Home thoughts from abroad

This morning after I ate my breakfast of bread and jam and mango on the porch, I thought about the last week in Soroti.  In the background cocks are crowing, people are working in their maize field on the other side of the fence, Fortunate the cook is walking backwards and forwards across the compound, her 2 small children come and ask me to play and the girls wave as they walk back to their rooms from the cookhouse.  It’s 8.30am on Saturday.  One of the younger girls has visitors staying and it’s lovely to see her playing like a little girl.  There are 13 girls who board here although they don’t all stay at the weekends. Uncle Mike will be here soon and we'll play parachute games with the local children.

I start to think about the people I’ve met and stories I’ve heard and once again it hits me that we really are worlds apart.  I’ll go home next week to my 4 bedroomed house with gas cooker, 2 bathrooms, and all mod cons. I can drive my own car wherever and whenever I want – even late at night through the country lanes near our house, and without having to navigate enormous potholes.  I can walk on a pavement or ride my bike without having to move out of the way of thundering lorries, or cover my face from thick red dust.

Imagine a family of 5 (or 6, or 8) sharing a one-roomed house with mud floor and walls and no window. No separate kitchen and a shared latrine.  If you live in a town or suburb you may have access to water but you pay for it on a sliding scale depending on whether it’s from a bore-hole, spring or tap – but you have to fetch it yourself.   You may sleep on the floor, a mat, a mattress or if you’re really lucky, a bed. You’re unlikely to sleep alone in a family home, you have to share all available space with other adults or children. 

If you can, you go to work.  If you’re a woman, your husband may not want you to get a job even if it means guaranteed food each day, if he wants you to be able to look after him, your home, the garden, and your children.  

If you have health problems you can get an appointment at a clinic if you can afford it – but you may have to wait for hours however sick you are.  Some people think there’s no point going because they can’t afford the tests or medication that might result.  If children are given medication they may forget to take it or not understand how important it is, unless they have an adult who will monitor it.  You can get free HIV treatment – but you have to take it in order to get well. 

As I was musing over this, someone arrived and told me that he’d been up all night with a friend who had been stabbed. They’d driven round all night trying to find a hospital that could help – but they aren’t fully staffed at night and are very busy.  Eventually the police helped them but it was too late and his friend had bled to death.  The only response I could think of was to do a very un-Ugandan thing and give my friend a hug. 

Today I’ve chatted to people about how to progress the project for children with disabilities,  how to cultivate crops to support your family, about the bee keeping project here at Global Care, about ways of generating sustainable income, about the lives of women and about the responsibilities and costs of caring for sick and orphaned children.  I have made some amazing friends here and I genuinely love the people and this place as a second home. But it’s easy for me, I come with a suitcase full of play goodies for the children and I help out where I can.  Then I go to my ‘first’ home.   

Each day someone asks me ‘Auntie, when are you leaving?’ I wish there was a way of explaining that each time I come, a little bit of my heart gets left behind when I go home.