The best worst day of my life.

The best worst day of my life.

Yesterday.

I have never experienced such a range of emotions in one day. If you have not been getting my e-mails you have no basis for what I’m talking about right now.

Let me give you an over view. Last Thursday I went to a town called Jinja, it’s about an hour from my house. I went there to do some HIV testing on women that are involved in a group called PITEK, it’s apart of Grassroots Uganda (www.grassrootsuganda.com) We went to test the women, testing went pretty well. We tested 26 and 6 were positive. After testing a few of us wanted to go to a slum nearby called Masese. When I say slum, I don’t think that properly depicts the poverty and filth I’m talking about, but it’s the only word I can find to describe it. We arrived at Masese, and were immediately bombarded by screaming little children chanting “Our mzungus how are you?!” It’s quite adorable and we hiked for a bit with a woman who was showing us around. Now, this woman showing us around, was by no means a saint, she owns a distilary where they make UG Waragi, it’s a local gin. She employs women that work in the filithiest, smelliest, most disgusting place I’ve ever been, now these women work for 1,000 shillings a day….that equals out to just over 60 cents a day. They work with their children on their backs…the fumes in this place are so overwhelming, and they are covered in tar. So all that to say, this woman showing us around, Nicolena, was asking us to give these poor women money because they had nothing and were being exploited…by her? It was obnoxious, then she started asking to help all of the people with health problems. I say all the people because about 75% percent of the slum had some sort of an immediate health need. We then were walking with people begging for our help, having to say no. Heartbreaking. She told us that there was a little girl that needed us badly, she said she had some sort of a skin issue. She took us up to the top of this hill in the village where a woman was sitting with the most tragic looking baby I’ve ever seen. This child was a year and three months old, and looked about 6 months old. She is obviously a little black child, however her skin was turning white and melting off, she was so badly swollen that there were massive cracks in her arms and legs, when she moved she was in incredible pain but couldn’t even mustier the strength to cry. There was so much more than just a skin issue wrong with her and we could tell within minutes we needed to take care of her soon or she would die. The mother was trying to nurse her but they child was near unresponsive, when the mother would smack away flies from the childs face, she wouldn’t flinch and held a blank gaze the entire time. The most bizarre part of it all was that she was a twin, and the little boy twin was completely fine…no issues. We told the mother to get ready and we would take care of all of their expenses and put them up in a hospital. In the large group of children I mentioned earlier, there was one child that struck my attention as well. His name was Sharif, a normal looking boy with a limp, we looked down at his leg and saw the top of his foot. There was a hole about the size of a fifty cent piece all the way down to the bone. It looked as though there was some sort of a flesh eating virus in there….not good. There were flies crawling all over this open wound. We told him to get ready and we were taking him in. So, after all of that is said and done, we get the children on Boda Boda’s with us (boda’s are motorcycles that you hop on and pay the man like 50 cents to drive you around). We got them to the clinic and admitted them, the little girl needed to stay for three weeks, so we sent to get the other twin to stay there with her and the mother and covered all of the costs. The little boy however couldn’t stay, but he needed to be brought in everyday for 7 days, so in his situation, we paid all of the fees and gave the mother the transport money and had them explain that her son could lose his leg or die without attention. She said she understood and took the money and left.

Now fast forward to Wednesday. I am almost finished at Murchison Falls. I received the news that the little girl had died, via text message. My heart fell so hard. She is about the age of my very own niece. We all believed there was a hope that we had gotten her there in time. They diagnosed that she had a protein deficiency, malnutrition, malaria, anemia, and possibly TB. It was horrible. Right after getting the news I reached the top of Murchison Falls. Now if you haven’t seen Murchinson Falls I’m posting a picture for you. It’s the most beautiful, powerful, and majestic thing I’ve ever seen. It is where the entire power of the nile is forced through a 7 meter wide gap. It's incredible. I sat there in silence, crying, trying to sort out my emotions, my anger, frustration, confusion, love, desire for good. Sometimes it doesn’t all add up, and won’t no matter how long you sit and cry. God’s plan doesn’t seem to match up with his goodness. There isn’t a way to measure his plan with his gentle kindness, I’m not him, I don’t get it. So as I’m sitting there staring into the most awe inspiring piece of creation I’ve ever seen, I’m trying to swallow that we lost this poor little baby. She is the first that has died since I’ve been here. I had a 6 hour drive home to think, pray, cry and deal with it all.

Now to yesterday. We felt we should go to see the burial of the little girl and check up on Sharif. So, that is what yesterday was. First we went to the clinic and found out that Sharif had never been brought in for treatment, we were livid, this mother was ready to sell her sons life for 14,000 shillings (that is about 7 US dollars). We headed in to Masese to find Sharif, yell at his mother, and visit the baby’s burial. We were pretty scared that they were going to blame us, and western medicine for killing their daughter, mostly because they would only take her to the witch doctor when she’s sick. They didn’t, they were deeply grateful that their daughter died in a hospital in less pain. The little grave was just that, so little. We cried, in silence. We stood, in silence. We kissed the ground and let our tears make mud puddles out of the red dirt. We greeted the family and knealt to them (that isn’t the way it works, traditionally, the Ugandans will kneel to you) We donated some money to the family and tried to find Sharif. We went to his home and knocked, no one came to the door, however there was cooking food on the door step. Nobody would leave food burning and not be there. I at this point am ready to kill his mother or at least fight her good and hard. I refrain. We can’t find Sharif and are about to leave. At the road side, just two minutes later, we bump into his mother, she had been hiding from us. She then proceeded to tell us that she had JUST been at the clinic and Sharif was up at the house. She was in filthy clothing and would NEVER go into town dressed that way, she proceeded to tell us that she had JUST changed. We asked about the cooking food… “my husband is cooking” Now if you know anything about Acholi culture (the Acholi are the tribe from the north) the one thing you should know is this, men don’t do ANYTHING for women, EVER. Especially not cook, ever. I told her to quit lying to me and to give me Sharif. She did, we scolded her some more and told her we were reporting her for neglect and child abuse. The wound itself looks as though it was inflicted upon the boy and we were all suspicious of it. Sharif needed to meet with a surgeon and we couldn’t get ahold of the surgeon. African hospitals aren’t exactly up to standard. I carried Sharif about 3 km to the hospital from Rose’s house (rose is our African momma.) We waited and waited, they said they would call us when he got in. That wasn’t good enough so we demanded to know which hospital he was at. He was at one only 2ish km away. I picked up Sharif and started walking. We got there and found the Surgeon, Sam. Sam inspected the wound and set up a surgery for Sunday. He also said he needed to at least re-dress the wound because it was so badly infected and there was rotting flesh sitting under the bandage from last week. Apparently the hospital we were at was out of gauze…can you imagine that in the states…A hospital not having simple gauze to change a dressing? Never. Frustration was mounting in all of us. He asked us to go BACK to Rippon which was the other clinic we were at, he said he would meet us there. At this point I’m dripping in sweat and my body is aching beyond belief because he’s a normal sized 8 year old kid, not exactly the weight of a feather. I picked the poor little guy up again and walked BACK to Rippon. We got there and had to wait for an hour for Sam to show up. He finally arrived, Sharif is tired it’s 5 p.m. at this point. I carried him back into the room and Sam starts to clean the wound, in order to get it clean enough to wait til Sunday he needed to scrape out some of the rotting flesh. No local anesthesia of course. Now up until this point Sharif and I had been buds all day. Shoot, I was carrying him around like a little princess in my arms and he was getting candy all day. The doctor went into the wound with an instrument that looked like a miniature spoon. Sharif didn’t know what was coming and let out a shrill cry into my arm. Now African kids are tough, they poured an entire bottle of peroxide on it and he didn’t flinch. But that spoon thing was a little too much. I remember as a kid saying that my mom hated me when she would hold me down for shots at the doctor, imagine that multiplied by a hundred. Sharif wanted to move his foot, I had to hold his legs down, then he tried to reach out and touch his foot. I had to hold his arms and body into mine and hold his leg steady. The other people with me asked if I needed help holding him down, however they both had tear filled eyes and I said no. I have never felt worse in my life. Ugandan children don’t cry and this kid was sobbing so deeply in my arm that it was drenched. I couldn’t bear it and I lost it as well. When all was said and done Sharif was shaking and weeping. It was the first thing anybody had done for him that would eventually save him. At this point however, all he felt was the pain. We needed to get him back to his village but first needed to stop by rose’s to drop off his information for his surgery as we weren’t going to trust his mother with it. I picked him up again and headed back to Rose’s while my friends waited for me at the clinic. My friend Gigi was taking him back to Masese and met me half way. We said our goodbyes and I passed him off to Gigi. I told him I loved him and he just smiled a little, his little foot was still shaking. I finished the way to Rose’s by myself, crying, tired, sore and frustrated. I sat down by the side of the road to compose myself. One of my feet was bleeding from the bottom and my arms were trembling. So here I am so burnt out, so tired, so confused and so hurt for this little boy…and all the while I’m so okay compared to this child. My life is perfect, even at this moment, in relation to this little guy. This moment where I feel like my body could just give out and I could die is NOTHING in relation to the pain he feels everyday. I have never been so tired emotionally, spiritually and physically.

If you know me, know me at all. You should know a few things about me. All I want in life is to be a passionate lover of Christ, a devoted wife and a loving mother. I want to provide a home with an open door policy, I want to welcome people to come feast, live, and learn with my husband, children and I. I had a pretty amazing model of that, for that I’m deeply grateful, especially today. I can only gather that it is because of those desires of my heart that this day was so difficult for me. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a child hurt so much or die so quickly because of neglect. Because a mother and a father deemed 7 US dollars more valuable than their childs life, because they don’t care about him, I had to hold him down. When I see stuff like that here I want to scream at the top of my lungs, shake, beat or kill these people. These “parents” that exploit their children, offer them up as a sacrifice for the family. How can you swallow that? I can’t begin to. I think it’ll be years before I fully recover from what I experienced yesterday. I woke up today aching, my heart, my soul, and my body. It was tangible this pain I feel for these people.

Days like today, and yesterday make the love I have at home so real. When I see these men that don’t love their wives, I see how much James loves me and am reminded at how lucky I am that he wants to spend the rest of his life learning to love me better. When I see a mother that would let her son die for $7, I see the passionate love of my mother, who has pushed me past every limit I have in me to make me a woman that is ready and able to live out love to others. Today I am sitting, when I woke up I couldn’t move because I’m sick on top of the rest of it all. I laid in bed and cried. I stood up and then cried some more. I walked to the latrine and cried. I have a feeling that will be the pattern. It’s not an unhealthy wallowing cry. Just a legitimate wake up.

I cherish and treasure the experience I had yesterday. I needed it. We all need that. Need to be reminded of how lucky we are, how out of this world, unbelievably, un measurably lucky we all are. My first response was to call james, my sister, my mommy, gwenie, millie any of my favorite people to talk to…and I couldn’t. I had to do this one alone. I needed to experience these emotions alone…Yet the craziest thing happened…my mom, gwenie and millie called me. Nuts huh? They all called and could only talk for a couple of min…but it was long enough to say an I love you. That’s all I wanted. All I needed. When I submitted my will that I wouldn’t call, they did. God is so good. He is so real, even in the slums, even in the pain, the confusion, the lost, the found, the weak and the desolate. He is here, he is alive and you should be grateful. Grateful is such an overused word…but we have so much grace, and freedom. Live a life with a reverent attitude. Grateful of the gift, because it is just that, a gift of life.

Please don’t read this and think I’m a martyr, I only explain my pain so you can understand how frivolous it is in comparison to the reality of a pain filled life. Mine is just a few days.

I love you all, more than you can dream to understand. It is real, it is deep and it is true.

The following are pictures of a few of the things I explained.

This is the main street of the slum we were in. That is trash, broken bottles, and ripped papers on the ground. The houses were made of sheets of tin and mud.

This is the distillery. You can see the fumes, but they are nothing compared to the tar that covers the ground and the stench it lets off.

This is a picture of a woman working in the distillery with her baby on her back.

This is the little girl we lost. We didn't even know her name but we all mourned the loss of her deeply. RIP little one.

And this is Murchison Falls...the place where God showed up and shook my heart to the core.

Thanks for your time, love, prayers and support.

love you all.

Love. Laugh. Look. Live.

Amanda June