Great joy and great need in Uganda...

I have finally got some time to put this blog up. Hopefully the next one is posted more quickly! I am borrowing a different laptop so this post will have a couple pictures attached but they take a long time to load on the Internet that is used here so I won’t post many. (Edited to add: The photos will be in a separate post. Each time I tried to insert them I was bumped out of blogger and had to redo this blog post, so I'll try them separately.)

This week has been busy already! I have gone to a 4-hour Mass and afterwards ate with a few politicians and some priests. We ate the food we went to town to buy yesterday. We bought a chicken, beef, goat, and pig. This all was just hanging from the ceiling. Without air conditioning! I did not eat any of that meat. The other muzungu here, Sander, and I decided to eat instant noodles, rice, and fruit. The fruit here is wonderful and they have many kinds that are not easy to get in the States. After the meal, two men from here and I drove 2 hours to a city called Fort Portal. There we went to a hotel called the Dutchess. The food there was wonderful and it had real coffee! That is a rarity here in Uganda. They grow wonderful coffee, I see it everywhere, but very few drink it. They drink mostly tea and water.

The Mass, which included Confirmation, was incredible. It was a little longer than I am used to (71 minute homily!!... not that I counted) but it was beautiful. The people were incredibly joyful to be adults in the eyes of the Church. The sad part was though it was supposed to be 600, only around 300 could be confirmed. The church here has to ask a fee of the people being confirmed because it cannot support itself. The offering they usually get on Sundays is less than $20. That is not an amount they can support a priest on; the priests have to drive many miles to get to Masses for the villages, and they cannot even get the money for gas. Since the church has to ask a fee of about $4, there are some people who cannot partake in the sacrament. While understandable on the part of the diocese here, it needs to be helped. Many individuals try to sponsor as many students as they can, but there is no money. I hope to be able to send money for just that purpose to the parish. I do not want any of God's children to miss out on being confirmed due to lack of $4. It is sad.

I will tell you a bit about my trip to get the food. We traveled about 20 minutes to their big town. Before we got there, we saw a small group of people selling produce, so we got some potatoes that they put in the trunk of the car. We went to the store, as they called it, their Wal-Mart. It was about 20ft by 20ft. There we got items to make the millet (it has the texture of Play-Doh when fully cooked) some tea, and a bottle of wine for the Vicar General and the politicians. We put all of this in the trunk then proceeded to the market. We got there and went straight for the live chickens. The priest I was with and the vendor haggled over price and then exchanged money. The vendor took the chicken away, and I remember thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder where she is going with our chicken?” but I decided not to ask because the language barrier can be almost impossible to overcome with some Ugandans. We then got some melons and peas and walked to the car. I went to put the melons in the car, opened the trunk, and boom! The chicken starts squawking and flapping its wings. In the trunk! They cannot buy frozen chicken so some things they put in the trunk live.

I also have visited a village that is off of the main road here. It is about a 1-hour drive from the road over some rocky terrain. The cars have to be 4-wheel-drive to reach it! I visited two nuns who have a health center they maintain and run for the diocese. They were very kind people and let me stay at their house. I had a huge room with a sink and we had running water, until their water tank ran out. It has not rained, besides a 10-minute shower yesterday, since March! I taught one sister, Sr. Edwig, how to make rosaries, and she was by far the best pupil I have had. She had it down and made a rosary that was nearly perfect on the first try. While here I learned how to use a Ugandan latrine. It is different from our outhouses because it has no seat. It is just a hole in the ground! It was ... interesting. This one was a private latrine so it was clean, a luxury many here do not get.

 I visited two schools. The thing that struck me the most was the two schools that have had financial help from my hometown, St. Thomas and Mary Seat of Wisdom, are so much better off than most schools in the area. I would even go as far as to say they have the best facilities of any of the other schools in the area. The floors at the other schools are dirt, and when it rains they become just mud. They have no glass in the windows. If they have wooden shutters they are lucky. The meals are maize flour and water that make a type of porridge that is a gelatin-like thing (not as bad as it sounds, but it would get old) and beans. They eat this every day for lunch and dinner.

I was also an attendant at a funeral and they are also much different from American ones. There were probably around 600 people in attendance coming from all over the village and surrounding area. They do not have undertakers in Uganda, they leave the body at the house and bring a coffin there. They have Mass right outside the front door, with all the friends, relatives, and acquaintances in attendance.  After the Mass they carry the coffin to a grave dug on the property (usually in the middle of a banana tree grove) and fill it in themselves. They do not leave till the coffin is fully covered, because they say that people will steal the body and use parts for black magic. I have not come across people practicing black magic here and I hope I do not, but it is apparently a very big problem.

This village was beautiful, and hideous. It was beautiful because the land around it is gorgeous. When this country becomes developed people will pay big money to stay here, like they already do at safari resorts! The mountains are beyond description; green foliage and orange soil mix together and make a beautiful picture. The tea and coffee plantations are breathtaking. They are ordered and straight like our farms, then next to them is the rest of Uganda, confusing and real. It is hideous because the living conditions are horrible. The houses are made of mud and sticks in the back country, and the toilets are a hole in the ground with walls. They have to be a breeding ground for disease, the stench is almost overwhelming. They eat meat that is hanging off of the side of the house, flies flying all around them, landing and spreading their fecal matter at will. The water is yellowish and not drinkable for Americans. I have to drink water out of bottles. I could not ever get used to that part of this country. The intense beauty next to the hideous living conditions is more than I can take in at times. My Ugandan friends can tell, they ask many times if I am OK. They are the most selfless people I know.

  I truly want to help these people. In spite of their living conditions that would leave me and most I know at the very least melancholy, these people are joyful. I don’t want to just throw money around because it gets misused, but I want to coordinate with the people I know here who are not corrupt and do projects for schools and families. That is my dream. It is one that people say a 17-year-old boy cannot do ... and they are correct. I cannot do it, but God can. I will do my best, He will do the rest.