I say it back to myself a few times before the reality hits me and even then, it doesn’t totally register. When it doesn’t rain, there is no water.
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It’s rainy season in Northern Uganda and we haven’t seen even a cloud in the sky for three weeks.
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Another morning comes and I sit in our hut in the shade with my team as we eagerly wait for our breakfast. Steven, one of the children we live with, comes up to greet us and says “we’re not having breakfast today” and I don’t understand – and then I realize ; it’s the water. There’s no water because there’s no rain and when there’s no water, the kids don’t eat, they don’t bathe.
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Our cook Viola arrives with our breakfast. My team and I sit with a platter of hot water, instant coffee, sugar, milk and buttery, fresh pancakes, but suddenly my appetite is gone.
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__________
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This is just one of the realities of camp, of the refugee crisis. I hate to call it that, because you lose the individual, the human that is a refugee – but looking at their home and their current location, it is a crisis.
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More than a million men, women and children have fled South Sudan to come to Uganda to seek refuge. They escaped war, murder and so much violence – and while they found physical safety, there is still so much missing.
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In Rhino Camp, there is still death – sickness takes many because there are few clinical doctors available to treat anything beyond a simple infection. There is still murder, there is still rape. The culture is shame based, so everything is unspoken.
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I live in an orphanage that houses about 100 children.
For breakfast they eat rice, if we’re lucky enough to have gotten water from the UN.
For lunch they eat posso and beans – for dinner, they eat the same. From time to time, they get greens or meat.
They live in simply constructed wood-walled and tin-roofed dorms – but the wood is falling apart due to massive termite infestations. We make a game out of taking sticks and pounding the walls of every building on site to temporarily delay the pest’s takeover.
Their bathrooms are pit latrines that don’t seem to have been emptied since their construction.
The orphanage’s budget only allows infrequent second and third hand clothes purchases for the children. They manage to use strings of plastic from bags to mend gaping holes in what they do have.
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It’s heartbreaking to witness, but a blessing to be in the midst of things with these children. They’ve lost so much, but have more joy and hope than most people who have it “made.” I’m grateful for the time my team and I have had in Rhino Camp because it’s changed everything. It’s easy to read about a suffering population, study numbers and research suggested methods of aid. It’s comfortable to look at pictures of starving children and hollow eyes from afar, turning away when it gets to real.
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But to sit with them – to break bread with them. To study with them as they struggle to excel in their education because it’s their only way out. To listen as they try and articulate the rift inside of them ; longing for home because it’s their HOME, but scared to go back because of what they may find…or who they may not.
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The impact isn’t in the dollars we send. It’s in the waiting. It’s in the sweating in the hot sun kicking around a football on blistered feet. It’s in the calling every single child and person by NAME, because they’re more than a statistic and deserve to be treated as such.
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These people have become my family – we have served each other and loved each other. We’ve dispelled lies of shame and combated legalistic views of what redemption truly looks like. I know the deepest, hidden parts of their stories and they know mine.
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We read the Word together, we pray together. We laugh together, we play together and we cry together. We celebrate and we mourn – but we do it all as one. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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