Doug Van Pelt

Children [Uganda.21]

Wow. Today was supposedly an "ease into it" kinda day. Wake up late to compensate for jet lag, go to just one project, come back fairly early, blog and be done. We decided to go to another project, with the agenda of not having one, but just to play and interact with the kids. That happened. It was very cool. It's amazing how much we did in just one day. It almost seemed like a week's worth of activities.

As mentioned in the post about Rose's house, we went to a church/project this morning. After visiting Rose's house, which was very impacting... Imagine a room that was 8 feet wide by 6 feet deep. Two handmade wooden benches line each space longwise, and we had 9 people in there -- talking in the dark. It was amazing. There was a sheet/curtain behind one of the benches, which was where Rose and her husband slept. The six kids all slept on the floor.

It certainly is one thing to see these kinds of living conditions on tv or in pictures, but to actually duck as you ventured inside and sit in that space ... it makes an impact and drives home the reality of the poverty of our neighbors. It's really crazy how much stuff we take for granted in our culture. Concrete floors, wooden floors, carpet... that's a far cry from dirt.

It was neat, though, to not really be phased by the conditions at all, but to take the time to meet someone. She was a very nice woman and she was so cool to let us into her house like that. I don't know if she knew what to expect from us. I was like a mild trouble-maker, it seemed, asking questions about her interaction with her kids, what her favorite games to play with them are, etc. I was just trying to get to know her better, but some of the folks there explained that this is an area that this country wants to improve in -- the relationships between children and their parents. No one was agitated, of course, but they revealed that in their culture there is a lot of separation from parents. There's not the reading of bedtime stories or other bonding stuff like that.

After we left Rose's house, where a pastor named Phil and I were able to pose with her husband, who quickly donned his policeman's uniform after arriving home, I had the coolest conversation with a builder from the church. He's like a building supervisor, who is overseeing the building projects they have. He mentioned that he thought his country really needed a new way of thinking. A new attitude that didn't accept poverty or dwell in it, but one that was developing and growing. He mentioned how the land we were standing on was gold. "If you bring a china man here, he'll set up a shop over there and soon he'll own the whole neighborhood, because he's got a plan. He's got a goal. He's got a different mindset." It sounds like the country is already enjoying and benefiting from such an attitude change, but they still have a ways to go.





Charlotta was a big hit with the kids by breaking out her bubble solution. Kids just loved popping those things. She was surrounded in a flash, with lots of laughter and children. I saw a young boy who really loved wheeling a motorcycle tire around. I'd seen footage of that fun pasttime many times on tv or in photos, but I think it was the first time I saw somone engaged and enthralled in that particular makeshift toy.





Peter told me that his parents never told them about the separation between the classes of people where he grew up (in that same neighborhood). He had an innocent outlook on himself and those kids around him. Even though they went to a private school or something, when they had free time, they resorted to the same toys as the kids here living in this ghetto.

I've been aware and open minded about poverty for much of my adult life, acknowledging both God's love for people and our responsibility to help those out in need; and I've been around my share of poor conditions, crime, and homelessness ... but the difference between what I've seen in the streets of Austin, Texas, for example, and the dirty alleyways and roads of Kampala, Uganda ... are startling.

Anyway, here's a photo that Keely Scott took (she's this really neat person that Compassion brought along to supply all us bloggers with good photos). This photo is one I call "the epitome shot," because it crystalizes in an image what we are doing here. We are adults from another culture holding hands and supporting a young child here in Uganda. It's really the perfect picture of what goes on when we (me, us, you, them) get involved with a sponsorship type of role. We're practically helping our neighbors here in Uganda.





I learned about some other cool ways to help with Compassion. Many kids are brought into "the program" and start getting help before they are actually sponsored. This is done because some people donate into an unsponsored children fund. There's also a whole other level of help that we saw today in our second project visit. The first project is like many, which they call CDSP (I could be wrong about the acronym...I never served time in the military, so sometimes the acronym mastering takes me some time), which involved the Child Sponsorship Program. The CSP, though, stands for another type of program, which is about Child Survival Program. This is where support workers offer aid to an unborn child, offering help to a pregnant mother to help her health and the health of the baby. This also involves young children with HIV. It's stepping in and helping save a child's life, basically. It's urgent and immediate help to try and save lives. The Child Development Sponsorship Programs are helping develop a child; the CSP is actually about the hardcore saving of a child's life.

The project we visited secondly today had lots of children that were orphaned or had incapacitated parents due to HIV. We spent a lot of time playing with them. I kicked the soccerball around for what seemed like hours. I was sweating in my jeans and polo shirt, and enjoying playing with the boys and seeing their smiles as we interacted on an athletic level. That's always cool.

Here's a few photos. Today's blogging was kind of split up, so hopefully the next few days will have more photos and perhaps be more organized. Like we're experiencing on this trip, though, not everything goes exactly as planned.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at February 12, 2008 01:23 PM