens.

As a Christian, I understand those times to be Jesus moments--Jesus was always pulling people in who didn’t fit in other places and making something new.  Whores and bad guys and, yes, kids, were at the center of his mission—to throw open the doors and let absolutely everybody have the life and grace that he knew was their birthright.  As children of God all of us, imperfect and needy and making bad choices all over the place, are loved and treasured no matter what the world says.  There’s forgiveness, there, both for well-meaning but often clueless do-gooders as well as for the adults who have let these kids down. And for them, a promise that poverty and illness don’t have the last word.

I have been away from home for 16 days—at least 4 of those on a plane or bus trying to get somewhere. So I don’t pretend to have any answers after two weeks. I have a lot of questions, and a lot of interpretations. Spiritually, I know the places I want to return—to that moment of being completely cracked open and flooded with light in that church in Kihurio, Tanzania, where all the women and some men and lots of kids came out singing to meet us on the road and brought us in. I want to return to that moment of eating together, of communion and being joined in the mystery of sacrament and silence and riotous music in Amboni.  I want to return to the love in Ann’s eyes when she talks about her seven foster kids and the future that’s possible for them, one of whom came to her at just a few weeks old, for whom she is all the mother she has had.   And all of those dirt floors swept clean and all the prayers said in gratitude for whatever we have been given, no matter how small. And I want to hang on to the requests—Bahati, one of the teachers at a school that has kids sponsored by BMCF, who sent us a meticulously handwritten note asking that we double our support, and Kizara’s need for hospital beds at the clinic up in the mountains, and even the housekeeper at the hotel where we stayed who asked us for money for a suitcase. I want to be on the hook for that, to remember to tell these stories and not just come home with some lovely baskets and a sunburn, but a mission and a hope for the future.

Finally,

Finally, I want to remember to be moved.

We heard about the Newtown killings in a text message to Tom from Mally at the diocesan office, and spent the day on the road wondering what had happened. As the details emerged and it got worse and worse, all we could do was be silent and remember that there is insecurity and danger, even at home.  Our culture does not have a lock on communitarian goodness or even any claim to functional society by a longshot.  Next, of course, was to question why our country doesn’t have meaningful gun laws. Not asking that question is a little like getting sick from bad food and then going back for seconds and wondering why you got sick again.  Not politics, causality. Nobody needs an assault rifle. Nobody.

So there has been plenty of Good Friday, but we have also often noted how without the blare of Christmas music from everywhere, Advent has been quite a different prospect. Heaven knows that the amount of time we’ve spent in the car has been an excellent waiting discipline. So Christmas is in a week—that moment where the world gets turned upside down and God becomes human and goes to the unlikeliest, poorest place, and lights it on fire with God’s grace and call to peace and justice; a powerless baby telling everyone to wake up and know that everything can be different, that there is enough, that we can be different. 

And for now, that will have to be enough.

Thanks for reading.

More work with BMCF

Leaving Kasese over the speedbumps, of which there are many.  In my last post I mentioned that it took 8h40min to drive back from Entebbe and the hope for today is to make it in 7, going the longer but more scenic and less bumpy route.

How to describe the last few days.

Wednesday, which I wrote about before, was our time with the health center and hospital site visiting.  Thursday morning we went out with the mobile clinic, and it was both hopeful and shattering at the same time.  The staff set up in a church yard and inside the church—prenatal exams were inside, with women lying down on a cushion perched on two benches together and a screen around them. Outside there was a station for immunization, HIV testing, pre and post HIV test counseling, and baby weigh-in. As soon as the word got out that we were there, it seemed like every child in the neighboring area showed up. We were on the outskirts of Kasese—not too far from the clinic itself, but far enough that getting there could be a barrier.

So all of these children turned up, and we came prepared with our customary stash of lollipops and bubbles. That was entertaining for about twenty minutes before everyone started asking for extras “for my sister,” at which point we figured everyone had been well-served.

The kids were not well. There were runny noses, rashes, cuts on their feet.  There were seven year olds with 18month olds on their backs. One particular (girl, I noticed when I saw she wasn’t wearing anything covering her bottom) child seemed delayed because she was the size of a robust one year old but her motor skills were that of a two year old—she could walk fine, but didn’t talk at all. She seemed to be cared for by her older sister (who was maybe on the older side of 3, also with nothing on but a T shirt).

When the bubbles ran out, we tried singing and games—I lead “head, shoulder, knees and toes” and tried Simon Says, and Amy did hopscotch and got the older kids in a circle for clapping games. [let me interject here that I’m writing as we’re driving through the Queen Elizabeth National Park and it is incredible and beautiful and we have seen a bunch of antelope already] Sitting in the shade with the smaller kids, the girl I noticed who seemed small for her age was climbing over the bench and fell off and started to cry.  The older child with her looked a little concerned, but moved on so I pulled her up next to me. Some younger children we’ve met in both Tanzania and Uganda have seen us and run away, so I was mindful of not wanting to alarm her. But she was OK with me and kept crying, so I pulled her on to my lap and rocked and sang a little.  She stopped crying and eventually fell asleep and I had the delicious “pinned” feeling you have when a child falls asleep in your arms and immediately weighs 500 lbs.  So we sat together for about half an hour before their dad showed up—I’d been told the mom was in the village and that he was “out.”  He came over to me and said motioned to her and said he was the dad, so I handed her over not a little sadly. I noticed that four kids left with him—I think the older kids were 6 and 8, maybe. Her name is Pree.

In the meantime, Amy kept up with the games and it got hotter and hotter and the kids more and more impatient with each other.   Finally, technology won out; she got out her ipad and started making little movies and showing them.   A few of those kids would have been in school at a different time of year; the end of school year vacation is December-January, but most would have just been with each other, with the adults off trying to make ends meet.

I want to take a moment here and talk about photography.

In a lot of places, the kids have been eager to have their pictures taken. Especially with digital cameras when you can see it right away. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to send back picutres we’ve taken and that they can get to the right people. Even at home, I wrestle with documenting vs experiencing; do I want to spend my kid’s pre-kindergarten graduation behind a camera, or do I want to actually be there? Here, my reluctance comes from a slightly different place, in not wanting to freeze things, not wanting it to become a simple, two  dimensional image of  abstract disaster of kids with no pants on in which all you see is the sadness. At the same time, the dirty feet and torn shirt should not be a source of shame.  More shame is for those who merrily go along on our way pretending that this kind of need doesn’t exist.  Of course, I am overthinking.  And I’m glad somebody took a picture of me with Pree.

The afternoon after the clinic, we went along with Alex and Ann with home visits. The children’s program supports all aspects of kids’ development—and checks up on them. We visited five homes, each an example of a family category—“Discordant” couple—he HIV + and her HIV – and their children, one with an elderly caretaker, one with an HIV + mom and son, one with HIV + mom and several kids in the program, and one with a mom who was also being served through the microfinance program, which she’d opened a small shop next door to her home. The “discordant” family wasn’t home, but we heard a little of their story; they had been living in a crumbling home with four kids in one room—corrugated metal that was falling down—but owned the property, so an organization from Mississippi that BMCF has contact with funded with construction of a new home. The couple—Joseph and Mary—helped build and Joseph made the bricks so there was more collaboration. The other houses were either corrugated sheets of metal nailed together or brick, and all had dirt floors. One house we visited, with Helen (pictured with Penny, Tom, and Ann) was living with an elderly relative who was HIV +. She was unstable and disappeared for days, so Helen didn’t get enough food to eat. Ann and she said they were looking for another sponsor to pay for her to go to boarding school; she was already attending during the day, but when there was no food, it was hard for her to study so she needed an extra $450/year to cover the room and board.  Tom looked at Penny and said, “How about it?” so they’ll cover her expenses until she graduates high school.

We then visited Boniface and his mom, both HIV +, who live next to a shop where she works. Her illness is not under control, though, so she can’t work very often.  His cousin just came to stay with them a few months ago after her parents died, and she’s being tested this week.

BMCF supports 611 kids—that’s 611 stories just like those. More than 50% don’t live with a parent.  It was a hard day, and none of us slept well. In Tanzania, people were poor, but if the margins were thin there, here it’s a razor thin line between life and death. The AIDS epidemic here has wiped out whole towns, and even though drugs now are very good, they’re very strong and it’s not easy to stay on treatment, which then creates more illness. Boniface, who is twelve, doesn’t want to take his drugs; his mom is sick, so he is losing hope. Caroline, whom we heard from the day before, also has a sister who has stopped taking her drugs; she says she’ll die anyway, so why bother.

Ann says she never loses hope. She has plenty of hard days, and said that she still thought about a girl who died in July.   But they don’t lose hope. If they don’t, how can we?  Still, there’s this economy of sorrow that seems so vast. We went to a life skills presentation some of the kids attended and one of the girls talked about how she was with a single HIV + mom and how they prayed all the time but her father had disappeared and didn’t support them. I asked her, what can we pray for for you?  Her answer was stark: “That my mother doesn’t die.”

But these kids are creating community with each other, they’re learning about how to focus on their values, know their strength and weaknesses, try to be a leader to others.   They are children and they have nothing, and they have to negotiate their relationships with school, their guardians, and, nearly always, HIV. Heartbreaking  story after story, and there are so many.  There is a depth to the disasater, but also a depth to the success—each individual child brings with them their siblings, their mother, their guardian.  BMCF won’t reach every child in Uganda, or even in Kasese, but the ones they do reach matter a lot.

Friday, December 12

Friday, we had a “resting” day; morning in the national park.  We went with Dr. Daniel and his son, Elisha, age six, who was incredibly fun and made me glad to be seeing my own kids very soon. I think he and Isaiah could wreak a lot of havoc together.  Our car was a leaky minibus; not one of those cool four wheel drive vehicles that the top pops up on so you can look out the roof.  Seeing an elephant cross the road in front of you is pretty magical, though, no matter what kind of vehicle you’re in.  We all felt a little awkward about our comparative (and extreme) comfort vis a vis the kids who we met the day before. Also sighted: warthogs, lions (far away, but still), more elephants, antelope, water buck (related to antelopes), and some amazing birds. So now I can say I’ve been on safari. Sort of.

Finally, our last night in Kasese—we went to Dr. Daniel’s house and met his wife, Jackie, and their other 11 month old son, who used Tom’s collar as a teething ring all night. Food was delicious—all the food here has been great, thanks to Mama Stella—and at the end of the night Daniel talked about how thankful they are for our friendship and support. Jesus brought friends together and called them brothers. We are friends and brothers and sisters and will each do our work in our own place.

Our work in our own place: I’m not sure, exactly, how this will become part of my work. It has certainly deepened my sense of the challenges the world faces, but it has also given me more of a sense of what’s possible and put a face on the world that needs to be done. We stood in front of Helen’s house and Ann told us what she needed and now she—she, Helen, with a big smile and beautiful face—she is going to go to a better school now and she will decide what she wants to be when she graduates.

As we went around the circle, I said that it is a privilege it is to be part of what they’re doing, even in the smallest way.  And also how there are a lot of people who do great work in the world, but that it’s been not just inspiring to be here, but a real pleasure; such smart and funny and committed people.

Now, we’re driving back to Entebbe to get our flight tomorrow. Bishop Zeb has been in Kampala all week in meetings; USAID is considering moving funds directly to local NGO’s instead of going through the government, where funds are often misappropriated, so he met with the American ambassador on Tuesday and is staying on for the service for the new archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda.

Ah, the Anglican Church of Uganda.

We spent all our time in Tanzania centered around church, and none here. When we were at the mobile clinic the pastor came out to say hello—he lived across the way—and took me for a walk and showed me everything.   Unfortunately our churches are not on the best of terms, given that the Anglican Church here has decided that the Americans are going to hell because we support the rights of GLBT people to get married and serve in the church. The pastor asked me to fund his education—people are very willing to ask for help, which is both refreshing and a little unsettling.  And in this case, the answer is no. Bishop Masereka is a retired bishop, so he is free to work with Americans in ways his compatriots can—or will-not.

Sexuality came up in the life skills class as well—one of the kids said that he and many people were worried that the world was going to come to an end because of homosexuality. Tom gave a pretty good answer—culture and acceptance on all sides, that we believe that God loves gays and lesbians and ask for their respect of our beliefs. Later, he said it occurred to him that he might have mentioned polygamy, which is more accepted here than I had thought.  Uganda has been in the news quite a bit lately over the “Kill the gays” bill, which was first introduced in 2009.  Same gender sexual acts are already a crime in Uganda and can lead up to 14 years in prison, but the new bill establishes life imprisonment and the death penalty for “serial offenders” and acts with minors or an act committed by an HIV positive person.  It also includes a raft of punishments for those who “collaborate,” which could impact teachers who don’t turn in students, health workers who treat GLBT persons, and on and on.  An All Out petition making its way around the internet has taken some credit for the fact that the bill has stalled and won’t be taken up again until after the next session begins in 2013; there is a fairly scathing Ugandan response to this at the blog for Freedom and Roam Uganda (http://faruganda.wordpress.com), a Ugandan lesbian organization. In other news, the pope this week gave a blessing to Rebecca Kadaga, the speaker of Parliament who hoped to pass the bill in time for Christmas, when she was in Rome with other Ugandan leaders. It was the same day he went on twitter so that upstaged the coverage of the Ugandan visit. So pray for the kids we’ve met, as well as the GLBT community here.

Cultural baggage multiplies on both sides; Mama Stella said someone in the US once asked her if she lived in a tree house in the jungle, and someone else in the student Q and A (sitting next to the one who was worried about homosexuality) was curious if 63% of Americans really do worship Satan. This time of year, only Santa.

 

[editing note: I leave for the airport in just a few hours! see you soon and more words to come from the airplane. Also many more pictures when I get more technology straightened out at home]

  

December 12

Rwenzori Gardens Guest House,  Kasese, Uganda

We arrived in Kasese yesterday at Mama Stella (everyone calls her that) and Bishop Masereka’s house after a very, very long drive-- we left Entebbe at 9am and were told that the drive might take ten hours.

It’s 250 miles.

As it turned out, the drive took 8 hours and 40 minutes, due to the extraordinary caution of our driver and, perhaps, extreme fragility of the vehicle. When we arrived the bishop said it usually takes 5 or 5 ½ hours, so I am not exaggerating that we took our time. In any case, it’s good to be here.

Last night many of the staff from the BMCF (Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation) joined us for dinner, as well as a Swedish intern who’s staying with the Maserekas but working with a local group through a Swedish program. Small world! I even got to help translate. There seems to be more NGO activity here, but that might also just be because the signs are in English and not Swahili as they were in Tanzania.

Uganda is very linguistically diverse, with Luganda, the language spoken in the central region and around the capital as having a slim majority but with other related, but distinct, languages dominating in different regions.  St Peter’s, Christ Church’s partner congregation. is composed mostly of folks who speak Luganda, so I have to keep reminding myself that this is a different place.  Where we are the language is called Lusoga. Swahili is spoken in the north, somewhat, but because it’s also associated with Idi Amin, it’s not too popular otherwise.

The Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation is the project of Bishop Zebedee Masereka, who was bishop of the Rwenzori diocese, where we are now.   Health issues had always been an interest of his, and his inspiration for starting the clinic was from a time when he was looking for medical treatment for his grandson but couldn’t find anywhere to take him. His wife, Stella, has many projects as well—she runs the guest house that hosts visitors to the foundation and others, as well as agricultural projects. She is an amazing cook and has something like 40 chickens AND grows her own vegetables and mushrooms. Power couple!

The BMCF’s mission is work on behalf of maternal/child health and orphans and other vulnerable children, which they do through two major programs: their health center and their children’s program. They are currently in the final stages of raising funds to build a hospital on the Western part of town (breaking ground in late summer 2013, hopefully), where Kasese is rapidly expanding. This will enable them to serve more rural populations as well as to substantially upgrade their facilities.

Touring today, it’s astonishing to see how much the clinic can accomplish with the resources they have.  The incredibly talented Dr Daniel has been with the foundation for more than 6 years but is leaving soon to continue his studies in reconstructive surgery in South Africa, so they’ve recently taken on another doctor to catch up before Daniel leaves. The clinic has one incubator and have saved premature babies as small as 2 ½ pounds, and deliver healthy babies pretty much every day.   They are able to do some lab work. but samples to be tested for rarer infectious diseases (you know, like EBOLA) have to be sent out to South Africa or Kenya.  

The other astonishing part of their work is the children’s program. With her staff of 3, Ann provides nearly 360 degree mentoring, tuition relief, and tracking of students for year and years.  Tomorrow we’re going on home visits with some of her outreach workers, so I’ll say more tomorrow. Today we talked to some of the teachers in the schools where BMCF works and we were all brought to tears on several occasions in hearing from these incredibly courageous young people who, with the deaths of their parents, seem to lose everything only to be picked up and nurtured and set back on their way. The tenacity with which Ann and her staff simply do not give up on the kids is, no exaggeration, a miracle.   

Today during a meeting with stakeholders we heard from Caroline, whose parents both died of AIDS, leaving her and her two sisters alone. Her older sister had made it through school, but BMCF found her and got her back into school and encouraged her to study nursing.  Having lost everything, she came for a while but then got frustrated and left. Even during the year and a half she left school, Ann and her team still kept calling still kept after her to come back. Finally, she did, and now works as a field officer for HIV counseling and testing. We heard story after story from teachers and students about how lives had been changed. Hardest to hear was about how they had to end the support for 55 students because one of the major donors (us—the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts’ Jubilee committee) cut funding. Because the Alewife deanery didn’t do the annual dinner and auction. So they described how they chose the students who were doing poorly and also had more advantages than others. They left the most vulnerable ones (even those who weren’t as successful) because they understood that they would have a harder time.  We will work a lot harder this year.

Another thing we talked a lot about was transparency. Uganda is notoriously corrupt—Transparency International rates it a 2.4 (with 0 being the most corrupt and 10 the least). Every dollar here, though, goes where it’s supposed to go and goes as far as possible. Everything is accounted for and even, according to friends of the foundation, the corrupt politicians are afraid of Bishop Zeb! 

More to come tomorrow—site visits and more learning about the children’s program.  Good night.