Uganda | Moments

Uganda is so many things, I return feeling I lived six months in three weeks. When I initially started blogging while living in South Africa, I was challenging myself to notice and remember the little things making up this big thing we called life. I felt more defined by a million small moments than a few big moments. My time in Bombo, Uganda this year was filled with so many little things compounding into the feeling life is a lot for a heart to hold. I live with the people of Bombo every day, sharing meals, sharing work, sharing songs, sharing stories, and then on a cloudy day I say goodbye. could write pages and pages about Bombo (if anyone wants to give me a book advance LMK), but this blog post is an attempt to record just a few moments.

My last day in Bombo I walked through the church campus turned into a medical clinic for a week and let the little moments rush through my head.

I began my walk saying goodbye to the kids at the homes on the outskirts of the campus. They live in the two light orange houses with each other and a house mom, their blood families having abandoned them or departed from this world. I walked away from the dirt patch where we played football waving and calling out goodbyes. On Tuesday, in the shade of their homes they sat holding my hands, picking at my calloused hands and asking what the rough patches were from. In this moment I felt the weight of how different our lives are.

“Rock climbing,” I responded hesitantly.

“In Jinja?” They replied, referencing a place in Uganda named from the Luganda word for stone, “ejjinja.” I proceeded to try and explain climbing in a gym in California. They quickly swiped left-right-left-right on my phone between pictures of my sister and I climbing, zooming in and out asking questions to understand. In this moment, showing them pictures on an iPhone, thinking about how far the price of gym membership would go for food in Uganda I was deeply aware of my privilege and wanted to shove it away like I shoved my phone back in my pocket. We returned to playing hand games and football, singing our numbers in Luganda and taking turns being keeper. They sleep two to a bed and cook porridge outside on a charcoal stove. These little hearts captured mine last year and I leave saying, “See you soon,” and watch as they keep kicking around the football we brought.

Continuing my walk through of the clinic away from the homes, I pass the ledge where all the volunteers sit to eat tea and lunch. A few bread crusts and empty cups remain on the ground. Meals were always a welcomed break and time for conversation. It is the great equalizer, hunger, and slow lunches where I discussed public health, American education, Black Panther, and God countered my experience telling the kids about climbing. At these meals, it felt like any day sharing a meal with friends. The divide felt less severe.

One day I sat down with just a cup of tea and a Ugandan medical volunteer looked at my lack of food and said, “I will share my banana with you, you need food.” I assured him I already ate my banana and buttered bread. This is the generous, outward facing love I consistently receive in Uganda. My sweet friend working in the kitchen would ask me every day how the food was and if I received enough. She served relentlessly, often not eating until hours after everyone else had been fed and dishes from 300 people had begun. She would later say she knows it is a tangible way to serve others, to provide a meal of rice, beans, chapati, and pineapple. She does what she is skilled at, where she is at, joyfully.

Near the lunch area is the center of the church campus. Here I ran into a man I met my first time in Bombo and have seen every year since. He is a tall man, with a wide nose and a short friend who always accompanies him. Both are Muslim, and both come to this Christian run medical clinic every year, speaking of the grace and acceptance they experience at the clinic. When I first saw him this year, he broke out into a smile of recognition and walked toward me. The group of four other Muslim men he was with greeted me, “Salaam alaykum.” I responded naturally, “Alaykum salaam,” and they cheered and hugged me.  

“If you love, you learn,” I was told by a friend in Uganda. He said this is how we change things, by being willing to learn about each other. This is how we eliminate us and them. I think being able to greet a Muslim man on a Christian church campus in Arabic is the type of barrier breaking love this world needs. It is so simple, yet powerful. It communicates, “I see you. You, as you are, is enough.”

Turning right, I walked through the gate separating the three buildings used as patient exam rooms from the large worship centered turned into a registration and triage area. I walked up this path holding up a mama on Wednesday. I saw her walking slowly with a younger woman supporting her. The mama was hunched over, barefoot on the rocky dirt ground, eyes fixed ahead on the distant road. Coming beside her, I put my arm under hers and immediately felt her give into the help. Slowly, the three of us shuffled up the path to the road. The younger woman asked my name, and I asked hers.

“Chris, and this is Jen,” she said nodding toward the woman between us. The mama smiled at me then winced at the slight incline of a ramp, her slow shuffle slowing even more. She did not stop, she did not complain, I only knew her pain because of the look on her face and the way she let us hold her up. We reached the road and Chris asked me to help her lift Jen onto a boda boda, the motorcycle taxis populating the streets. With no other option of transport, I lifted her legs and Chris lifted under her arms. She then secured Jen’s grip around the boda boda driver’s torso. Chris wedged herself on the back and they sped away.

I walked back down the path to the clinic after helping Jen to the boda boda with tears in my eyes and sat behind a building in the shadows, my spot throughout the week when I needed a minute to breathe. In front of this building in the middle of the traffic of the clinic I stood with a little girl’s arms wrapped around me for a long time on Friday. She came up to me with open arms for a hug and stared up at me with big eyes as if she knew me deeply. She asked for many things I could not give her and yet returned again and again to simply be held as she waited for her mother to finish seeing a doctor.

These are the moments where joy and pain sit like oil and water in my heart, two very different elements but together fill up the cavity of my soul. We stood for so long with arms around each other, this little girl with a long blue skirt, evidence of worms on the top of her head, and twigs shoved through pierced ears. I pointed to the paper with words and illustrations she held and asked if she knew this Jesus it talked about. Her eyes opened wide, her face broke out in a smile, “Yes,” she responded.

“Yes, I know Jesus. He loves me.”

There is the institution of religion, but there is also the hope of believing in more than this painful and fleeting life. Every time I go to Uganda I am reminded of this simple faith in things unseen and the hope it brings.

I never want to stop being changed by these experiences. Every time I go, every time I listen, every time I step out in courage my world grows a little bigger and my heart aches a little more when I leave. So many things occurred, so many conversations were had, and so many people were served, all alongside my Uganda family. We support each other through this hectic week. We learn about each other and laugh with each other. We walk through the little moments with one another.

In this life, I want to travel often, listen well, and love deep.

There is immense joy.

There is immense pain.

But, I have found there is also more love than I am ever deserving of as I grow and intertwine my lives with others in many corners of the world.

As I ended my walk through of the clinic, I was stopped and greeted with hugs and good mornings by many friends as they moved to their posts for the day. The pastor’s wife who I work closely with watched these small moments and said to me, “You are part of our village.” The sun was rising over the red dirt that has come to define my life and smiling I replied, “This is family, and this is home.”