I have been able to meet guys my age who used to be child soldiers. Many of the women are now infected with HIV/AIDS as a result of living in the displaced persons camps where the army soldiers would abuse them. There are children, now orphans, left behind by their fathers and mothers by choice or by sickness. Over 80% of Uganda’s population is under the age of 14. Obviously, there is an extreme level of poverty since people we’re forced out of their homes and jobs and no longer have a means to provide. Most children live on one meal a day consisting of beans. It’s hard to ever improve your situation when the daily chores of cleaning, washing, fetching water, finding and cooking food, and selling anything you can make a bit of money off of turns into a tasks that takes hours.
We have been working to help the local pastor here set up a website for his organization called Uganda Childcare Foundation. This way, he can begin building a foundation for a sponsorship program for the children in this area who are either orphans, or whose families can not afford to take care of them. He is already taking care of several children and helps to pay for their school fees, food, and medical care. Unless you are being sponsored in some form, most kids will have to work for most of the day just to pay their school fees (only a few dollars). They do this by getting water from the well for other people, making bricks, digging and cultivating farmland, or selling vegetables at a market. We are helping develop profiles for these children to go on the website by having them tell us their stories. We also get to spend time just playing and loving on the kids. They love to jump rope, play frisbee or soccer, and sing and dance.
The despair and hopelessness that is present from years of civil war is overwhelming. So is the poverty the majority of people live in where we were staying in Rackoko, and probably most of Uganda. We can't do much with limited money and time. Honestly, it'd be hard to do much with endless money and time. But… the Lord says to love your neighbor. He says the heavens rejoice over one person coming to know him. So I will choose to love one person at a time, as much as I can. I can't fix a country destroyed by war and corruption but I can love those who were affected and need to be loved. I can bring a smile to an orphan's face by hugging them and laughing with them. I can't extend a person's life who is dying of HIV/AIDS but I can tell them that they are not forgotten and their life does matter. There is a God who died for them so that may live with Him for eternity. There is a God who sent me here, at this time, so that I could here there stories, be changed by them, and try to love them as He would.
