Day Five: Our 3rd full day in Uganda

Last Monday (Oct. 19) was an emotional and eye-opening day for me. When Lizanne was last in Uganda, she volunteered at a literacy centre for a few months and grew close to one of her students (a young woman with 4 children), who was one of her brightest pupils. Lizanne decided to sponsor the children so that they could attend school, and has been doing so for the past 3 years. We went to visit this woman (Anna) and her husband. She now has a 5th child - a 5 month old boy who is so adorable that I just wanted to eat him up. We spent about an hour with this family, talking to them about their plan to buy land (which is another way in which Lizanne is going to be sponsoring them). I have decided that, once my condo sells, I am also going to contribute to the future of this family, by donating some money to the purchase of the land.

I was so moved by what I saw that I had to hold back tears. We've all seen the images of abject poverty ("third world slums") on television, in magazines, etc. Some of us, myself included (when I was in Thailand, Cuba, Tanzania), have seen what I saw today in person, but only from a distance, driving past on a bus or in a car or walking by on the road. Monday was the first time I walked through a "slum" and it was an experience I will never forget. It is almost impossible to describe in any way that can effectively convey the experience. Even photographs do not do it justice, because pictures don't include the smells, the "textures" or the details that you can see when you are right there. People live in shacks that make the backyard tool sheds we have in Canada look spacious and luxurious. There are literally piles of rotting garbage everywhere, and the stench that occasionally drifted up to my nose made me gag a few times. I was literally having to navigate my way around these heaps of garbage, while children and toddlers played in and around them. Again, there are no words to truly capture the experience. Lizanne was telling me that these living conditions are pretty much the "norm" here in terms of the percentage of the population that lives like this. There are some who are worse off (although I can't imagine how) and there are the wealthy minority, but the large majority of Ugandans live this way. It is like their version of a middle class.

The photo I took of the brick house is one of the nicer dwellings in the area, because it has solid walls. We went inside Anna's house and sat down to talk. It was the size of an average Canadian bedroom and 7 people live in it. It was hot and dark and had two beds. Furnishings were sparse and kind of cobbled together out of bits of this and that. As I sat in the dark, dank room, listening to this gentle, soft spoken man (Anna's husband James) talk about wanting to own land and build a workshop on the land so that he can make furniture and earn a half decent living for himself and his family, I felt this bitter mix of sadness and outrage well up inside me. No one should have to live this way...regardless of race, nationality, skill or ability. It's just not okay - period! I think the other reason it hit me so hard is that it was the first time I had ever sat down and spoken to a person living in these conditions and seen first hand how they live. This reality was no longer an abstract concept to me or a piece of intellectual knowledge. I now had real people, faces and names (including a beautiful, laughing, gurgling little baby) associated with these appalling living conditions.

The photo I took of the ad for Fortune cooking oil was on a wall right around the corner from the area where Anna and her family live. I thought it was sadly ironic that this ad would be located there and, in my opinion, almost a slap in the face to the people living in filth and desperate poverty.

That night, Lizanne, her father, a wonderful Ugandan woman named Evelyn and I went out to dinner at a really nice Thai restaurant (a stark contrast to what I had seen earlier in the day) and I felt a deep sense of gratitude for what I have and for the life I live.